Forum Post: Exposed: The Other ALECs' Corporate Playbook

Exposed: The Other ALECs' Corporate Playbook

Thursday, 21 June 2012 00:00 By Steve Horn and Sarah Blaskey, Truthout | News Analysis

How is it that no matter whom we elect as our state representatives - Democrat, Republican, or other - we most often end up with policies that privilege the corporate agenda over the public interest?

It's a simple question, raised by laws promoting charter schools, fracking, union-busting, privatization, deregulation, and countless other corporate-friendly policies that have spread like wildfire around the country, particularly in recent legislative sessions.

As it turns out, the answer is relatively simple. Big business in the United States has perfected a legislative "playbook" - a methodical strategy for turning the wish list of multinational corporations into a state-level policy agenda with bipartisan support.

The specific details of legislative processes are many and intricate, yet the corporate playbook for exploiting state-level policy is straightforward and critical to understand.

To the extent there has been any discussion of this playbook at all, it has centered almost exclusively on the role of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its model legislation process.

But a closer examination reveals a well-coordinated network of many corporate-sponsored organizations - not ALEC only - that are influential in state politics. "Stealth lobbyists" use this network to advance their clients' agendas in statehouses nationwide.

---

Clearly, the corporate playbook in the statehouses extends far beyond the tentacles of ALEC, which is but a small part of a vast, complex network of nonprofits.

The multilayered, dynamic system of corporate representatives mingling with state legislators and public officials in a network of quasi-governmental nonprofits, allows the small number of people who are part of the interlocking directorate to wield a huge amount of power in shaping public policy. Under the guise of conducting educational activities, the stealth lobbyists of the "other ALECs" reduce the choice of citizens to which version of the corporate agenda to accept.

Will citizens, then, continue to accept such a scheme? Time will tell.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9889-exposed-the-other-alecs-corporate-playbook