I don’t have time to comment on this particularly, but wanted to flag it for myself for future reference. Ben Skirvin at State Impact has a blog post discussing the Indiana legislators associated with the American Legislative Exchange Council — an organization in which I’m interested because it provides pre-packaged right-wing legislative proposals.
Rep. Bob Boehning is listed most prominently, but also: Rep. Dave Frizzel (national chairman), Sen. Jim Buck (tax & fiscal policy committee chair), and Rep. David Wolkins (energy, environment and agriculture committee). The blog post cites Eric Bradner’s article in the Evansville Courier Press and quotes a passage indicating that about 29 legislators are members. State Education Superintendent, Tony Bennett, gave a keynote speech earlier this year (presumably because he wouldn’t have to answer questions from teachers in that forum.)
“…I’m interested because it provides pre-packaged right-wing legislative proposals.”
I’m sorry…I’m not sure why this is such a big deal. Countless interest groups on the right and left have offered model legislation and has done so for decades. Yet ALEC doing it is treated as some sort of evil conspiracy? I don’t get it.
I don’t think anybody said “evil”.
If proposals are coming out of conservative think tanks, I’d like to know about it. Just like I prefer to know about it when proposals are coming from the Uniform Law Commissioners. I think it’s useful for evaluating legislation when you know where it’s coming from. You can sometimes figure out what the law is attempting to accomplish if you then ask “why would that organization want this.” Doesn’t make it per se bad; though.
For ALEC bills, my instincts would be to see if and how proposed legislation enriches the rich or empowers the powerful.