Template:ALEC News
ALEC News |
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Betsy DeVos Ethics Report Reveals Ties to Student Debt Collection Firm The report, available here, details some 102 companies that might pose a conflict of interest for DeVos and sheds new light on the nominee’s investments and ethics. While most Secretaries of Education have an extensive resume as school administrators or as educators, DeVos has neither. DeVos is married to the billionaire heir to the Amway fortune, Dick DeVos. Together they have spent millions advancing a radical school privatization agenda, including taxpayer vouchers for private and religious schools, and electing politicians across the nation willing to advance that agenda. DeVos was asked about her experience for the job by Democratic senators who were only allowed 5 minutes each. Read the rest of this item here. Scott Pruitt: Trump’s Pick for EPA Image: Gage Skidmore CC BY SA 2.0 Pruitt was the subject of a Pulitzer prize winning New York Times investigation in 2014 ("Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General") which described "the unprecedented, secretive alliance that Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation's top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda". He describes himself as "a leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda." Many fossil fuel funded groups responded to Pruitt's nomination with delight. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) also expressed its own support for Pruitt, who is a former ALEC member, stressing that he would "work constructively with industry" as well as the states to "spur economic growth." Read the rest of this item here. Exxon Illegally Funded ALEC Under Tillerson’s Tenure, CMD Tells Committee Hearing on the Nomination of Rex Tillerson to Be U.S. Secretary of State. Dear Chairman Corker, Ranking Member Cardin and Members of the Committee: The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) would like to bring your attention a matter of serious concern regarding the nomination of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be U.S. Secretary of State. We would also respectfully request that this letter be included in the hearing record on his nomination, which we oppose. For more than a decade under Mr. Tillerson’s tenure, Exxon has poured millions of dollars into nonprofit organizations in order to undermine public confidence in climate science and promote its anti-regulatory agenda. Read the rest of this item here. ALEC Pay to Play on Display in Washington, DC I first attended an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) winter policy meeting in 2014. There I learned that many so-called "model bills" in the ALEC library had become law in my state of Wisconsin. These include the "cable competition" (deregulation) bill, the "castle doctrine" allowing home owners to shoot intruders, and parts of a bill to make it harder for young, old, and poor people to vote. Upon my return home, I found that corporate ideas flogged by luncheon sponsors while we ate and promoted at lobbyist tables between sessions at the 2014 meeting had subsequently followed the same well-worn path to "model bills," then state law. Read the rest of this item here. |