An ag-gag in Kentucky, guns on campus in Georgia, protection for businesses that want to deny service to gays in Kansas; sound familiar? You can thank the American Legislative Exchange Council’s one-size-fits-all bills that are gutting local control.
ALEC is the clearinghouse for conservative ideas, a highly secretive non-profit that puts big business and state lawmakers together to draft model legislation in an effort to undermine regulation, cut taxes and advance other often far-right agendas, all while avoiding the very disclosure of its members. It’s the spoke in the wheel of dozens of conservative organizations that’s weakening the very purpose of the states, especially in Republican-dominated regions. Grassroots state governance and local control has been replaced with confidential meetings with big-money backers. America’s red states are becoming little more than chimeric twins, absorbed by their more powerful plutocratic siblings.
State. Sen. Jim Patrick told us this week that ALEC had nothing to do with the controversial ag-gag legislation he pushed through this year. But Patrick is the ALEC’s state chairman, says internal documents acquired by Sourcewatch.org. The Kentucky state Senate’s Agriculture Committee quietly slid an ag-gag of its own into legislation passed by the lower House designed to protect animals from abuse. Four members of that committee are also ALEC members, according to documents leaked to various news outlets. Coincidence? We don’t think so.
