You And Your Family Have An Enemy... Named ALEC

The National Conference of State legislators leadership has proposed a resolution in support of repealing the Dodd Frank consumer protection bill be voted on at their annual meeting next week in San Antonio. Here's an excerpt:

WHEREAS, The banking and insurance industries are essential to the continued growth and well-being of the States, serving as important hubs of economic activity for communities throughout the country; the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act not only poses a major threat to these businesses, but will serve as a destructive influence on the entire nation; and

WHEREAS, The Dodd-Frank Act, which was signed by the president of the United States on July 21, 2010, consists of 2,300 pages of new statutory language that will result in the promulgation of more than 250 new federal regulations; supporters of the legislation claim that it will equip federal regulators with powers to prevent another financial debacle like the country experienced from 2007 through 2009, but in reality, the bill sets up a regulatory regime that allows "Too Big to Fail" banks and Wall Street to continue to avoid adequate scrutiny while it punishes traditional state banks that had nothing to do with the most recent crisis; and

WHEREAS, A new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection is established to regulate all consumer financial services in the United States; the bureau will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding from the Federal Reserve System and is not subject to congressional oversight through the
appropriations process; it will have the power to decide what types of financial products can and cannot be offered, and it will have the power to set prices for consumer loans, mortgages, and small business loans

It's a point of view. It's a point of view-- a point of view embraced by American Express, Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, Golden Rule Financial Corp, HSBC, and Koch Industries, and dozens of other companies-- shared, in fact, propagated by shady right-wing front group ALEC. All those organizations are ALEC donors, by the way. Yesterday ALEC-- the American Legislative Exchange Council-- kicked off its annual convention of right-wing politicians from across America in New Orleans. Lisa Graves covered it for ALEC Exposed and went into how the corporate lobbyists who write the ALEC agenda were wining and dining the Republican legislators from the moment they arrived.

Legislators will be sitting down with some of the biggest corporations in the world -- Koch Industries, Bayer, Kraft, Coca-Cola, State Farm, AT&T, WalMart, Philip Morris and more -- behind closed doors. There, they approve one-size-fits-all changes to the law that ALEC legislators take home and introduce as their own brilliant policy innovations.
 
ALEC is little more than a bill factory for corporate-friendly legislation that often repeals people’s rights or fattens the corporate bottom line. We think citizens have a right to know that these Fortune 100 firms “have a voice and a vote” through ALEC on bills before they are introduced in state houses, cleansed of the fact that corporations already voted on them. ALEC’s hot bills lately have sought to require voter ID, promote tobacco products flavored to appeal to kids, privatize Medicare and Medicaid, privatize prisons and public schools, and legalize the harassment of immigrants.

The Center for Media and Democracy made available to the public over 800 “model” bills and resolutions voted on by corporations through ALEC, which we analyze on ALECexposed.org. Citizens can look at the actual ALEC bills and compare them to legislation moving in their states.

ALEC's National Chairman is Louisiana Rep. Noble Ellington, the former Democrat from Franklin Parish.  Ellington defended ALEC on National Public Radio, but admitted that corporations have a big role in crafting ALEC bills.  Ellington himself introduced numerous ALEC bills, including two last year that would undermine environmental protections for Louisiana wetlands. ALEC’s Private Property Protection Act (pdf) (HB 1040) basically asserts that corporations have a right to pollute and should be compensated by taxpayers if that right is infringed by laws limiting pollution.  He also proposed studying ALEC’s “Opportunity to Correct Act” (HCSR 5), which would require that polluters get special notice before the government can find that they are violating the law. 
 
ALEC’s arsenal includes bills to make it harder for people to band together to negotiate with employers through unions.  The ALEC “Public Employee Bargaining Transparency Act,” proposed by Rep. Anthony Ligi (as HB204), was rationalized on the claim that “Increased transparency in labor negotiation meetings and documents serves to provide all parties to the negotiations with an incentive to avoid any hint of corruption; Open sessions and increased oversight help ensure that government is using taxpayer money effectively.” Perhaps Ligi will sponsor a bill to open ALEC's task force meetings, where corporations and legislators vote, to similar sunshine and require disclosure of ALEC’s corporate donors “to avoid any hint of corruption,” especially since taxpayers pay many legislators’ ALEC dues.

Last week Lisa did an amazing job of analyzing the six most dangerous bills ALEC is pushing through Republican-controlled state legislatures right now. They seek to undermine democracy in various ways, particularly by attacking public education and by making it difficult for working class Americans to vote. Disenfranchisement is a right-wing priority. So is union-busting. Here are all six:

Disenfranchising American Citizens Through Voter ID

In the wake of the highest general election turnout in nearly 60 years in the 2008 presidential election (particularly among university students and African-Americans), ALEC's "voter ID" legislation has been rapidly moving in state legislatures. Shortly after the election of the nation's first black president, "Preventing Election Fraud" was the cover story on the Inside ALEC magazine, and ALEC corporations and politicians voted for "model" voter legislation in 2009. Voter ID is a hot issue this year, in advance of the 2012 presidential election.

In many of states, voter ID legislation has ALEC's fingerprints. In forty-seven states, legislation was introduced requiring specific kinds of identification to vote or making existing requirements more onerous. These laws have the effect of disenfranchising many of the elderly, people with disabilities, people of color, and students, among others who do not have driver's licenses, but who typically have other proof where they live in a voting precinct, like a utility bill, which has traditionally been accepted for voter registration. In Wisconsin, for example, those without the designated state-issued photo ID include many tens of thousands of state university students and a staggering number of other people, especially older Americans and also people of color-- 23 percent of all elderly Wisconsinites over the age of 65; 17 percent of white men and women; 55 percent of all African American males and 49 percent of African American women; 46 percent of Hispanic men and 59% of Hispanic women; 78 percent of African American men age 18-24 and 66 percent of African American women age 18-24. Although Wisconsin's voter ID law offers free IDs, just like the ALEC bill, Governor Scott Walker subsequently announced plans to close as many as ten offices where people could obtain IDs, allegedly located in Democratic districts.

Out of the forty-seven states where Voter ID bills have been introduced, twenty states had no voter ID requirement at the beginning of 2011 but legislation to require it was introduced this year; it became law in three. Of the remainder, twenty-seven had voter ID, but not photo ID, requirements at the beginning of 2011; fourteen of these states saw legislation that would require photo ID at the polls, and the proposals became law in four states. This disproportionate focus on the specter of voter fraud belies the statistical reality that such fraud in the U.S. is exceedingly rare, even though such legislation will have a statistically significant effect of depriving many American citizens of their right to vote. The idea of limiting the number of people who vote is closely associated with ALEC's founder, Paul Weyrich. Among the many of Weyrich's statements over the years that were tailored to advance the agenda of white fundamentalists, in 1980 he gave a particularly illuminating and disturbing speech on voting. He expressly told a group of religious conservatives: "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Union-Busting

In early 2011, a wave of anti-union provisions provoked unprecedented protests, after Wisconsin Governor and ALEC alumni Scott Walker introduced a radical set of anti-worker provisions to cripple public employee unions. After a month of massive protests, William Cronon, a history professor from the University of Wisconsin penned an op-ed in the New York Times questioning whether ALEC was behind Governor Walker's union-busting effort. Two days later, the state Republican Party filed an Open Records request against him widely perceived to be retaliation against questioning the role of ALEC. Wisconsin's new Republican governor and Republican-controlled legislature were not alone in pushing anti-union legislation in 2011-- Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire, Florida and 19 other states introduced laws limiting the collective bargaining rights of employees-- and the simultaneous effort seemed more than coincidence. Indeed, ALEC has long had its sights set on busting unions, which strengthen the bargaining power of employees in negotiations with public and corporate employers, and which serve as a political counterweight to corporate influence in elections and policymaking.
Each state pushed its own ALEC-inspired anti-union legislation, but there were many commonalities. Some of the most common ALEC bills reflected in these efforts were the "Public Employer Payroll Deduction Act" prohibiting automatic payroll deductions for union dues, the "Public Employee Freedom Act" allowing employees to be free riders and opt-out of paying union dues, and various iterations of ALEC's "Right to Work" and "Paycheck Protection" legislation. ALEC ideological guru Milton Friedman, who spoke at several ALEC meetings since 1978, famously said "Only a crisis-- actual or perceived-- produces real changes. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around." Anti-union legislation is just such an idea that has been "lying around" awaiting the budget crisis, which was caused by unregulated Wall Street gambling and which is being irrationally blamed on union pay and pensions.

Undoing Efforts to Address Climate Change

After federal climate change legislation failed in 2010, over 30 states joined regional climate agreements in the Midwest, Northeast, and West to coordinate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, develop clean energy sources, and bring predictability to state rules and regulations. By most measures, this state-led, decentralized, cooperative effort proves the vitality of federalism, a concept ALEC allegedly supports. However, these regional initiatives might also affect the profits of ALEC funders like Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil, and ALEC drafted the "State Withdrawal from Regional Climate Initiatives" (pdf) to thwart these state-led efforts. The ALEC resolution includes talking points urging state governors to withdraw from regional climate initiatives, and has shown up in states like Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington, in some cases with the ALEC language duplicated verbatim.

Filling For-Profit Prisons Through Anti-Immigrant Bills

Arizona's infamous anti-immigrant legislation, known as SB1070, has been revealed by National Public Radio to have been crafted by long-time ALEC member Corrections Corporations of America (CCA) and others connected to ALEC. The for-profit prison company, CCA, reportedly helped draft the ALEC "No Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigrants Act," which requires state law enforcement enforce federal immigration law, gives private citizens the right to sue law enforcement officers if they do not think the law is being enforced (regardless of other law enforcement priorities such as investigating violent crimes), makes presence on state soil without federal immigration status a criminal offense, and requires that employers use the flawed "e-Verify" system for hiring employees. This model bill became Arizona's SB1070, resulting in legalized racial profiling and more immigrants incarcerated in for-profit prisons operated by CCA. According to the ACLU, "ten percent of the country's detained immigrants are held in five detention centers in Arizona[,] three of them are run by the private Corrections Corporation of America [and there has been] a 58% increase in immigration detention in Arizona over the past six years." Since the beginning of 2010, thirty states introduced anti-immigrant legislation similar to ALEC bills, which also include the "Resolution to Enforce Our Immigration Laws and Secure our Borders" and "Immigration Law Enforcement Act." Five states have passed them: Arizona, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, and Florida.

Opposing Health Insurance Reform

In 2008, in the midst of a presidential election that included campaign promises to address rising health care costs and help the millions of Americans without health insurance, ALEC worked to thwart efforts to provide a program like Medicare for all Americans. In 2008, the ALEC "Health and Human Services Task Force," which has included lobbyists from some of the biggest health insurance and drug companies in the world, voted for a model state constitutional amendment or statute to make a national health insurance program basically illegal, through a bill with the feel-good name of the "Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act" (pdf). According to ALEC, by 2010, "42 states either introduced or announced ALEC's Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act. Eight states (Virginia, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee) passed the ALEC model as a statute, and two states (Arizona and Oklahoma) passed the ALEC model as a constitutional amendment." The industry-dominated task force went on to pass a resolution that, if passed by 2/3 of the states, could effectively block any national "public option" for health care coverage, under ALEC's claim of a Tenth Amendment "state's right" against such legislation, under its "Resolution on Preserving States Rights Regarding Federal Health Insurance Exchanges and a Public Plan." Seven states have passed resolutions opposing health care reform. ALEC has also boasted that its "Health Care Choice Act" was introduced in nineteen states and became law in Wyoming, allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines, which undermines the ability of a state's regulators to insist on minimum coverage to protect consumers.

Privatizing K-12 Education

ALEC has been pushing to privatize pubic schools through "vouchers," which use tax dollars, for decades, and, like many ALEC initiatives, Wisconsin has been a focal point for its agenda. The nation's first large-scale school voucher program was pushed through in 1990 in Milwaukee by then-Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, an ALEC member. That program was limited to low-income students in Milwaukee and at the time gained bipartisan support, particularly from African-American leaders who supported more educational options for urban youth. It is now clear the Milwaukee program was the proverbial camel's nose under the tent in the ALEC effort to privatize public schools and also to undermine teachers' unions. Despite two decades of lackluster performance in Milwaukee's program, Governor Scott Walker, an ALEC alumni, took office in 2011 and pressed to expand the program statewide, along with provisions to use tax dollars to pay for the private school tuition of wealthy families. Walker was not alone in pushing ALEC's agenda to shift tax dollars from public schools to for-profit school companies or private religious schools.

ALEC model bills representing various privatization footholds have been introduced and passed in many states, particularly through offering tax credits to parents sending their kids to private schools (like the Parental Choice Scholarship Act, the Family Education Tax Credit Program, and the Great School Tax Credit Program). Also popular this year is ALEC's Special Needs Scholarship Act, which attempts to appeal to parents of children with disabilities by providing tax dollars for kids to attend unregulated private schools that can evade the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Act or other regulations.

Can Eric Holder Stop The GOP From Disenfranchising Millions Of American Citizens? Will He Even Try?

In state after state, ALEC has plans for those with Republican-controlled legislatures and ruthless, fascist-minded GOP governors (obviously Scott Walker stands out, but Wisconsin is far from alone). 117 Members of Congress signed a letter asking AG Holder to report back to them about what actions his department is taking to prevent Republicans from disenfranchising millions of citizens, as many as 11% of the entire voting public:


Tuesday Katrina vanden Heuvel did an op-ed for the Washington Post outlining a staggering state-by-state crusade by outright fascists to undermine American democracy. Ever notice that when democratic parties win elections they never try to disenfranchise the political right but that's always the first thing fascists do?

In states across the country, Republican legislatures are pushing through laws that make it more difficult for Americans to vote. The most popular include new laws requiring voters to bring official identification to the polls. Estimates suggest that more than 1 in 10 Americans lack an eligible form of ID, and thus would be turned away at their polling location. Most are minorities and young people, the most loyal constituencies of the Democratic Party.

There are only two explanations for such action: Either Republican governors and state legislators are genuinely trying to protect the public from rampant voter fraud, or they are trying to disenfranchise the Americans most likely to vote against them. The latter would run so egregiously counter to democratic values-- to American values-- that one hopes the former was the motivation.

And yet, a close examination finds that voter fraud, in truth, is essentially nonexistent. A report from the Brennan Center for Justice found the incidence of voter fraud at rates such as 0.0003 percent in Missouri and 0.000009 percent in New York. “Voter impersonation is an illusion,” said Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center. “It almost never happens, and when it does, it is in numbers far too small to effect the outcome of even a close election.”

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) disagrees. He argues that voter fraud is a serious problem that requires serious action. But as proof, Kobach cites just “221 incidents of voter fraud” in Kansas since 1997, for an average of just 17 a year. As a Bloomberg editorial points out, “During that same period, Kansans cast more than 10 million votes in 16 statewide elections. Even if the fraud allegation were legitimate... the rate of fraud would be miniscule.”

The facts, however clear, did not deter the Kansas legislature from passing one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country. Neither have they deterred other states that have passed such laws this year, or dozens of others considering similar action.

That’s because the facts of voter fraud are, in reality, wholly irrelevant to the Republican push for stricter laws. Republicans aren’t concerned with preventing a problem that isn’t occurring. They are concerned with preserving their party’s position in power, and they are willing to disenfranchise millions of people to do so. No other explanation could possibly pass the smell test.

This is seen, as well, in the fact that a number of new restrictive voting policies wouldn’t prevent voter fraud, even if it were occurring. In Ohio, for example, a recently signed law to curb early voting won’t prevent voter impersonation; it will only make it more difficult for citizens to cast their ballot. Or take Florida’s new voter registration law, which is so burdensome that the non-partisan League of Women Voters is pulling out of Florida entirely, convinced that it cannot possibly register voters without facing legal liability. Volunteers would need to have “a secretary on one hand and a lawyer on the other hand as they registered voters,” said Deirdre MacNabb, president of the Florida League of Women Voters.

What’s worse is that these aren’t a series of independent actions being coincidentally taken throughout the country. This is very much a coordinated effort. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a corporate-funded organization that works with state legislators to draft model legislation. According to The Nation’s John Nichols, “Enacting burdensome photo ID or proof of citizenship requirements has long been an ALEC priority.” It’s not surprise then, that the Wisconsin state legislator who pushed for one of the strictest voter ID laws in the nation is also ALEC’s Wisconsin chair.

I asked Alexander Keyssar, one of the country’s premier voting rights scholars, for some historical context. When was the last time an effort of this nature was so central to the agenda of an American political party? “What is so striking about the wave of legislation for ID laws is that we are witnessing for the first time in more than a century, a concerted, multi-state effort to make it more difficult for people to exercise their democratic rights,” he said. Keyssar, author of The Right to Vote, noted that “it is very reminiscent of what occurred in the North between 1875 and 1910-- the era of Jim Crow in the South-- when a host of procedural obstacles were put in the way of immigrants trying to vote.”

...That there is still a party in American politics willing to use disenfranchisement as a political tactic is gut-wrenching. Today, 46 years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, it must be the job of the American people to fight back against the forces that are disfiguring their nation on behalf of their party. Our dignity and the destiny of our democracy depends on it.

A week from Tuesday voters in 6 senatorial districts in Wisconsin will make a decision that will have heavy national reverberations. They will chose democracy or fascism by recalling and replacing 6 Scott Walker zombies or not. The Koch Brothers and other dangerous native fascists are pouring millions of dollars into the state to advance the cause that was stopped with World War II.

You Think The Rightists Have Taken Over Yet? Can You Guess Which State Would Make Hitler Happiest?

Conspicuous by his absence, Christie's legislature has cramped his style

Ken Quinnell posted a fantastic crowd-sourced feature at AlterNet yesterday that delineates the 10 craziest legislatures in America. Hard to imagine that his own Florida only came in at #2 and that Scott Walker's Wisconsin zombie parliament was only the 3rd worst. But one of our Facebook pals, Dan Lynch really felt burned, writing, "I feel left out. Surely Idaho deserves at least honorable mention? After all, the Senate caucus chairman went on a drunken rampage, stole and crashed a car, saying he was looking for the promised land." Life's never fair.

While attention was naturally focused on the changes in Congress that came as a result of the 2010 elections, an overlooked, but vitally important, consequence of those elections was the strong rightward shift in legislatures across the state. As of the beginning of legislative sessions this year, 26 states were controlled by Republicans, with only 15 in the hands of Democrats. Not surprisingly, this has meant an epidemic of right-wing legislation being proposed and passed across the country. The worst things that have passed, in both quantity and quality, are coming from Republican-controlled legislatures.

Keep in mind that all of these right-wing bastions of extremism and, more often than not, outright fascism, are now gerrymandering their states and rigging the election laws to make sure they hold power far into the future. Ohio only rang in as the 8th worst legislature and yet Quinnell writes that "It's hard to top Ohio Republicans, who had a fetus testify against abortion on the floor of the legislature. Seriously. They also went further than Wisconsin in stripping collective bargaining rights from public workers, including police and firefighters. (After that bill stalled in committee, Republicans just changed the committee membership to make sure the bill passed.) They also tried to pass legislation to allow guns in bars and stadiums and to allow drug convicts to have the right to bear arms. The legislature also poured money into for-profit charter schools, regardless of whether or not they successfully educated students, including one with a less than 2 percent success rate. All of this is without any oversight." It gets worse. Here's why Blue America has been asking everyone-- regardless of where you live-- to contribute to helping Wisconsin's voters recall Rick Scott and his pet fascist senators.

By now, everyone is familiar with Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican legislature's stripping state workers of their collective bargaining rights, but that's far from the only bad law to pass this year. The legislature also took away local governments' right to provide workers with stronger sick leave benefits, effectively privatized the state's Commerce Department, loosened child labor laws, cut public transportation and health care, shifted federal welfare reform dollars toward paying for tax cuts and cut access to broadband. All of this was done in a climate where the governor and Republicans went out of their way to deny Democrats the right to participate in the legislative process.

Quinnell makes a point that Florida is still worse. And can you guess which state tops the list of craziest in the nation? So as not to give it away, I'll alter the description slightly... but all regular DWT readers should be able to guess this on one try:

The number of times the legislature alone makes it on the national radar, not even touching on the nutcase governor, makes it a leader in state-level extremism. And it seems that it also sets the agenda for extremists in other states. Numerous states attempted to copy its most extremist legislation, but most of them didn't pass it. This proto-fascist state not only passed it first, the state is trying to up the ante by attempting to launch state "compacts" with its neighbors to override federal immigration law.

Want anti-union legislation? Check. Want to undermine a woman's right to choose? Got it. What about a full-scale assault on federalism and the powers of the national government? They lead the way. A government official gets shot in your state and what do you do? Vote to allow concealed weapons on college campuses. Don't like ethnic studies classes and believe crazy theories about a Mexican takeover of the U.S.? This is the state for you.
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Want a legislator ranting on the floor about bisexual high school principals? Done. Want another legislator saying the earth is only 6,000 years old? This state wins again. Want a birther bill passed through the legislature? All you had to do was ask.

Oh yeah, and the legislature (and governor) cut back on a transplant program that actually led to two people dying. When your state starts killing people who aren't on death row, then you can challenge these guys, which has the worst legislature in the United States.

These 10 states don't even remotely have a lock on the extreme legislative proposals this year. In particular, Virginia, Alabama, New York, Georgia, Maine, Kansas, and Missouri also got serious consideration for the top 10. And with groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pushing its agenda in every state, progressives should keep an eye on all of the state legislatures to see where the national conservative attacks of tomorrow are being perfected today.

That's all folks... but only the 4th worst

UPDATE: And Back To New Jersey For A Moment

The New Jersey legislature wasn't included in the 10 worst. People would say that that's because the Democratic majority has kept Governor Christie from rolling out the full right-wing agenda that Kacich, Scott, Walker, Snyder, Daniels, etc have done in their states. But as Ken has shown earlier this month and in June, there is a dangerous species in the Jersey legislature named Christiecrats. Is a picture worth a thousand words?

ALEC-- The Biggest Threat To America Since The Nazis... And A Very Similar One

Lately we've been doing a lot of reporting on the history of American fascism in the '30s and '40s and how the far right's activism back then planted the seeds for current developments in the Republican Party. Wealthy families, business and media groups, phony churches and political committees today can trace their roots directly back to antecedents who helped facilitate the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and who worked for their success, some even after the U.S. went to war against Germany and Italy.

On Saturday, for example, we looked at the power of the one of America's preeminent fascist dynasties, the DuPonts, and how they used one of their fascist front groups, the National Manufacturers Association, to push an anti-union, anti-regulatory, anti-family agenda that sounds exactly like the kinds of programs being pushed by current fascist-oriented Republicans like Scott Walker (R-WI) and John Kasich (R-OH). Walker and Kasich are both prominent alumni of today's most fascist-oriented GOP front organizations, ALEC (the American Legislative Excahnge Council), a private legislative organization responsible to no one but... the Koch Bros. Never heard of it? It's a much bigger threat to you and your family than al Qaeda ever was or ever will be. The website that tracks ALEC uses this warning as their introduction:

Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called "model bills" reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations. Through ALEC, corporations have "a VOICE and a VOTE" on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state. DO YOU?

This week's Nation features an important exposé on ALEC by John Nichols that every American should read.

“Never has the time been so right,” Louisiana State Representative Noble Ellington told conservative legislators gathered in Washington to plan the radical remaking of policies in the states. It was one month after the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans had grabbed 680 legislative seats and secured a power trifecta-- control of both legislative chambers and the governorship-- in twenty-one states. Ellington was speaking for hundreds of attendees at a “States and Nation Policy Summit,” featuring GOP stars like Texas Governor Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Convened by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-- “the nation’s largest, non-partisan, individual public-private membership association of state legislators,” as the spin-savvy group describes itself-- the meeting did not intend to draw up an agenda for the upcoming legislative session. That had already been done by ALEC’s elite task forces of lawmakers and corporate representatives. The new legislators were there to grab their weapons: carefully crafted model bills seeking to impose a one-size-fits-all agenda on the states.

Founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich and other conservative activists frustrated by recent electoral setbacks, ALEC is a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that, with infusions of corporate cash, has evolved to shape American politics. Inspired by Milton Friedman’s call for conservatives to “develop alternatives to existing policies [and] keep them alive and available,” ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces. The task forces cover issues from education to health policy. ALEC’s priorities for the 2011 session included bills to privatize education, break unions, deregulate major industries, pass voter ID laws and more. In states across the country they succeeded, with stacks of new laws signed by GOP governors like Ohio’s John Kasich and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, both ALEC alums.

The details of ALEC’s model bills have been available only to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 300 corporate members. But thanks to a leak to Aliya Rahman, an Ohio-based activist who helped organize protests at ALEC’s Spring Task Force meeting in Cincinnati, The Nation has obtained more than 800 documents representing decades of model legislation. Teaming up with the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation asked policy experts to analyze this never-before-seen archive.

There are 5 analyises of those documents available through The Nation, blueprints for a corporatist takeover of the United States; that's a polite way of saying a fascist takeover:

“Sabotaging Healthcare,” by Wendell Potter

“The Koch Connection,” by Lisa Graves

“Rigging Elections,” by John Nichols

“Business Domination Inc.,” by Joel Rogers and Laura Dresser

"Starving Public Schools,” by Julie Underwood

Happy Bastille Day!