Is there a Diary dedicated to the American Legislative Exchange Council on Daily Kos? Because if there isn't I think there really should be.
And that is because I have to admit two things about ALEC. One being that just seeing the initials ALEC is usually enough to start sending me into a panic attack and I instantly go there thinking; "well how bad is it"? And once I get to the story they never disappoint. Its always worse than I thought it would be.
Two of the most recent examples of that are ALEC's concerted efforts to kill green energy and also do away with Country Of Origin labeling on food products, especially meat.
I was watching the reports on ALEC's efforts to kill green energy from an article in the Guardian (because naturally the vast majority of US media hardly if ever reports on ALEC.) And its a pretty comprehensive effort. ALEC sponsored at least 77 energy bills in 34 states last year. The measures were aimed at opposing renewable energy standards, pushing through the Keystone XL pipeline project, and barring oversight on fracking, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, according to The Guardian.
But the real kicker is ALEC's model legislation to tax homeowners who install solar panels and provide power to the grid lowering their electrical bills. Here's an example of ALEC's thinking. John Eick, the legislative analyst for Alec's energy, environment and agriculture program said; "This is an issue we are going to be exploring," Eick said. Alec wanted to lower the rate electricity companies pay homeowners for direct power generation – and maybe even charge homeowners for feeding power into the grid. As it stands now, those direct generation customers are essentially freeriders on the system. They are not paying for the infrastructure they are using. In effect, all the other non direct generation customers are being penalized," The Guardian reported.
Get it people who install solar panels for the protection of the environment and to lower their electrical bills are freeloaders and must be taxed. How's that for an anti-tax organization.
And I if it wasn't enough to have to worry about ALEC killing green energy initiatives just another day or two ago right here on Daily Kos I read this diary post http://www.dailykos.com/... by VL Baker.
This diary not only highlights how ALEC is protecting factory farms but now want to eliminate Country Of Origin Labels.
And allow me to just quote VL Baker on what that really means.
[quote]One of its latest debacles is the introduction of legislation which would eliminate country of origin labels on our meat. There is a new law called COOL which mandates country of origin labeling and of course the meat industry is not happy and is using ALEC to try to eliminate COOL. Meat labeling is a public health issue as the danger is that if there should be a pathogen outbreak from meat ingestion its very difficult to trace the origin or even the country of the suppliers if it's not labeled.[/quote]
So as we can see its not enough for ALEC to be actively poisoning our environment now ALEC also wants to help actually poison us as well.
And this is just the tip of the underhanded iceberg ALEC is constantly up to. In fact it seems to me I constantly find ALEC's dirty greedy fingers everywhere I look and I can never seem to keep up with them. That scares me.
Which brings me to the second thing I have to admit about ALEC. I didn't even know ALEC existed until about three years ago, and then when I did find about ALEC and their "model legislation" I found out it was ALEC that had been writing most the new state laws in my state for more than 30 years. And when I say writing laws I mean some of ALEC's "model legislation" was adopted nearly verbatim. And like I said I've been trying to follow ALEC ever since but its very difficult.
However on the positive side ALEC's model legislation called "Stand Your Ground" recently exposed ALEC to daylight which turns out to be a deadly disinfectant for them. ALEC lost so many corporate sponsors over that and according to another Guardian story ALEC has actually launched the "Prodigal Son Project" to try and win them back.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
And that's something all of us should be watching and fighting to make sure those sponsors don't come back.
So I hope you will join me in trying to watch and keep up with ALEC and help keep shedding daylight on them because the single thing that makes ALEC so successful is being able to do their dirty work in the political dark.