Legislation machine descends upon Utah
In a 1995 editorial cartoon, a man holds a sign with an arrow: “Access This Way.” That arrow points to a banner: “Government of the Corporate—Buy the Access for the Power.” Another banner contains an alphabet soup of acronyms: CSG, NCSL, NGA, WLC and ALEC.
Few politicians need to Google the letters. The acronyms stand for organizations whose mission is to bring corporations and lawmakers together. Ross Perot’s Utah newsletter, which ran the cartoon, was aiming at them.
In 1995, there was no catalyst like the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida, and the cries from Perot’s United We Stand newsletter were summarily ignored.
“We’ve been trying to get the state to pull out of these organizations forever,” says citizen activist Claire Geddes, who ran Perot’s Utah campaign. “These representatives don’t even see the problem with this. Our government has gone so far wrong that they believe this is right—and it’s fascism.
“Everyone talks about socialism, but we’re promoting corporations above the individual, and people ought to be horrified,” she says. Instead, Utah has put out the welcome mat for ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is holding its 39th-annual meeting in Salt Lake City from July 25 to July 28.
ALEC was founded in 1973 by conservative kingmaker Paul Weyrich. Weyrich’s original goals were to flag issues for state legislators about abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment and D.C. voting rights. However, the interests of monied corporations soon took center field.
Under the Reagan administration, ALEC began as a “clearinghouse” of ideas, but developed task forces as stand-alone think tanks, and began actively soliciting input from the private sector. Today, that includes corporations like AT&T, Pfizer and Koch Companies Public Sector, to name just a few. ..Continued.. by Katharine Biele
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