Investigating Power
Since ALEC does not list their corporate members on their site, it is hard to know who exactly is currently a member, but here is the best list that I could find, as compiled by The Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch.
This week a joint report of the Energy and Policy Institute and the Center for Media and Democracy says utilities are trying to rebrand “demand charges”, which charge solar customers rates based on their highest consumption time (often a 15-minute or hour-long interval out of an entire month’s worth of consumption), to “efficiency rates” to slip them past public utilities regulators who have rejected “demand charges” in the past.
Bradley Files, Environment, SPN
The Sutherland Institute is also a member of the State Policy Network, or SPN, an association of state-based think tanks and advocacy groups that the Center for Media and Democracy describes as “the tip of the spear” of a “nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party.” SPN and its member groups have together received large cash contributions over the years from corporate interests and conservative billionaires, including the Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, the Bradley Foundation, and the Scaife Foundations.
“All of the bills (enacted by those states) are closely tailored to model measures being promoted by the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force,” reported the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy. “Funded and controlled by large corporations, including Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, telecom, and tobacco companies, ALEC has supported a balanced budget amendment since 1995 and renewed its push for a constitutional convention in recent years, publishing an Article V convention handbook for legislators and hosting numerous strategy sessions.”
In addition to model legislation mirroring Trump’s executive order requiring two regulations be repealed for every new one, ALEC also is considering a resolution recommending that Congress repeal the 17th amendment, adopted over 100 years ago to allow citizens to directly elect their U.S. senators instead of state legislators.
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“It’s a new radically reactionary proposal that came up in this new period of Trump-dom,” said Lisa Graves, a former Justice Department attorney who launched the Center for Media and Democracy’s “ALEC Exposed” program in 2011. “This certainly seems to be evidence of them feeling emboldened to embrace an extreme counter-democratic measure.”
Lisa Graves, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, said groups like Goldwater succeed in spreading their ideas because they access funding and expertise beyond the reach of everyday citizens. Graves heads the Center for Media and Democracy, which investigates the activities of conservative political non-profits.
Goldwater, which as a non-profit is not required to disclose the sources of its funding, took in about $4.3 million in 2015 and spent about $5.6 million on salaries, legal expenses, advertising, lobbying, fundraising and other expenses, according to the group’s most recent disclosures.
Graves said elected officials increasingly allow special-interest groups with which they’re ideologically aligned greater say in policymaking — far more than the voters who elect them.
Graves said Goldwater’s communication with state officials shows “the taking away (of) the power of ordinary people to influence policy, and to really, truly have oversight of programs that are being pushed by these really, very narrow special interests.”
Last week Senate Republicans passed a tax bill that hands massive tax breaks to corporations and the rich at the expense of low-income and middle-class Americans. Written behind closed doors with the help of 6,000 lobbyists and rammed through before anyone could read it, the bill offers Christmas presents for special interests, like eliminating a tax that private jet owners have fought the federal government over and tax breaks hedge-fund managers living in the Virgin Islands. And it sets the stage for a sweeping attack on the New Deal and Great Society reforms of the past century that built America’s middle class.
An ALEC spokeswoman said in 2012 the organization was ending the task force to focus more on economic issues. But at a policy summit this week, the group will hold two panels focused on voting issues, setting off alarm bells among activists.
“After a lot of controversy over voter ID, ALEC disbanded its task force that dealt with democracy issues and purported to be out of the business of mucking around with voting laws,” said Arn Pearson, general counsel for the Center for Media and Democracy, a group that closely follows ALEC. “This is the first time we’re seeing them come back in on it.”
ALEC, Environment, Koch, SPN
According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch, the Mercatus Center was founded and is largely funded by the Koch Family Foundations, with Charles and David Koch described as key funders of right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network.
According to SourceWatch, the Mercatus Center has engaged in campaigns involving deregulation, especially environmental deregulation.
Two of the richest men in the world believe that transforming the public school system into for-profit money making operations is the “choice” Arizona moms should be making.