American Legislative Exchange Council

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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an association of state legislators and corporations.

History

Notable members

State legislators

Corporations

Trade groups

Law firms

Non-profits

Conferences

Lobbying efforts

Political connections

Financiers

Lobbying allies

Officials and politicians

References

External links

  • Sourcewatch pages on ALEC
  • Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange, "Lowndes County and Valdosta history: origins of the old boys", 2012/04/??: "Only a generation ago, the general understanding was that a couple of local families said frog and all the local elected bodies hopped. Nowadays I’m told by some in the know that it’s a bit more broad-based than that. Unfortunately, some of the slightly more broad-based old boys have hooked up with a source of top-down autocracy in DC: ALEC. That’s where the pushes for private prisons, charter schools, school consolidation, and some other shadowy things we’ve been shining a light on have been coming from, sprayed like pesticides around here and as far as the statehouse by certain of our state- and nationally-prominent newer old boys."

Founding members

Economic ideology

Climate change

  • The Independent, "Have scientists really admitted climate change sceptics are right?", 2017/09/19
  • Liberal proponents of climate action who covertly support fossil fuels
    • George Soros investments
      • The Guardian, "Climate philanthropist George Soros invests millions in coal", 2015/08/19: "Billionaire climate philanthropist George Soros invested more than $2m (£1.3m) in struggling coal giants Peabody Energy and Arch Coal in recent months, despite having once called the fuel “lethal” to the climate. Filings with the Securities and Exchange commission show that between April and June this year Soros Fund Management (SFM) bought more than 1m shares in Peabody ($2.25m), the world’s largest private coal company, and 500,000 shares in Arch ($188,000)."
      • Daily Caller, "George Soros Makes Massive Financial Investments On Fossil Fuels", 2018/02/19: "In the last quarter of 2017, Soros Fund Management reported investments in eleven new fossil fuel corporations totalling nearly $160 million, according to his company’s December 31, 2017, filing before the Securities and Exchange Commission reviewed by TheDCNF. [...] The billionaire’s newest fossil fuel investment was $87 million in Alerian, MLP, a fund that solely invests in “energy infrastructure” consisting of pipelines, storage tanks and processing plants for crude oil and natural gas. He purchased eight million shares of the company. His company’s second biggest energy investment was Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil exploration and drilling companies. His firm purchased 842,000 shares valued at $30 million. [...] Other oil and gas companies purchased by Soros include oil and gas firms Noble Energy and Energen Corporation, oil field service firms like Ocean Rig UDW and Oasis Petroleum, propane, natural gas and natural gas liquefaction product UGI Corporation, and the oil and natural gas distributor Atmos Energy Corporation. Soros finds oil and natural gas pipelines to be attractive. Despite the political activist uproar in the building of the Keystone XL project, in June 2016 the billionaire invested $54 million in Columbia Pipeline, an oil and gas pipeline company that completed its merger with TransAmerica, the owner of the pipeline."
    • The Guardian, "Revealed: Google made large contributions to climate change deniers", 2019/10/11: "Google has made “substantial” contributions to some of the most notorious climate deniers in Washington despite its insistence that it supports political action on the climate crisis. Among hundreds of groups the company has listed on its website as beneficiaries of its political giving are more than a dozen organisations that have campaigned against climate legislation, questioned the need for action, or actively sought to roll back Obama-era environmental protections. The list includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative policy group that was instrumental in convincing the Trump administration to abandon the Paris agreement and has criticised the White House for not dismantling more environmental rules. [...] Google is also listed as a sponsor for an upcoming annual meeting of the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella organisation that supports conservative groups including the Heartland Institute, a radical anti-science group that has chided the teenage activist Greta Thunberg for “climate delusion hysterics”. [...] CEI has opposed regulation of the internet and enforcement of antitrust rules, and has defended Google against some Republicans’ claims that the search engine has an anti-conservative bias. [...] Apart from CEI, they include the American Conservative Union, whose chairman, Matt Schlapp, worked for a decade for Koch Industries and shaped the company’s radical anti-environment policies in Washington; the American Enterprise Institute, which has railed against climate “alarmists”; and Americans for Tax Reform, which has criticised companies who support climate action for seeking out “corporate welfare”. It has also donated undisclosed sums to the Cato Institute, which has voiced opposition to climate legislation and questioned the severity of the crisis. Google has also made donations to the Mercatus Center, a Koch-funded thinktank, and the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action, a pressure group that said the Paris agreement was supported by “cosmopolitan elites” and part of Barack Obama’s “destructive legacy”."

Prison abuses

Net neutrality

Voter suppression

Police abuses

Health care and insurance

Other curiosities

  • Democratic Party relationship with the Koch brothers
    • Support for the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)
    • New Yorker, "The Koch Brothers' Covert Operations" by Jane Mayer, 2010/08/30
      • "By 1993, when Bill Clinton became President, Citizens for a Sound Economy had become a prototype for the kind of corporate-backed opposition campaigns that have proliferated during the Obama era. The group waged a successful assault on Clinton’s proposed B.T.U. tax on energy, for instance, running advertisements, staging media events, and targeting opponents. And it mobilized anti-tax rallies outside the Capitol—rallies that NPR described as “designed to strike fear into the hearts of wavering Democrats.” Dan Glickman, a former Democratic congressman from Wichita, who supported the B.T.U. tax, recalled, “I’d been in Congress eighteen years. The Kochs actually engaged against me and funded my opponent. They used a lot of resources and effort—their employees, too.” Glickman suffered a surprise defeat. “I can’t prove it, but I think I was probably their victim,” he said."
      • "The Kochs continued to disperse their money, creating slippery organizations with generic-sounding names, and this made it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington. In 1990, Citizens for a Sound Economy created a spinoff group, Citizens for the Environment, which called acid rain and other environmental problems “myths.” When the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigated the matter, it discovered that the spinoff group had “no citizen membership of its own.”"
      • "During the 2000 election campaign, Koch Industries spent some nine hundred thousand dollars to support the candidacies of George W. Bush and other Republicans. During the Bush years, Koch Industries and other fossil-fuel companies enjoyed remarkable prosperity. The 2005 energy bill, which Hillary Clinton dubbed the Dick Cheney Lobbyist Energy Bill, offered enormous subsidies and tax breaks for energy companies. The Kochs have cast themselves as deficit hawks, but, according to a study by Media Matters, their companies have benefitted from nearly a hundred million dollars in government contracts since 2000."
    • Brian Mohr, "Rahm’s donors are Trump’s donors; Thiel, Koch agendas seeping into city deals", 2018/11/03: "Since 2011, the richest man in Illinois has donated almost $1.4 million to the campaigns of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Ken Griffin, the billionaire high-frequency trader and founder of Citadel Investment Group, has also given million$ to the Koch brothers, Trump’s Inaugural Committee, Paul Ryan, Karl Rove’ American Crossroads Super PAC, Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign and pro-Jeb Bush super Pac, Right to Rise USA. The money has gained him access to to not only Emanuel’s office but also the White House. On the same day last June that former FBI Director James Comey testified before the Senate, Griffin and other investors including Rebekah Mercer, Doug DeVos and Todd Ricketts met at the White House with Trump, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, WH Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Advisor Kellyanne Conway to discuss the administration’s legislative agenda."
  • Smear campaign against Ruth Bader Ginsburg
  • Ayn Rand background
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