ALEC via one of its political offshoots, the Federalist Society (formed in 1982 and formerly headed by Leonard Leo) has been responsible for insuring that all of the recently appointed Supreme Court justices have been verified to be in favor of anti-abortion laws, and coincidentally, who tend to make decisions in favor of big business interests like ruling to end ACA  Affordable Care Act/ Obamacare, as in a case scheduled for review by the Supreme Court on November 10, 2020.

Excerpts:

“To itself, ALEC is an organization dedicated to the advancement of free market and limited government principles through a unique “public-private partnership” between state legislators and the corporate sector. To its critics, it’s a shadowy back-room arrangement where corporations pay good money to get friendly legislators to introduce pre-packaged bills in state houses across the country. Started in the mid-1970s, ALEC’s existence has been long known but its practices, largely, have not; the group hasn’t been eager to tie its bills in Wisconsin to those in Ohio to those in NC.”

“(In 2012), a website called ALEC Exposed went live, showcasing more than 800 so-called model bills contributed by, the site’s creators say, a still-anonymous whistleblower. Beyond the bills themselves, the group built out a wide-ranging, sometimes confusing wiki aimed at documenting which legislators take part in the group, which corporations support it, and where the bills go once they leave ALEC.”

“Lisa Graves is executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, the group that built ALEC Exposed. She’s also a former Justice Department official in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Said Graves on a call this week, “We built out the material using Google, the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine, primary records that were previously on ALEC’s website, old old Lexis news clips, and the tobacco library,” as in the digital archive run by the University of California of San Francisco as part of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of the late ’90s.”

“Having the bills all in one place painted a certain picture. “If it’s voter ID, it’s ALEC,” observed Doug Clopp, deputy director of programs at Common Cause. “If it’s anti-immigration bills written hand-in-glove with private prison corporations, it’s ALEC. If it’s working with the N.R.A. on ‘Shoot to Kill’ laws, it’s ALEC. When you start peeling back state efforts to opt out of the regional greenhouse gas initiative, it’s ALEC.” Adopted first in the states, by the time these laws bubble up to the national level, they’re the conventional wisdom on policy.”

“For years, political types had vague notions of the state-to-state connections, but it was difficult to see the whole picture. ALEC Exposed launched with a series of companion articles in The Nation, detailing not only the bills themselves but the involvement of the Koch brothers, early ALEC funders. Graves said she was eager to avoid the fate of past interest group reports that focused on ALEC then sat on shelves, unread. ““I know the only way that we could possibly tell the story of this corporate bill mill across 50 states was to use, in essence, crowdsourcing that engaged other journalists, citizens, researchers, and writers.”

One group that decided to jump into the mix was ColorofChange.org. The organization is known for its mastery of online organizing. The ALEC Exposed research was eye-opening, said ColorofChange.org executive director Rashad Robinson. ColorofChange.org took particular offense at the spate of voter ID laws that had originated within ALEC. It focused its efforts at peeling off the corporations taking part in the group.

“In early December 2012, ColorofChange.org sent out an email to its membership list. “It read, “the right wing has been trying to stop Black people, other people of color, young people, and the elderly from voting for partisan gain — and now some of America’s biggest companies are helping them do it.” The missive introduced how ALEC works, detailing the spread of voter ID laws through dozens of states.”

“ColorofChange.org came up with a strategy. It would start by meeting face-to-face with corporations to explain to them why their participation in ALEC was troublesome. Some companies made the case, said Robinson, that they were simply dedicated to making sure all viewpoints were represented in public debates. “There’s no two sides to black people voting,” Robinson said.”

“For months, things rolled along that way. Pepsi dropped out of ALEC. ColorofChange.org used that move to try to persuade Coca-Cola.”

“In January 2012, the push against ALEC got a small bump when Republican Florida state legislator Rep. Rachel Burgin submitted a bill calling for the federal government to cut corporate tax rates. Burgin had forgotten to strip the ALEC boilerplate from its top. Whereas, it read, “it is the mission of the American Legislative Exchange Council,” so on and so forth. Burgin yanked the bill back a day later, but it was too late. Common Cause researcher Nick Surgey posted about it on the organization’s blog. It got picked up in social media and on cable news.”

Then, on February 26th of 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot.

“But this wasn’t just about Trayvon Martin. At some point the discussion pulled back from just Martin to the “Stand Your Ground” law that let (George) Zimmerman go (*free). Upon examination, it turned out that this wasn’t just Florida; Stand Your Ground had passed  elsewhere. “There was a mystery (as to ) how did this bill become a law in more than 24 states?”

Link to entire report: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/exposing-alec-how-conservative-backed-state-laws-are-all-connected/255869/

SEE:

“How The Stand Your Ground” Laws Came To Be (ALEC/ Koch Brothers)

Koch Brothers And Their Billionaire Cronies Own … Supreme Court

How Dark Monies Backing GOP In US Congress By Donors … Koch Brothers Will Destroy Our Planet