Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress went to a lot of trouble to get the goods on ALEC at their annual meeting in New Orleans a few days ago. I urge everyone to read the report and watch the video on RawStory of ThinkProgress reporters getting thrown out of the conference by security.
TP also got hold of a list of ALEC's corporate sponsors. There are the usual suspects, big energy, big pharma, big retailers. But I was surprised to see the level of participation of non-US based international corporations, from England (British Petroleum-estimated contribution $100,000), France (Sanofi-estimated contribution $25,000), Germany (Bayer-estimated contribution $50,000), and Japan (Takeda-estimated contribution $100,000). Maybe I'm naive, but if we're concerned that American corporations are writing model legislation and then sending in their robopoliticians to do their bidding, shouldn't we be even more concerned that foreign corporations are doing the same thing? Can it even be said with a straight face that the legislative members of ALEC are representing American interests, when they are funded by foreign corporations to such a significant extent? Isn't this violating some oath of office somewhere?
Do the Tea Partiers know that some of their biggest funders aren't American? Are they ok with that?
TP's list of documented ALEC contributors for this year's conference over the fold.
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