ALEC is spreading its pro-corporate, pro-privatization agenda into the education space with greater abandon than before. ALEC-style “education reform” includes a push for the complete removal of school boards which would effectively block public input from decisions about schools. The Voters Legislative Transparency Project recently...

Modernization. It sounds so progressive, so forward-thinking.  Why settle for what you have when you can have something more modern, right?  When the word is used to frame anti-worker legislation as inescapably helpful, however, it enables politicians to turn hackneyed arguments into news cycle fodder and to inch ever closer to reversing...

In 1996, President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich had their own “grand bargain”, an overhaul of the welfare system that created a set of guidelines allowing states to create their own rules in helping those most in need. The result 15 years later, sadly, was the percentage of poor Americans receiving Temporary Assistance ...

The story of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett begins with Pennsylvania unions being busted and ends with privatization in the name of “tax relief.” While the state’s money woes could easily be solved by higher taxation on corporations, Corbett is taking pages out of the American For Prosperity/ALEC playbook and demonizing...

The hits keep coming for transparency activists praying for the demise of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the über-conservative front group responsible for anti-union, pro-privatization and voter suppression legislation, among other ills. After massive members Coke, Pepsi and Kraft pulled out of the group, spokespeople for...

Minnesota’s Governor, Mark Dayton, is doing a really good job. As we have reported in the past months, he is trying to stimulate the state’s economy via expanded infrastructure and local hire and he has vowed to fight the newly radicalized Minnesota GOP by reaching across the aisle for bipartisan support. But what is going ...

The overt and immeasurable influence of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) over U.S. policy has been well-documented on this site and others. For the most part, little has been done legislatively to change this unfortunate fact. But a Madison, Wisconsin Democrat, Mark Pocan, has been circulating a bill that aims to rein ALEC in: ...