About ALEC Exposed
Welcome to the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org!
On July 13, 2011, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) unveiled this trove of over 800 "model" bills and resolutions secretly voted on by corporations and politicians through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). These bills reveal the corporate collaboration reshaping our democracy, state by state.
ALEC bills, which largely benefit the organization’s corporate members, have been introduced in legislatures in every state—but without disclosing to the public that corporations previously drafted or voted on them through ALEC.
Before our publication of this trove of bills, it has been difficult to trace the numerous controversial and extreme provisions popping up in legislatures across the country directly to ALEC and its corporate underwriters.
The Center obtained copies of the bills after one of the thousands of people with access shared them, and a whistleblower provided a copy to the Center.
We have analyzed and marked up the bills and resolutions to help readers understand what the bills do, beyond the PR in the names of bills. We share them to help the public identify the legislation in their state and the wide extent of the agenda to rewrite our rights by the corporations that bankroll ALEC.
These bills and resolutions reach into almost every area of American life: worker and consumer rights, education, the rights of Americans injured or killed by corporations, taxes, health care, immigration, and the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. Only by seeing the depth and breadth and language of the bills can one fully understand the power and sweep of corporate influence behind the scenes on bills affecting the rights and future of every American in every single state.
Since the launch of this website in July 2011, CMD has been honored with three investigative journalism awards for our ALEC Exposed project: the "Sidney Award" for Investigative Journalism, along with The Nation magazine, in September 2011; the "Izzy Award" for outstanding achievement in independent media, along with Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, who covered the uprising in Egypt from the ground; and most recently, the "Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award" from Cultural and Critical Studies Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication -- an honor shared with previous award-winners Molly Ivins, I.F. "Izzy" Stone, Noam Chomsky, Studs Terkel, and Bill Moyers.
Please join us in helping to expose ALEC, its corporations and politicians, and how money has corrupted the democratic process. You can read the bills without signing up to be a contributing editor of this site. But, we hope readers will team up with reporters to dig through the cache of documents and share the truth with others. (Here's how.)
To learn more about ALEC and this project, click here for an open letter from Lisa Graves, the executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, publisher of ALEC Exposed.
Lisa Graves on ALEC & Koch |
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Listen to Lisa Graves discuss ALEC.
Watch other ALEC Exposed experts here. |
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