2012 29
Six More Monster Corporations Leave ALEC
The unpopularity of laws crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has brought the total number of companies abandoning the hyper-corporate lobby to 38. General Electric, Western Union, Sprint Nextel, the maker of Norton anti-virus Symantec, Entergy, and Reckitt Benckiser Group (maker of a wide range of products from French’s Mustard to Lysol) last week disassociated from the cancerous policy house.
For these companies, the loss of consumers and/or integrity appears to outweigh the importance of having more underhanded influence on Capitol Hill.
According to Color of Change (via The Center for Media and Democracy), some of the latest defectors had leaderships roles in the organization in recent years:
GE told the online civil rights organization ColorofChange.org (CoC) that it decided not to renew its ALEC membership in July 2012. The company was a member of ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force as of March 2011.
Tim Daly, senior vice president for global public policy at Western Union, told CoC that the company was only an ALEC member in 2011 and chose not to renew in May 2012. Western Union was a member of ALEC’s Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force as of June 2011.
Ralph Reid, vice president of corporate responsibility at Sprint Nextel, told CoC that the company did not renew its ALEC membership in 2012. Sprint was a member of ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force as of July 2011.
Symantec is also listed as a member of ALEC’s Communications and Technology internal task force directory in July 2011, but Symantec’s vice president of global government affairs, Cheri McGuire, told CoC that the company’s membership expired June 2010 and was not renewed.
Reckitt Benckiser told CoC that it is no longer an ALEC member. It had been a member of the Health and Human Services Task Force and Public Safety and Elections Task Force as of June 2011.
Last but not least, Entergy said in a letter to Walden Asset Management that neither it nor any of its subsidiaries is currently a member of ALEC, nor has it funded ALEC since 2011. Entergy had been a member of ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force as of June 2011.
ALECexposed, the group largely responsible for bringing ALEC’s dubious legislative impact to the fore, is targeting EBay as it’s next prospective defector.
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