WI Dem rep infiltrates ALEC in NOLA

You don't have to be an extremist Republican to join ALEC, the legislative roach motel that generates so many harmful laws. Most members are hard right-wingers. But a few Democrats do join. Wisconsin state Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat, did join to find out what it was all about. He's in New Orleans at the ALEC conference, reporting on what he sees.

This is just too much. Pocan writes,

I really thought it would take more than five minutes in New Orleans before I realized the conservative movement had landed.

But it didn’t.

As I was waiting for my bags, I heard a mid-thirties woman talking on the phone. “Yah, I’m down in New Orleans for the American Legislative Exchange Council meeting. We write legislation, and they pass our ideas. It’s the free market.”

natasha at the Fighting Chance community page on Daily Kos explained why ALEC got Arizona to pass its "Show Me Your Papers" law. It isn't pretty. Private prison companies (the ones that want Florida's business right now) are big supporters of ALEC, and they wanted more immigrants locked up so they'd have more business. Writes Natasha:

ALEC costs us public safety, education, health, energy modernization, access to the courts, transportation and good-paying jobs. ALEC costs the country its dignity, as we're transformed from a broadly prosperous, democratic society, into a place where tax dollars are siphoned off by a lawless aristocracy. ALEC costs too frakking much.

Read the whole thing here.