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Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are passing a slate of laws that effectively shield oil and gas companies from legal claims that they are responsible for the destruction and mounting toll caused by climate change. Fifteen laws have either been passed or are currently being debated in 11 states. Together, they threaten to remove long-standing tools for the public to hold corporations accountable.

A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo, who is credited with placing conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. These groups have drafted state legislation, planned its dissemination and engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to get them signed into law.

The effort is unfolding as courts are weighing more than 30 significant lawsuits by states, counties and municipalities accusing fossil fuel companies of misrepresenting the risks their products posed to consumers and seeking to recoup the costs of disasters and other climate impacts like wildfire losses or coastal flooding that their products helped cause. A goal of the legislation is to block these cases from going forward and prevent new ones from being filed.

The strategy to establish state laws that will make it all but impossible to sue oil and gas companies was laid out in detail by a group of lobbyists and political operatives in December, during a panel presentation at the annual States and Nation Policy Summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council — the influential organization that brings together state lawmakers, corporate leaders and conservative activists to draft and promote legislation.

During the session, one of the panelists, Will Hild, the executive director of a nonprofit called Consumers’ Research, described the climate cases as a liberal effort to use the judicial system to exact a new tax on energy companies in the form of civil judgments. Another panelist, Oramel H. Skinner, the former solicitor general for Arizona and the executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Consumers, warned that those judgments will trickle down to make citizens’ lives less affordable and ultimately make many of their choices — whether to own pickup trucks or purchase a side of beef — illegal.

ProPublica reviewed an audio recording of the event obtained by the nonpartisan watchdog group Documented.

Hild and Skinner had come to the session with a ready-made fix: a set of pre-written bills and plenty of funding.

Consumers’ Research and the Alliance for Consumers are both funded by organizations connected to Leo. ProPublica examined lobbying records across 25 states, federal tax disclosures for more than a dozen organizations and notes from other closed-door strategy sessions among ALEC members and found that several Leo-supported groups are part of a national strategy to give legal immunity to companies for their climate emissions.

Since 2021, Leo has been deploying a $1.6 billion gift through a series of nonprofits and other organizations that obscure the source and the recipients of donations — so-called dark money groups. Much of that money has been routed through a nonprofit judicial advocacy group Leo founded — now called The 85 Fund — which both receives and disseminates Leo’s funding. Many of these nonprofits are increasingly focused on issues related to climate change.

The panel session’s moderator, Michael Thompson, is a senior vice president at CRC Advisors, Leo’s for-profit Virginia-based political and corporate consulting firm. He also sits on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council. Hild’s organization, Consumers’ Research, received more than 65% of its funding in 2024 through a dark money group called Donors Trust. The 85 Fund contributed more than $67 million to Donors Trust in 2024. Consumers’ Research also works closely with — and contracted more than $670,000 of work in 2024 to — CRC Advisors. Another panelist, Paul N. Watkins, was a legal fellow at Consumers’ Research. According to tax filings, his law firm received more than $2.2 million in 2024 from the group. As recently as 2024, Skinner was also counsel for Leo’s 85 Fund, according to the nonprofit’s tax filings.

= POWELL MEMO BS

“For decades, the left has leveraged immense resources to capture the institutions that shape our society — the legal system, universities, medical and scientific bodies, the entertainment industry, and our biggest corporations,” Leo wrote to ProPublica in a text message. “That takeover resulted in a radically woke culture that does not reflect the will of the American people, or the pillars of limited constitutional government that made our country great. That is why our enterprise supports organizations that are committed to crushing liberal dominance and restoring balance in the institutions that shape society.”

At the ALEC session, Skinner presented a model bill that would effectively bar cities and towns from bringing public nuisance lawsuits against corporations and others when the issue is a broad public harm like climate change. In several cases, plaintiffs have argued that the impacts of climate change — the buckling of a road from extreme swings in temperature, for example — are a “nuisance” caused by fossil fuel companies.

Nuisance claims are common in the American legal system, giving individuals, companies or communities a way to sue when someone else’s actions damage their property, degrade the health or safety of the environment around them or interfere with their rights. Under these laws, parties can ask for financial compensation or seek court orders to remedy problems, such as pollution. Skinner, however, argues that nuisance laws should only be used to address local, easily fixable problems, like excessive noise from a bar. His bill would curtail the use of public nuisance suits in climate cases by limiting liability for manufacturers and other businesses and giving state attorneys general the sole authority to bring them.

“Think really hard about every lever you have in your states to shut off the ability for this woke lawfare machine to churn,” Skinner told the audience. “The left’s goal is to reshape society around you using the courtroom.”

The second draft law, called the Energy Freedom Act, was produced by the policy nonprofit associated with Hild’s organization. It would, among many provisions, shield businesses from liability related to emissions of greenhouse gases if those releases did not violate the federal Clean Air Act.

Critics of the bills say they subvert the rights of local communities. They send the message that “you can pollute with impunity,” said Carly Phillips, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s really a thumb in the eye of places that are affected by climate change.”

The push to block climate suits across the states comes as several of the cases against the oil industry approach, or have already entered, the perilous legal phases of discovery, when plaintiffs will have the opportunity to seek confidential industry documents and depose oil executives. The stakes for oil companies are enormous. By some estimates more than $10 trillion in damages can be attributed to U.S. emissions.

:{:{There’s a reason why state and local governments have increasingly brought these suits. The frequency and cost of climate-influenced disasters, including severe storms, drought and flooding, continues to mount — between $350 billion and $450 billion in each of the last three years — stretching government budgets.}:

Significantly, the science that makes it possible to attribute how much any one disaster was influenced by climate change has steadily advanced. To cite one example, the March heat waves across the U.S. would have been virtually impossible without the emissions that have caused climate change, according to the European science group World Weather Attribution, and were about four times as likely to happen as they were a decade ago.}:

Boulder, Colorado, is among the places facing increasing droughts, more extreme precipitation and larger wildfires — all of which are significantly propelled by climate change linked to the emissions from the use of fossil fuels. The state has estimated the costs of these perils will run into the many hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2018, Boulder County sued Exxon Mobil and the Canadian oil company Suncor Energy, accusing the companies of “intentional, reckless and negligent conduct.”

Among its claims, the county alleged the oil companies engaged in a conspiracy to mislead the public and violated consumer protection rules by mischaracterizing the dangers of their products. They accused the oil companies of creating a public nuisance by altering the environment and leaving the county to pay to abate growing hazards such as the flooding that tests roads and bridges. Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy have never filed a response in Colorado but asked for the case to be dismissed.

Ever since, the lawsuit has been mired in a dispute over whether Colorado courts were the correct venue, with the state Supreme Court ultimately ruling last May that they were. Suncor filed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider, and this fall it will weigh the company’s petition asking whether federal environmental law preempts the state law.

:{:{The high-profile national court case is just one facet in an increasingly tense fight over liability for the fossil fuel industry. In January, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest fossil fuel industry group in the United States, said fighting the climate liability lawsuits was one of its top priorities in 2026. Lobbying records for the group from last year show that it advocated for legislation to protect oil producers from climate lawsuits at the state level. }:

The Trump administration; other industry groups, including the Chamber of Commerce; and several of the nonprofit advocacy groups associated with Leo have argued that state courts are the wrong venue for claims that ultimately concern emissions that drift widely across borders, and they wish to see other cases moved or dismissed. They say that because the federal government already has the authority to regulate those emissions, the federal courts, not the states, should hear the claims.}:

In an interview, Hild told ProPublica that he sees the suits as an illegitimate effort to enact policy through the courts and to “regulate the entire U.S. economy from a single state.”

In an email, Skinner wrote: “Our effort is not one focused on climate change. But it is true that left-wing activists and their dark money donors have put vast sums of money and years of groundwork into pushing a coast-to-coast campaign of climate-focused public nuisance lawsuits.”

Neither Watkins nor Thompson responded to requests for comment.

When Skinner and Hild finished their presentation at ALEC they made a QR code available to download the language of the model bills and directed the audience to a woman named Catherine Gunsalus, who was in the back of the room. She would be able to answer any questions, they said.

Gunsalus until recently worked for the Heritage Action Fund, the political and lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation, the Trump-aligned think tank that is most recently known for promoting the Project 2025 agenda. Records show that Gunsalus has also lobbied in collaboration with another Leo-affiliated group, Americans for Public Trust.

In April 2025, she formed a lobbying firm called Varidon Strategies and began registering in states almost immediately afterward, according to records. By mid-summer, Varidon was representing Alliance for Consumers Action Fund; Consumers’ Research; The Honest Election Project, an affiliate of The 85 Fund; as well as other Leo entities in 25 states. In the majority of those filings, Varidon used an email address at the domain of Holtzman Vogel, a Virginia-based law firm that is often retained by Leo’s organizations.

Gunsalus did not reply to a detailed list of questions.

In the four months since the ALEC summit, there has been substantial activity in the states where Varidon has registered. On Jan. 5, representatives in Missouri introduced the loosely related Eliminate Criminal Profiteering Act, which could stop revenues flowing to law firms from settlements in the sort of nuisance suits often used in climate cases. Two days later, legislators took up the Public Nuisance Reform Act, which proposes narrowing the definition of what could be considered a nuisance.

That same month, similar bills were introduced in Indiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. In February, eight more followed in Oklahoma, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, Louisiana and Kansas. Skinner, who is registered to lobby in Kansas, was invited to testify in a hearing about that state’s bill and launched a new “End the Lawfare” website targeting the “left-wing” agenda. As of April 2, versions of the model legislation offered at the ALEC meeting have been introduced across 11 states altogether. In Utah, the governor has signed two related bills into law, and in Tennessee and Indiana, bills are awaiting their governors’ signature.

The more states there are with some sort of waiver in place, the narrower the pathway for cities and states to seek redress as environmental conditions worsen, and the costs continue to rise. Hild and Skinner and the Leo network’s bills also serve another purpose: teeing up a conflict that pits states against one another, a conflict that only the Supreme Court or Congress can finally resolve.

As Hild put it at the ALEC gathering, “This is economic civil war.”

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With less than two months until Trump begins his second term, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is meeting in Washington, D.C., this week for its annual States and Nation Policy Summit. ALEC state politicians, corporate lobbyists, and right-wing operatives are gathering at the four-star Grand Hyatt Washington to discuss and vote on model policies and resolutions to further climate delayism and preserve the use of fossil fuels, alter state election codes, protect purveyors of misinformation, privatize education, and push their extremist agenda in other ways.

U.S. Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-R) and Ron Estes (KS-R), Trump’s pick to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Vivek Ramaswamy, Univision CEO Daniel Alegre:{, insurrectionist Cleta Mitchell:(style="background-color:#ff8000"):}:, and GOP pollster Scott Rasmussen are all scheduled to speak at the summit.

Following the summit, attendees are invited to stay on for the 2024 ALEC International Freedom Academy, which focuses on “Defending the States and Supporting Israel,” according to an invitation obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). There, lawmakers will learn how to “defend their states” against China and “address the spike in campus anti-Semitism without sacrificing free speech.”

A number of model bills and resolutions circulated at the meeting this week target China. The Act Relating to Prohibited Applications on Government-Issued Devices and An Act Restraining State and Local Governmental Use of Mobile or Online Software Applications and Electronic Devices Under Control of a Foreign Adversary could both be used to ban the use of TikTok and other Chinese apps, software, and websites on government devices.

The sweeping Model Policy to Protect Select US Land from Ownership by America’s Foreign Adversaries would prevent entities controlled or owned by “foreign adversaries” — defined as China, Iran, and North Korea — from owning land in the U.S. Foreign nationals from those countries would have to submit “security notices” to a State Homeland Security Council for approval and would be banned from owning farmland or property near “critical infrastructure.” . Even single-family homes bought or inherited by people from the covered countries would require “prior written notice of approval” from the Security Council for property above an unspecified amount of acreage. Properties that fail to pass this hurdle would be taken by eminent domain.

ALEC will again look to work with lawmakers at the academy to restrict the right to protest, this time targeting anti-war student protesters demanding that Israel halt its collective punishment of the Palestinian and Lebanese people.

Last summer, ALEC adopted two related model bills, an Act to Prohibit Anti-Semitism in State K–20 Educational Institutions and an Act to Adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Anti-Semitism.

The first bill states that, “The Working Definition of Anti-Semitism adopted by the International Holocaust Alliance (IHRA) that contains contemporary examples of anti-semitism may also be used to identify anti-semitism.”

Opponents fear that relying on this definition — which references “hatred towards Jews” that may be manifested rhetorically or physically and includes certain types of criticism of Israel — will expose anti-war and humanitarian activists to possible prosecution or charges of hate crimes for simply speaking out against Israel’s war in Gaza or its occupation of Palestine.

The second model bill would officially adopt the IHRA definition. ALEC, along with representatives from the Israeli government and the Heritage Foundation, has been pushing state lawmakers to adopt the IHRA definition since as early as 2021.

For decades, ALEC has operated as a pay-to-play group that brings together corporate lobbyists and state lawmakers to vote as equals on model policies that advance corporate interests at the state level, but in recent years it has also advanced the interests of foreign governments such as Israel and Taiwan.

ALEC annual meeting materials from 2022 obtained and reviewed by CMD revealed a menu of opportunities for sponsors to purchase access to lawmakers at ALEC’s annual conferences, including buying “special” pre- and post-conference meetings for an unspecified price. ALEC keeps its funders and sponsors of meeting sessions secret.

Sponsors of ALEC’s 2024 summit include the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, Altria, Consumers’ Research, Honest Elections Project, PhRMA, Stand Together Trust, and the State Financial Officers Foundation, according to a list obtained by CMD.

Chairman

* Institute for Justice

• Leadership Institute
• Only Citizens Vote Coalition
• Patient Rights Advocates
• Save Our States

Vice Chairman

• Altria
• Arnold Ventures
• Casey Family Programs
• Consumers’ Research
• Honest Elections Project
• PhRMA
• Stand Together Trust
• State Financial Officers Foundation
• Texans for Clean Water
• Yes. Every Kid.

Director

• Combat Antisemitism Movement

Trustee

• DailyPay

Related Article: ALEC Maps Out Right-Wing Legislative Agenda for 2025 in DC

Climate Delayism and Fights Over Public Lands and Water

Numerous model policies, resolutions, and statements that will likely accelerate the unfolding climate emergency will be considered at the meeting this week. Many of them center around climate delayism or the “systematic and coordinated strategy to bring about unwarranted concern regarding a wide range of climate actions for the purpose of slowing down or indefinitely suspending those actions.”

The Utility Scale Solar Plants – Preserving Environment Open Spaces and Fairness Act would place restrictions on the development of solar farms out of purported concern for ecosystems, farmland, and endangered species. ALEC has advocated for “Congress to amend the Endangered Species Act upon its re-authorization to require a stronger role for the states and a stronger consideration of the social and economic consequences” in a model resolution last amended in 2013.

ALEC’s Tenth Amendment Resolution introduced this week would allow states to declare “tenth amendment sanctuary” counties within their borders that refuse to adhere to certain federal regulations, a move that would likely cue up legal fights with the federal government.

The resolution argues that the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution places power in the hands of the states over everything from education to water management — anything not explicitly included in the federal government’s enumerated powers. For this model, it states that “the board affirms it will not enforce against any citizen any Federal law that unconstitutionally infringes upon the right of People of ___ County to keep and use their non-navigable Water.”

On a related note, ALEC is holding a roundtable on the *Utah v. United States* case now before the U.S. Supreme Court.Utah is challenging the perpetual federal retention of unappropriated public lands within its borders, arguing that doing so is unconstitutional.

The roundtable description states that, “Experts from western states and the Federalist Society expert whose BYU Law Review article provided the basis for Utah’s action will lead a robust discussion on the suit and how federal mismanagement has exacted both an economic and environmental cost preventing states from maximizing their economic potential and contributing to devastating wildfire seasons year after year in the American West.”

A couple of other model bills circulated this week would ensure the continued use of fossil fuels. The Energy Choice Resolution, Natural Gas would have counties express their support for the use of propane and natural gas in new residential and commercial buildings.

The Statement of Principles on Housing argues for government “flexibility” on choosing heating systems and appliances to ensure that people have affordable housing choices. “Too many state and even local governments are seeking to come inside your home or business to require standards that restrict your choice of heating systems, appliances and energy efficiency methods (from insulation, to windows, to sprinkler systems),” the policy states.

Another model, the Resolution in Support of Recycling, argues against bans and mandates on packaging materials in favor of “market-driven incentives that promote sustainable packaging design and reduce waste.” ALEC passed a model policy in 2015 that would prevent local or municipal governments from prohibiting, taxing, or regulating the use or sale of single-use plastic.

Finally, ALEC meeting attendees will again have the opportunity to attend a workshop on “woke capitalism” — this one called “Battles Won, War Continues: The Left, ESG and State Policy.”

Since the summer of 2021, CMD has repeatedly documented ALEC’s consideration and promotion of multiple model bills punishing companies and public entities that embrace environmental, social, and governance factors (ESG) in their business and investing practices.

Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild is now a regular speaker at ALEC meetings since the group became a major sponsor, and ALEC has, in turn, promoted his attacks against ESG.

At ALEC’s annual meetings, Hild presents the Consumer Champion Award to state lawmakers for passing anti-ESG legislation. The 2024 award went to Arkansas State Representative Mindy McAlindon (R) and the 2023 award went to Texas State Senator Bryan Hughes (R).

Voter Suppression Strategizing Continues

While no voter suppression models are on the table this week, ALEC summit participants will still have opportunities to strategize on restricting voting in the name of “election integrity.”

Attendees will discuss the topic at a breakout breakfast as well as at a workshop on “Restoring Voter Confidence in Elections” that will “focus on key principles of election integrity that can improve state election codes.”

Prior to the summit, ALEC lawmakers had the opportunity to attend an “Honest Elections Project Academy” at the beginning of the week, as a 2024 ALEC Academies calendar obtained by CMD indicates.

Honest Elections Project, the group ALEC partnered with fore its voting agenda, is a dark money operation formed in February 2020 to push for voting restrictions and spread baseless and dangerous claims about election fraud that laid the groundwork for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. It is a project of The 85 Fund, the legal name for the Judicial Education Project, a group linked to Leonard Leo that played a central role in Trump’s effort to pack the Supreme Court and the entire federal judiciary with right-wing judges.

An Honest Elections Project Academy was also held prior to ALEC’s annual meeting last summer.

Public Dollars for Private Education

ALEC has a long history of promoting school privatization schemes, from backing Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), or universal, tax-funded school vouchers, to drafting this year’s Microschool Education Act, which would give home-based or microschool entities of 100 or fewer students the same rights as private and charter schools.

This week, ALEC politicians will consider the Education Tax-Credit Act. The bill would give parents sending their kids to private schools a tax credit on their income taxes equal to the average base educational aid provided by the state.

In the workshop “How Education Marketplaces Drive Quality and Cost Efficiency,” meeting attendees will hear how “market-driven education is also delivering cost savings,” and why “to maintain a dynamic market, [lawmakers] must avoid imposing price controls.”

ALEC lawmakers will also discuss the Standardized Testing Choice Act, which would add the Classic Learning Test (CLT) administered by Classic Learning Initiatives to the ACT and SAT tests required for admission to most universities and colleges.

Already used in Florida and by the University of New Mexico, the CLT puts greater “emphasis on the Western canon and Christian thought.” In April, the Iowa Board of Regents recommended not approving the CLT as a requirement for admissions.

Protecting Vehicles of Misinformation

ALEC state lawmakers will also consider the Statement of Principles on News Censorship this week, which argues that any attempt to identify misinformation or disinformation “is an inherently political determination that chills free speech” and that “government has a First Amendment obligation not to engage in such censorship or otherwise support organizations engaged in such activities.”

Misinformation and disinformation campaigns by foreign or domestic actors left unchecked will make it more difficult for public health officials to keep citizens safe, for environmentalists to move policies that address the unfolding climate emergency, or for election administrators to ensure the integrity of voting systems, among a host of other challenges.

ALEC apparently agrees with former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway that false claims are “alternative facts.” It states in its model that the “private sector is already leading on this issue” with features like “community notes” on social media platforms. However, the American public disagrees.

“A national survey commissioned by the media reform group Free Press found that 79 percent of people polled worry the information they are seeing online is ‘false, fake, or a deliberate attempt to confuse,’” Truthoutreported in June.

A 2021 University of Chicago and Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that “almost all Americans see the spread of misinformation as a problem, and significant majorities believe social media users, social media companies, and U.S. politicians are responsible for spreading misinformation.”

Other New Drafts Up for Consideration:

• By-Right Housing Development Act
• Defend the Guard Act
• Dental Access Model Act
• Efficiency in Permitting, Licensing, and Certification Processes Act
• Entrepreneurial Freedom Restoration Act
• E-Verify Requirement Act
• Internet Free Speech Act
• Internet Safety Resource Act
• Limiting Student Use of Cell Phones in K–12 Classrooms
• Live Event Ticketing Consumer Protection & Reform Act
• Model Domestic Material Circularity Act
• Model Policy to Regulate the Use of the Colorimetric Presumptive Field Drug Test
• Pharmacy and Patient Protection Act
• Ratepayer Protection from Large Electricity Users Model Policy
• Resolution Ensuring Consumer Freedom and Promoting Innovations in Protein
• Resolution in Support of Farming and Energy Production
• Resolution on Enhancing Data on Crime and Clearance Rates
• Resolution to Oppose the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) Misuse of United Nations Resolution 2758 to Delegitimize Taiwan and Exclude Taiwan from International Organizations
• Statement of Principles on Broadband Internet Access Service Non-Regulation
• Statement of Principles on Establishing an Interstate Compact Regarding Competitively Bid Transmission Projects
• Statement of Principles on the Gig Economy (and Home Sharing)
• Ten Guiding Principles for Consideration of Grants
• The Safe Harbor from Excessive Exactions Act
• Third-Party Challenges to Development Permits

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Milwaukee State Rep. Ryan Clancy readily admits he was the odd one out last week at a Washington, D.C., meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC, a nonprofit that brings together state lawmakers and corporations and drafts model legislation, describes its point of view as “dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” It has produced state policies embraced almost solely by Republicans — drafted with input from corporate members of the organization.

Clancy is neither a Republican politician nor a corporate official. “To the best of my knowledge, I would be the only Democrat — and almost certainly the only socialist” at the States & Nation Policy Summit ALEC held Tuesday through Thursday, Clancy said in an interview. But as a state legislator, he was technically welcome at the event.

On the last day, however, Clancy was summarily kicked out and told his registration would be withdrawn and the fee refunded. While declining to explain how, an ALEC spokesman said Clancy was being “disruptive” — something Clancy categorically denies.

Attending an ALEC event was important to him, said Clancy, who is just wrapping up his first term in the Assembly after being elected in 2022. He wanted to see the process by which ALEC drafts model legislation and distributes bill proposals through its member lawmakers to statehouses around the country.

Clancy said that in his first term in Madison he has seen a lot of legislation circulate that originated in ALEC proposals. Those included more than a dozen bills putting restrictions on trans and nonbinary people, such as preventing gender affirming medical care for people under 18, he said.

“My oldest child is trans,” Clancy said in an interview. “It was just horrific to have to bring together the community to push back on those. But it was also good to know about them in advance.”

Clancy said the anti-trans legislation points to priorities that he believes ALEC has beyond the talking points it makes about individual liberty, free markets and limited government.

“Even more economic-seeming policy discussions were often peppered with anti-trans and anti-DEI comments behind the scenes,” Clancy said.

While his attendance was cut short, he said, his time at the session offered a preview of ALEC-inspired legislation that he expects to see in the coming session of the state Legislature, and an opportunity for his fellow Democratic lawmakers to “figure out how we can push back on that.”

Democratic tradition

When Clancy joined ALEC and signed up to attend last week’s policy summit, he was following a tradition among Wisconsin Democrats in the state Legislature, who have long viewed the organization with suspicion.

The first Democrat to decide to attend ALEC sessions wasthen-state Rep. Mark Pocan, who began attending the meetings two decades ago, before he became a member of Congress. He was succeeded by Democratic Rep. Chris Taylor, who has since left the Legislature when Gov. Tony Evers appointed her to Dane County circuit court, before her election to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.

Most recently in 2023, Reps. Kristina Shelton (D-Green Bay) and Francesca Hong (D-Madison)attended an ALEC annual meeting in Florida.

ALEC has its lawmaker members join two task forces, and Clancy, a former Milwaukee Public Schools teacher, chose education and the environment.

In the education task force, Clancy caught a discussion about legislation that would give families who home-school their children or enroll them in private schools a tax credit to offset the taxes they pay to support public schools.

“They were looking at it as fairness because [those families] shouldn’t have to pay for public schools and also pay for homeschooling or a private school as well,” he said.

As proposed, the tax credit would be non-refundable — meaning that a taxpayer would only collect up to the amount of their tax liability.

“What that means is if you are fairly well off, like middle class or rich, and you have a big tax liability at the end of the year, you’d get that back,” Clancy said. A lower-income family with a lower tax liability wouldn’t get as much, even if their school expenses were just as high.

He said another lawmaker suggested that in the name of fairness, the tax credit should be made refundable — paying the balance of the credit amount in cash to someone whose tax liability was less than the credit’s full value.

The lawmaker presenting the proposal rejected the suggestion, saying that “it was not supposed to be, quote, a wealth redistribution program,” Clancy said. The lawmaker called that “a bright line and she absolutely would never support that.”

Recycling — conservative or ‘woke’?

At the environmental task force session he attended, the principal topic was recycling — a subject that provoked conflicting opinions.

One participant advocating incentives for recycling disposable cans and bottles instead of sending them to landfills declared, “Conservation is conservative,” according to Clancy. “And then you have other people very angry about this saying no … recycling is ‘woke.’”

Still others countered in defense of recycling aluminum in particular, making the argument that “communist China is going to continue to get a leg up because we import aluminum from communist China all the time,” Clancy said.

Those arguments revolved around a model bill that would establish a deposit-based recycling system operated by the beverage industry rather than the state, with the deposit funds that consumers don’t collect staying with the industry, offsetting the costs for recycling initiatives and for marketing the system to consumers. “This would be a handout to corporations,” Clancy said.

Clancy said that throughout the meetings he kept his own reactions to the proposals to himself and listened to other lawmakers as they discussed the issues. He took notes and photographed information slides with his phone, something that he said he saw many other participants doing.

But he said he never spoke up during any of the presentations, raised questions or publicly engaged presenters or other participants.

“The extent of my behavior in both the task forces and the workshops was sitting there taking notes, holding up the [phone] camera and getting pictures of what was going on, just like all of the other participants who were not told to leave for that same behavior,” Clancy said.

Kicked out of the meeting

In the midst of the last session he attended on Thursday, however, a hotel security staff member came to him and escorted him from the room. Outside he was told that his registration had been withdrawn.

Clancy, who recorded the exchange with the security staff member, asked why he was being thrown out. The security staffer deferred the answer to ALEC officials, but Clancy said he’s never been told what violations he was accused of.

When registering, Clancy said he was directed to a code of conduct that ALEC has posted directed to media covering the event, but that he has seen no other such list of rules for participants. In any event, he said, he took pains to not draw attention to himself.

“I have recordings of all the things that I was in, and you can hear me not asking questions,” Clancy said. “That’s really difficult for me,” he added. “I mean, to be in those spaces, to hear them saying those things, and not to say what the hell is wrong with you people was an act of will on my part, and I succeeded. I managed not to say any of the things that a reasonable person would say in that situation, because I didn’t want to be, you know, accused of disrupting or anything else.”

Clancy questioned an unnamed ALEC representative whether he was being thrown out because he’d been identified as a Democrat or a socialist. He suggested that in doing so the organization would be running afoul of its 501(c)(3) tax-exemption and IRS rules under which “they can’t give undue influence to inside members of their group and exclude people based on partisan things.”

In response to the Wisconsin Examiner’s inquiry, ALEC’s communications director, Lars Dalseide, replied in an email message.

“All are welcome at ALEC events, where all attendees are asked to abide by our long-standing code of conduct. One that ensures a welcoming and productive experience for everyone in attendance. Sadly, the individual in question failed to adhere to these guidelines. On the final day of the conference, after several complaints, he was asked to leave,” Dalseide said.

In a subsequent email, Dalseide declined to clarify what actions of Clancy’s constituted conduct violations.

“We don’t release those kinds of details to the press,” he said. “If we did, then every speaker, member, and guest wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking freely at our events.”

While Dalseide said that attendees were reminded of the code of conduct at each session, Clancy denied that.

“They did not ever make reminders of any code of conduct at the beginning of any session, nor did I ever make a single comment or ask a question within any of them,” Clancy said. “I still don’t know what rules they’re accusing me of violating, or why speakers wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking if they knew the rules for attendees.”

Dalseide also relayed an additional statement from Leah Vukmir, a former Wisconsin state senator and former ALEC National Chair:

“The Wisconsin Socialist Party has been sending people to disrupt ALEC meetings for years, so it’s no surprise that the newest member of the Wisconsin Socialist Party would try to cause trouble at this year’s event. As a former National Chairman, I can attest to the fact that ALEC has always welcomed all views as long as individuals conduct themselves in a mature, professional manner.”

Clancy said he is a Democratic Party member and that, while he also identifies politically as a socialist, he is not a member of any Wisconsin Socialist Party, nor had he heard of any past actions by socialist-aligned groups to disrupt ALEC events.

Rep. Pocan was reached through his Congressional office and asked if during his years of attending ALEC he recalled any socialist groups attending or engaging in disruptive behavior.

“Nope,” Pocan replied in a text message.

Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and X.

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Home | Behind the GOP's radical agenda to penalize 'sinners'

Thom Hartmann July 06, 2024

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thom 7 24 an

alternet- no lnx see thom 3 bak for anno

Home | Behind the GOP's radical agenda to penalize 'sinners'

Thom HartmannJuly 06, 2024

Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and Project 2025 have some very specific plans for nationally resetting the legal status of half the American population, and they’re using religion and “sin” to justify their bizarre imposition of 18th century values.

They explicitly want to reverse the status of women’s legal, workplace, marital, and social equality and return to a time when biblical law dictated that men ran everything from the household to business to governance and law.

One key to women being able to play leadership and workplace roles has been their ability to regulate their own fertility, from access to birth control, the morning-after pill, and abortion.

By enforcing the Comstock Act — which is still on the books, as Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and numerous other Republicans keep reminding us — they will be able to ban the shipment of anything, from drugs to surgical devices, that can be used to produce an abortion. This could even end most hospital-based abortions by essentially outlawing the equipment needed to perform them.

As Project 2025 proclaims on p. 594 of their Mandate for Leadership for the next Republican administration:

:{“Announcing a Campaign to Enforce Criminal Prohibitions in 18 U.S. Code §§ 1461 and 1462 [the Comstock Act] Against Providers and Distributors of Abortion Pills That Use the Mail. Federal law [the Comstock Act] prohibits mailing ‘[e]very article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.’

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, there is now no federal prohibition on the enforcement of this statute. The Department of Justice in the next conservative Administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law….”}:

The second key is to give men the power to challenge women who want a divorce. As Senator JD Vance said in 2021:

“One of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace” is the idea that “these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy, and so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term”.

Republican legislators in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas have already proposed eliminating no-fault divorce in those states, and the trend is picking up steam among GOP politicians nationwide.

Multiple Project 2025 partners, including the powerful and influential American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has helped introduce thousands of pieces of state and federal legislation, are explicit about this goal, as Media Matters for America noted:

“The American Legislative Exchange Council proposed a piece of legislation dubbed the “Marriage Contract Act,” which would have eliminated no-fault divorce. [Center for Media and Democracy, ALEC Exposed, 2/13/17]”

The consequences could be dramatic and deadly for women, as The Guardian recently explained:

“Between 1976 and 1985, states that passed the [no-fault divorce] laws saw their domestic violence rates against men and women fall by about 30%; the number of women murdered by an intimate partner declined by 10%; and female suicide rates declined by 8 to 16%.”

Republicans nationwide are calling for a reversal of the women’s rights movement dating all the way back to Abagail Adams’ imploring her husband John to “remember the ladies” at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 through today, and are not shy about it.

For example, Federal District Judge Michael Kacsmaryk, 46, was appointed to the federal bench by Donald Trump. A Republican activist and religious fundamentalist, he’s said that “so-called marriage equality” has put America “on a road to potential tyranny” and reflects a “complete abuse of rule of law principles.”

As The Washington Post noted, Kacsmaryk has argued that:

“The sexual revolution ushered in a world where an individual is ‘an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology’ and where ‘marriage, sexuality, gender identity and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.’”

Kacsmaryk, the judge who tried to outlaw mifepristone nationally (which the Supreme Court will almost certainly decide on next year) is part of a substantial movement within the GOP to use religion to roll back the rights and status of women.

Because their “beliefs” are grounded in their religion and they believe that women who get abortions or use some types of birth control (IUDs, morning-after pills, etc.) are committing the ultimate sin, murder, they want to see these sinning women suffer for their “crimes.”

Like people who love the death penalty (and in two states now state legislators have called for the death penalty for women who get abortions), they want to be able to torture them and watch them suffer; they want them to experience humiliation, and feel mortification for their sin of rejecting a pregnancy initiated by a man who was ordained by their god to be their master and the head of their household.

Torturing women for religious reasons is nothing new for American theological zealots.

Louise and I used to live just a short drive from Dover, New Hampshire, the fourth-largest city in the state, near the Maine border and the Atlantic seacoast. Generations ago, rightwing politicians and preachers were enforcing social control, much like the GOP’s forced birthers are trying to do today.

John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “How the Women Went from Dover” tells the tale of three young women who dared to challenge that day’s most powerful religious men, that early generation of the people driving the most extreme parts of what today has morphed into the forced birth movement.

Whittier’s poem begins:

The tossing spray of Cocheco’s fall

Hardened to ice on its rocky wall,

As through Dover town in the chill, gray dawn,

Three women passed, at the cart-tail drawn!

The three women were Anne Coleman, Mary Tomkins, and Alice Ambrose, and their crime was adhering to and promoting female-tolerant Quaker beliefs in a rabidly rightwing town.

This so enraged the minister of Dover’s Congregational church, John Reyner, that he and church elder Reverend Hatevil Nutter (yes, that was his real name) lobbied the crown magistrate, Captain Richard Walderne, to have them punished for their challenge to Reyner’s and Nutter’s authority.

It was a bitter New England winter when Walderne complied, ordering the three women stripped naked and tied to the back of a horse-drawn cart by their wrists, then dragged through town while receiving ten lashes each.

As Whittier wrote:

Bared to the waist, for the north wind’s grip

And keener sting of the constable’s whip,

The blood that followed each hissing blow

Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow.

A local man, George Bishop, wrote at the time what he witnessed:

“Deputy Waldron caused these women to be stripped naked from the middle upwards, and tied to a cart, and after a while cruelly whipped them, whilst the priest stood and looked and laughed at it.”

It was a start, from Reverend Reyner’s point of view, but hardly enough to scare the women of the entire region from which he drew his congregation. So, he got the young women’s punishment extended to 11 nearby towns over 80 miles of snow-covered roads, all following the same routine.

So into the forest they held their way,

By winding river and frost-rimmed bay,

Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat

Of the winter sea at their icy feet.

The next town was Hampton, where the constable decided that just baring them above the waist wasn’t enough. As Sewall’s History of the Quakers records:

“So he stripped them, and then stood trembling whip in hand, and so he did the execution. Then he carried them to Salisbury through the dirt and the snow half the leg deep; and here they were whipped again.”

As Whittier wrote in his poem:

Once more the torturing whip was swung,

Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stung.

“Oh, spare! they are bleeding!” a little maid cried,

And covered her face the sight to hide.

Whipping, beating, stoning, hanging, nailing, being pilloried (publicly clamped to a post through neck and wrist holes, often naked and sometimes for days at a time), dragging, burning, branding, and dozens of other techniques were employed by religious and government authorities in the early American colonies to enforce religious thought and behavior, particularly against women.

As Whittier wrote:

If her cry from the whipping-post and jail

Pierced sharp as the Kenite’s driven nail,

O woman, at ease in these happier days,

Forbear to judge of thy sister’s ways!

For the entirety of “civilized” human history — in country after country, culture after culture, religion after religion — crusaders for Zeus, Ra, Thor, Odin, Aphrodite, Venus, JHWH, Shiva, Rama, Krishna, Jesus, Quetzalcoatl, Mohamed, Ceridwen, Xpiacoc, Ishtar, and Amen (among hundreds of others) have, at various times, punished, tortured, and even killed women who refused to acknowledge their male gods and the rules of their patriarchal religious and political systems.

— Adherents to radical Islam from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to The Philippines today require women to cover most all of their bodies, and delight in publicly whipping and even beheading females who won’t comply.

— Fundamentalist Hindus in India today burn women to death if they’ve defied religious authorities or the patriarchs of their families.

— For over 1000 years, Christian fundamentalists have — as Whittier documents — tortured, hung, impaled, and burned to death women who defied their male ministers’ religious mandates.

What we’re seeing today in these attempts to regulate women’s behavior by the GOP is a simple extension of religious fundamentalism and patriarchy that goes back as far as ancient Samaria.

This lust for domination is really about wielding political power under the guise of religion.

Again, this is nothing new. It’s an ancient story that keeps echoing through history and Trump, the GOP, and Project 2025 are committed to reviving.

Here in America today, it’s part of a larger war on “uppity women,” non-whites, non-fundamentalist-Christian people, and gender minorities.

Which is why it’s so clear that bringing back enforcement of the Comstock Act via Project 2025 is not about the safety of women. It’s not even about reducing the number of abortions.

It’s about control, power, and their assertion that an angry Christian god has told them they are uniquely suited to interpret his scripture in a political context. They, and they alone, can choose to embrace the punitive parts of Christianity and ignore the empathetic and loving parts of it.

Those sadists want to shame women who’ve rejected their religious beliefs and gone on to get abortions, seek divorces, or participate in the workplace or government. Who have defied their religiously-justified patriarchal political authority.

They want to publicly humiliate women, harass them, and teach them a lesson about who’s really in charge.

And, if the adjudicated rapist Donald Trump takes the White House this fall, they’ll be able to gleefully do it — like Reverend Nutter — under the sanction and protection of the law.

NOW READ: How to end all Trump prosecutions

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Governors

Governor John Bel Edwards, Louisiana

Governor Kay Ivey, Alabama

Governor Brian Kemp,Georgia

Governor Kristi Noem, South Dakota

Governor Mike Parson, Missouri

Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa

U.S. Senate

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS)

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC)

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC)

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS)

U.S. House of Representatives

4/22

LEADERSHIP

STATE CHAIRS

Rep. Phil Thompson

Alabama

Rep. Mike Holmes

Sen. Dan Roberts

Rep. Arnold Mooney

Alaska

Rep. Cathy Tilton

Sen. David Wilson

Arizona

Sen. Sine Kerr

Sen. TJ Shope

Arkansas

Rep. David Ray

Rep. Representative Jim Dotson

Sen. Missy Irvin

Colorado

Rep. Tim Geitner

Sen. John Cooke

Connecticut

Rep. Mike France

Delaware

Sen. Colin Bonini

Florida

Rep. Spencer Roach

Rep. Jason Fischer

Georgia

Rep. John Carson

Sen. Bruce Thompson

Rep. Matthew Dollar

Sen. Steve Gooch

Hawaii

Rep. Gene R. Ward

Idaho

Rep. Tammy Nichols

Rep. Sage Dixon

Sen. Mary Souza

Illinois

Rep. Joe Sosnowski

Rep. Thomas Morrison

Indiana

Sen. Linda Rogers

Rep. Heath VanNatter

Sen. Jim Buck

Iowa

Sen. Jesse Green

Rep. Mike Bousselot

Rep. John Wills

Kansas

Senate President Senator Ty Masterson

Rep. John Barker

Sen. Ty Masterson

Kentucky

Sen. Robby Mills

Rep. Chris Freeland

Rep. Randy Bridges

Louisiana

Rep. Mark Wright

Rep. Paula Davis

Rep. Ray Garofalo

Maine

Rep. Matthew Harrington

Sen. Trey Stewart

Maryland

Del. Christopher Adams

Del. Susan Krebs

Massachusetts

Rep. Nicholas Boldyga

Michigan

Rep. Matt Hall

Rep. Jim Lilly

Minnesota

Rep. Pat Garofalo

Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer

Mississippi

Sen. Joel R. Carter, Jr.

Rep. Rebecca Currie

Missouri

Sen. Eric Burlison

Rep. Ben Baker

Rep. Justin Hill

Montana

Sen. Kenneth Bogner

Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe

Nebraska

Sen. Lou Ann Linehan

Nevada

Sen. James Settelmeyer

New Hampshire

Sen. Gary Daniels

Rep. Jordan G. Ulery

Rep. Ken Weyler

New Jersey

Sen. Joseph Pennacchio

New Mexico

Rep. Jim Townsend

New York

Rep. Kevin Byrne

North Carolina

Rep. Jason Saine

Rep. Kyle Hall

Rep. Dennis Riddell

North Dakota

Rep. Dan Ruby

Rep. Vicky Steiner

Ohio

Sen. Robert McColley

Rep. Scott Wiggam

Oklahoma

Rep. Mark Lepak

Sen. Julie Daniels

Oregon

Sen. Dennis Linthicum

Pennsylvania

Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill

Rep. Eric Nelson

Rep. Seth Grove

South Carolina

Rep. Garry Smith

South Dakota

Rep. Sue Peterson

Rep. Spencer Gosch

Sen. James Stalzer

Tennessee

Rep. Chris Todd

Sen. Brian Kelsey

Texas

Rep. Tan Parker

Sen. Kelly Hancock

Utah

Sen. Lincoln Fillmore

Vermont

Rep. Robert Helm

Virginia

Rep. Michael Webbert

Washington

Rep. Vicki Kraft

West Virginia

Del. Joshua Higginbotham

Sen. Patricia Rucker

Wisconsin

Sen. Steve Nass

Rep. Tyler Vorpagel

Wyoming

Sen. Cheri Steinmetz

Rep. Dan Laursen

Membership Disclaimer

ALEC provides a forum to facilitate the exchange of policy ideas from a variety of perspectives. ALEC model policy and resolutions are developed by ALEC members and may or may not reflect the positions of any individual member, company, association, or non-profit.

LIMITED GOVERNMENT • FREE MARKETS • FEDERALISM

15 tags

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recall alec warning from cronon

aha: note pattern, any time mod kicks in ctr-attack]

speed date for corps and pols, but also promote COI cf utah state rep coleman? charter schools

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ALEC Fails to Denounce Dangerous and Racist Views of Its Leaders and Members

By Scott Zimmerman —  White nationalist statements and ties draw fire from many within GOP, but not ALEC.

Read more >>

It has been a banner week for extremist politicians linked to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC’s Washington State Chair, Rep. Matt Shea, promoted and maintained close ties to an extremist group training children and young men for battle in a “Biblical warfare” while schooling them in the “biblical teachings” of racist preacher John Weaver, according to a new exposé lnx ] published by The Guardian. The revelations come just weeks after the Washington House hired an outside firm to investigate whether Shea has engaged in, planned, or promoted political violence.

And ALEC alumni and Iowa congressman Steve King pondered Wednesday whether there would “be any population of the world left” without rape and incest. Rep. King was stripped of his committee posts in Congress earlier this year after questioning why white supremacy should be considered offensive.

Despite ALEC’s claim that it “does not condone hate speech of any kind,” the pay-to-play influence group has ignored calls for it to remove Shea from his ALEC leadership position, and has done nothing to repudiate the extremist statements of Shea, King, or other radical right-wing ALEC legislators.

ALEC Leader Repeatedly Echoes White Supremacists

ALEC does not disclose how its “State Chairs” are selected, but according to its 46th annual meeting agenda, they serve as leaders to their state’s delegation, receive special training, and are invited to exclusive events. Rep. Shea (R-Spokane) has been listed as an ALEC State Chair since July 29, 2017.

In November of 2018, The Seattle Times reported that Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich had referred Shea to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for circulating a manifesto advocating a U.S. holy war that Knezovich described as a “‘how to’ manual consistent with the ideology and operating philosophy of the Christian Identity/Aryan Nations movement and the Redoubt movement of the 1990s.”

Shea’s “Biblical Basis for War” calls for the killing of all males who do not agree to “obey” biblical law. The radical agenda Shea circulated included a stop to all abortions, an end to same sex marriage, an end to idolatry, an end to communism, and replacing America’s current justice system with Biblical law.

As a result, Shea lost his leadership role within the Washington state Republican Caucus, and many donors cut ties with him. ALEC, however, kept him in his position as State Chair.

In addition to the “Biblical Basis for War,” The Guardian reported in April of 2019 that Shea had engaged in conversationsabout “carrying out surveillance, ‘psyops’ and even violent attacks against his perceived political enemies.”

Shea also authored legislation to create “a separate and independent state” in “the eastern portion of Washington” called “Liberty.” A presentation Shea gave titled “Protecting our Christian Culture and Heritage” is displayed as justification for the new state, in which he calls Christianity the United States’ religion.

According to Dave Neiwert, author of the book “Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in Trump’s America,” there has been a dedicated effort to try to get white supremacists to move to the Northwest to create an all-white ethnostate there. The demographics of the proposed State of Liberty would have significantly less racial diversity than the rest of the state.

ALEC Legislator of the Week Led Dangerous White Supremacist Group

When the Corvallis Advocate reported that Oregon Rep. Mike Nearman was listed as the vice president of Oregonians for Immigration Control (OFIC), he denied it. OFIC has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and local news organizations as a hate group that “has links to influential white nationalist eugenicist John Tanton.” The Daily Beast later confirmed that Nearman was “very definitely” the vice president of the organization “some time after early March 2017.”

An ALEC member, Nearman was selected as the “ALEC-FreedomWorks Legislator of the Week” in July of 2017.

Nearman may not work for OFIC any longer, but he still participates in the group’s events, including an OFIC lunch on March 26, 2019. Nearman now has a position as “the state director of the anti-union Freedom Foundation,” according to the Salem Reporter. The Freedom Foundation is an affiliate of ALEC’s sister organization, the State Policy Network, a right-wing web of “think tanks” in 49 states that is often called upon to provide the academic legitimacy for ALEC model bills as they are introduced.

Registered ALEC Member Opined that There Aren’t “Enough White Kids”

Former Arizona representative and ALEC member David Stringer stirred controversy last year when he gave a speech complaining that “there aren’t enough white kids to go around” to integrate Arizona’s schools and that immigration is an “existential threat” to Arizona.

Josselyn Berry, of ProgressNow Arizona, said that Stringer’s comments were “racist and paranoid” as well as “fear mongering and hateful.” Furthermore, a local news outlet reported that Stringer “had a hard time apologizing and providing a ‘yes or no’ answer about whether he is a white nationalist.” According to Arizona House Minority Leader Rebecca Rios, Stringer’s rhetoric “echoes fervent racists and white nationalists like David Duke.”

The Arizona Republican Party Chairman at the time, Jonathan Lines, and ALEC-tied Gov. Doug Ducey both called for Stringer to resign in response to his statements, but ALEC made no comment.

In November 2018, Stringer was back at it, telling a group of university students that, unlike European immigrants, “African-Americans and other racial groups don’t … blend in.” That prompted the Arizona Anti-Defamation League to question Stringer’s fitness for office, and the incoming Minority Whip, Reginald Bolding, said censure and removal should be on the table.

Stringer was ultimately forced to resign from office by Republican leaders in March 2019 after his undisclosed 1983 conviction for child sex abuse came to light.

Dues-Paying ALEC Member Blamed Mass Shootings on Minority Group and Democrats

Earlier this month, ALEC member Ohio Rep. Candice Keller blamed mass shootings on transgender people, “drag queen advocates,” “homosexual marriage,” immigration policies, and “disrespect to law enforcement,” for which she credited former President Barack Obama.

Ohio Republican Party Chairman Jane Timken denounced Keller’s comments as “shocking and utterly unjustifiable” and called for her to resign, as did Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones. Jones tweeted “Candice Keller should resign at once. Shame shame.”

ALEC has not spoken out on the controversy.

In 2017, Keller spoke on a “white power advocate’s” radio show. Her appearance can be found on the ‘Resolution Radio’ website, where images for the show state, “Our white culture is beautiful!” “‘Diversity’ is a code word for white genocide,” and David Lane’s infamous white supremacist slogan, “We must secure the existence of our race and a future for white children. Because the beauty of the Aryan women must not perish from the earth.”

Keller paid ALEC for a two-year legislative membership in 2017.

ALEC’s Uncomfortable Relationship with Hate Speech

When the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and a broad coalition of 78 organizations urged ALEC’s corporate funders to cut ties with the bill mill following inflammatory comments by hatemonger David Horowitz at last year’s Annual Meeting, ALEC took steps to distance itself from his radical views. ALEC stated that it does “not share the perspective” Horowitz expressed at its 45th annual meeting, despite the fact that Horowitz received a glowing introduction and called ALEC’s CEO Lisa Nelson “my old friend.” Among other things, Horowitz proclaimed that public education “had been turned over to racist organizations like Black Lives Matter and terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Telecom giants and longtime ALEC backers Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast ultimately quit ALEC over Horowitz’s statements.

Nonetheless, ALEC has remained conspicuously silent about the dangerous and racist statements and ties of its legislative leaders and members Shea, King, Nearman, Stringer, and Keller.

Arn Pearson contributed to this report

About Scott Zimmerman

ALEC Doubles Down on Trump, Corporate Agenda at Annual Meeting in Texas

By David Armiak — The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meets this week in Austin, the capital of the Lone Star State, for its 46th Annual Meeting at the posh JW Marriott hotel.

Read more >>

...Texas seems a logical and timely venue choice for ALEC to build those networks, as it has a supersized influence in the state, according to a new report by Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), and the largest delegation of politicians with ALEC ties. Plus, it’s just a Chinook helicopter ride away from the Mexican border, where ALEC public sector board members got a “confidential” tour on Monday.

ALEC is keeping conference speakers secret this time around, but here is what they have disclosed for their Austin agenda so far.

Gearing up for Gerrymandering

Now that the Supreme Court has kicked the door wide open for partisan gerrymandering, ALEC will also make sure its GOP legislative members are prepared to redraw their districts in the most favorable way come 2021.

In its June decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 conservative majority held that partisan redistricting, no matter how extreme, cannot be controlled by the courts. “Of all the times to abandon the Court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one,” lamented Justice Elena Kagan in an emotional dissent from the bench, noting that the ruling imperils “free and fair elections.”

However, the ruling fits nicely with ALEC’s Resolution Reaffirming the Right of State Legislatures to Determine Electoral Districts, adopted in September 2018, which called on the courts to stay out of the way and give state legislatures a free hand to set district lines.

ALEC is offering two workshops on the practice at its Austin summit: What is Redistricting and Why Must We Do It? and How to Survive Redistricting.

By “survive,” ALEC apparently means hold on to power despite a changing electorate. ALEC will bring in attorneys and legislators with “extensive experience” in past gerrymandering efforts and litigation to coach attendees on the process.

In the last redistricting cycle, Republicans led by political strategists like Karl Rove executed their REDMAP gerrymandering plan to lock in control of three quarters of state legislative chambers and the U.S. House despite a close split between Democratic and Republican voters.

“What’s scary is not that ALEC is holding these panels for redistricting but they are likely gearing up for the next round of gerrymandering unbound by any fear that the Supreme Court would rein in partisan gerrymandering,” said Kathay Feng, Common Cause’s national redistricting director.

Protecting the Electoral College…and Trump

Never a big fan of the popular vote, ALEC adopted a resolution last year calling for repeal of the 17th Amendment allowing voters to choose their U.S. senators and handing that power back to gerrymandered legislatures.

This year, ALEC members will consider a Draft Statement of Principles for Presidential Elections defending the electoral college system that got Trump elected in 2016 despite losing the popular contest to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes.

ALEC was hesitant to back candidate Donald Trump that year, but jumped to embrace him once elected. ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson wrote in a letter to funders and members after the 2016 election that the Trump administration had “the potential to be an ALEC administration. It is full of the people and ideas we have advanced since 1973…. Now is our time. And ALEC is ready.”

ALEC’s draft policy statement opposes the National Popular Vote (NPV) campaign which, if successful, would award electoral college votes to the winner of the popular vote. The group will host a workshop at its Austin summit, National Popular Vote Interstate Compact – An Act of Federalism or the End of States as We Know Them, to debate whether it poses “an existential threat to federalism.”

Sixteen states possessing 196 electoral votes have passed NPV bills to date, but they will not go into effect until states totaling 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 total electoral votes) have adopted similar measures.

ALEC’s draft statement argues that “the current Electoral College system best preserves our two-party system and prevents the fracture of America’s political structure.”

Union Busting

ALEC continues its all-out assault on public sector unions with its proposed Prohibition on Paid Union Activity (Release Time) by Public Employees Ordinance. The model ordinance from ALEC’s local government offshoot, the American City County Exchange (ACCE), would make it difficult to investigate potential grievances, meet with employers for collective bargaining, or enforce a collective bargaining agreement because union members would lose pay for doing so during work hours.

Earlier this year, CMD uncovered ALEC’s Public Sector Union Legislative Toolkit, which provides a menu of bills aimed at further weakening unions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Janus v. AFSCME decision in 2018.

ALEC corporations and legislators will discuss undisclosed “Public Sector Union Policy” at its Task Force on Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development meeting on Thursday, and members will hear a talk on anti-union “Litigation and Opt-Out” developments in the misnamed Worker Freedom Reform Meeting.

Privatizing Education

It is no secret that ALEC and Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos are fond of each other. After assuming office on a 50-50 confirmation vote in the Senate, with the tie broken by Vice President Mike Pence, DeVos was the featured speaker at the 2017 ALEC Annual Meeting.

The DeVos groups American Federation for Children (AFC) and Alliance for School Choice, along with private sector board member K12 Inc., have long been the drivers of ALEC’s school privatization agenda in the states, and now DeVos wants to create a national “scholarship” to fund private and religious schools.

ALEC’s Task Force on Education and Workforce Development will meet behind closed doors on Thursday to consider a draft Resolution Supporting the Principle of Education Freedom Scholarships to support DeVos’ controversial plan to expand vouchers at the federal level. Although DeVos has said that the scholarships will not take money from public schools, the plan resembles many of the voucher systems rolled out in states across the country, which have resulted in decreased funding for public education. If adopted, taxpayers will be on the hook for the $5 billion in lost revenue from the new tax credits.

For those meeting attendees feeling jaded about school privatization efforts spun as “school choice,” ALEC will also hold a workshop to win them back, called Do Conservatives Really Support School Choice? The workshop features privatization advocates Robert Enlow, the president of EdChoice, Leah Vukmir, ALEC’s 2016 National Chair and current vice president of state affairs for the National Taxpayers Union, and Carlin Yoder, a former Indiana state senator and Christian school headmaster turned lobbyist.

Vukmir tried to privatize virtually all facets of education in Wisconsin, and education issues became a big factor in her 2018 U.S. Senate race against Tammy Baldwin. Vukmir lost that race to Baldwin by more than 11 points.

Favoring Fossil Fuels, Opposing a Green New Deal

With Peabody Energy, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Koch Industries still sitting on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council, the Resolution Supporting Freedom in Energy Policy rejecting U.S. Sen. Edward Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal should not come as a surprise.

Markey and Ocasio-Cortez introduced the bold plan to address the climate crisis by transitioning the U.S. to 100 percent renewable, zero-emission energy sources within 10 years, and it does not sit well with ALEC’s fossil fuel industry backers.

ALEC’s proposed resolution, which will be discussed in a closed-door session on Friday, denounces the Green New Deal as “socialist” and “un-American,” and calls instead for an “American Clean Energy policy” that is “technology neutral” and “doesn’t pick winners and losers in the economy.”

However, ALEC seems to pick fossil fuel producers over renewables with its proposed Motor Fuel Tax Reduction Act. The model bill raises registration fees “on passenger cars, noncommercial motor vehicles, and commercial cars and trucks,” and then gives drivers a prepaid card that effectively exempts them from motor fuel taxes. This will have the intended consequence of lowering overall taxes for gas guzzling vehicles, while raising taxes on electric and hybrid vehicles.

ALEC’s Energy Subcommittee will also meet to discuss the Economic and Societal Impact of Fracking and the Environment Subcommittee will discuss Federal and State Chemical Regulation: PFAS. Fracking and PFAS have both been implicated as major health hazards and threats to our nation’s groundwater supply.

ALEC members also have the option of attending workshops on Sunshine Showdown: The Net Metering Debate across America and Federal Energy and Environmental Regulations Impacting the States.

ALEC Takes on Border Crisis

The Trump administration has faced strong public backlash for calling the flood of Latin American refugees at the southern boarder an “invasion,” separating immigrant families, and the inhumane conditions inside immigrant detention camps.

After taking its legislative board members on a “confidential border tour” on Monday, August 12 by Chinook helicopter and boat, ALEC’s Task Force on Homeland Security Session will have three discussions on border security behind closed doors: “What Is the Problem, How Does it Impact States?”; “Updated from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; What States Can Do to Help the Federal Government Measure the Impact of the Border Security Crisis”; and “What Makes Good State Policy?”

ACCE, will also take up the issue of sanctuary cities in the workshop Federalism v. Local Control: Localities that Defy Federal Law. Here members will discuss the legality of the “surge of localities refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement agencies.”

Taking on Female Genital Mutilation and Cannabis

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Everything Is Bigger in Texas, Including ALEC’s Influence

By Scott Zimmerman — Texas tops chart for number of ALEC legislators, with 59 politicians tied to corporate bill mill, the local delegation might be the largest delegation at this week’s meeting.

Read more >>

New Report Documents Pervasive Influence of ALEC in Texas

By ExposedByCMD Admin — As corporate lobbyists and legislators prepare to gather in Austin, CMD and Common Cause release a report detailing the pay-to-play group’s firm grip on Texas politics.

Read more >>

BREAKING: ALEC Plans “Confidential” Helicopter Border Tour in Texas for Board Members

By ExposedByCMD Admin — Two biggest private prison companies backing ALEC get millions in ICE contracts to run controversial immigrant detention camps, raising questions about who is paying for the tour and why.

Read more >>

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Comcast Is Latest Telecommunications Company to Drop ALEC

By David Armiak — The news of Comcast’s departure was made public in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing calling for increased lobbying disclosure by Comcast.

Read more >>

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ALEC Teams up with Anti-LGBT Alliance Defending Freedom to Promote So-Called “Campus Free Speech” Bills

By David Armiak — The noted hate group is also a dues-paying member of ALEC, CMD has found.

Read more >>

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cmd

Stephen Moore, Trump’s recent appointment to the Federal Reserve Board, has served as the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) leading voice for austerity and anti-labor policies for over a decade.

ALEC is a pay-to-play operation where legislators and corporate lobbyists meet behind closed doors to establish policies on issues that affect our lives, such as the environment, energy policy, and workers’ issues. Moore currently serves on ALEC’s “Private Enterprise Advisory Council” and the Board of Scholars. Since at least 2009, Moore has regularly attended the meetings where corporations script state policy.

Moore’s most well-known work with ALEC, “Rich States, Poor States” (RSPS), is one of the flagship documents supporting a conservative agenda in the states. For twelve years, Moore has co-authored the report, which serves as ALEC’s state scorecard for Koch-backed policies aimed at reducing taxes on the wealthy and corporations and suppressing wages.

ALEC’s RSPS report “provides a recipe for economic inequality, wage suppression, and stagnant incomes,” as well as for austerity for public infrastructure and education systems which “are the true foundations of long term economic growth and shared prosperity,” wrote economist Peter Fisher in a joint Good Jobs First and Iowa Policy Project report.

Moore now faces confirmation by the US Senate, which is expected to be a turbulent process, as he is widely considered unqualified to hold a position that would make him one of America’s most powerful officials for economic policy.

Ties to The American Legislative Exchange Council

Moore has spoken at ALEC conferences every year since at least 2013. He was a featured speaker at ALEC’s 40th Annual Meeting; a keynote speaker at the 2014 ALEC Annual Meeting; he “talked ideas and policy” at the 2015 ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit; he had a “terrific time with dedicated state legislators” at an ALEC event in 2016; was on an ALEC panel in 2017 and promoted coal at the 2018 ALEC conference and answered questions about RSPS on a panel.

ALEC claims Moore is one of the “most well-respected free-market economists in America,” while Moore states “it is a great privilege” to be associated with ALEC. “Don’t you just know we are doing the right thing at ALEC, when we have these lunatics protesting against what we are doing?” Moore once said, presumably speaking of the multiple workers’ rights and environmental rights groups that protested the 2015 States and Nation Policy Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Moore’s speaking engagements have predominantly focused on RSPS, which ALEC calls its “economic outlook of states.” Moore is frequently called to ALEC meetings to discuss the yearly report he and his co-authors — ALEC Chief Economist Jonathan Williams and Reagan-alum economist Dr. Arthur B. Laffer — research together.

Expert Reviews of Rich States, Poor States

ALEC’s flagship report has been derided by experts as “silly,” “highly misleading,” and the “gold standard in bogus economic policy claims.” As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reported in 2015, RSPC “slaps a fresh coat of paint on the flawed fiscal and economic austerity policies favored by the group and its corporate patrons.”

Menzie Chinn, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, reviewed ALEC’s RSPS reports and concluded that the data did not back-up ALEC’s claims. The “bottom line,” according to Chinn’s findings, is that the ALEC rankings are “not correlated with real [gross state product] growth, either short term or media term.”

Chinn told CMD that the conclusions of the 2015 econometric assessment are still likely true today and that he agrees with the conclusions of Good Jobs First and the Iowa Policy Project in their 2012 report on ALEC’s deeply flawed methodology. According to that report, “Selling Snake Oil to the States,” ALEC’s RSPS “consistently ignores decades of published research making broad, unsubstantiated claims and often using anecdotes or spurious two-factor correlations that fail to control for obviously relevant factors.” RSPS relies on a “methodologically primitive analysis that any student taking Statistics 101 would be taught to avoid,” the report concluded.

Moore often uses migration numbers as people “voting with their feet” as evidence for their economic policy preferences. But Chinn says that this method of analysis is fraught as it does not control for many factors at play. Marshall Steinbaum, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, called Moore’s premise of people moving from blue states to red states “some sort of fantasy.”

RSPS “embodies the policy agenda that ALEC pushes to state legislators” according to the Iowa Policy Project’s “Grading of the States.” That site was created by Fisher, an economist who is currently the Research Director at Iowa Policy Project, to cover business climate rankings. Grading of the States says despite ALEC’s claims that “these policies promote economic growth and prosperity, the evidence shows otherwise.”

Kansas is one data point of the evidence Grading of the States mentions. As CMD reported in 2016, ALEC-backed policies in Kansas have resulted in a widening of the income inequality gap “by shifting income to the state’s wealthiest taxpayers and corporations, while suppressing wages and cutting services for the middle class, low-income children, and veterans.”

Moore’s Background

Despite praise from ALEC claiming “no one is more qualified than Stephen Moore for this position,” Stephen Moore would be alone on the Federal Reserve Board as the only member without a doctorate degree. Moore has never worked within academia. And, as pointed out by Chinn, Moore has never been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Instead, Moore has climbed the ranks within conservative think-tanks and political groups. He founded Club for Growth, and has worked as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a senior economic contributor at FreedomWorks, a board member of the Donors Capital Fund, a research director for President Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Privatization, and with many other right-wing organizations.

“Stephen Moore is little more than a fairly inept polemicist. I’ve never seen anything written by him that could be construed as ‘research’ in an academic/policy sense,” Chinn told CMD. Pointing at his lack of a doctorate in the field, Chinn opined, “perhaps he has an excuse, given his limited economics training,” but Moore’s “use of incorrect or outdated data suggests deeper issues.”

Economists Say Moore Is Not Qualified

Moore “is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad pick. He hasn’t gotten a thing right in twenty years,” Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, tweeted.

Wolfers is not alone. Greg Mankiw, a Harvard professor who was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush and is considered a “leading Republican economist,” said Moore “does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job.”

Moore himself said, “I’m kind of new to this game, frankly, so I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions,” according to Bloomberg. “It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there, assuming I get confirmed.”

Trump also recently appointed “former pizza magnate turned failed Republican presidential candidate” Herman Cain to the Fed. However, according to ABC News, Cain is expected to withdraw his name from consideration in the coming days after four GOP senators indicated they would not vote to confirm him. The next step in the confirmation process is vetting from the Senate Committee on Banking, chaired by Idaho Republican Mike Crapo.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/03/18/cmd-continues-throw-spotlight-legislators-heralded-secret-group/

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) seems to have stopped recognizing its rising stars with its “Legislator of the Week” award, switching instead to a monthly award.

ALEC meetings provide venues for global corporations and state politicians to vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called “model bills” reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations.

Started a few years ago, the “Legislator of the Week” award recognized the group’s leaders on right-wing legislation written with corporate representatives, and affecting health care, environment, education and many other issues.

“Legislator of the Week” Recognition Did Not Go Well

CMD has frequently found ALEC’s award recipients notable for their extreme positions, questionable ethics, or poor judgment.

Consider the ALEC state legislator of the week the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) wrote about who likened homosexual behavior to psychopathic behavior. Or read about the ALEC female legislator who opposes gender pay equality in her state, despite that state having the largest gender earnings gap of all states.

Another honoree, and ALEC’s 2018 national chair, was shown to take the “pay” in a “pay-to-play” scheme to buy almost $20,000 of personal clothing.

In late 2017, CMD wrote about ALEC’s Legislator of the Year award going to a legislator who tried to carry a gun onto an airplane.

ALEC Tries “Legislator of the Month”

After a five-month hiatus in recognizing its leaders, ALEC’s first honoree of the month is Utah’s ALEC state chair: Representative Kim Coleman.

ALEC gave the award on March 8, 2019, just ten days after KUTV’s investigative report on February 26, 2019 exposed state legislators with ties to charter schools, who also regulate charter schools.

Kim Coleman is the founder of Monticello Academies, a charter in West Valley City, Utah. CMD found that her husband, Joel, is also a trustee of the school and serves as its board secretary. The latest IRS filings publicly available of the charter school do not show Joel Coleman drawing a salary from Monticello.

ALEC again has given its award to a legislator of some renown in their own state. Coleman has unsuccessfully brought lawsuits against the state board that regulates charters for removing her as executive director of the school.

“During Coleman’s tenure as the school’s director, parents complained she did not provide required special education services at the school … and had created an environment in which special education services were not provided as required by law.” Coleman lost in the lower court and the verdict was upheld by a Utah state appeals court. The charter school, meaning the Utah taxpayer, covered some of Coleman’s legal expenses.

Still Tied to Charter

Kim Coleman, though no longer on the board of the charter school along with her husband, is now executive director of Monticello Academy Properties, the non-profit entity that provides management services.

She was appointed to that board as executive director, presumably by, among others, her husband who is the principal officer, between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017, according to the group’s latest available tax filing. She is not on earlier tax filingsof this non-profit.

That same tax return shows her claiming she works 20 hours a week but does not receive a salary. CMD is not suggesting any wrongdoing but the Utah State Charter School Board, in removing her as executive director of the school, may not know that Coleman became the executive director of the property management company connected to the school.

CMD will make sure the Utah State Charter School Board is made aware that Representative Coleman is still involved in the school, even if she no longer determines the curriculum. Without ALEC naming Coleman as its “Legislator of the Month,” CMD would have never known of the controversy surrounding not only an ALEC legislator, but ALEC’s state chair for Utah.

CMD looks forward to next month’s award.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28032019/pipeline-protest-crackdown-state-law-legislation-south-dakota-conspirators-riot-boosting

This story was updated with a lawsuit filed March 28 over the South Dakota law.

Bills to clamp down on pipeline protests have spread to at least nine new states this year, part of an industry-backed push that began two years ago to heighten penalties for activists who try to block fossil fuel infrastructure projects.

Several of the bills also allow prosecutors to go after people or organizations as "conspirators" or "riot boosters" for merely supporting or coordinating with others who violate the law.

Civil liberties advocates argue that these vague and far-reaching provisions risk violating free speech protections under the First Amendment, and they have already started launching legal challenges.

The latest government move came on Wednesday in South Dakota—one of the states the planned Keystone XL pipeline is slated to cross—when Republican Gov. Kristi Noem signed a law that enables state and local governments, as well as "third parties," to seek civil damages from people or organizations that engage in "riot boosting."

Lawmakers in North Dakota, a hub of oil and gas development, also passed a bill this week that stiffens penalties for anyone who interferes with the construction or operation of pipelines and other "critical infrastructure." Once the Senate approves some minor changes, it heads to Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, who has not said whether he will sign it.

The North Dakota bill was based on a law that was enacted in Oklahoma in 2017 and then circulated by the industry-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Versions of that legislation have now been introduced in at least 15 states, three of which have enacted it: Oklahoma, Louisiana and Iowa. A version of the bill passed the Indiana legislature this week, too, though the Senate there must also approve some amendments before sending it to the governor.

While the details vary from state to state, the bills generally increase penalties for trespassing on or tampering with a range of facilities, including pipelines, oil storage tanks, railroads and utility infrastructure. Several of them, including North Dakota's, also include language assigning higher penalties—up to $1 million in some cases—for any group found to be a conspirator in violating the law.

The South Dakota law is different. Rather than imposing new penalties for interfering in pipeline construction, the bill enables state or local governments—or a third party working with government—to seek compensation from anyone who engages in "riot boosting," which includes encouraging or directing someone to engage in a riot, defined by the state as the use of force or violence by three or more people acting together.

Someone can qualify as a "riot booster" even if they reside out of state and act indirectly "through any employee, agent or subsidiary." Anyone found liable would be responsible for three times the ordinary penalty.

The bill was introduced at the end of the legislative session and approved over the course of four days, with only one hearing.

Environmental and civil liberties advocates, as well as many Native American tribes, say the bills are an attempt to stifle legitimate protest by creating harsh penalties for minor infractions and by trying to scare off advocacy groups. An organization that holds a nonviolence training, for example, might be targeted under the law if attendees are later part of a protest that ends in a clash with private security forces or police.

"'Riot boosting' is an unusual and new term. You might be asking yourself what that means, and I think protesters will too," said Vera Eidelman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has tracked the bills. "I think it poses a unique threat to speech and appears to be targeted at protests. It uses words like 'encouraging' and 'advising' that are very broad and refer to a category of protected speech."

On Thursday, the ACLU sued South Dakota officials in federal court on behalf of indigenous and environmental groups, arguing that the new law and two related statutes violate the Constitution by suppressing free speech and failing to describe what actions could qualify as violations. In a statement, the group said "such vague and broad language invites arbitrary enforcement, will chill protected speech, and will result in indiscriminate targeting of peaceful organizers."

Industry-Backed Group's 'Model Legislation'

The legislation is part of a wave of state bills introduced across the country since President Donald Trump's election in response to high-profile protests like those against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017.

Oklahoma state Rep. Scott Biggs said he was responding to those protests when he introduced a bill in 2017 to impose harsh penalties on people or groups who interfere with "critical infrastructure." After ALEC adopted the bill as model legislation, versions quickly spread across several states with active pipeline projects.

The bills' supporters have said they make it easier for prosecutors to go after protesters or vandals who violate the law, and that they do not target free speech.

Advocates have pointed out that the actions in question—trespassing, vandalism—are already covered by existing laws. Instead, they say, the aim of the bills is to intimidate protesters who draw attention to their concerns through civil disobedience, including minor infractions like blocking the gates of construction sites. Advocates say these protests are part of a long tradition of American civil disobedience dating back to the Boston Tea Party.

"Even where these bills are simply introduced, even if they do not move, even if they do not become law, they have potential to chill free speech and curtail activism," said Maggie Ellinger-Locke, a staff attorney with Greenpeace. "We're hearing from people on the frontlines of activism in these states that these bills frighten them."

Pipeline Companies Register Their Support

Energy companies and associations have supported the bills and have continued to push the legislation this year, according to documents compiled by Greenpeace.

TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, registered its support for the bill this year in Missouri along with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and other industry groups. In Illinois, TransCanada was joined by Enbridge and Energy Transfer, two other leading pipeline developers, as well as the American Petroleum Institute.

Sen. Janne Myrdal, who sponsored the North Dakota bill this year and is a member of ALEC's energy task force, did not respond to requests for comment. But she told the Associated Press that she introduced the bill in response to a protester who in 2016 broke into a control site for the existing Keystone pipeline that cuts through the state and manually closed one of the valves.

"There was frustration from law enforcement and residents that there wasn't enough teeth in current law to go after these people and the organizations that support them," she said.[pix]

The protester, Michael Foster, was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, though two of those years were suspended. He ended up serving about half a year.

In South Dakota, Gov. Noem's office did not answer emailed questions about TransCanada's role in drafting the bill, but Noem said in February that she had met with representatives of the company to discuss her legislative package, which also includes a bill that requires pipeline developers to contribute to a fund that would help pay for government costs associated with construction.

"I fully support the freedoms of speech and assembly, but we must also have clear expectations and the rule of law," Noem said in a statement issued Wednesday. "My pipeline bills make clear that we will not let rioters control our economic development."

Terry Cunha, a spokesman for TransCanada, said in an email that "we appreciate the efforts of Governor Noem and her administration to help advance Keystone XL construction and other pipelines," adding that "any legislation that deters unlawful activities and encourages the advancement of critical infrastructure projects is a positive step."

Is It Stifling Dissent?

Some activists say the bills are part of a wider effort by the oil and gas industry and its allies in government—through lawsuits, public relations campaigns and legislation—to paint protesters as criminals and even terrorists.

"All of these things I think incorrectly mischaracterize protesters and respond to a powerful pushback against pipelines and other protests, not by trying to engage on the issues but by trying to stifle dissent," Eidelman said. "I think this is really part of a broader trend."

Last year, the ACLU sued the federal government, accusing several agencies of withholding documents detailing preparations for the potential construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The group had submitted records requests seeking information about the preparations, and the documents that did emerge, mostly from state agencies, showed that law enforcement agencies were conducting trainings for potential protests. The ACLU said the activities risked treating activists as criminals even before protests broke out. State officials have said they are simply doing their jobs.

In January, The Intercept reported on similar concerns in Minnesota, where police had been preparing for a year and a half for protests against Enbridge's proposed Line 3 pipeline expansion project by identifying groups opposed to construction and monitoring some activists.

The ACLU and other civil liberties groups said they are continuing to evaluate the state bills and considering whether they may challenge them as unconstitutional. So far,Louisiana is the only state where protesters have been arrested under the new laws. Bill Quigley, a lawyer who is representing several of the activists, said prosecutors have two years to press charges and have yet to do so.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

ACTIVISM OIL SPILLS/PIPELINES REGULATION

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mary b cmd 3/19

Record-breaking heat last summer, inspired-15-year-old Greta Thunberg to pack a water bottle, a book, and a snack and take a stand outside the Swedish parliament with a handmade sign “School Strike for Climate.” By January 2019, school strikes were spreading across Europe and some 70,000 teens hit the streets to demand action in Brussels, where the EU Parliament meets.

At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January, Thunberg addressed some of the most powerful people on earthwith a stark message. “Adults keep saying we owe it to the young people, to give them hope,” Thunberg said, “But I don’t want your hope… I want you to panic. I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is.”

Thurberg was inspired by the March 14, 2018 mass mobilization and national school walkout organized by the Parkland students in Florida to protest gun violence.

Now the inspiration is coming back across the Atlantic, and European teens will soon be joined by a mobilization of American high school students who will demand action from one of the world’s worst polluters, the United States of America.

Countering the Trump Agenda

These young people are paying attention. A 2018 landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change says that we need to transform the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”

In the United States, an insurgent movement is pushing a Green New Deal onto the agenda of a reluctant Congress. The term is reminiscent of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s original New Deal in the 1930s and the massive mobilization it took to transform a shaky U.S. economy into global powerhouse ready to take on the Nazis. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other proponents of the Green New Deal know it can be done again, with a focus on infrastructure investment, good jobs and equity.

But the barriers to change are enormous. The Trump administration is headed in exactly the wrong direction, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accords, putting a halt to Obama’s Clean Power Plan, accelerating fossil fuel exports and giving the thumbs up to giant oil and gas pipelines.

And Trump has appointed a passel of climate change deniers and fossil fuel lobbyists to key positions in his administration. These include Andrew Wheeler, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who was formerly an energy lobbyist and vice president of the Washington Coal Club; David Bernhardt, acting Secretary of the Interior and a former industry lobbyist whose clients included the Independent Petroleum Association of America; as well as leading climate change deniers John Christy, a member of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board, and William Happer, who will lead the Presidential Committee on Climate Security.

Countering the Koch Agenda

If battling the president is not a big enough task for American youth, they are taking on the fossil fuel industry and institutions in the states that are actually trying to turn back the clock on the progress states have already made on climate.

According to the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), Koch Industries is among America’s top toxic polluters. It has many subsidiaries, operating in oil and gas exploration, pipelines and refining, in chemical and fertilizer production, cattle and game ranching, timber and paper products, electronics, industrial glass, and various consumer products.

According to Greenpeace, Koch Industries has spent over $127 million funding climate denial groups. One of them is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) , which produces cookie-cutter “model bills” that are rolled out in state legislatures all across America. ALEC’s position on climate is so extreme, even ExxonMobil dropped the group last year.

ALEC bills:

* Repeal renewable energy standards

* Increase fees for home solar

* End govt. support for electric cars (but not fossil fuels)

* Attack Obama’s Clean Power Plan

* Attack emissions standards for cars

* Oppose carbon tax on pollution

* Support fossil fuel extraction from federal lands

* Support fracking, coal, crude oil exports

* Increase penalties on climate protesters

In their desperation, the Koch-ALEC crowd thinks that by increasing penalties on pipeline protesters and silencing campus protest, they can stop the future, but they cannot.

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nyt

12/18 attack cafe

“With oil scarcity no longer a concern,” Americans should be given a “choice in vehicles that best fit their needs,” read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration’s proposed rules incorporate similar logic.

The industry had reason to urge the rollback of higher fuel efficiency standards proposed by former President Barack Obama. A quarter of the world’s oil is used to power cars, and less-thirsty vehicles mean lower gasoline sales.

In recent months, Marathon Petroleum also teamed up with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a secretive policy group financed by corporations as well as the Koch network, to draft legislation for states supporting the industry’s position. Its proposed resolution, dated Sept. 18, describes current fuel-efficiency rules as “a relic of a disproven narrative of resource scarcity” and says “unelected bureaucrats” shouldn’t dictate the cars Americans drive.

A separate industry campaign on Facebook, covertly run by an oil-industry lobby representing Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Phillips 66 and other oil giants, urged people to write to regulators to support the rollback.

The Facebook ads linked to a website with a picture of a grinning Mr. Obama. It asked, “Would YOU buy a used car from this man?” The site appears to have been so effective that a quarter of the 12,000 public comments received by the Department of Transportation can be traced to the petition, according to a Times analysis.

...

AT&T, the biggest telecommunications company in the world, has followed in the footsteps of Verizon and dropped its membership with ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) over its hosting of hate speech last summer.

My takeaway? Exposing ALEC works!

113 corporations worth trillions in market value have now dumped ALEC since we launched ALEC Exposed in 2012.

And exposing ALEC is only possible with your support.

While ALEC has been a tool of the Kochs and big business pay-to-play operations for decades, it has recently veered into alarming far-right territory, denying climate science, embracing racists, and using hatemongers like David Horowitz to whip up alt-right support for rewriting the U.S. Constitution.

CMD blew the whistle on Horowitz's wild anti-Islamic accusations at ALEC's annual meeting in August and joined 78 civil rights and reform groups in a letter of protest calling on ALEC's corporate patrons to stop funding ALEC extremism.

And earlier this month CMD exposed that Rep. Matt Shea, who was reported to the FBI for circulating a manual on how to wage a violent Christian holy war in the United States, is the chair of ALEC in Washington State. ALEC still has not removed Shea from his position.

AT&T's departure is the third major blow to ALEC this year, following Exxon-Mobil's decision to ditch ALEC in July.

https://medium.com/lobby99/trump-sets-up-alec-administration-e6d00be457d2

Nearly half of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks, as well as Vice President-elect Mike Pence, have ties to an ultra-conservative group that writes laws to benefit its corporate paymasters.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) writes “model legislation” used as the basis for often-controversial state laws, including voter ID and “school choice” bills. It also has written a host of measures favorable to corporations, including deregulation, anti-minimum-wage and right-to-work legislation. Its corporate funders include billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, ExxonMobil, PhRMA, UPS, AT&T and Pfizer.

While the group focuses on state (and, recently, local) government, it has made inroads at the federal level as well. Some of its alumni in Congress have pushed a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget, and one of them led efforts to “reform” the U.S. Postal Service.

Now, ALEC finds itself in the heart of the White House.

Seven of the 15 cabinet nominees and two of the five cabinet-level nominees so far have been members of ALEC or spoken at the group’s events. The cabinet-level post of chair of the Council of Economic Advisers remain to be filled.

“In view of the incoming presidential administration’s focus on rolling power back to the states and the sheer number of ALEC alumni in the new administration, ALEC is the organization best positioned to bring policy experts and business leaders together for open and substantive discussions,” ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson said in a statement.

The nominations could as easily have come from some of Trump’s Republican primary opponents, such as former ALEC members Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and John Kasich. Trump, though, was not at the top of ALEC’s wish list.

When Republican pollster Frank Luntz asked attendees at ALEC’s annual meeting in 2015 how many were supporting Trump, the crowd responded with?—?silence. One booth at the conference even included a Trump piñata.

This was, after all, the candidate who had vowed to “drain the swamp” of Washington lobbyists, many of whom are fixtures at ALEC events.

Trump proclaimed himself the only Republican candidate to refuse to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. ALEC has proposed privatizing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He labeled the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which ALEC supports, a disaster. He lashed out at banks (notably Goldman Sachs) and multinational corporations on the campaign trail.

In reality, Trump’s administration will be packed with billionaires, former Goldman Sachs bankers and those tied to ALEC’s corporate and legislative wings.

Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has worked his entire career at ExxonMobil, becoming CEO in 2006. The company gave more than $1.7 million to ALEC from 1998 to 2014, and has a representative on the organization’s corporate board.

ALEC argues that “global climate change is inevitable,” opposes government mandates that “limit or dictate energy choices,” and encourages the expansion of access to North American fossil fuel reserves. The organization also opposes the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.

Political advocacy group Common Cause released hundreds of documents this year illustrating how Exxon used ALEC to push the company’s legislative goals on issues including cap-and-trade, fracking, the Keystone XL Pipeline, and the Clean Power Plan.

Exxon continued to fund ALEC for eight years after it pledged to stop funding climate denial, according to the Guardian.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump’s pick for administrator of the EPA, is a former state senator and ALEC member. Pruitt has sued the EPA over the Clean Power Plan. In his LinkedIn profile, Pruitt claims to be “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”

Labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder is a board member of the International Franchise Association, which advocates for laws and policies favorable to the industry. It also is an ALEC member.

The IFA has pushed to delay the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act and repeal the provision requiring businesses to provide health insurance for employees working an average of 30 hours a week. The organization unsuccessfully sued Seattle in 2014 to try to block the city from treating franchises as large businesses under its new $15-an-hour minimum-wage law.

ALEC has called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and is opposed to minimum-wage increases.

ALEC has adopted a policy backed by the IFA, stating that franchising is a contractual business relationship, not an employment relationship. The policy is an effort to ensure that large franchise corporations such as McDonald’s and Puzder’s own Carl’s Jr. are not held liable for the labor practices of their franchisees.

Tom Price, the nominee for secretary of health and human services, is an ALEC alumnus. He has introduced legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and supports privatizing Medicare, mirroring ALEC’s positions.

Price also is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a medical group whose statement of principles “declares that it is ‘evil’ and ‘immoral’ for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid.”

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Price had “traded more than $300,000 in shares of health-related companies over the past four years while sponsoring and advocating legislation that potentially could affect those companies’ stocks.”

Betsy DeVos, the education secretary nominee, is chair of the American Federation for Children, a dark-money group that supports school voucher programs and charter schools nationwide, funneling donations from undisclosed sources to candidates who support school privatization, mostly at the state level. AFC is an ALEC member, and has worked with the group to draft model legislation.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump’s UN ambassador nominee, is a former ALEC member. She has pushed ALEC-sponsored legislation including school voucher programs, voter ID laws, and a bill allowing law enforcement to check the immigration status of any person who is arrested or stopped, modeled on an infamous Arizona law. She signed into law a measure to block a boycott movement against some Israeli companies. About a dozen other states have enacted similar laws?—?a policy backed by ALEC’s national chair.

Trump’s pick for energy secretary, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, was a keynote speaker at ALEC’s annual conference in July. A 2011 analysis by ThinkProgress found that 10 of then-governor Perry’s initiatives “mirror ALEC model legislation or policy recommendations from ALEC’s state affiliate.”

Pence, who wrote the introduction to ALEC’s annual “Report Card on American Education” in 2014, also spoke at the group’s July conference. His education policies as governor of Indiana matched those of ALEC and DeVos, including funding for charter schools and vouchers. He appointed a former ALEC director to his cabinet, and once sent an email urging legislators to join the group.

“I was for ALEC before it was cool,” Pence said at the July conference.

Transportation secretary nominee Elaine Chao spoke at the ALEC annual meeting back in 2002, when she was secretary of labor. Chao was a distinguished fellow with the Heritage Foundation, another group funded by organizations connected to the Koch brothers, before and after her time as labor secretary. Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation, also co-founded ALEC.

Ben Carson, nominated for secretary of housing and urban development, spoke at an ALEC meeting last year, calling for deregulation, school choice, a balanced-budget amendment, and changing the mission of the EPA so it would work with businesses to exploit natural resources.

At least 12 others appointed to top positions in the administration also have connections to ALEC or the Koch brothers, and share many of ALEC’s goals.

Kellyanne Conway, who will serve as counselor to the president, spoke at the ALEC annual meeting in July. Conway, a former pollster and senior adviser for Pence, worked for a super PAC supporting Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign before switching to Trump. Cruz is a longtime ALEC supporter.

Rep. Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s nominee to be director of the Office of Management and Budget, served in the South Carolina Legislature from 2007 to 2011, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Koch Industries has donated $31,000 to Mulvaney’s campaigns. The Club for Growth, whose funders include the Koch network, has been his top donor, giving $85,580. Club for Growth was a sponsor of ALEC’s annual conferencethis year.

Mulvaney has called for a balanced-budget amendment. He has questioned climate science, referring to “baseless claims regarding global warming,” and wants to make it easier for companies to access domestic oil, natural gas and coal. He has called for eliminating the capital gains tax and lowering tax rates for businesses.

Marc Short, a longtime Pence adviser, has been tapped by Trump as director of legislative affairs for the White House. Short was the Koch brothers’ top political adviser as president of Freedom Partners, the Kochs’ political arm, from 2013 until he joined Rubio’s presidential campaign in February.

Trump’s White House Counsel, Donald McGahn II, was lawyer to scandal-plagued former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican who was convicted of money laundering to bypass state campaign finance laws barring corporate contributions during the 2002 election. The conviction later was overturned by the Texas Court of Appeals.

Following the 2002 election, Republicans took control of the Texas Legislature for the first time in modern history, allowing them to gerrymander congressional districts and send more Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives.

DeLay is an ALEC alumnus.

Later, serving on the Federal Election Commission, McGahn refused to enforce campaign finance laws. In private practice, McGahn has represented Freedom Partners, testifying on behalf of the group at an FEC hearing last year.

Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, served as chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party from 2007 to 2011, leading the party to success in the 2010 elections. Priebus’ longtime friend Scott Walker was elected governor, and Republicans took control of the state Assembly and Senate.

Walker, a former ALEC member, was heavily funded by the Koch brothers, ALEC corporate members and other conservative groups. He went on to propose a budget bill that eliminated public employee collective-bargaining rights except for wages, reflecting ALEC’s anti-union policies.

In all, the Republican-controlled Legislature introduced 32 bills in 2011–12that reflected ALEC model legislation, 19 of which became law.

Mike Pompeo, nominee for CIA director, is a member of the tea party movement who was elected to represent Kansas’ 4th Congressional District with the financial backing and endorsement of the Koch brothers.

Pompeo has argued that climate science “needs to continue to develop” and opposed the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations and Clean Power Plan. A lifetime National Rifle Association member, he opposes gun-control legislation. The NRA is a member of ALEC, which has written model legislation opposing gun-control efforts.

Koch Industries is Pompeo’s top campaign donor, giving $375,000. Club for Growth has donated more than $64,000.

Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions and interior secretary nominee Ryan Zinke also have received contributions from Koch Industries.

Sessions is skeptical of climate science, and voted to bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. He voted against the Affordable Care Act, and supported efforts to de-fund it.

Zinke, who has received more than $345,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, has flip-flopped on climate science, supported the Keystone XL Pipeline, limited the president’s ability to protect public lands by declaring them national monuments, and weakened protections from endangered species. The League of Conservation Voters has given him a lifetime score of 3 percent. Zinke supports a balanced-budget amendment.

Former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is Trump’s nominee for agriculture secretary. As governor, Perdue signed into law measures based on ALEC model legislation, including the nation’s second voter ID law and what ALEC co-founder Paul Weyrich described as “the most expansive school-choice program in the nation.”

ALEC praised Perdue for appointing special counsel to join other states in challenging the Affordable Care Act.

Billionaire Wilbur Ross, nominee for commerce secretary, is a friend of David Koch’s. Another billionaire, Todd Ricketts, is Trump’s pick for deputy commerce secretary. Ricketts, the co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, and his wife Sylvie Lègére have served on the National Council of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the oldest conservative think tanks.

AEI has received financial backing from charities related to the Koch brothers, ExxonMobil and the DeVos family. The Guardian newspaper listed AEI among the top recipients of donations from conservatives “to groups spreading disinformation about climate science.”

Two other Trump nominees, Puzder and Linda McMahon, have served on AEI’s National Council. Education secretary nominee DeVos serves on AEI’s board of trustees, along with former vice president Dick Cheney. Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton was an AEI senior fellow.

ALEC also has ideological soul mates in the Republican congressional leadership, which will control the legislative agenda for at least the next two years.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has supported ALEC’s efforts to block the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, and has said he doesn’t know if climate change is a real problem.

He has taken numerous positions that match those of ALEC, including opposing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms; voting against the Affordable Care Act and calling for its repeal; opposing increasing the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits; introducing a balanced-budget amendment; opposing collective-bargaining rights for public employees; and supporting a national right-to-work law.

McConnell is married to Elaine Chao, Trump’s nominee for transportation secretary.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a friend of fellow Wisconsinite Priebus, has long pushed a budget in lockstep with ALEC’s goals, including tax cuts for the rich and Medicare privatization.

Koch Industries is one of Ryan’s top five donors. Ryan spoke at ALEC’s States and Nation Policy Summit in 2013. He is a devotee of far-right author Ayn Rand, requiring staffers to read her best-selling novel “Atlas Shrugged.”

Ryan, McConnell and other Republican leaders are pushing an agenda that has been pursued for years by ALEC, one that benefits corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the vast majority of Americans. Judging by Trump’s cabinet selections, he will do little to stand in their way.

==

ALEC a liability!

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/11/14/how-tammy-baldwin-target-of-14-million-in-outside-spending-sent-the-koch-brothers-and-their-minions-packing

Senator Tammy Baldwin took to the stage for her victory speech on November 6th with Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” blasting.

Baldwin, the top target of early Koch Brothers attack ads, won big in the state of Wisconsin, crushing her opponent Republican State Senator Leah Vukmir by 11 points. She also garnered 150,000 votes more than Tony Evers, the Democratic nominee for governor who beat Scott Walker by 31,000 votes. This, in a state that had elected Walker three times and gave Trump the 23,000 votes he needed to capture Wisconsin and the White House.

By February, Baldwin had already been the target of $4.5 million in ads from just one Koch front group, Concerned Veterans of America, claiming she dropped the ball on the over-prescription of opioids at the Tomah veteran’s clinic, which resulted in the death of a U.S. Marine. The group ladled on another $1.5 million in July, claiming that she failed to attend important committee meetings. Other ads by the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners groups attacked Baldwin over taxes and for “rigging the system against us.”

Baldwin used these early attacks to raise money to respond, and respond she did. The parents and wife of a veteran quickly came to her defense in an ad that effectively put an end to the issue, and Baldwin moved early to define her opponent as a servant of special interests.

Baldwin Ads Used Vukmir’s ALEC Ties to Define Her

Baldwin was the first candidate in a high-profile race that used the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to effectively frame her opponent as doing the bidding of corporate special interests. The ads capitalize on Leah Vukmir’s long association with the corporate bill mill, where she moved from treasurer to vice president to national chair by 2016. In 2017, she was given an “Iron Lady” award from ALEC, likening the ambitious Vukmir to GOP icon Margaret Thatcher....

jim h

Is it possible to get public policies out of our political system that benefit common people rather than moneyed elites?

Yes! We the people can bypass corporate-purchased lawmakers and write the laws ourselves. In 26 states and numerous cities, grassroots people can put statutes and constitutional amendments on the ballot through a citizens initiative process, that in this era of plutocratic rule, has become a major avenue for achieving progressive change.

For example, on November 6, voters in Albuquerque, Baltimore, and Denver will be offered new forms of small-dollar, public financing of elections to counter secret, unlimited donations by corporations. A South Dakota measure would ban corporate donations to candidates and political parties and bar “gifts” from lobbyists to elected officials. To stop incumbents from hand picking their voters by gerrymandering their districts, people in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, and Utah will have a chance to turn redistricting over to independent, non-partisan commissions – and other various reforms to democratize voting are proposed in Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Maryland, South Dakota, and Massachusetts.

Ballot measures have proven so successful that corporate front groups have begun proposing deceptively worded initiatives that – get this – would forestall citizens from putting initiatives on the ballot. So far this year, initiatives to stop or restrict initiatives have been filed in Maineand South Dakota to curtail people’s access to this process of direct democracy. Also, ALEC, the secretive, Koch-funded anti-democracy group, has generated bills in six state legislatures essentially to keep citizen initiatives off the ballot.

Corporate elites are so afraid of democracy that they’re actually trying to outlaw it! To help protect direct democracy, go to: ballot.org.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/09/26/alec-flaunts-trump-ties-while-celebrateing-its-45th-anniversary-potuss-dc-hotel

dave a

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) will celebrate its 45th anniversary at Trump International Hotel tonight, fitting as the Trump administration maintains close ties to the corporate bill mill.

Tickets for the event are a whopping $500 a piece, about the same rate for one night at the hotel. Alternatively, state delegations can get a lobbyist to sponsor a table for $10,000.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Kimberley Strassel will serve as the “Mistress of Ceremonies,” but the rest of the program has not been announced. With the Trump International Hotel being just over a mile away from the White House, it is likely one of the many with ALEC ties in the administration will be there.

Lisa Nelson, CEO of ALEC, was giddy after Trump was elected, telling members and funders that the Trump administration, “does have the potential to be an ALEC administration. It is full of the people and ideas we’ve advanced since 1973… Now is our time. And ALEC is ready.”

And ALEC has been helpful to Trump. ALEC member legislators led the fight on eliminating the state and local tax deduction (SALT), a key component of Trump’s massive tax break for the wealthy and corporations. More recently, 308 state legislators, in partnership with ALEC, sent a letter of support for Judge Brett Kavanaugh to Senators, calling him “the single most qualified person in the country to serve on the Supreme Court.”

While some ALEC alumni — most prominently former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt — have been dropped from Team Trump, many others have hung on.

The ALEC Vice President

“I can say I was for ALEC before it was cool,” Vice President Mike Pence once said at an ALEC meeting. And just after Trump nominated him to be his VP, Pence made another speech at an ALEC meeting.

As Governor of Indiana, Pence lobbied for ALEC to state legislators:

As a governor, I cannot say enough how important ALEC is in my state and across the nation. Indiana is fortunate to have many of our legislators as members of ALEC.

I am writing today to ask you to consider membership in one of the nation’s leading policy organizations, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The ALEC Administration

Many who have remained with Trump since he was elected have ties to ALEC.

Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is an ALEC alumna. She pushed many ALEC model bills as Governor of South Carolina and state representative, including voter ID laws and school vouchers.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry made passing ALEC model bills a priority when Governor of Texas, marking some as “emergency” legislation, and has spoken at ALEC meetings. ALEC has a profile of Perry up on its website. This morning, Perry welcomed ALEC to the White House and spoke to the ALEC delegation about “American energy dominance.”

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a long time funder of ALEC and shares its goal of privatizing education. DeVos headlined the 2017 ALEC Annual Meeting and stated in a speech that, “The President has said that this administration will reduce the federal footprint in education, and he signed an executive order this past April instructing our Department to review every regulation that might obstruct parents, teachers, communities and states from best-serving their students.”

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has long been a friend of ALEC. As Governor of Georgia, he passed the nation’s second voter ID law based on an ALEC model bill. Perdue also rolled out one of the most expansive school privatization programs at the time in 2008. ALEC also praised Perdue for challenging the Affordable Care Act.

Others in the Trump administration have spoken at ALEC meetings as well, including Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson in 2015, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway in 2016, Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta in 2017, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in 2018, and Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao in 2018.

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OMG NOLA

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/08/13/alec-in-disarray

It  took about 10 minutes for a picture of Ronald Reagan to emerge on the screen at the opening ALEC lunch event I attended after my arrival in New Orleans for the 45th ALEC conference. I never did see a picture of President Donald Trump. As the hot mess of the Trump presidency unfolds, ALEC is struggling to both embrace the major things they love about him (deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy), while keeping a healthy distance from the chaos and corruption engulfing his presidency.

Trump certainly wasn’t ALEC’s first choice. Or second. Or third. During his campaign, Trump never came to kiss the golden ALEC ring, like ALEC acolytes Scott Walker and Mike Pence. As corruption charges continued to emerge against prominent Republicans, and the trial of Paul Manafort waged on, I didn’t hear one attendee legislator extoll the virtues of a Trump presidency. In fact, I heard almost nothing about Trump at all from the actual attendees. But the speakers and presenters were more representative of the Trump administration than last year.

Elaine Chow, the Secretary of Transportation came in and tried to give a speech but the ballroom lunch, sponsored by Marathon Petroleum, was so loud you could barely hear her. She did extoll the need to repeal California’s ability to set fuel emissions standards in favor of a weaker federal standard. Former Texas Policy Institute director Brooke Rollins, now a key Trump advisor, was next. She repeated the oft cited metaphor of Trump “draining the swamp” with the islands that emerge being the states, the “great laboratories of innovation.” Except Elaine Chow had just moments before argued to repeal a state’s right to set fuel emission standards.

And this revealed a major, continuing tension of ALEC. They want state’s rights, except when they don’t. The same contradiction is evident with their struggle with local control–sometimes they like it, sometimes they don’t. The defining factor is whether these levels of government promote the far-right ALEC agenda. It is getting harder and harder for ALEC to ignore these internal contradictions.

And there are visible cracks in ALEC world. Collectively, this was the messiest and least disciplined ALEC conference I have attended since 2013. In the energy task force, presentations were all over the place. A natural gas and electricity supplier went off script by openly discussing the billions in subsidies the oil and gas industry receives. There was silence in the crowded task force room, filled with fossil fuel producers and lobbyists.

Though some continued to insist that clean coal was possible and renewables unreliable and expensive, new ALEC members from renewable energy companies gave a compelling pitch about the declining price and high demand in the private market for wind and solar, especially in red, rural communities. After one of the renewable energy presenters mentioned that the wind energy sector was working with Congress to phase out subsidies (not something we would ever see from the fossil fuel industries), a skeptical executive asked if they would help get rid of states’ Renewable Portfolio Standards. The renewable energy guys had the perfect answer–it was up to the states. Remember, the laboratories of democracy? ALEC’s hostility to renewable energy and other green energy policies prompted infighting between industries and high-level departures, most recently by ALEC funder and board member ExxonMobil.

In the Health and Human Services task force, the Goldwater Institute and Buckeye Foundation were in a tizzy because the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was still in existence and the left seemed to win that war, at least for now. How could it be, they moaned, when Republicans are in charge of EVERYTHING? They whined that the “debacle of last year was horrible” and that Congress wouldn’t touch another repeal with a 10-foot poll. So, 100 conservative groups came together to propose an alternative plan that guts the ACA, again. But the list was messy and confusing, and even the presenters seemed doubtful their plan would ever succeed.

But the biggest disaster I have ever seen at an ALEC conference was on a panel about the Convention of States (COS) project. COS is mobilizing in states to call an Article V Constitutional Convention for the purposes of amending the federal constitution by passing a balanced budget amendment, term-limits for federal judges, and who knows what else. One of the key speakers was right-wing provocateur David Horowitz, who has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of America’s most dangerous hatemongers” for his virulent anti-Islamic and anti-immigrant websites and speeches. After converting from being a Marxist decades ago, Horowitz now runs his own right-wing think tank, bankrolled to the tune of $3.4 million by the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. Horowitz gained recent fame as a key mentor of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, the “the architect” of Trump’s family separation policy according to the Atlantic.

Horowitz gave two inflammatory speeches. Over breakfast he claimed that “at the K-12 level, school curricula have been turned over to racist organizations like Black Lives Matter and terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood.” Later he commended Trump for not retreating after calling Rosie O’Donnell a “big fat pig.” Regarding Trump, Horowitz commented “so this guy showed what you can do if you have confidence and you are always on the offensive, which he always is.”

Horowitz’s other allegation is that “the left’s attitude towards the Constitution is they hate it.”

As justification that Democrats hate the Constitution Horowitz stated:

You know, one of the really vicious things about the left is how they attack the founding principles of this country. I’ve heard this from Democratic leaders, I remember Al Gore saying it, they say it all the time, that the Constitution is, you know, designed by slaveowners and it regards blacks as three-fifths of a human being. Well actually the word black, white, male, female those words do not exist in the Constitution. The whole identity politics is anti-Constitution.

Horowitz’s beef is that the South wanted to treat slaves as full human beings for population purposes so they would “count” towards congressional representation. The North, however, insisted on curtailing a more powerful South by counting slaves as three-fifths of a human. Of course, Horowitz ignores the fundamental fact that slavery was a barbaric Southern system, initially tolerated by the North and protected by the founding fathers in the U.S. Constitution who prioritized preserving the nation over treating people of color like human beings.

I have sat through many ALEC conferences. At times I have wanted to scream, tear my hair out, stomp away, or run away. I don’t hide who I am, but I don’t announce it with a megaphone. I am quiet. I am respectful. I am there to observe. I am there to plan the resistance to the harmful ALEC agenda that has swept, and continues to sweep, into my state and our country and erode our democracy. But at this moment, I couldn’t write about it, tweet about it, Facebook about it, and then sit there in it. I rose to the microphone and waited my turn. To my objection to the “big fat pig” comment, Horowitz replied “She is a big fat pig.” To my objection to Horowitz commending the South for wanting to treat slaves as full humans while perpetuating the barbaric institution of slavery, I was told by the panel moderator and COS director I had simply “misunderstood.”

ALEC is moving into dangerous territory. Despite the formidable infrastructure they have built over 45 years, their control of 33 state legislatures and their hordes of corporate cash that perpetually grease their wheels, the organization seems to be increasingly in disarray and in an identity crisis. While simultaneously distancing themselves from the chaos and corruption of President Trump, the reality is that they need him, and his hate-mongering, to further the foundation of their right-wing agenda–gutting the ACA and federal conservation standards, repealing workers’ rights, pushing down wages and privatizing public education.

And so the Horowitz’s of the world, who ALEC at least publicly has kept at a distance during my tenure, are now becoming part of the ALEC universe. Are ALEC supporters, including their corporate funders, willing to embrace this hate-mongering to continue to advance their corporate agenda?

Read more on ALEC’s agenda in NOLA and the bills being debated, here.

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ref

When the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) convenes its 45th annual meeting of legislators and corporate lobbyists at the swank Hilton New Orleans Riverside hotel on August 8, it will serve up a veritable banquet of union-busting, gerrymandering, pro-fossil fuel, and school privatization proposals for lawmakers to take back home.

Welcoming the ALEC crowd will be Jason Saine, a North Carolina Representative and ALEC’s National Chairman. Earlier this year, CMD reported that Saine used $19,000 from his campaign kitty to order custom-tailored suits.

Other keynote speakers will include Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, and White House Special Assistant in the Office of American Innovation Brooke Rollins. Rollins was an aide to former governor Rick Perry, who is now Secretary of Energy.

ALEC’s menu of policy proposals at the New Orleans conference includes:

RIGHT TO GERRYMANDER RESOLUTION

With citizens turning to the courts and ballot box in a growing number of states to clamp down on hyper-partisan “gerrymandering” schemes, ALEC members will instead be voting on a resolution to defend the right of politicians to keep hand-picking their voters.

Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating electoral district boundaries to favor the party in power and minimize the ability of opposing parties or disfavored racial and ethnic constituencies to elect candidates of their choice.

The resolution, entitled “Draft Resolution Reaffirming the Right of State Legislatures to Determine Electoral Districts,” asserts the legislative branch’s “sovereignty” over redistricting and states that the “intervention of state supreme courts to redistrict congressional district maps violates the fundamental right of the residents of a state to republican self-government.”

What has ALEC’s knickers in a twist? In Pennsylvania, Republicans drew such a gerrymandered map in 2011 that it resulted in an astonishing 13-5 congressional district advantage in a state where Democrats won five straight presidential elections. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court intervened to ensure that new maps follow the traditional redistricting criteria of compactness, contiguity, and equality of population. In a blow to the Pennsylvania GOP, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to strike down the more balanced maps created by the court.

Other cases on similar grounds have made their way to the nation’s highest court this year from Wisconsin, Maryland, and North Carolina. But the Supreme Court has so far declined to set clear rules limiting this type of voter manipulation.

With the Court failing to act, voting rights advocates are pushing hard for reforms. A quarter of U.S. states have already given non-partisan commissions full or partial authority to draw legislative districts, and with initiatives on the ballot this fall in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, and Utah, more states may join them soon.

JANUS V. AFSCME VICTORY LAP

ALEC has invited Mark Janus, plaintiff in the Janus v. AFSCME case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, to be a keynote speaker. ALEC, along with the State Policy Network (SPN) and the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity, are key institutions in a multi-pronged strategy to dismantle public sector unions through the courts and state legislatures across the country. CMD’s reporting on this topic in February received national recognition.

Mark Janus was a public worker in Illinois whom groups put forward as a plaintiff in the case after the actual plaintiff, billionaire Republican Governor Bruce Rauner–who had vowed to dismantle unions for partisan political advantage–was found to not have standing. Rauner’s case was originally filed and promoted by two SPN groups in the state, the Illinois Policy Institute and its offshoot, the Liberty Justice Center.

In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court used the ginned-up case to strike down agency fees and make it harder for public sector unions to operate. Shortly thereafter, Janus left public employment to take a job at the Illinois Policy Institute.

“As we celebrate 45 years of ALEC, we meet to create solutions for the future,” ALEC CEO Lisa B. Nelson said in a press release about the meeting. But one of the first bills on the ALEC agenda has been on the corporate wish list for a very long time. ALEC’s latest union-busting bill, which would force unions to hold recertification elections every other year, has long been pushed by anti-union PR man Richard Berman and others.

Under the proposed measure, unions would have to get the votes of a majority of all members–not just those showing up to vote–in order to retain their right to represent workers in a bargaining unit. That punitive standard is far more restrictive than anything used in corporate governance or U.S. elections. (Imagine a bill forcing the unseating of corporate directors if the majority of all shareholders, not just those casting ballots, did not vote for management–or a similar standard for politicians.)

Richard Berman’s PR firm, Berman & Company, operates a network of industry front groups and attack-dog web sites that work to counteract minimum wage campaigns, keep wages low for restaurant workers, block paid sick leave laws, and maintain barriers to workplace organizing. Berman, along with U.S. Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT), has pushed a similar decertification bill in Congress, called the “Employee Rights Act.”

In an audio recording obtained by CMD, Berman boasted about his obsession with unions and his attack on their efforts to raise the minimum wage for American workers: “I get up every morning and I try and figure out how to screw with the labor unions,” Berman said.

KEEPING DOWN PAY AND BENEFITS IN THE GIG ECONOMY

ALEC will also be considering a “Uniform Worker Classification Act” that promotes short-term contracts and freelance work over permanent jobs. The resolution focuses on “uniform standards for determining who is an employee and who is an independent contractor,” but is designed to establish a very broad definition of independent contractor that lets employers off the hook for the rights and benefits enjoyed by traditional employees and prevents union organizing. Misclassifying workers is a classic corporate strategy for short-shrifting employees and has been the subject of much litigation.

While companies such as Uber, Lyft, and TaskRabbit are changing the job market, they typically generate low-paying jobs with few or no benefits. The tenuous relationship between employers and employees in many of these jobs raises a passel of legal issues. Are these contract employees subject to the same wage and hour laws? Are these contract employees eligible for unemployment benefits, job training, workman’s compensation, and other worker protections?

In New York, the state has taken steps to regulate the industry after six professional drivers killed themselves, and drivers for-hire and taxi drivers say they are not making enough to pay their bills or support their families. New York’s Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board recently ruled that Uber and Lyft drivers are formal employees of the company, and Seattle recently gave Uber and Lyft drivers the right to organize a union. The model bill being considered at ALEC would attempt to fend off such regulation by lowering the bar for whom corporations can consider a contract employee. note pattern, any time mod kicks in ctr-attack]

The NetChoice trade association represents e-commerce employers such as Lyft and Airbnb at ALEC and is likely responsible for this bill. The National Employment Law Project has a handy fact sheet on why this is such an important issue.

PROTECTING FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY WITH BILLS UNDERMINING ELECTRIC CARS, FUEL ECONOMY STANDARDS

ALEC will debate a “Resolution Regarding Subsidies and Mandates for Energy Vehicles and Fuels.”

The measure expresses opposition to “all federal, state, and local efforts to compel consumers to subsidize any and all vehicles, energy, fuels, and fueling infrastructure.” Oil Change International tried to put a price tag on U.S. oil and gas subsidies and pegged them at about $20 billion per year.

At face value, it sounds like ALEC is considering taking a bold new stand against fossil fuel companies such as Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and others that have long underwritten its work. Could ALEC be objecting to the millions in subsidies that Koch Industries receives from federal, state, and local governments (some $430 million and counting according to Good Jobs First)? Does this explain why ExxonMobil decided to dump ALEC earlier this year?

But something about the wording of the resolution, especially the language condemning “agreements in which costs to construct and operate fueling infrastructure are socialized” and an “infrastructure that will likely be used by a small minority of consumers,” suggests that they are only talking about electric vehicles.

As CMD has reported, the Kochs have long opposed electric vehicles, public transportation, renewable energy, and other clean energy initiatives, and this resolution appears to be more of the same

Another ALEC draft bill Resolution in Support of the Reconsideration of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards attacks the Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFE standards imposed by the federal government and the state of California as “a relic of a disproven narrative of resource scarcity” left over from the 1970s.

The resolution ignores the fact that fuel economy standards have cleared the deadly smog from Los Angeles and other American cities, improving the environment and the health of residents, especially those suffering from asthma. Plus, fuel economy is an very important factor to many car buyers who want to save money at the pump, which is why they enjoy broad bipartisan support. The fact that U.S. cars lag behind foreign cars on fuel economy has long disadvantaged U.S. car makers. The Trump administration announced last week that it would try to roll back federal fuel standards and preempt the state of California from issuing separate standards. The Trump administration has little regard for the fact that tailpipe emissions are one of the largest sources of global warming pollution in the United States.

In taking a stand against renewables and clean energy, ALEC is not just out of touch with the world, it is out of touch with its own base. Prominent GOP pollsters have shown that 72 percent of conservative Republicans want to accelerate the development of clean energy to reduce pollution and create jobs. A solid majority of 54 percent believe the world’s climate is changing and that mankind plays a role in the change.

Also under consideration for the August meeting is the “Driving Automation System Uniformity Act,” which would bar localities from regulating driverless vehicles, continuing ALEC’s love affair with preempting local democracy. ALEC members have fought to preempt living wage campaigns, plastic bag bans, and paid sick leave ordinances across America. At this meeting, ALEC will also be reviewing a 2012 policy calling for the preemption of local food and nutrition policy.

SUBSIDIZING PRIVATE SCHOOLS FOR FAMILIES IN LOW-INCOME AREAS

Over the years, ALEC has worked hand-in-hand with the DeVos family’s group, American Federation for Children, to advance a “cash for kids” model of school privatization, including dozens of bills promoting school vouchers. For decades, ALEC billed vouchers as a civil rights ticket for low-income kids, but then ALEC’s “Education Savings Account Act” created a “universal” system that siphons off public education dollars to private school parents of any income level. Now ALEC is debating a new bill, the “Economic Development Zone ESA Act,” to require the state to pay the equivalent of public school aid toward any private school for students who live in majority low-income economic development zones. Given the cost of a private school education, the likely effect would be to subsidize the ability of middle- and upper-income families in economically distressed areas to pull their kids out of public school.

A RESOLUTION ON SCHOOL VIOLENCE MISSES THE MARK

ALEC’s proposed “Statement of Principles on School Safety and Security” begins with the bold statement, “The American Legislative Exchange Council recognizes the presence of violence everyday in America’s schools,” and states that “evil, mental illness and alienation are clearly factors.”

What follows is a 1,600-word statement chock-full of platitudes and non sequiturs that mentions guns only once and gun control not at all.

While ALEC is a big fan of preempting local control, in this instance the draft proposal states that “[a]ll decisions regarding school safety and security should be made by local authorities.” ALEC is happy to turn over the issue to localities because it knows that local authorities in 43 states are already preempted from regulating firearms.

There are many other items on ALEC’s agenda for the New Orleans meeting including the following draft bills:

The Open Financial Statement Act

Model Policy on Risk Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence in Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice Data Transparency Model

Resolution in Support of Establishing Efficient and Fair Criminal Law Discovery Practices

Draft Executive Branch Transparency in Testimony Act

Draft Executive Branch Public Advocacy and Transparency Act

Draft Resolution in Support of the Taiwan Travel Act

Draft Establishing an Economic Analysis Unit in the State Legislature Act

Draft Victims of Communism Memorial Day Resolution

Copycat Production Act

Administrative Procedures Act [beware stealth boring name]

Resolution Supporting States Establish Transparency with the Cost of Legislation Affecting Regulated Utilities Be Shown as Line Items on Consumer Bills

Resolution Concerning the EPA’s New Source Review Regulation

Resolution in Support of the Reconsideration of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards

Draft Reforming How Federal Grants Are Provided to the State

Draft Resolution to Restore the Division of Governmental Responsibilities between the National Government and the States

Medical Freedom Act

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/08/08/common-cause-exposes-alec-influence-louisiana

ALEC is registered as a tax-exempt charitable organization and claims not to spend any money on lobbying. But according to a new report from Common Cause, a national nonpartisan government reform group, a number of ALEC-backed and -drafted bills have been introduced and enacted by ALEC-affiliated legislators in Baton Rouge in recent years.

“ALEC in Louisiana” uncovers the power that “the secretive special interest lobbying group” has already utilized in the southern state. According to the report, nearly 50 members of the Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives have ties to ALEC.[ now gov john bel edwards ?] Common Cause found that legislative language in Louisiana is commonly copied and pasted from the ALEC “model bills,” making the group’s influence “extremely prominent.”

“Shining a light on ALEC’s undemocratic and secretive operations helps voters know who is really calling the shots in their state legislature,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause. “ALEC’s history of rigging the rules against everyday Louisianans on behalf of their corporate funders is not how democracy is supposed to work.”

ALEC is a powerful corporate-funded pay-to-play organization that brings lawmakers, lobbyists, and other groups in the Koch’s influence machine together to vote side-by-side on bills that legislators then take back and introduce in their home states, usually without any public disclosure of their source. The Center for Media and Democracy teamed up with Common Cause in 2012 to file an IRS whistleblower complaint against ALEC, charging the group with tax fraud and massively underreporting its lobbying activity.

This week’s ALEC annual meeting is chock full of union-busting, gerrymandering, fossil fuel promoting, and school privatizing legislation that benefits the economic interests of ALEC’s patrons.

While the exact issues the Louisiana bills address are varied, the bills fulfill ALEC’s admitted purpose, “to strengthen relationships between ‘business leaders’ and legislators” and “satisfy corporate needs,” according to Common Cause.

For instance, HB 727, was introduced by dues-paying ALEC member, Sen. Joseph H. Major Thibaut, Jr. Thibaut’s bill shares text with an ALEC model bill, “The Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.” It was signed into law in May of this year amidst growing local opposition to the construction of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which will bring fracked oil from North Dakota to Louisiana’s Gulf Coast.

Senate Bill 364, intended to deal with recent conflicts over controversial speakers on college campuses, is based on ALEC’s “Forming Open And Robust University Minds (Forum) Act.” In June, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed the act into law, after vetoing a similar bill last year.

With ALEC’s assistance, similar bills have been pushed and enacted around the country at the behest of the right-wing Goldwater Institute and State Policy Network. The American Association of University Professors has criticized the legislation’s approach as “a political agenda masquerading behind ‘free speech'” and objects to its “preference for punishment as a means for ending protests and disruptions that obstruct free speech.”

Meg Logue, a 350 New Orleans activist, told Common Cause that, through ALEC, “our legislators jeopardize our democracy by bending toward the priorities of corporations while undermining the peoples’ right to self-determination and justice.”

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/12/alec-extreme-exxon-long-term-alec-board-member-dumps-alec-climate-denial-policy

armiak mb

ExxonMobil, the largest oil and gas company in the world, will not renew its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) after a split within the corporate lobbying group over how to address climate change, Bloomberg reported earlier today.

Exxon’s exit follows a disagreement over a resolution introduced in December by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank that denies climate change, that would have asked the federal government to reconsider its findings that greenhouse gasses are harmful to human health.

The EPA did its spadework and laid out the scientific foundation of the endangerment findings in over 200 pages of technical documentation in 2009. Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt failed to reconsider those findings, much to the disappointment of the Koch crowd.

Although large companies like Ford, Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and many others have cut ties with ALEC, few have given and supported ALEC as much as Exxon has. Exxon was listed as a “major contributor” to ALEC as far back as 1981 and has given ALEC millions over the years to promote its corporate agenda. Exxon has also consistently served on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Board.

REACTION TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT

“This is a major loss for ALEC. It’s not just the financial support that Exxon provides, which has been significant over the years. This also represents a growing split between oil and gas majors that are increasingly concerned about their public image, and groups like ALEC that still regularly promote debates about climate science on their agenda,” said Nick Surgey, co-director of Documented.

“Exxon’s departure should send a strong message to ALEC that it’s extreme agenda and undemocratic, secretive operations have no place in American politics,” said Jay Riestenberg, campaigns & media strategist at Common Cause.

“It’s very significant when a giant of the fossil fuels world thinks that ALEC ‘s denial of the existence of climate change is intolerable. I hope that other responsible corporations that are still members of ALEC will follow suit,” said Wisconsin State Rep. Chris Taylor, who has attended ALEC events and written about its climate denial positions.

With regard to ALEC and the Koch brothers’ hostility to renewable energy and public transportation, Taylor said, “Their positions belong in the dinosaur age. We need to be investing in transit and renewables, and they just keep throwing up road block after road block.”

“Other major oil companies, including BP, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips, left ALEC years ago. It’s about time ExxonMobil finally did, too,” said Kathy Mulvey, fossil fuel accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a formal statement. “But the company has a lot more to do to set things straight.” Exxon continues to fund the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, both of which continue to do battle with groups and regulators attempting to address climate change, Mulvey said.

EXXON USED ALEC TO PROMOTE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL FOR DECADES

In October 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause filed additional evidence for their 2012 IRS whistleblower complaint against ALEC detailing how Exxon had pumped $1.7 million into the front group “to promote the oil giant’s climate denial policies and legislative agenda, in gross violation of ALEC’s 501(c)(3) charitable status.”

ALEC claims to spend zero dollars on lobbying but the complaint showed that Exxon had deliberately used ALEC over two decades as its lobbying arm to advance its position on cap-and-trade policies, the Keystone Pipeline, the Obama Clean Power Plan, and fracking.

CMD brought this concern to the attention of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in January 2017 when ExxonMobil’s former CEO, Rex Tillerson, was nominated to be President Trump’s Secretary of State.

“For years, Exxon used ALEC as a key asset in a fossil fuel industry campaign to sow uncertainty about climate science, undermine international climate treaties and block legislation to reduce emissions,” said Arn Pearson, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, who drafted the 2016 IRS complaint. “And New York and other states have been investigating Exxon for its role in hiding evidence of its climate impact from shareholders and the public. So it is ironic that ALEC’s anti-science stance has apparently become too extreme even for Exxon.”

Exxon did not respond to CMD requests for comment.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/19/alec-deadly-asbestos-agenda-benefits-koch-industries

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) named Missouri Republican state Rep. Bruce DeGroot as a “Legislator of the Week” in June.

Why is ALEC so fond of DeGroot? Because he has cheerfully championed ALEC legislation to restrict the right of terminally ill, asbestos victims to sue over mesothelioma. In doing so, DeGroot is helping the many U.S. companies, including ALEC funders Koch Industries and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, that have asbestos-related liability.

NATIONWIDE, NOT ON YOUR SIDE

Mesothelioma is an aggressive type of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Even though the dangers of deadly asbestos have been known for over 100 years, industry worked hard to bury evidence that workers were being harmed by asbestos exposure. Three thousand people are diagnosed each year with mesothelioma in the United States and most die within a year or two. Most victims are public servants, veterans, firefighters, even teachers exposed to asbestos in schools.

In addition to being an ALEC politician, Degroot is an attorney for an insurance defense firm, Brown & James, which represents dozens of insurers who, in turn, have as clients companies responsible for mesothelioma-related claims. One of the firm’s clients is Nationwide. Sources tell the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that Nationwide was actively pushing the bill in Missouri, although it was not publicly listed as a supporter of the bill.

In many states, a legislator who introduced a bill benefitting his firm’s clients could face ethics charges or worse. In Missouri, “it is unseemly, to say the least, and one of the reasons we need ethics reform in this state,” said deputy director Sharon Geuea Jones of the Missouri Association of Trial Lawyers.

Nationwide has long been a corporate sponsor of ALEC. In 2014 and 2015, for example, Nationwide incurred asbestos-related losses of $148 million and $98 million respectively, giving it one of the largest asbestos liabilities of any insurer for those years, according to Casualty Actuaries of Greater New York.

ALEC PROTECTIONS FOR ASBESTOS COMPANIES

At ALEC, corporate lobbyists and politicians vote as equals behind closed doors on “model” bills that advance corporate interests over consumers’ interests. DeGroot’s bill, HB 1645 or “The Asbestos Transparency Act,” bears a striking similarity to ALEC’s “Asbestos Claims Transparency Act.” The Missouri House passed the bill in March, but the Senate has yet to take action.

The bill would force victims of asbestos to search out bankrupt companies that made asbestos, not just companies still in business. The problem for the injured is that many companies that made asbestos or had asbestos products have sought bankruptcy protection and are now in trusts. These trusts are more difficult to sue, their assets are harder to determine, and the victims often die before their case is heard. The bill would also limit the time victims have to bring a case after diagnosis, even though it takes more time to prepare for a suit against bankrupt companies.

DeGroot can’t say enough about how awesome ALEC’s cookie-cutter corporate legislation is. “ALEC and ALEC model policy are a great resource. ALEC was able to put me in touch with an expert who was willing to travel to Missouri to testify in support of one of the bills I filed, Asbestos Transparency Trust,” DeGroot said in an ALEC interview.

That “expert” was Mark Behrens, a partner of the Kansas City law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon. The firm has a national reputation for representing deadly industries like Big Tobacco. Behrens travels around the country lobbying on behalf of ALEC’s many asbestos bills, but tells the public that he is representing other clients like the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.

EMOTIONAL FLOOR DEBATE

A cheerful DeGroot opened floor debate saying inaccurately that the bill simply stopped “double dipping” by asbestos victims, but the issue quickly turned emotional.

The first legislator to speak was Republican Rep. Steve Cookson, who is suffering from liver cancer. “I have been up here for eight years and most bills that we talk about are about protecting somebody’s money.… This bill is designed to protect out of state companies and insurance companies.”

Cookson went on to say that in the past he had been supportive of some tort reform bills. “I reflect back now, and you know I have a personal situation going on right here. I think a lot more about life and death. I would ask you, did you ever contemplate the way you want to die?” he asked of DeGroot.

“Well that is a bit personal,” responded DeGroot with a nervous laugh.

“Well, so do you want to die a slow death where you lay there in the bed and suffocate to death?” asked Cookson.

“I wouldn’t like that, no,” said Degroot.

Cookson went on to say that for the time he had left in the legislature, he wanted to make sure he was on the side of those “laying in the hospital for a long long time suffering, surrounded by their families…. I can’t bring myself to be in support of anything that would compromise a person’s ability to be made whole, and their family to be made whole because they had to leave this world in a horrible fashion in an abbreviated time they would have been expected to live.”

The ALEC bill offered by DeGroot would mean that many victims would not live to see their day in court. As one opposing legislator, Rep. Jay Barnes explained, “the best evidence in an asbestos case is the plaintiff, and when they die, that goes away.”

Similar bills based on the ALEC model have passed in 15 states: Ohio, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Arizona, Texas, Utah, Tennessee, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Mississippi, Michigan, Kansas, and North Carolina.

KOCH INDUSTRIES LIMITS ITS EXPOSURE TO MESOTHELIOMA LAWSUITS

Koch Industries is the largest privately held company in America, with multiple subsidiary firms. When Koch acquired the paper company Georgia-Pacific LLC in 2007, it also became responsible for Bestwall LLC, which up until 1977 made a joint compound that contained asbestos. And because mesothelioma symptoms only appear after 10 to 50 years, Koch knew that when it purchased Georgia-Pacific, it also became responsible for thousands of asbestos lawsuits.

Koch Industries is a big financial supporter of ALEC and has served on the ALEC private enterprise board for many years, including in 2007 when the ALEC board approved the Asbestos Claims Transparency Act. Subsequently, in 2017, Koch Industries put Bestwall into bankruptcy to limit its exposure to mesothelioma lawsuits.

An affiliate of Koch’s Georgia-Pacific, Bestwall, joined “scores of U.S. manufacturers that have filed for bankruptcy due to asbestos litigation, and comes as the U.S. Congress mulls a bill that plaintiffs’ lawyers say would discourage asbestos claims,” wrote Reuters. The misnamed FACT Act is supported by ALEC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and companies with billions of dollars of liability for asbestos claims, including Koch Industries.

Koch now argues that Bestwall was only a minor user of asbestos, but construction workers were exposed to multiple sources of asbestos, and since many of the responsible parties no longer exist, victims’ lawyers are forced to sue more than one company.

Koch complains it is spending $160 million a year defending its subsidiary against asbestos lawsuits. It could have set up a trust fund from the beginning when it acquired Bestwall to pay victims with that money instead of fighting every lawsuit, and is now slowing the process by putting the company into bankruptcy.

Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that the Kochs will get $1.4 billion from the Jobs and Tax Cut Act of 2017, money that could be used to pay asbestos victims before they die.

Instead, Koch and its allies are working hard to pass laws that run out the clock.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/05/07/take-money-run-trump-tax-cuts-boost-earnings-alec-corps-layoff-workers

Nine major publicly traded corporations that are funders of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) just reported earnings from the first quarter of 2018. Trump’s recent massive corporate tax cuts were sold as a job creation mechanism, but rather than creating jobs, all nine companies reported layoffs that have recently taken place or are planned for 2018.

At ALEC, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called “model bills” reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit the corporations writing or voting on the legislation.

The federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 — pushed hard by the Koch Caucus in Congress — lowered the federal income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, and the Trump Administration promised that the cuts would cause corporations to invest, expand, and hire new workers, as well as pay bonuses or increase wages.

The Center for Media and Democracy’s analysis of nine companies that are major players in ALEC shows that, even with the tax cut, those corporations have laid off or will lay off employees. Comcast, for example, said it will save $128 million from the tax cut and announced 500 layoffs. Caterpillar reported that it will pay 9 percent less in income taxes, but also announced it is closing facilities.

Eli Lilly reported that it lowered its corporate income tax rate by almost one-third, but announced 3,500 layoffs at the end of 2017, layoffs that are still taking place. Energy companies are expected to be major beneficiaries of the tax cut, but two ALEC energy companies, Chevron and Marathon Petroleum, reported large tax savings as well as layoffs for the year.

The Center for Media and Democracy did not cherry-pick companies to find those that announced both tax savings and layoffs. Excluded were coal companies, for example, such as ALEC members Dominion Resources and Peabody Energy, which are downsizing as coal sales continue to decline. Nor did CMD choose companies that saved money on income taxes because they lost money. The nine companies analyzed below all made large profits.

What the companies did with the profits was a corporate choice. In most cases companies bought back shares, a practice that then increases the earnings per share and the dividends paid to shareholders. The boards of these companies vote for the share repurchases, and directors that own large numbers of shares greatly benefit from this repurchasing.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has already made an extra $29 billion from the tax cut. Most of that is because his companies boosted dividends by repurchasing shares. Berkshire Hathaway owns the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, an ALEC company.

CMD has written that ALEC member corporations laid off 12,000 workers in 2017.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in tax savings has not slowed the firings. And economist Dean Baker tells us the firms are failing to invest these tax dollars to expand their operations as promised.

Chevron: Chevron, like most oil companies, greatly benefited from the tax cut. Its earnings have grown, and it has credited the tax cut as one reason for the increase.

So far, Chevron has announced 300 layoffs for this year.

The layoffs are partly due to a decision by the company to repurchase shares, thus boosting the earnings per share for wealthy shareholders. “There’s still little evidence that the corporate tax benefits are finding their way to employees,” the Houston Chronicle reports.

Marathon: Marathon Petroleum increased its earnings in the first quarter and its income taxes declined by almost half. The company, based in Houston, made share repurchases of $1.33 billion, which, like Chevron, reflects a decision to increase dividends rather than expand operations and hiring (or invest in renewable energy).

The Houston Chronicle says that, “Houston energy companies have reported at least $20 billion in tax benefits from the recently enacted tax overhaul, but whatever savings the firms realize will likely go to well-heeled investors rather than support the local economy through hiring, pay raises and expansions.”

Despite a tax-cut benefit and increased earnings Marathon has announced layoffs of employees.

Comcast: According to a company press release,”1st quarter 2018 net income attributable to Comcast Corporation includes a $128 million net income tax benefit because of federal tax legislation enacted in 2018.”

Before Christmas Comcast laid off 500 salespeople, even though it anticipated a tax savings in the first quarter 2018.

Verizon: Verizon paid $1.39 billion in income taxes in the first quarter 2018, compared to $1.63 billion for the comparable period in 2017. It is not known, based on data provided by the company, how much of that tax savings of $241 million is a result of the new tax cut bill, but Verizon earned substantially more in this year’s first quarter; the taxes should otherwise have been higher, not lower. Company earnings in the first quarter were 23 percent higher than the first three months of 2017.

Verizon is closing some of it calling centers, resulting in the layoff of 3,000 employees.

Pfizer: Pfizer reported a quarterly earnings increase of 23 percent from one year ago, thanks in part to a much lower 2018 tax rate.

Pfizer has abandoned efforts to find drugs related to treating Alzheimer’s and is set to lay off 300 employees.

Times Warner: The company paid substantially lower income taxes in the first quarter 2018 versus first quarter 2017. The company does not report how much was from the tax cut legislation or other factors, except to say it benefited from the cut. In the first quarter of 2018, Times Warner increased its revenue by $261 million and its profit by 15 percent.

Times Warner has announced layoffs at many of its properties, including CNN and Turner Broadcasting, but larger layoffs are expected if its merger with AT&T is approved by a case pending in federal court.

Eli Lilly: Pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly, a sponsor of ALEC’s 2017 membership meeting, laid off 3,500 workers in the fourth quarter of 2017 (2,300 of whom took a buyout).

In its press release announcing its first quarter 2018 earnings, Lilly told investors, “The effective tax rate was 15.9 percent in the first quarter of 2018, compared with 21.2 percent in the first quarter of 2017. The lower effective tax rate for the first quarter of 2018 was primarily due to U.S. tax reform enacted in December 2017…”

Caterpillar: Caterpillar reported an income tax decline of 9 percent in the first quarter 2018 relative to the same period in 2017.

Caterpillar is expected to close some facilities, with an estimate of 800 layoffs.

Altria: Tobacco giant Altria reported a 30 percent increase in earnings per share for the first quarter 2018 relative to the same period one year ago. The company says, “[I]n the first quarter we benefited from a lower tax rate as a result of Federal income tax reform, something for which we long advocated.” Altria repurchased $513 million in shares.

Altria has announced layoffs in Virginia.

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KOCH

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/04/23/alec-task-forces-gather-grand-rapids

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) will hold its annual Spring Task Force Summit on April 27 at the Amway Grand Plaza in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

There is no word yet on whether Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a Michigander married to Amway heir Richard DeVos, will be joining the gathering at the swank four-star hotel as ALEC legislators and corporate lobbyists vote on cookie-cutter bills behind closed doors. ALEC has long embraced DeVos and her school privatization agenda, even though the failure of the charter school system she helped create in Michigan has been the topic of devastating reports in the New York Times and 60 Minutes.

Further education privatization is on the agenda in Grand Rapids along with measures to please fossil fuel companies, marijuana companies, and more.

CATERING TO FOSSIL FUEL FUNDERS

While over 100 mainstream American companies have fled the controversial organization, a 2017 Annual Meeting registration list shows that ALEC is still chock full of fossil fuel companies.

Peabody Energy and Koch Industries serve on ALEC’s Private Enterprise Advisory Council and ExxonMobil, Chevron, Duke Energy, Marathon Petroleum, the Edison Electric Institute, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Gas Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association are ALEC members.

One piece of priority legislation for the companies is ALEC’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. The bill, a punitive measure designed to frighten protestors with stiff penalties and discourage large-scale demonstrations like the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, was adopted by ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force in 2017. Similar bills have been signed into law in Oklahoma and Iowa and introduced in Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio. Wyoming’s bill passed the legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Matt Mead.

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a number of powerful examples of people publicly coming together to raise their voices and push for change—from water protectors and their allies challenging pipeline construction near Standing Rock and elsewhere, to racial justice advocates taking to the streets to protest police shooting deaths,” said Vera Eidelman, Legal Fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “And yet, rather than respond to the protesters’ substantive messages…many elected representatives are instead introducing bills that would label them ‘terrorists’ or ‘saboteurs,’ chill their speech, and discourage others from associating with them.”

In Michigan, ALEC politicians will be asked to vote on new bills that advance the interests of the industry, including the Resolution Supporting States Ability to Permit and Regulate Oil and Gas Development on Federal Lands within their Borders and the Gas Tax Transparency Act.

The oil and gas permitting bill is the latest from ALEC in its push to hand over America’s public lands to the fossil fuel companies that started almost 20 years ago. The latest resolution calls on Trump and Congress to hand over the power to regulate and permit fossil fuel development on public lands to the states, where the industry has its greatest power and influence over government.

The Gas Tax Transparency Act requires fuel tax stickers to be placed on gas pumps detailing state and federal taxes to promote “transparency.” ALEC hopes that voters will be up in arms about the taxes and will pressure their representatives to lower them.

ALEC is for transparency only when it aids their benefactors. The organization is better known for its efforts to undermine reporting when it comes to campaigns and elections. ALEC is aggressively pushing a model resolution designed to stop states and municipalities from requiring dark-money groups that spend millions to influence elections to disclose their donors, and has launched the misnamed Center to Protect Free Speech to lobby for it.

GREENWASHING CHARTER SCHOOLS

Ironically, while the ALEC energy task force is working hard to advance the polluter agenda, the ALEC education task force will discuss an education bill that promotes itself as a means to crack down on air pollution. The Environmentally Sustainable Charter School Admissions Act gives enrollment preference in charter schools to children who live near the school or if a parent works near the school in order to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.

ALEC has worked hand-in-hand with the DeVos group, American Federation for Children to advance a “cash for kids” model of school privatization including dozens of bills promoting school vouchers. For decades, ALEC billed vouchers as a civil rights ticket for low-income kids, but then ALEC’s Education Savings Account Act created a “universal” system that siphons off public education dollars to private school parents of any income. Now ALEC is entertaining a new bill, the Economic Development Zone ESA Act, to give preference to kids who live within economic development zones.

A series of recent studies have shown poor results for voucher programs. For instance, a major study of Louisiana’s voucher program found that public elementary school students who started at the 50th percentile in math and then used a voucher to transfer to a private school dropped, on average, to the 26th percentile in just one school year. Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said the negative effects in Louisiana were “as large as any I’ve seen” in the history of American education research.

The Amendments to the Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act would amend an earlier ALEC bill to correct a drafting error that apparently resulted in some corporations getting a tax benefit more than the amount of a scholarship donation.

MARIJUANA MONOPOLIES

In a rather surprising move, ALEC will be considering a legislative proposal for a Closed-Loop Payment Processing System for Marijuana Taxation and Sales. The bill would require a State Treasurer to devise a financial system that will put it in charge of processing all marijuana financial transactions in the state. Yes, it is true that some states are having issues processing medical marijuana related payments, but a state-sponsored financial monopoly? The whole idea seems counter to ALEC’s usual stance on “free” markets.

The impetus for this bill may be from the fact that the multi billion-dollar cannabis industry is struggling to find financial partners with cannabis still being illegal at the federal level. The 2017 ALEC Annual Meeting in Denver saw a number of marijuana entities join up, including Weedmaps, a “Chairman Level” sponsor, the Marijuana Policy Project, and Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition.

EMBRACING TRUMPISM

In the era of Trump, the Koch machine, including ALEC, has fully embraced Trumpism. Shortly after the November 2016 election, ALEC’s Executive Director Lisa Nelson told funders and members that she was thrilled to report that the Trump administration “does have the potential to be an ALEC administration. It is full of the people and ideas we’ve advanced since 1973…Now is our time. And ALEC is ready.” Since then over 40 Koch political operatives have signed on to work for the the Trump White House and administration, according to a recent report by Public Citizen.

This week, as ALEC meets in Michigan, the Koch takeover of the administration will be the topic of floor speeches in the U.S. Senate and educational events. The Intercept exposed the Koch political network’s secret laundry list of policy changes that it has pursued and won the administration, including the federal tax overhaul giving massive tax breaks for corporations and the rich that will balloon the deficit.

Resources: The list of ALEC legislative members can be accessed here and the list of ALEC corporate funders can be accessed here. Follow @ALECexposed.  DAVID ARMIAK

random sample

ALEC LEGISLATOR OF THE WEEK: HOMOSEXUALS AND PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS “IT’S A BEHAVIOR THING”

By Don Wiener | April 9th, 2018 at 9:51 AM (CDT)

ALEC’S BEST AND BRIGHTEST

One “Legislator of the Week” and now national chair of ALEC, Republican state representative Jason Saine, gained notoriety in his home state of North Carolina for taking $20,000 in campaign money from the telecommunications industry, supporting its legislation, and using that money to buy himself a new wardrobe.

State Representative Brian Greene, a Utah Republican, and an ALEC “Legislator of the Week” said, during a legislative hearing on the state’s sexual assault statutes: “If an individual has sex with their wife while she is unconscious … a prosecutor could then charge that spouse with rape, theoretically. That makes sense in a first date scenario, but to me, not where people have a history of years of sexual activity.”

ALEC has other awards for those who carry legislation for big corporations. Colorado Republican Lori Saine, no relation to the above Jason, was arrested in December for trying to bring a loaded semi-automatic gun through Denver airport security.

Saine was charged with a sixth-degree felony. If convicted, she could face up to 18 months in jail and a fine of up to $100,000. Saine already was a “Legislator of the Week,” but the day following her arrest ALEC also gave her their award as “Public Sector State Chair of the Year.”

SEXUAL PREFERENCE AND PSYCHOPATHIC KILLERS, “IT’S IS A BEHAVIOR THING”

Then there is Indiana Republican Rep. Woody Burton, the chair of the Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Taskforce, who was named the ALEC/FreedomWorks “legislator of the week” in March.

Burton had this to say when discussing LGBT rights at a town hall meeting:

“You can’t control it sometimes. I understand that. If someone’s a psychopathic killer, it’s a behavior thing. They can’t help it. OK? Somebody’s a homosexual, maybe it’s a genetic thing. Maybe it’s not. They can’t help it. But it’s still a behavioral thing.”

Burton then tried to walk back the comparison.

“When I talk about behavioral things, I want to stress that I’m not comparing gays to…people that are psychotic…I was trying to explain behavior is a thing that people have and sometimes they can control it and sometimes they can’t.”

Another Burton gem? “If I pass a law that says transgenders and homosexuals are covered under the civil rights laws, then does it say anywhere that fat white people are covered?” he said at the town hall.

If in politics, as in life, you are known by the company you keep, then the corporate members of ALEC, companies such as UPS, Eli Lilly, State Farm, and Comcast — and their customers — may want to take note.

These are the “legislative leaders” of ALEC — the best and the brightest — that are underwritten by their corporate membership dues.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/06/bayou-bridge-protesters-arrested-louisiana-advances-bill-toughening-penalties-pipeline-protests

no linx many

Bayou Bridge Protesters Arrested as Louisiana Advances Bill Toughening Penalties for Pipeline Protests

By Julie Dermansky • Friday, April 6, 2018 - 16:29

Protester chained to a barrel in the road

On Thursday, April 5, opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline attempted to shut down its construction by blocking an industrial supply company’s facility in Iowa, Louisiana, just outside of Lake Charles on the same day a bill spelling out harsher penalties for pipeline protesters was advanced to committee during the Louisiana legislative session.

For about two hours starting at 6:30 a.m., roughly 20 protesters blocked the entrance to Yak Mat, an industrial yard that supplies access mats used to create temporary roadways at pipeline construction sites and enable trucks to pass through muddy areas. The site is close to the starting point of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which spans south Louisiana from Lake Charles, near the Texas border, to St. James, along the Mississippi River. The pipeline is the tail end of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access pipeline network, which begins in North Dakota.

Renate Heurich, locked to a barrel, being rolled out of the entrance to the Yat Mat lot in Iowa, Louisiana, during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Louisiana joins several states, including Wyoming, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, in introducing a bill specifically making the types of protests increasingly common at oil and gas pipeline construction sites criminal acts with harsher penalties. This latest proposed legislation parallels an anti-protest law that passed in Oklahoma in May 2017. Protests against the Dakota Access pipeline were cited as the inspiration for these “critical infrastructure” bills, which liken the actions of pipeline protesters to “terrorist activities.”

Shortly after police arrived on Thursday, the protesters dispersed, except two New Orleans residents, both educators. Renate Heurich and Susan Prevost chained themselves into barrels fastened to the ground at the entrance to the mat supply yard. Both women started the day in crawfish costumes to emphasis the oil pipeline’s threat to the wild crawfish habitat in the Atchafalaya Basin, a National Heritage Area which the pipeline is being built through, despite an ongoing legal challenge.

Law enforcement at the anti-pipeline protest

Law enforcement officers waiting to move in on the protesters in Iowa, Louisiana. There were more members of law enforcement at the protest than protesters.

Protester dressed as a crawfish

One of the Bayou Bridge pipeline protesters, dressed as an iconic Louisiana crawfish, in Iowa, Louisiana.

Prevost stressed the importance of protecting Louisiana’s heritage. She worries that an oil spill in the basin will mean that future generations of local Louisianans won’t know the joys of traditional crawfish boils. A spill in the basin could decimate the wild crawfish population. “Can Louisiana really afford the Bayou Bridge pipeline from the company that has the worst record on pipeline accidents?” Prevost asked me the night before the protest.

Heurich, a founding member of 350 New Orleans, believes it is imperative to take a stand against climate change. She believes direct actions against the pipeline are necessary because tremendous public outcry against the permitting of new fossil fuel projects and ongoing legal challenges against the pipeline have not succeeded in stopping its construction.

“Six Democratic New Orleans city council members recently voted in favor of a new gas plant and Democratic governor John Bel Edwards still won’t acknowledge man’s role in climate change,” she said, “but they all know humans are responsible for climate change. I don’t believe they’re dumb. It is absolutely about the money.”

Anti-pipeline protester Renate Heurich

Renate Heurich, a retired teacher and member of 350 New Orleans, protesting against the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Iowa, Louisiana.

A large group of law enforcement officers and protesters at the site of the demonstration

Protesters move back when police move in and tell them to disperse. All but the two who remained in the barrels complied.

Heurich also wants to protect Louisianans from the pollution oil and gas industry sites produce which sicken many people in fenceline communities, like St. James, a small town where the Bayou Bridge pipeline will end. She told me that people she knows are already dying of illnesses associated with toxic emissions from industrial sites in the area, including Keith Hunter, a retired carpenter, whom she met at an anti-pipeline meeting in St. James. Others she met a year ago in St. James have been diagnosed with cancer.

After sheriff’s deputies managed to move Heurich’s barrel out of the way, operations were able to resume. The deputies offered Heurich and Prevost a deal: If they unlocked themselves on their own, they would be charged with felony trespass, but avoid being taken to jail. Heurich unlocked herself, while Prevost remained in her barrel until noon, deciding to unlock herself after two trucks passed dangerously close to her.

Truck loaded with mats passes next to protester chained to a barrel in the road

Truck loaded with mats returning to the yard passing dangerously close to Susan Prevost who was locked into a barrel fastened into the ground.

Susan Prevost removes herself from the barrel she chained herself to

After conferring with a lawyer, Susan Prevost removes herself from a barrel she attached herself to in order to block work on the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Susan Prevost is led away by two police officers

Susan Prevost being led away by police after her arrest during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Cherri Foytlin, one of the founders of the anti-pipeline L’eau Est La Vie Camp (Water Is Life), was also arrested after live-streaming the demonstration for over an hour at the end of the driveway, which she thought was a public road. “I complied with what the officers told me,” she wrote in an email. When the police came after her, others from the camp pleaded with the officers to let her go, explaining she hadn’t heard them tell her to get off the driveway.

Another activist who took part in the protest was accused of stealing a car. All were released later the same afternoon but face charges.

Cherri Foytlin in the back of a police car

Cherri Foytlin, in the back of a police car being taken to jail for trespassing during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.

Protester escorted by two officers

Protester being taken away.

Heurich found it ironic that their direct action took place hours before the state legislature advanced to committee the bill HB 727, which would strengthen punishments against pipeline protesters. She said the attorney for the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, who reportedly helped draft the bill, sat next to its lead sponsor during the session. “The oil and gas industry writes a law to protect its interest, in order to keep Louisiana a sacrifice zone while at the same time taking away our First Amendment right to protest its actions,” she said in dismay, “and our legislators support it.”

Louisiana law already prohibits trespassing at sites known as “critical infrastructure,” including power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants, water treatment facilities, and natural gas terminals. House Bill 727 adds pipelines and their construction areas to the list of critical infrastructure sites, a move in reaction to growing pipeline protests nationwide.

HB 727 is based on a model bill produced by the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). “But it is ALEC-plus” Pam Spees, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing a coalition of groups against the Bayou Bridge pipeline in a variety of legal challenges, said. “People not involved in an action, who don’t protest, damage, or injure anything or anybody, can still be held accountable for being associated with activists.”

The bill increases the penalties for any damage to or interference with pipeline and other critical infrastructure sites. Sentences range from one to 15 years in prison with a $10,000 fine or six to 20 years plus a $25,000 fine if the damage could threaten human life or disrupt site operations. In addition, this state bill criminalizes “conspiracy to commit trespass.” Anyone involved with organizing a protest like the one on April 5 could face a year in prison. And anyone connected to an action that involves damaging the infrastructure could end up with a prison sentence of 20 years and fines of up to $250,000 if a judge rules that they are part of a conspiracy that threatens life or the operation of critical infrastructure.

“The language concerning conspiracy is worrisome,” Spees told me during the protest in Iowa. “The conspiracy provision makes it possible for law enforcement to arrest people before they have actually done anything wrong, even if they are just planning a nonviolent protest.” After Thursday’s protest, Spees traveled to the jail to help make sure everyone arrested during the demonstration was released.

Along with a handful of others, Meg Louge, a member of 350 New Orleans, spoke out against HB 727 at the state capitol in Baton Rouge. Many of them objected to the proposed law because existing trespass laws are already in place. Some argued during Thursday’s legislative session that the new law is meant to quash dissent against oil and gas pipelines. “The representatives who spoke in favor of the bill cited the protests in North Dakota a couple of times and how they don’t want Louisiana to ever have a ‘Standing Rock’ type situation,” Louge said.

Though Louge was not pleased the bill was moved to committee, she said that she was glad that Rep. Valarie Hodges, one of the bill’s sponsors, agreed to amend the conspiracy language during the session, before the bill is voted on in committee.

While Thursday’s pipeline protest didn’t go as planned, Heurich was not discouraged. “Today’s action was a success,” she said during a call. “One of our goals is to get the word out that climate change is a huge issue and that there is real opposition in Louisiana.”

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https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-pipelines-dakota-keystone-2540819277.html

Koch Network Took Credit for Dakota Access, Keystone XL and REINS Act, Leaked Memo Shows

By Steve Horn

A leaked memorandum published by The Intercept and Documented Investigations shows that a Koch Industries' donors network, known as the Seminar Network, has taken credit for Donald Trump approving the permits for both the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines during the first months of his presidency.

The memo also applauded efforts by the Koch network's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) chapter in Wisconsin to pass a deregulatory measure there known as the REINS Act. The Seminar Network, which meets secretly twice a year, is made up of donors who give at least $100,000 toward Koch-led political and philanthropic efforts.

Koch Industries has a business interest in both pipelines, though their approval has not been something its funded network has widely discussed. Quietly, though, Koch has advocated for the pair of pipelines in regulatory hearings in both Iowa for Dakota Access—as previously reported by DeSmog—as well as in Canada, as reported in 2012 by InsideClimate News.

The REINS (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) Act, which GOP officials have been pushing in Congress since Obama's first term, passed as state law in Wisconsin in 2017. The law, long considered crown jewel legislation by the Koch front group AFP, gives legislative bodies full veto authority over regulations proposed by executive agencies. Conservative groups in Wisconsin already are using the law to sue the top state public education officer.

"State legislatures, particularly in states with a strong Network presence, have also made significant progress toward removing harmful and unnecessary regulations. For example, Wisconsin this year went so far as to enact the nation's first REINS Act, which will require legislative approval of any issued regulation that has an impact above a certain cost threshold," reads the Koch Seminar Network document.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded group of mostly Republican Party state legislators, has a REINS Act model resolution on the books, which supports the federal version of this legislation. In 2017, six states introduced pro-REINS Act resolutions: Kansas, Montana, Missouri, Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina. ALEC—which brings corporate lobbyists and state legislators together at annual meetings for networking, seminars and voting on what it dubs "model policies" —maintains close connections with the Koch network.

Koch, KXL, DAPL Business Ties

Koch Industries also owns assets in a tar sands reservoir located in Alberta, Canada, both in the form of lease holdings for land and as a company with a drilling interest. For the latter, Koch owns Koch Oil Sands Operating, which has a drilling interest in both the Gemini and Muskwa tar sands fields in Alberta.

It also owns 1-2 million acres' worth of land (the exact number is contested) in the tar sands for prospective future leasing, according to a 2013 report published by the International Forum on Globalization. Keystone XL, the pipeline owned by TransCanada and approved by Trump and his U.S. Department of State in March 2017, would bring around 500,000 currently-booked barrels per day of tar sands oil from Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma, where the pipeline connects with TransCanada's Gulf Coast Pipeline.

Gulf Coast, which was approved by President Barack Obama in a 2012 election season executive order, sends the tar sands bitumen down to Port Arthur, Texas, where the substance is refined into products and then sent to market.

[map]

Koch Industries even nearly testified at a 2012 hearing in support of its development of tar sands, before backing out after signing confidentiality agreements with impacted landowners. Much of the tar sands extracted in Alberta is refined at Koch's refinery in Pine Bend, Minnesota, which is owned by its subsidiary Flint Hills Resources and is the top refiner of tar sands in the U.S. at 223,000 barrels per day, as of 2013.

For Dakota Access, Koch also quietly came out in support of the pipeline via its front group, the 60 Plus Association, which purports to be a conservative alternative to the American Association of Retired Persons for seniors. Through intermediary groups, 60 Plus had received tens of millions of dollars from the Koch network.

Koch Industries has a direct tie to Dakota Access, through a storage terminal part-owned by its subsidiary Flint Resources and located in North Dakota's Bakken Shale basin. As DeSmog previously reported, this terminal, called the COLT Hub, feeds oil into the Dakota Access pipeline.

Back in 2015 when the pipeline was hotly contested in Iowa, a representative for 60 Plus testified on behalf of Dakota Access in front of the Iowa Utilities Board.

"The Dakota Access Pipeline Project is important to seniors for several reasons. High energy prices are disproportionately impacting America's low and fixed-income senior citizens today—citizens that often have limited financial resources with which to meet their needs," the 60 Plus representative testified in September 2015. "By helping the United States to better capitalize upon its growing domestic energy resources—and affordably transport these resources to market—the Dakota Access Pipeline will help to foster stability within energy markets nationwide, and improve the availability of affordable American produced crude oil."

60 Plus also began lobbying and campaigning on behalf of the Dakota Access as the protest movement grew against the pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Around the same time those protests began in September 2016, 60 Plus deployed its chairman, Jim Martin, to begin lobbying Congressabout Dakota Access. Martin also wrote an opinion piece that month supporting the pipeline for the publication Morning Consult.

"Whether it's heating or cooling your home or putting gas in your car, the cheaper the energy, the more economically stable your checkbook will be," wrote Martin. "The 60 Plus Association's 5.5 million members know this all too well. This is why as an organization that champions free enterprise and who have championed energy issues for seniors before, we strongly support the Dakota Access pipeline."

'Whole New Level'

In the 2018 election cycle, the Koch network plans to spend up to $400 million to keep the Republican majority in Congress and GOP control over statehouses nationwide.

"We've made more progress in the last five years than I had in the last 50," Charles Koch, one of the infamous petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers, said in January at a private Seminar Network meeting held in Indian Wells, California. "The capabilities we have now can take us to a whole new level."

new? bk 1% solution

The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time 1st Edition

Gordon Lafer is Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon& https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060066527

ALEC's conservative wing says the organization — which convenes corporations, think tanks and legislators — is capitulating to left-of-center interests to regain funders after an exodus of corporate titans like Google LLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC over the organization's climate change positions. Others, however, contend that the conversation on climate has shifted away from hard-liners, with a growing number of Republicans and conservatives embracing clean technology and climate science, according to several of the group's members.

"I think the attention they got on energy and environmental issues was so intense that that's where they focused on their outreach with the center-left," said Paul Blair, director of strategic initiatives with Americans for Tax Reform and a member of ALEC. "You can't pass the laugh test with going center-left on tax issues. To me, you can't pass the laugh test with me by going center-left on energy and environment issues. But they apparently think they can."

It's a fight that reflects the broader conservative debate over climate change and the direction of the Republican Party during the Trump administration.

And it will soon come to a head, as ALEC members prepare to vote on a measure that takes aim at U.S. EPA's endangerment finding on greenhouse gases. The Obama-era finding is a compilation of scientific evidence that forms the legal basis for EPA greenhouse gas regulations. It's despised by many conservatives.

ALEC's Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force is slated to vote on a draft resolutionat a meeting in Nashville, Tenn., next month that calls "upon the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw the 2009 endangerment finding for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and conduct a new rulemaking on this issue."

If ALEC ultimately adopts the resolution, it will serve as a model resolution for state and federal lawmakers to express their disdain for the EPA finding. The vote will put big businesses and trade groups that sit on the ALEC task force on the spot regarding whether the endangerment finding is worth investigating.

"Robust debate comes from stakeholders engaging from a variety of perspectives. And that is precisely what's happening here," said ALEC spokesman Bill Meierling. He noted that the draft resolution could be amended or changed when the task force meets in Nashville.

The tug of war at ALEC mirrors the fight between voices skeptical of mainstream climate science — like the nonprofit Heartland Institute — and groups that are more moderate on climate change, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Heartland is rumored to be behind the endangerment resolution, with former North Dakota state Rep. Bette Grande (R) — who now freelances for Heartland and participates in ALEC matters — thought to have drafted it and handed off the language to a state lawmaker and ALEC member.

Heartland did not respond to a request for comment.

Heartland and its allies have pushed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to take on the endangerment finding, which the EPA chief has been reluctant to pursue. Corporate America, meanwhile, largely supported staying in the Paris climate agreement and retaining the Clean Power Plan — an Obama administration rule to curb power plant emissions — but ultimately lost those battles to far-right groups, though some hope Trump will ultimately remain in the global climate pact.

Bellwether moment?

The endangerment finding vote may serve as a bellwether for where ALEC stands on climate change.

Is ALEC part and parcel of a conservative movement that has questioned climate change and the policy responses to it? Or does it operate among the wider atmosphere of reputation-conscious corporations and even some moderates who have opposed the Trump administration on climate change?

But that calculation also belies a more fundamental point about ALEC — while it has a reputation as a far-right group advancing industry interests, it's also a member-driven organization. If ALEC is shifting on climate and energy, it's largely because its members have, too.

"If there were some grand conspiracy, I'd know about it, and there isn't," said Eli Lehrer, president of the free-market think tank R Street Institute, which supports a carbon tax. "To the extent things have changed, it's because opinions have changed."

At its core, ALEC is an organization about free markets and limited government. Thus, its members also have railed against and helped craft bills to roll back President Obama's climate and environmental measures, many of which were federal regulations, and local incentives for clean energy. At the same time, though, the group has come under fire for taking cash from fossil fuel companies threatened by the advance of clean energy while often neglecting to mention subsidies and incentives that legacy energy sources enjoy.

Longtime ALEC watchdogs view the endangerment finding draft resolution as an attempt by its conservative members to reorient the organization to its roots after several rudderless years on energy and environment matters. Part of that is a response to the Trump administration, said Nick Surgey, director of Documented, an organization that tracks the influence of corporations on public policy.

"This is a reflection of an organization that has shifted itself more into the mainstream of climate change in terms of rhetoric in the last three to four years," Surgey said. "Now they've got almost everything they want from Scott Pruitt and the EPA, and they have to justify their existence to their funders. And it seems like they're allying themselves with the more radical of the funders."

The cohesion between ALEC and the Trump administration is evident to ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson. She sent a congratulatory email to its members on Jan. 30 to celebrate the new administration, saying, "This administration does have the potential to be an ALEC administration. It is full of the people and ideas we've advanced since 1973."

But conservatives familiar with ALEC said they're concerned that the organization has gravitated to satisfying interests that aren't committed to the free-market principles upon which the group was created. They said that dynamic is most apparent in the energy and environment space.

"When it comes to the policies of the organization, ALEC does have strong positions on issues that are consistent with the free market," Blair said. "The issue is if they are planning to upend those principles to fundraise in the future."

They worry that ALEC is trying to plug a funding gap following the high-profile exits of Google, BP PLC, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and others, all of which blamed the organization's stance on climate change for their departure. Those companies left largely over pressure from shareholders who were spurred into action after activist groups harped on ALEC funding streams. The conservative billionaire industrialist Koch brothers are big donors; Exxon Mobil Corp., a member of the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force, is also a major funder.

Conservatives revolt

ALEC's conservative members saw warning signs recently when feathers were ruffled over what they said in the past would have been a fairly easy decision.

The energy task force couldn't agree to move on a resolution that opposed property assessed clean energy, or PACE — a financing mechanism to fund clean energy or energy efficiency upgrades. Conservatives were worried about exposing taxpayers to losses, since municipal bonds underwrote many of the projects.

But many of ALEC's members also have PACE interests. One conservative source said those groups backing PACE angled to kill the resolution and criticized ALEC for trying to appease such funders. Rockwood Group CEO Scott Zajac, whose investment firm operates in the PACE world, was particularly vocal in opposing the resolution within ALEC, the source said.

Others, though, noted that's just how the energy space is these days — corporations are on board with clean energy. Rejecting mainstream climate science or trying to stymie growth of energy sources that compete with ALEC's old guard of coal, natural gas and oil companies doesn't fly anymore.

The PACE resolution foundered over much acrimony in ALEC's July meeting and was forbidden to ever return as a discussion point. That result has generated revolt from some of the more dogmatic conservatives.

"I'm concerned that there has been an effort more recently to try and table what in the past would have been considered straightforward proposals based on free-market principles," said Tom Pyle, president of the conservative energy think tank Institute for Energy Research. "That's what ALEC is supposed to be advancing."

That effort, though, is minor compared with the endangerment finding, which is a lightning rod in climate policy circles.

Publicly traded companies on the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force are getting calls about the upcoming vote on the draft endangerment finding resolution, according to a source familiar with the situation. Companies on that task force include Exxon Mobil, Pfizer Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc.

"We have not received calls on it to my knowledge, but either way it is not an issue we would support," UPS spokeswoman Kara Ross said in an email. "As one of the leaders in sustainable and transparent logistics, our position on climate change is clear."

Aside from Exxon Mobil, Pfizer and UPS, the task force also includes lobby group heavyweights such as the Edison Electric Institute, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and American Gas Association.

E&E News contacted all those members. EEI, AGA, AFPM, Pfizer and Exxon Mobil did not respond to requests for comment. NRECA said it didn't want to challenge the endangerment finding because it supports "inside the fence" carbon emissions regulations on power plants to replace the Clean Power Plan, which Pruitt formally moved to repeal last month.

"Challenging the endangerment finding would lead to a different result, which we think would be unwise," spokesman Dan Riedinger said in an email.

==

Two sessions at a summit this week for one of the country’s most powerful conservative groups will focus on voting, something civil rights groups and voting advocates are alarmed by and say could signal the group’s renewed interest in restrictive voting policies.

The focus on voting from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is significant because the group disbanded its Public Safety and Elections Task Force in 2012 following significant pressure from civil rights groups. Beginning in 2009, the task force helped draft model legislation for states to impose voter ID requirements that critics say makes it more difficult for people to vote.

ALEC is an association of about 2,000 state lawmakers with close ties to big business and conservative groups. ALEC produces model legislation on conservative issues that lawmakers can then introduce in their respective statehouses. Among the model measures ALEC backed is the controversial “stand your ground law” and legislation that limit the ability of localities to raise the minimum wage.

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.”

One of the panels will be a “voter integrity workshop,” in which election experts will “discuss important voting policies and legislation in the states to improve the integrity of elections, the accuracy and security of state voter registration rolls, and new ways to verify the eligibility of voters.” The panel will also discuss “policy concerns” regarding automatic voter registration, a reform with bipartisan support advocates believe can add millions of Americans to the voting rolls.

A different panel will focus on redistricting as states gear up for the next round of redrawing electoral maps in 2021. The workshop will focus on “significant legal changes from the past decade; a rundown of ongoing litigation, ballot measures, and legislation; what apportionment might look like after the 2020 census and what challenges that will present.” The workshop will also look at what “groups are doing to address the multi-front campaign to shift the redistricting landscape – and find new “rights” in the Constitution.” The workshop will be led by a group called Fair Lines America, a group Pearson said he had never heard of and doesn’t appear to have an online presence.

The panel comes as the Supreme Court is considering a case out of Wisconsin that could, for the first time, set a standard for when gerrymandering can go too far to benefit one political party.

Jay Riestenberg, who closely follows ALEC for Common Cause, a public interest watchdog, said only a few states had adopted voter ID measures before ALEC took an interest in the issue in 2009. When it got out of the business of dealing with voter laws in 2012, he said, they only did so after successfully spreading voter ID laws to dozens of states. Thirty-four states have measures requiring voters to show some kind of identification at the polls.

Bill Meierling, an ALEC spokesman, said the group “does not work on or maintain policy election issues.”

“Workshops are part of the ALEC meeting and can cover a range of issues that may or may not be related to ALEC policy/work,” he said in an email.

Pearson said he was skeptical the panel’s were purely informational.

“ALEC is a pay-to-play outfit. Member organizations pay to sponsor events and workshops. Typically if something is showing up on the agenda it’s because somebody wants to push it,” he said.

“ALEC has been a very anti-democratic organization since its founding. It brings corporate lobbyists and state legislators behind closed doors to trade these so-called model bills,” Riestenberg said. “They’re kind of opposed to the very idea of representative democracy, and so when they have panels about voting and what they call voter fraud or voter integrity, it kind of raises red flags given their history on the issue and their kind of anti-democratic structure.”

Riestenberg said he was surprised ALEC did not post the names of speakers on the panel, something he said it had done in years past. ALEC officials did not respond to a question about who would be speaking on the panels.

The panels also have increased significance amid President Donald Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud and a commission he created in May to investigate it. Led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), members of the panel have favored voter ID, proof of citizenship laws and forcing states to more aggressively purge their voter rolls.

J. Christian Adams, a member of the Trump voter fraud probe, said in a statement he would be participating in the ALEC panel about election integrity. Adams has sued jurisdictions to try and force them to more aggressively purge their voting rolls and has said the Department of Justice is not doing enough to make sure states are maintaining accurate rolls.

Critics say the commission is an effort to weaken confidence in the U.S. election system and to lay the groundwork for more restrictive voting policies. Several studies and investigations have found voter fraud is not a widespread issue.

“There was evidence that ALEC was behind the spate of strict voter ID laws that started to be enacted throughout the country and have been found to have a voter suppressive impact,” said Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups suing Trump’s voter fraud commission. “Given the present environment with the Pence/Kobach commission moving toward voter purges, we do fear that this could begin another era of suppressive voter laws.”

Trump’s commission has temporarily paused as it faces multiple lawsuits. Riestenberg said ALEC could be working to continue the commission’s work.

“I kind of expected this to be the next wave. The Pence/Kobach commission is caught up in lawsuits. They’re trying to figure out what’s their next move. I think ALEC and other state level advocacy groups on the conservative side are their venue to actually push their agenda since they can’t do it through the commission.”

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Huffington Post | Published: 12/6/2017

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.”

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Colorado State Representative Lori Saine (R-63) arrived a little later than expected to this week’s American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) States & Nation Policy Summit in Nashville, but she had a great excuse.

Saine was arrested Wednesday at the Denver International Airport for trying to bring a loaded semi-automatic handgun through security.

Saine was charged with a sixth-degree felony. If convicted, she could face up to 18 months in jail and a fine of up to $100,000.

It is unclear why Saine tried to sneak a loaded gun onto a plane. Firearms are only allowed on planes if they are unloaded and properly stored in checked baggage.

ALEC apparently did not find Saine’s actions disturbing, as it went on to award her the Public Sector State Chair of the Year award on Thursday anyway. The award is given to State Chairs to recognize them for their work with ALEC members in promoting ALEC’s extremist agenda.

ALEC and FreedomWorks, a right-wing group instrumental in the Tea Party movement, also awarded Saine the “Legislator of the Week” award in March.

FreedomWorks praised Saine again yesterday on Twitter, “Colorado Representative @lorisaine fights for lower taxes, especially on small businesses. Thank you, Rep. Saine!”

For a number of years, the gun industry’s lobbying arm, the National Rifle Association (NRA), co-chaired ALEC’s Task Force on Public Safety and Elections, which has since been disbanded after public controversy concerning the shooting of Trayvon Martin and ALEC’s backing of radical “stand your ground” laws.

ALEC pushes a wide range of pro-gun bills around the country and opposes of gun safety measures. Currently, ALEC’s executive assistant to CEO Lisa Nelson, Sarah Spaulding, is a former legislative assistant for the NRA, and the corporate pay-to-play group’s public affairs staffer, Ashley Varner, previously worked as an NRA media spokesperson for eight years.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/12/07/alec-hires-former-koch-staffer-lead-energy-task-force

The Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has hired Grant Kidwell, a former analyst from two major Koch-backed groups–Americans for Prosperity and the Charles Koch Institute–to lead its Energy, Environment and Agriculture (EEA) task force, a position that has been left vacant since July.

Funded by numerous fossil-fuel companies, ALEC and its EEA task force has a long history of passing “model bills” undermining environmental protections and opposing policies to combat climate change. The task force is made up of numerous corporate lobbyists and their trade groups that stand to benefit from measures weakening environmental protections: including Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, Peabody Energy, the Edison Electric Institute, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the American Gas Association.

Kidwell’s first week at ALEC comes as the group holds its States and Nation Policy Summit, currently taking place in Nashville, Tennessee. Among the measures being discussed is a resolution urging the EPA to scrap the 2009 endangerment finding for greenhouse gases, which formed the legal basis for the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. According E&E News, the fossil-fuel funded Heartland Institute is rumored to be behind the resolution.

Before Kidwell’s appointment, Kenneth Stein who now works for the Koch-backed Institute for Energy Research, briefly served as the task force director from April to July 2017. John Eick, who now works for AFPM, previously led the task force from 2012-2017. Todd Wynn, who now works at the Department of Interior and previously worked at the Edison Electric Institute, was Director from 2011 to 2013.

This story was originally published in Documented here.

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) -- an organization where corporations and politicians vote on legislation to enact across the nation -- will be holding its 45th anniversary gala at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

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part of choke hold series icn

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29102017/renewable-energy-ohio-rps-law-fossil-fuel-political-donations-coal

COLUMBUS, Ohio—On March 30, Bill Seitz, a charismatic Republican, took to the floor of the Ohio House to make a case for gutting a 2008 law designed to speed the adoption of solar and wind as significant sources of electricity in the state. The law, he warned, "is like something out of the 5-Year Plan playbook of Joseph Stalin." Adopting a corny Russian accent, he said, "Vee vill have 25,000 trucks on the Volga by 1944!'"

Nine years before, Seitz and his colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike, had voted overwhelmingly for the measure he now compared to the work of a Communist dictator. It made Ohio the 25th state to embrace requirements and inducements to lure utilities away from coal, a major contributor of the gases fueling global climate change. Studies suggested the law would help create green energy jobs and boost the Ohio economy—and it has.

Now, Seitz said, it was obsolete. Natural gas, rapidly displacing coal, was the resource Ohio ought to foster, he said. He also argued the law gives an unfair advantage to wind and solar when the state's last nuclear plant is fighting for its life. Most important, Seitz insisted, the government had no business telling anyone what kind of energy to buy. By the time he was done, he had secured a veto-proof majority to undo key parts of the law.

What happened to turn lawmakers so decisively against a statute they'd adopted 93-to-1 less than a decade ago?

The answers begin with the 2008 financial crisis, which hit Ohio hard and greatly depressed energy demand, and they include the shale gas boom, which benefited Ohio producers and made coal uncompetitive.

But there's more to the story, too.

As fossil fuel interests mobilized at the national level to fight proposals to mitigate climate change that would undercut their profits, they made Ohio a priority for fighting clean energy policy at the state level. Beginning in earnest in 2011, a network of coal companies, utilities, think tanks, nonprofit foundations and political action committees coalesced to roll back Ohio's alternative energy initiatives.

Industry-supported think tanks provided highly questionable research purporting to show big job losses. An industry group claiming to represent consumers—and accused of using fraudulent tactics before regulatory agencies—advised Seitz's staff on how to water down the definition of alternative energy. And industry sources donated to the campaigns of state politicians, like Seitz, who've kept the repeal-and-replace bills coming, even after Republican Gov. John Kasich vetoed a similar effort.

This network includes Americans for Prosperity, a foundation funded by the energy magnates Charles and David H. Koch; the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group known for its criticism of climate change science; and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), another conservative nonprofit in Washington with Koch ties that frequently spoon-feeds draft legislation to state politicians.

Seitz is on ALEC's national board of directors, but he bristles at the suggestion that he relies on the council for guidance. "ALEC doesn't drive me," he told InsideClimate News. "If anything I drive ALEC." Either way, in 2012, ALEC adopted an "Electricity Freedom Act" that reads like a declaration of war against the kind of energy rules on the books in Ohio and calls for the effort to reject them that Seitz leads.

The Rise of Clean Energy Scare Studies

Once a major coal producer, Ohio has a lesser-known history with fuel-free electricity. In the winter of 1887-88, Charles F. Brush constructed the world's first electricity-generating wind turbine on a 60-foot iron mast behind his Cleveland mansion. Brush held more than 50 patents, and his company joined with several others to form General Electric. In 1984, physicist Harold McMaster first demonstrated in his Toledo basement the potential for thin, non-silicon-based films to capture the sun's energy. Glasstech, now called First Solar, has led the conversion of Toledo into a solar manufacturing hub. The University of Toledo trains engineers for the many photovoltaic companies in the region, and, in 2007, it added the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization to transfer what's in its labs to nearby factories.

...

"Ohio has a legitimate claim to being a leader in renewable energy, which is what makes the effort to stymie renewables here all the more ironic," said Bill Spratley, former executive director of Green Energy Ohio, an advocacy organization in Columbus. He said if the Seitz bill became law, "we might end up supplying everyone else with these wonderful technologies while we don't get to benefit from them ourselves."

Spratley testified against Seitz's bill. He noted that there are roughly 80 companies making parts for wind power systems in Ohio and scores of engineers and sales representatives installing solar, "and those jobs aren't going anywhere," he said. "Those are local jobs."

Ten years ago, more Ohio politicians embraced Spratley's message. In 2007-08, as the "Energy, Jobs and Progress" plan made its way toward law, energy demand was strong, prices were expected to remain high, and awareness of coal's contribution to climate change had peaked. The law committed Ohio to cutting energy consumption by 22 percent by 2025 and diversifying sources so that 12.5 percent of its electricity would come from alternative energy sources—geothermal, biomass, wind, solar.

In 2011, the former American Tradition Institute, now the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, commissioned an analysis of the economic impacts of Ohio's energy standards. Based in Washington, the EELI receives funding from Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, the two largest suppliers of coal in the United States. The Beacon Hill Institute, then an affiliate of Boston's Suffolk University and a frequent publisher of papers critical of climate-related policies, undertook the study.Demand and prices fell with the recession and the shale gas boom, but the promise of more jobs and less global warming continued to resonate. Or it did until studies started showing up that warned that the law would do more harm than good.

In its report, Beacon Hill forecast that the Ohio energy standards would result in the loss of 9,750 jobs, wipe out $1.1 billion in disposable income every year, and force Ohioans to pay $8.6 billion more for electricity in 2025. The authors, among them BHI's executive director, David G. Tuerck, reached this conclusion based on an economic model that ignored the rapidly declining cost of electricity generated by wind and solar. Beacon Hill later lost its Suffolk University affiliation because, a university spokesman told The Boston Globe, its research lacked rigor and tended to reach conclusions sought by its underwriters.

...

no link below, many

Cost claim and rebuttal.

On April 13, 2011, ALEC sent the Beacon report to all its members in the Ohio legislature, warning that the energy rules were "a blueprint for economic misery."

RPS cost claim and savings rebuttal.

Citing the study, state Sen. Kris Jordan introduced a bill five months later to repeal the alternative energy standards. The measure didn't make it out of committee, but Jordan, Seitz and others kept at it, until, in 2014, they managed to secure a two-year freeze on meeting the annual benchmarks established under the 2008 law.

Cost claim and rebuttal

More scare studies followed. In 2015, the Institute of Political Economy at Utah State University published a paper suggesting Ohio's energy rules would kill off 29,000 jobs. Last spring, the Buckeye Institute, a free-market think tank across the street from the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, modeled four economic scenarios; the rosiest estimated that the renewable and energy efficiency standards would cost Ohio 6,800 jobs and $806 million in GDP by 2026.

RPS jobs claim and rebuttal.

"Those studies are completely bogus," said Terrence O'Donnell, a lawyer representing renewable energy developers at Dickinson Wright, a Columbus law practice. "The Utah one is the most ridiculous, because it blames everything that happened to the economy during the recession on the renewable portfolio standards. It's laughable. There's not one policy maker I know of who still refers to it." The Buckeye Institute, he added, assesses "a fictitious Ohio law, not the one on the books." For example, the Buckeye economists assume "that the cost containment provisions in the law simply won't kick in if prices for renewable energy rise. But they don't say why." And the price of solar electricity hasn't just fallen a little bit; it's less than half of what it was three years ago.

Several other studies have concluded that Ohio's energy rules have, on the contrary, created jobs and improved the economy.One, published by Ohio State University's Center for Resilience, found that in 2012 alone, the law stimulated a modest .04 percent, or $160 million, in GDP growth statewide. According to the Ohio Environmental Council (OEC), the state added more than 2,300 renewable energy projects and 25,000 clean energy jobs since 2009. Not minus 29,000 jobs, but plus 25,000 jobs, and not based on a model, but on payroll and labor statistics.

Renewable Portfolio Standards, State by State

Trish Demeter, the OEC's managing director of energy, said the 2008 law benefits the state in another way. Its energy efficiency provisions are saving money. For every dollar invested in efficiency, she said, "Ohio ratepayers are saving between $1.10 and $4.20 on their utility bills, depending on what kind of consumer they are." She said this data came from actual receipts, not models, and had been reviewed by the Ohio Consumers Council and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

So whose numbers are right? On behalf of Gov. Kasich's office, Matt Cox, a Ph.D. from MIT and founder of Greenlink, a consulting practice in Atlanta, modeled three scenarios to try to determine if Ohio's energy rules were too aggressive. Overall, Cox found that the rules generated more jobs, more GDP and, in time, lowered electrical bills.

Ohio State Rep. Bill Seitz

Seitz told InsideClimate News that Cox ought not to have factored public health impacts of air pollution into his study. Cox responded, "How can you do a cost-benefit analysis and not factor in a cost that is borne, not by the utility, but by everyone else?"

Dave Anderson is policy and communications manager for the Energy & Policy Institute, a watchdog group headquartered in San Francisco. He and his team note that all three of the organizations behind the Ohio scare studies—Beacon Hill, Utah State and Buckeye—have received donations from the Koch brothers or their affiliates. For example, the Buckeye Institute receives funding from the Koch-backed Donors Capital Fund and Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundations, as well as directly from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Passionate Opposition to Wind Power

The bill that froze Ohio's energy rules in 2014 also created an Energy Mandates Study Committee to determine whose numbers were best and what to do next.

To staff the committee, Seitz turned to Sam Randazzo, general counsel for a consortium of electricity purchasers large and small called the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio. Randazzo has been deeply involved in shaping Ohio's energy policy for five decades and, like Seitz, opposes the 2008 standards.

On Aug. 8, 2016, as the freeze neared expiration and the EMSC was due with its findings, Seitz wrote to 10 utility, gas and coal lobbyists, as well as Randazzo, that "we should be meeting as a small group to figure out what that report is going to say." (The watchdog group EPI obtained this email through a public records request.)

The EMSC counted 12 elected officials, among them Seitz, as members. These 12 collectively received $830,000 in campaign contributions from utilities, oil and gas interests, and coal mining companies, according to an investigation by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Contributions from electric utilities to Seitz more than tripled after he began trying to dismantle the state's renewable energy standards.

Following the Money

Randazzo disputed any notion that the committee was stacked by the fossil fuel industry. "This was a legislatively appointed body with representation by both Republicans and Democrats," he said. And, it was "absolutely open to all stakeholder positions."

In an interview, Seitz was blunt about whose interests he was looking out for. "Coal is moribund and crowded out by natural gas. If there's anyone I should have an affinity for it's the natural gas guys. ... The old saying is, you dance with who brung you to the dance. In Ohio, natural gas is who brung us to the dance."

Seitz despises wind turbines, and his dedication to rolling back Ohio's energy standards stems in part from his passionate opposition to wind power. In fact, the only reason he voted for the standards back in 2008, he said, was a promise by the Senate president that he could write the language on turbines. Over time, Seitz has been behind restrictions that have wiped out any large new projects. "There will be no wind farms!" he said, with satisfaction.

Turbines, Seitz said, take up too much room, don't work when the wind doesn't blow, and are not a good fit for his district, in the far corner of the state where it borders Indiana and Kentucky. His neighbors love spending time in their yards and don't want any turbines wrecking their "view sheds," or chopping up bats and birds, he said. And it doesn't help matters that "it seems to be a cabal of urban millennials who love wind [power] and want to inflict the damage on rural landscapes—stick it out there in the country where all the bumpkins can't do anything about it. That's not very nice. So I'm not a big fan of wind."

Gov. John Kasich

The final Energy Mandates Study Committee report was a gift to incumbent utilities and gas and coal interests. It recommended an indefinite extension of the freeze on renewable standards and more or less mirrored a bill Kasich vetoed on Dec. 22, 2016, saying the measure could undermine the state's improved business climate and prevent businesses and homeowners from saving money by saving energy.

Undeterred by Kasich's veto, HB 114, the bill that passed on March 30, contains much of the EMSC wishlist.

Seitz's staff also received advice from the Consumer Energy Alliance on expanding the definition of what counts as an alternative form of energy. The CEA is comprised of few consumers, operates out of HBW Resources, a Washington-based lobbying firm, and is backed by major oil and gas companies, such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon, Shell and Norway's Statoil. It's a lobbying group that has been challenged before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for submitting public comment letters from individuals who later said in sworn statements that they never signed them. The CEA withdrew a petition in Wisconsin after a local reporter found that some people who signed it actually opposed the utility rate changes CEA was pushing.

Seitz laughed at the notion that he is the face of a well-funded industry campaign. "As I've made clear 20 times, I find mandates philosophically obnoxious," he said. "Look, I'm an antitrust lawyer by background and training. Antitrust lawyers tend to favor competition and not be a big fan of monopolies, and tend to believe that government interference ought to be kept to a minimum."

His bill is now in the state Senate, where it may face an uphill fight. John Fortney, spokesman for the Republican majority caucus and Senate President Larry Obhof, said any legislation will have to be a compromise acceptable to both houses and Kasich. Kasich's office did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

Andrew Kear, an assistant professor of political science and environment and sustainability at Bowling Green State University, said HB 114 can't survive without substantial changes. He said any measure will have to recognize that renewable energy is an economic driver in parts of the state. "They have to get beyond the false dichotomy that it's environment versus economy," he said.

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/these-corporations-have-biggest-influence-climate-policy

For better or worse, corporations have a major influence on climate change policy. Just look at Koch Industries, a multinational conglomerate owned by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch that has contributed hundreds of millions to federal candidates and lobbying over the last 25 years.

The "Corporate Carbon Policy Footprint," a new analysis from U.K. nonprofit InfluenceMap, now ranks Koch Industries as the company with the strongest opposition to the Paris climate agreement and most intensely lobbies against policies in line with the landmark global accord.

The InfluenceMap scoring system does not measure a company's actual greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, it measures "the extent to which a corporation is supporting or obstructing the climate policy process."

For the InfluenceMap report, researchers analyzed more than "30,000 pieces of evidence" on 250 global companies and 50 major trade associations on their lobbying records, advertising, public relations and sponsored research, according to Bloomberg.

The research group gave the Wichita-based company an "F" grade for its anti-climate actions:

"Koch Industries appears to be actively opposing almost all areas of climate legislation. In 2014 in the US, they were reportedly active in their opposition to a carbon tax, funding politicians and campaigns to oppose the tax. Similarly, in 2014 they appear to have opposed the U.S. EPA Clean Power Plan in consultation and through direct engagement with policy makers, and boasted about their success in blocking the US Cap and Trade Scheme in 2010. Additionally, they appear to be opposing measures to transition to a low carbon economy, advocating against renewable energy subsidies, and funding groups that have opposed energy efficiency standards, the repeal of fossil fuel subsidies and the need for action on climate change. They seem to be exceptionally active in opposing renewable energy standards across the U.S. Both the organization and its CEO, Charles Koch, appear to have questioned climate change science, and have reportedly funded climate denial. Senior executives are active in both the National Association of Manufacturers and ALEC, which also appear to be resisting climate change related regulations and policies."

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Silicon Valley tech giant Apple was ranked highest on the list and has an A+ for its support of climate change action and its positive engagement with a number of climate change policy areas.

Here are the report's key findings:

35 of the 50 most influential are actively lobbying against climate policy. They include companies in the fossil fuel value chain (ExxonMobil, Valero Energy, Chevron), energy intensive companies (BASF, ArcelorMittal, Bayer, Dow Chemical and Solvay) and electric utilities with large amounts of coal generating capacity (Southern Company, Duke Energy and American Electric Power).

Also in this group of 35 influential companies holding back climate policy are four powerful automotive manufacturers (Fiat Chrysler, Ford, BMW and Daimler). The research found the companies lobbying to delay or dilute efficiency and CO2 emissions standards and procedures both in Europe and North America. Depending on region, passenger vehicle emissions account for 12% or more of all greenhouse gas emissions.

On the other side, 15 of the 50 most influential are pushing for an ambitious climate policy agenda, favoring renewable power and electric vehicles. They include signatories to the RE100 initiative committing to buying 100% renewable power (Apple, Ikea, Unilever, Coca Cola and Nestle) as well as power sector companies (SSE, Enel, EDF, Iberdrola and National Grid) who are shifting their business models towards low carbon electricity generation.

"The data shows the climate policy agenda, in terms of corporate influencing, is being driven by a small number of massive global corporations," Dylan Tanner, InfluenceMap executive director, said in a statement. "It also shows a group of powerful of companies in the tech, consumer goods and utilities sectors increasingly pushing for policy to implement the Paris Agreement."

InfluenceMap also ranked "influencers" or powerful trade associations that actively lobby against climate policies. A number of trade associations received an "F" grade, but here are the bottom five: U.S. Chamber of Commerce; American Petroleum Institute; American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity; National Mining Association; and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Check out the full list here.

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mike davis says tee'd up trump win:

In the Midwest the 2010 Tea Party victories brought a new generation of feral Republicans to power, many of them groomed by far-right think tanks such as Indiana’s Policy Review Foundation (once headed by Mike Pence), Michigan’s Mackinac Center, Wisconsin’s MacIver Institute, and Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment, all of them spoiling for a fight to the death with the region’s public-sector unions and progressive big-city governments. Coordinating through the State Policy Network (sixty-five conservative think tanks) and the American Legislative Exchange Council, they launched campaigns to destroy public-sector bargaining rights, defund unions through right-to-work laws, and privatize public education through vouchers.

They focused in other words on increasing their structural and legal advantages in ways that Democrats would find difficult, even impossible to roll back. Unions and students, of course, conducted an epic resistance in Wisconsin but were unable to recall Scott Walker, in large part because of the lackluster character of the Democratic candidate. In Ohio the unions were more successful and repealed right-to-work by referendum, but in Indiana, Michigan and West Virginia, Republican majorities rammed through right-to-work and in Michigan, a Mackinac Center-inspired receivership for Detroit’s schools.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/the-great-god-trump-and-the-white-working-class

http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/07/20/big-coal-burns-bright-alec-conference

...But Big Coal, which drives ALEC’s energy and anti-environmental model policies, is burning bright for him now. The fracking industries and king coal producers Noble Energy and ARCO dominated the first day of the 44th ALEC conference. The terms “clean coal” and “clean fossil fuels,” oxymorons if I ever heard one, were uttered so many times by the gas and oil industry that I lost count.  And dirty coal dominated the day, with the gas and oil industry, including ExxonMobil, paying tens of thousands of dollars to host the first lunch and an entire afternoon of workshops.

The big coal producers can barely contain their glee at the gutting of environmental policies rolling out of the White House.  At the opening lunch, Noble Energy executive Chip Rimer extolled that the “oil and gas industry is an example of what good policies can do.”

At the afternoon workshops paying homage to fossil fuels, a Colorado State Senator exclaimed how “great” it is to see the federal government shifting back to fossil fuels.  Yikes.  A Colorado Commissioner talked about burdensome, “purely political” state regulations while simultaneously bemoaning that some of her constituents are living surrounded by intrusive sound barriers erected by the fracking industry.  Exactly whose rights are being infringed upon?

A gas and oil representative lamented that all the public hears about is when something goes wrong, like the “Firestone event.”  Turns out the “Firestone event” was a deadly house explosion that recently occurred in Firestone, Colorado where two people were killed.  The conflagration was caused when a well owned by Anadarko Petroleum was still attached to an abandoned, leaking gas line. Anadarko, a big fracking company, is a sponsor of the ALEC conference. What a nuisance that the public remembers such an event and that the state would step in to require additional safety precautions!

Renewable energy technologies are the enemy at ALEC. The Colorado Senator stated that renewable energies can’t even be considered an industry because of the subsidies needed and because “we can’t afford charities.”  Totally ignored are the massive public subsidies handed out to the gas and oil industry.  Even one of the presenters had to remind the audience that the fracking industry had received billions of dollars in public subsidies. You could hear a pin drop in response.

And on the docket today is the consideration by the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force of a model policy resolution condemning Property-Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs, pushed by Americans for Tax Reform.  PACE programs allow property owners to receive low-cost commercial loans to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects with long-term repayment options.

Sigh.  So much for the free market.

Learn more about what’s on the agenda at this ALEC conference at ExposedbyCMD.org.

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http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/07/23/the-alec-swampland

by ct

Though ALEC has an uneasy relationship with President Trump, they haven’t hesitated in adopting his “drain the swamp” rhetoric when extolling their plans to amend the federal constitution, repeal workers’ rights or gut social safety net programs.  Trump keeps filling his “swamp” with cronies, political insiders and the corporate lobbyists that also populate the ALEC swamp.

One of these lobbyists, working for the behemoth Chinese online retailer Alibaba, asked me to communicate information about his company to my (presumably male) boss.  When I replied that I am a legislator, he looked me up and down incredulously until I replied “They let women be legislators now.”  He didn’t speak to me again.

Experiencing ALEC is like diving into a swamp inhabited by creatures of the past. ALEC pushes policies that take us back to a federal government sitting on the sidelines while people suffered and starved, drank contaminated water and sustained injuries at work with no recourse.  They are still lamenting the 1965 law that created the Medicaid and Medicare programs, as this, according to Avik Roy of the conservative Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, was the “real government takeover of health care.”

So ALEC is trying to backdoor these rollbacks by calling for a first ever Article V constitutional convention to cut federal spending and limit federal authority. ALEC’s Article V constitutional convention push is really a hissy fit of the far right.  They are angry at their inability to persuade Congressional Republicans to gut critical, popular social safety net programs and direct the resulting savings towards massive tax cuts for their corporate buddies and wealthy friends. And ALEC members, as indicated in the Health Taskforce, are besides themselves about Congress’ seeming inability to repeal the Affordable Care Act and shrink Medicaid, which they called for yesterday in two unanimously adopted resolutions.

ALEC’s real goal is preventing the federal government from providing health care and most other things in the first place. And they are working diligently, with the Balance Budget Amendment Taskforce (BBAT) and the Convention of States (COS), to do just that by corralling 34 states to call for an Article V Constitutional Convention.

But divisions have emerged, a rarity in ALEC land.  The BBAT wants a convention to adopt amendments specifically requiring a federal balance budget.  They believe that 27 states out of the 34 needed, have already passed resolutions calling for such a constitutional convention.

The Convention of States (COS) project, launched at the 2013 annual ALEC conference by tea partier Mark Meckler, aims at a broader constitutional convention to pass amendments to institute term limits, and in general, limit the spending and authority of the federal government.  Twelve states have passed resolutions calling for this type of constitutional convention.

I couldn’t help but compare Meckler’s talk this week to his 2013 presentation at my first ALEC conference, as he has since been buffed, shined and suited up.  His message is no longer about leading a revolution, but rather restoring the constitution.  He concludes with the same hard sell for state legislators to embrace our front-line role in defending liberty and “be who the founders expected you to be.”  And Meckler’s solution if legislators don’t go along?  “Tell your colleagues they are willing dupes for George Soros and the radical left.”

When asked by a Michigan legislator why COS doesn’t just join the BBAT and get that done first, the divisions between the two efforts emerged, something rarely seen in ALEC land. The COS folks believe that the authority of the federal government is the disease which must be cured, and the spending is but a symptom.

A representative from Pennsylvania added the latest rallying cry to the effort—repealing the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and allowing state legislatures to once again choose U.S. Senators.  Meckler responded that it’s more politically feasible to advance a constitutional amendment that U.S. Senators will be controlled by state legislatures.

In the meantime, the next stop for this entire effort is Arizona, where that state legislature has called for a September Convention of States.  When I asked Arizona Rep. Don Shooter about this gathering, he stated that they intend to pass federal constitutional amendments they will ask Congress to consider.  Though he knows Congress won’t act, that underscores the point.

Let’s hope the public won’t go along with this ALEC act which could substantially harm millions of individuals and families throughout our country.