Tuesday, November 29, 2011

ALEC to get Occupied in AZ



One of the Benedict Arnold Koch brothers' favorite front groups, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), is having a confab at the luxurious Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz., starting tomorrow. Lawmakers are bribed invited to attend. As ALEC Watch reports,
ALEC membership has its benefits, and for 2,400 or so state legislators across the nation who belong to ALEC, chief among them each year is the opportunity to take at least one all-expenses-paid trip that looks a lot like a vacation.
If you're just catching up, ALEC lobbies for corporate greed. Oh, and it embodies everything that's wrong with our political system. ALEC is especially fond of disenfranchising voters, privatizing prisons, cutting funds for public education and getting rid of enviromental regulations. It claims to be nonpartisan. It is, if you consider Sarah Palin nonpartisan.

In honor of ALEC's Arizona resort vacation conference, the People for the American Way Foundation and Common Cause released a report today about Arizona's very special embrace of corruption by ALEC. Here's the Tucson Citizen:
Arizona’s state lawmakers are especially receptive to corporate money and influence, according to a new report from two liberal-leaning advocacy groups.
The 100-page report strives to show how the American Legislative Exchange Council uses “its resources to shepherd legislation from the corporate boardroom to the governor’s desk,” said Marge Baker, executive vice president at the Washington D.C,-based People for the American Way Foundation.

ALEC describes itself as a nonpartisan national association of state legislators.

Critics, however, say it is a conservative-based partisan organization that brings together about 300 large corporations and 2,000 predominately Republican legislators on task forces to produce model bills.
Tomorrow, Day One of the lawmakers' luxurious vacation conference is a Day of Action in Phoenix. Occupy Phoenix will lead a protest at the resort, and there'll be a press conference at the Arizona Statehouse exposing ALEC's misdeeds. Members of other local groups and Occupiers from other cities are expected to answer the national call for action against ALEC.

We'll keep you posted.