This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. ALEC is a powerful corporate front group that allows big corporations to help write legislation that it then delivers to state legislators across the country. The organization is so influential that as many as a third of all state legislators nationwide, mostly Republicans, are members of its legislative outreach network. Much of the nation’s most dangerous right wing legislation, like laws decimating collective bargaining and promoting climate denial, have come from ALEC.
Now, a source who attended ALEC’s annual meeting has passed on a list of its corporate financiers. The documents detail different levels of funding, ranging from “Presidential” to “Trustee” level sponsors. According to the source, “If the funding levels have not changed since last year’s meeting,” then that means that Presidential sponsors gave $100,000, Chairman sponsors gave $50,000, Vice-Chairman gave $25,000 and Director sponsors gave $10,000. Trustee-level sponsors appear to be new this year.
The following are the documents showing the large list of corporations financing the meeting. As you can see, they run the gamut from big polluters like BP to online retailers like Amazon.com to drug industry representatives from PhRMA to Koch Industries:
To learn more about ALEC, see the Center for Media and Democracy’s new website ALEC Exposed, which provides an easy way to search through the legislation that the front group has been promoting and passing in states around the country.
Financiers Of ALEC’s 38th Annual Meeting:
PRESIDENT LEVEL BP Reynolds American Takeda Pharmaceutical
CHAIRMAN LEVEL
VICE-CHAIRMAN LEVEL |
DIRECTOR LEVEL Amazon.com Atmos Energy BlueCross BlueShield Association CenturyLink Chesapeake Energy ConocoPhillips Dow Encana Energy Transfer Gulf States Toyota International Paper Jacobs Entertainment LouisianaTravel.com NetChoice QEP Resources StateNet TimeWarner WellPoint
TRUSTEE LEVEL |
Thank you for reading Truthout. Before you leave, we must appeal for your support.
Truthout is unlike most news publications; we’re nonprofit, independent, and free of corporate funding. Because of this, we can publish the boldly honest journalism you see from us – stories about and by grassroots activists, reports from the frontlines of social movements, and unapologetic critiques of the systemic forces that shape all of our lives.
Monied interests prevent other publications from confronting the worst injustices in our world. But Truthout remains a haven for transformative journalism in pursuit of justice.
We simply cannot do this without support from our readers. At this time, we’re appealing to add 30 monthly donors before the end of the day. If you can, please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly gift today.