Help:Contents

From Alec Exposed

Welcome to ALEC Exposed!

You can read the bills and analysis without signing up to be a contributing editor.

You can also help by writing about the bills or writing about your state's experience with the bills, on this website, which is a collaborative wiki like Wikipedia but more specialized. Please post your discoveries about individual bills based ALEC's "model" legislation in your state to this wiki, using the format described below.

You can also join us in documenting information about the corporations, politicians, and others involved in ALEC through our sister website, SourceWatch.org, which focuses on corporations and people trying to influence the media and our democracy. To do that, please visit our sister site SourceWatch and add to our articles there, or start a new article of your own.

Please share your work with fellow journalists, bloggers, colleagues, or friends. Expand awareness in your social network through sites like Facebook. On Twitter, make sure to tag your contributions with the #ALECexposed hash tag so that others in your state and around the country can learn from your work! You can also start a discussion on our Community Discussion page.

Join the effort to expose ALEC and help write history.

Post Articles to ALEC Exposed

Write about a Bill

• Identify bills from the collection of bills introduced in your state or that you are interested in. Help us keep this wiki up-to-date. This is a collaborative project and relies on the contributions of citizens on the ground in states throughout the country. Your expertise is welcome and, indeed, completely necessary to make this project effective!

• Start by searching for your bill in the search box in the upper right-hand corner of the wiki. If a page has already been created for that bill, that will show first in the results. If not, the first result will be a red link like the following:

"Create the page 'Paycheck Protection Act' on this wiki!"

Click this link and it will take you to a new page for you to start your article.

• Make sure to use internal links when applicable. For instance, when referring to a subject page on ALEC Exposed from within the ALEC wiki entries, use the "double bracket"

  ("[[" and "]]")

  symbols. For example,

  [[Tort Reform, Corporate Liability and the Rights of Injured Americans]]

  becomes Tort Reform, Corporate Liability and the Rights of Injured Americans and

  [[Taxes and Budgets]]

  shows as Taxes and Budgets.

Write about Your State

• Write about ALEC members and ALEC-modeled bills in your state. You can also start -- or add to -- an article focused on your state: what ALEC-modeled bills have passed in your state, which of your legislators are ALEC members, and what corporations you've discovered are rewriting laws in your state through ALEC.
• Start by searching for your state in the search box in the upper right-hand corner of the wiki. If a page has already been started for your state, that will show first in the results. If not, the first result will be a red link like the following:

"Create the page 'ALEC in Ohio' on this wiki!"

Click this link and it will take you to a new page for you to start your article.

Write about Legislators, Corporations, Groups, or Others

• Add information about people, names, lobbyists, lobbying firms, politicians and others that are vital to telling the story of how ALEC has affected your schools, neighborhoods, cities, universities, states, etc., to SourceWatch. SourceWatch is a sister site to ALEC Exposed that focuses on the people, corporations, and other names behind the news.

• Before starting a new article on SourceWatch, check to see if an article already exists on that topic. Perhaps the name or corporation you want to create a page for is already mentioned on a different SourceWatch page. If SourceWatch contains nothing on a corporation, politician, organization, lobbying group, etc., that you would like to create an entry for, simply type in that name in the SourceWatch “search” function. A link should appear to "create this page," like the following:

"There is no page titled 'Freedom Foundation.' You can create this page."

Click this link and it will take you to a new edit page where you can start your article.

• Once you've created or edited these SourceWatch articles, link to them externally when contributing to ALEC Exposed wiki entries.

Ground Rules

Be Clear

• Don't bury the lead! We ask you to put the important material first, and then the rest in descending order of importance. Don't bury the lead and waste "above-the-fold" space on minutiae.

• Strive for brevity. Concise, attention-catching writing, journalistic-style, is preferable to long-winded academic-style writing. Avoid run-on sentences.

• Use a clear style. Think about the writing that you would like to read as someone going to ALEC Exposed and/or SourceWatch for the very first time. Avoid wonky jargon and gear your writing for a general audience, not strictly policy experts.

Be Accurate

• Focus on the facts. We do not require a "neutral point of view." We are seeking editors concerned about ALEC.

• Be accurate. The standard for adding information to this collaborative site is that it be accurate and consistent with the mission of this site.

• Cite sources. This site is focused on building core information on ALEC's activities to help the American people understand this organization and to aid journalists and activists. Accordingly, we are seeking primary sources as well as other documentation to build the record of the breadth and depth of ALEC's efforts to rewrite the laws governing our lives and our democracy, in states across the country and in Congress. See below for the syntax to do this. An example of an external link to a webpage can be seen below:

<ref>[http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Citizens_United Citizens United], SourceWatch.org, Accessed May 29, 2011</ref>

Here is another example of how this format is best used:

On February 23, 2011, New Hampshire's overwhelmingly Republican House of Representatives voted to support HB 519, a bill that would repeal participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has cut [[greenhouse gas]] emissions and other pollution and made improvements in [[energy efficiency]]. The bill passed by a nearly party-line vote of 246 to 104 (13 Republicans voted against, two Democrats for). The bill has to pass through the finance committee before a final house vote and consideration by the senate. Gov. John Lynch (D-NH), who has touted the success of RGGI in making the air healthier while increasing economic prosperity, is expected to veto the bill, but Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature. The bill was aided by robocalls from the Koch-funded [[Americans for Prosperity]] group, which flooded the state with calls in support the bill. Rep. Sandra Keans (D-Rochester), told the ''Nashua Telegraph'' that AFP’s calls were “sleazy” and deliberately false: “I have never seen such a cowardly perpetration pulled on the citizens of New Hampshire."<ref>Joe Romm [http://climateprogress.org/2011/02/28/koch-tea-party-climate-denial-bill-new-hampshire-man-cow-global-warming/#more-43550 "New Hampshire: “Neither man nor cow is responsible for global warming”] Climate Progress (blog), February 28, 2011</ref>

Shows as:

On February 23, 2011, New Hampshire's overwhelmingly Republican House of Representatives voted to support HB 519, a bill that would repeal participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which has cut greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution and made improvements in energy efficiency. The bill passed by a nearly party-line vote of 246 to 104 (13 Republicans voted against, two Democrats for). The bill has to pass through the finance committee before a final house vote and consideration by the senate. Gov. John Lynch (D-NH), who has touted the success of RGGI in making the air healthier while increasing economic prosperity, is expected to veto the bill, but Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature. The bill was aided by robocalls from the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity group, which flooded the state with calls in support the bill. Rep. Sandra Keans (D-Rochester), told the Nashua Telegraph that AFP’s calls were “sleazy” and deliberately false: “I have never seen such a cowardly perpetration pulled on the citizens of New Hampshire."^[1]

See the References section at the bottom of the page for the reference, just as you would on your wiki article.

• Consult our SourceWatch Research Guides for how to do the meticulous research necessary to create good SourceWatch and/or ALEC Exposed pages.

Be Organized

• Focus on the most important facets of the bill or other example you are writing about and be organized in your writing. For example, what is the bill and what does it do? What would it mean for the commonwealth of your state? Who stands to benefit and who stands to lose from this bill? Where has this bill been introduced? What other bills has it been combined with if you have seen it in omnibus-style legislation? Are there ongoing legislative battles surrounding this bill? If this “model” bill has become law, how has it affected you and your state?
  

These are all important questions to answer when writing wiki entries for bills. If you need an organizational guideline, look to other good SourceWatch and/or Wikipedia entries you have seen in the past and model your contributions after their well-organized contributions.

• Organization counts and can be the difference between keeping and losing a reader. Make sure to use

  “==”

  signs for sections, and

  “===”

  and

  “====”

  signs for subsequent sub-sections. For example, see below:

==Bill Name Goes Here==

===History===

====Related ALEC Bill====

====Sponsors or Co-Sponsors====

=====Campaign Donations by ALEC Corporations to Sponsors=====

==Effect of Bill==

References

1. ↑ Joe Romm "New Hampshire: “Neither man nor cow is responsible for global warming” Climate Progress (blog), February 28, 2011