For those who read and follow the national systems breakdowns that have been rapidly speeding up in the last decade, ALEC is no mystery. Here is a brief overview of "What is ALEC?" for the rest of us from ALEC Exposed:
"ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door."If comparing on a macro level this corporate collusion via ALEC, it has many similar qualities with our local crony club behavior that writes contractoral agreements like the ERGA agreement creating a public-private partnership that is largely hidden from public view. Or what about the ongoing ERAC group hand selected to advise council on the General Plan Update? When all is said and done, it largely scale that makes these all different things. The elected officials, their paid staff, lawyers, bankers and lobbyists create the confusion to obfuscate pretty simple concepts of greed and dubious financial arrangements underwritten by taxpayer dollars.
The only reason it works is the public's lack of awareness and outrage. Like the cartoon, great simplification - but let's hope the tune sticks.
