ALEC to Right-Wing Bloggers: We Need Your Help! 18APR12 & ColorOfChange Applauds Yum Brand's Decision to End its Membership in ALEC 19APR12

I have State Farm auto insurance, have been with them for over 30 years, also have my renters insurance with them. I just called my agent here in Herndon, VA and asked him when State Farm is going to end it's association with alec as it may have an impact on whether or not I renew my policies with them in May. He actually was not aware of the controversy and said he will contact the corp offices in Bloomington, IL and will get back to me. He did want more information on alec, I directed him to TheColorOfChange.org . The companies who have dropped alec so far are Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell & Pizza Hut),  McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Mars Inc., Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Intuit, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Reed Elsevier (owner of LexisNexis and publisher of science and health information), American Traffic Solutions and Arizona Public Service. This article from Mother Jones on alec seeking the help of right-wing bloggers to stop the flow of companies leaving them due to public pressure, followed by a statement on the anti-alec campaign from ColorOfChange......

—By Andy Kroll

Portland Action Lab.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, the once-obscure organization that pairs corporations with state lawmakers to draft pro-business and often anti-union legislation for the state level, is in damage control mode. Corporate members such as McDonald's, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Mars, Inc. have cut ties with ALEC after taking heat from a coalition of progressive groups angry over ALEC's "discriminatory" voter ID bills and controversial "Stand Your Ground" self-defense legislation that figures into the Trayvon Martin shooting in central Florida.
To push back, ALEC has turned to the conservative blogosphere for help. As PR Watch reported, Caitlyn Korb, ALEC's director of external relations, told attendees at a Heritage Foundation "Bloggers Briefing" on Tuesday that the campaign against ALEC was "part of a wider effort to shut all of us down." She asked the bloggers for "any and all institutional support" in ALEC's fight against progressive groups, especially when it came to social media. "We're getting absolutely killed in social media venues—Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest," she said. "Any and all new media support you guys can provide would be so helpful, not just to us but to average people who don't know much about this fight but are seeing us really get heavily attacked with very little opposition."
Korb educated the bloggers with a handout listing ALEC's positions on a range of issues. PR Watch, one of ALEC's loudest critics, described the handout as "riddled with errors." Here's a list of ALEC statements followed by PR Watch's responses in italics:

• "The potential solutions discussed at ALEC focus on free markets, limited government, and constitutional division of powers between the federal and state governments." It is hard to discern what voter suppression bills, tax breaks for big tobacco, bans on unionization, protections for companies whose products injure or kill, and "Stand Your Ground/Kill at Will" laws have to do with free markets.
  
  
• "The organization respects diversity of thought; it is a non-partisan resource for its members, which include more than 2,000 Republican and Democratic state legislators." Diversity of thought apparently refers to Republicans talking to Republicans. Although touted as "nonpartisan," when CMD launched ALEC Exposed, out of 104 legislators in leadership positions in ALEC, only one was a Democrat. It's hard to believe that ALEC phone briefs on redistricting are totally nonpartisan.
   
• "Unlike in many private sector groups that offer model legislation, elected state legislators fully control ALEC’s model legislation process." As ALEC's public Task Force Operating Procedures" (PDF, p. 8) and other documents reveal, corporate members vote alongside legislators in ALEC task forces.
   
• "Each state legislator and their constituents then decide which solutions are best for them and their states." For the most part, constituents have no way of knowing that corporations wrote or approved ALEC legislation behind closed doors.

Blogger outreach isn't ALEC's only response to the campaign against it. ALEC has issued a handful of statements decrying the "coordinated and well-funded intimidation campaign" against it and pledging to keep pushing its agenda. In what some progressives touted as a victory, ALEC announced this week that it is eliminating of its "Public Safety and Elections" task force, the group that pushed voter ID bills as well as Stand Your Ground laws. Korb said ALEC will soon launch a new website called "I Stand With ALEC" to rally support. "We need to start fighting back," she said.
The progressive groups waging war on ALEC, meanwhile, have no plans of letting up. "Corporate membership in ALEC isn't just destructive to democracy, it's also bad for business," Michael Keegan, president of People for the American Way, said last week. "Corporations that currently support ALEC have a choice to make: They can continue to underwrite reckless assaults on our rights and wellbeing, or they can stand up for their customers by leaving ALEC immediately."

Andy Kroll

Reporter

Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips and insights at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. Follow him on Twitter here. RSS | Twitter

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  http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/04/alec-bloggers-blue-cross-heritage 

  ColorOfChange Applauds Yum Brand's Decision to End its Membership in ALEC

  Owner of KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut Announces It Has Left the American Legislative Exchange Council

  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
  Contact: Timothy K. Rusch
  tim@fitzgibbonmedia.com
  New York, NY - The following is a statement from ColorOfChange.org Executive Director Rashad Robinson:
  "This week, ColorOfChange members have been calling executives at Yum! Brands to ask the company to end its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Today, employees in Yum! Brands' corporate headquarters have told our members and ColorOfChange staff that the company has in fact dropped ALEC. In doing so, the operator of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell has restored our belief that it stands in favor of crafting legislation in view of the public, rather than behind closed doors.
  "We sent CEO David Novak's office a letter last year expressing our concerns about ALEC's role in voter suppression, and in early February received a noncommittal response from James Fripp, the company's Senior Director of Global Diversity & Inclusion. That letter said that Yum! was not part of ALEC's Private Enterprise Board, but did not communicate that the company had severed ties completely with the conservative policy group.
  "Now we know that Yum! Brands has joined the 11 other companies that have announced in recent weeks that they're no longer members of ALEC. These companies are McDonald's, Wendy's, Mars Inc., Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Intuit, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Reed Elsevier (owner of LexisNexis and publisher of science and health information), American Traffic Solutions and Arizona Public Service.
  "We want to thank these companies for making the right decision, and we want to thank ColorOfChange members and our partners. We continue to call on all major corporations to stop funding ALEC given its involvement in voter suppression. Our members and allied groups are prepared to hold accountable companies that continue to associate themselves with an organization that has attacked voting rights, causing irreparable damage nationwide."
  The tragedy of Trayvon Martin's death – and the so-called "stand your ground" law that helped his killer evade arrest for more than a month – is another example of how ALEC's agenda is dangerous for people of color. The NRA and ALEC exported Florida's “stand your ground” law to more than 20 states across the country, jeopardizing the safety of Americans nationwide.
  ColorOfChange members signed an earlier petition targeting ALEC’s corporate partners for their role in suppressing Black votes. The petition can be found here: http://www.colorofchange.org/campaign/alec/
  In addition, more than 170,000 ColorOfChange members have signed the petition calling on the Department of Justice to take over the Trayvon Martin case, arrest Martin's killer, and launch an independent investigation into the Sanford police department's mishandling of the case. The petition can be found here:
  http://www.colorofchange.org/campaign/trayvon/
  http://colorofchange.org/press/releases/2012/4/19/colorofchange-applauds-yum-brands-decision-end-its/