Big Brother is Watching You: ALEC’s Doublethink Attack On America’s Free Markets

The Center for Media and Democracy has written about ALEC and presents a different view. It states that “ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that.” [emphasis in original] “Secretive meetings” of “corporate lobbyists and state legislators” work to craft “‘model bills’ to change our rights that often benefit the corporations’ bottom line at public expense.” These model bills are core to the theory of change of ALEC. “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.” So far over 1,000 of these bills have been crafted and with an impressive track record of a 20 percent success rate. ALEC knows its stuff and must feel irreplaceable in its important mission.