Minnesota Governor Calls Out Corporate Front Group ALEC, Vetoes Its Bills

[Report1212]

I'm glad at least one governor is standing up to ALEC.

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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a secretive corporate front group funded by Big Business that works to pass corporate-friendly bills in state legislatures. It has grown so powerful that it now has nearly one-third of all state legislators under its umbrella.
ALEC has worked with legislators to pass bills ranging from issues as diverse as stripping unionized workers of their rights to to making it harder for low-income citizens to vote. It is usually able to do so because it hands its corporate-written template bills to state legislators and gets them passed without any public scrutiny as to the origin of this legislation.
Late last week, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton (D) decided that corporate front groups like ALEC should not be able to write his state’s laws. Dayton decided to veto a series of “tort reform” bills that would’ve restricted the rights of citizens to sue to hold big corporations responsible. In a press conference discussing his vetoes, Dayton condemned ALEC for providing the templates for the bills. “I’ve found that Minnesotans do not want their laws written by the lobbyists of big corporations,” said Dayton. Watch it:

Read more: http://www.republicreport.org/2012/minnesota-governor-calls-out-corporate-front-group-alec-vetoes-its-bills/

[msongs]

1. at least there's ONE democrat not afraid of republicans lol nt

[Report1212]

2. Or really the corporate front groups trying to run the states

ALEC is mostly Republicans but really it's about the corporations writing the model bills, not ideology or party.

[Ikonoklast]

3. It's almost ALL about party, and the money that party gets for supporting ALEC.

"While ALEC maintains that it is a bipartisan conservative organization that is a partnership between legislators and the private sector, Democratic members were few and far between. The organization’s current six directors are all Republicans as are all seventeen of its board members. Its current twenty-four Private Enterprise Board Members come from major American companies in the pharmaceutical, consumer goods, energy, and other sectors. ALEC claims over two thousand individuals in its general membership drawn from more than one-third of state legislators across the United States but will not divulge who those members are, so it is impossible to confirm its membership’s political affiliations."


http://adademocrats.org/2011/05/

Republicans at the state level are little more than paid-for useful tools which ALEC implements the corporate agenda.