New Bill Berkowitz piece on ALEC (Unaccustomed to Hot Seat, ALEC Talks) quotes DU's Hector Solon

[highplainsdem]

Who also uses the name Hector Solon at Daily Kos, but he posts about ALEC here at DU as well, especially in the long compilation topic on the American Legislative Exchange Council that was started over a month ago and now has over 200 replies with hundreds of links, a few dozen of those from HS.


Bill Berkowitz's new column at The Smirking Chimp is the third in a series on ALEC (replies 173 and 190 in the compilation topic link to the first two parts, and there are direct links from the new article).

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/bill-berkowitz/35440/unaccustomed-to-hot-seat-alec-talks

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has never been, or desired to be, a household name. In fact, for nearly forty years it has been more comfortable working behind the scenes to influence public policy. However, when Wisconsin's Republican Governor Scott Walker launched his anti-public-sector worker/anti-middle-class crusade earlier this year, ALEC was dragged into the fight.

In a telephone interview, Raegan Weber, ALEC's Senior Director for Public Affairs, denied that ALEC has had anything to do with legislation dealing with public sector unions in either Wisconsin or Ohio. Nevertheless, she admitted that the organization hadn't "seen this kind of attention before," and she "thought it was time to answer our critics." Weber, who has been on the job since October 2010, told me that she made "a recommendation to the executive director, and the leadership agreed" that the organization should issue a statement.

-snip-

Hector Solon has been following and helping to power the debate over ALEC's activities. In a recent post at Daily Kos titled "UPDATED: American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Releases FULL Donor and Membership Lists," Solon pointed out that "All Americans should be concerned about ALEC's subversion of basic democratic principles through activities producing content for bills and draft legislation, and influencing hundreds of elected officials in multiple states across the Country."

-snip-

While being careful not to attack Weber personally, Solon maintained that her resume "shows a very common pattern found in the biographies of many of the couple dozen staffers directly employed by ALEC. Most have both significant corporate business experience in a variety of industries, and state legislative work experience. Many have also time early on as interns or staffers in Republican organizations or directly at the Heritage Foundation, or one of many of the state-level conservative think tanks and conservative colleges with close relationships to Heritage."

-snip-

Kudos to Hector Solon! :yourock:

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. knr

[highplainsdem]

2. Thanks!

[WhiteTara]

3. kick

go Hector :yourock: