Hank Johnson: “Yesterday I spoke about a secret organization called ALEC, also known as the American Legislative Exchange Council. I…”

“Yesterday I spoke about a secret organization called ALEC, also known as the American Legislative Exchange Council. I talked yesterday about how ALEC promotes model legislation written by its corporate members and disseminated to conservative State lawmakers around the country. The public, whose votes elect these lawmakers to represent them, are kept in the dark about the fact that their Representative member is a member of ALEC. The legislative member goes on various retreats and junkets. The ALEC corporate members paid tens of thousands of dollars a year to be members, whereas the legislators pay $50 a year. You can see the imbalance there. This is something that is funded by the corporations' special interests. The lawmakers, just to make it look good, have to pay $50 annually to join. We don't know who those lawmakers are, although we do know that 60 percent of the lawmakers in the entire United States of America are members of ALEC. The taxpayers are probably the ones who pay the annual membership fee with which the members are then connected to corporate interests by way of ALEC committees, and these committees produce the model legislation that is then introduced by these same member legislators in their respective legislatures. That was the way that the so-called Stand Your Ground law--but it's really a ``shoot first, ask questions later'' bill--began. That's how it started in Florida. It was an ALEC-produced bill.…”