Reply #397: MT Inside the Bad Idea Factory on Montana from Cowgirl Blog Sep 2 - LIST of MT ALEC Members!

[Hector Solon]

Lot of work in this piece which includes a pretty solid list of Montana ALEC members and LINKS to ALEC models in MT bills.

Inside the Bad Idea Factory
Montana Cowgirl
Sept 2, 2011
http://mtcowgirl.com/2011/09/02/inside-the-bad-idea-factory/#comments

CLIPS:

The bad ideas and nutty legislation proposed in the Montana legislature certainly did not come from Montana constituents, and did not even (always) originate in the muddled minds of TEA Party Republicans. Instead, many of the bad bills came from an out-of-state hard right strategy group known as the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC.

In many cases however, the greater goals appear to be electoral. Take the voter suppression proposal, a bill that (if it wasn’t vetoed) would have helped Republicans keep more young Montanans, seniors, and low-income people living in isolated areas from voting. Here’s the model ALEC Model bill to require a current photo ID to vote, and here’s the Montana legislative bill.
http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/2011/billhtml/HB0152.htm

The other way ALEC advances the GOP electoral strategy is by forcing dems to take tough votes on issues that the republicans will then use to campaign against them. Take for example, the ALEC bill to opt out of health care reform. Here is the model ALEC bill for a constitutional amendment to allow states to opt-out and here’s the Montana legislative version.
http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/2011/billpdf/HB0206.pdf

Nice job out there Cowgirl! There are more ALEC models and members no doubt.