America’s Trojan Horse

I’m grateful for The Center for Media & Democracy’s PR Watch, which, in its own words, reports on spin and disinformation. In July, it released the secrets of The American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC), founded in 1973.

If you go to ALEC’s scary website, you’ll learn that the council is a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector, the federal government, and general public.

Not! Corporate interests pay big bucks to sit down with legislators (overwhelmingly Republican) and write model bills to further their agendas and increase profits. Think about it: America is being run for the benefit of corporations. Our elected officials are conspiring to betray us, and strip us of our rights, and the enterprise is being financed by corporate names like  Enron,  the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, Chevron, Coors Brewing Company, Shell, Texaco,  Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, Waste Management, Philip Morris Management Corporation, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.

This organization, according to ALEC Watch, is Corporate America’s Trojan Horse in the States. They vote against bills we need, like environmental and consumer protections, and vote for all the bad stuff that will take money out of our pockets and add to corporate wealth.

They propose, for example, that seniors pay for Medicaid by selling their houses via reverse mortgages, and naturally, they want to privatize everything.

They want to eliminate public education in favor of private schools, subsidized by vouchers.  Remember that private schools are accountable to themselves, unlike public schools, who are accountable to everybody. And what will happen when parents find it impossible to pay despite the voucher, and there’s no public school alternative? Don’t be surprised if we put the parents in prison.

Prisons are profitable for private sector interests, like the Corrective Corporation of America, (CCA), one of ALEC’s corporate members. ALEC proposes to eliminate early parole for prisoners deemed safe, so we can incarcerate way more people, as if we already didn’t lead the world in terms of our prison population.

Alec is the force behind bills to make it more difficult to vote. It’s clear to me that the poor and minority voters who usually support Democrats will be stripped of their voting rights.

ALEC is also behind the war against workers. Take a look at Wisconsin, and the damage done to unions there. Remember when good jobs with benefits still existed? ALEC companies like Walmart provide jobs, if you want to work a few hours a week with no benefits and no protections.

The model bills developed by ALEC are being passed all over the country. ALEC alumnus include Republicans running for president as well as current members of both houses, state governors and legislators, and obstructionists extraordinaire John Boehner and Eric Cantor.

I’m afraid, and I want you to be afraid too, but I want you to follow the links on this page, read one of the 800  model bills, and learn more about this insidious threat to our way of life. Then click on this link, and show these oh, so familiar corporations that you’re ready to fight. Hit them where it hurts!