Posted on May 9, 2012 in
Articles The Article: ALEC: The Most Important Election Issue You Don’t Know About by Savannah Cox on The Speckled Axe.
The Text: The 2012 election season has already brought with it familiar cries of so-called class warfare, quadrennial culture wars, and most recently, several pieces of controversial legislation that many have dubbed key components of the “war on women.” But as Americans and mainstream media spear each other with the same old political barbs, a far more sinister—yet perfectly legal—series of political maneuvering is taking place in boardrooms throughout the country. If successful, the subsequent victims won’t be just women, a particular class or minority but rather democracy itself. But the absolute worst part? In a year supposedly rife with democracy in action, hardly anyone is talking about it.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC): Not Your Average Baldwin
While the 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision gave a pulse and personhood to monolithic corporations throughout the United States, the corporate Frankenstein has been in the making for decades; it is only now that the monster is nearing completion and ready for unleashing against an otherwise distracted and disengaged populace. Funded almost entirely by billion dollar corporations since 1973, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) fuses together the worst of corporate and legislative corruption into one seamless copy and paste model policy package.
Their goal is simple yet sweeping: reduce the size of government to that of a shrunken pea, get rid of regulations that impede upon what should be unrestricted growth of multinational corporations and by effect shift political power from the American people to the pinstriped pockets of the world’s most affluent denizens. It should come as no surprise that its members, alumni, and award recipients are all familiar faces within the American conservative canon: current Speaker of the House John Boehner served as one of ALEC’s earliest alumni, along with influential men like Senate Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Donald Rumsfeld, Charles and David Koch, and Milton Friedman among a whole slew of others.
Continue Reading
