The land of the free

I have just been reading a rather depressing article in the NYRB about how rich people in the US are making sure that they get even richer. Part of this is cutting taxes, another part is moving what used to be public services to the private sector, where there are no unions to speak of and there are good profits to be made out of what are euphemistically called efficiency savings. Yet another part is to so arrange things that poor people vote for all this - which one might have thought tricky - but clearly not impossible in the land of the free - where, for example, the gerrymandering of congressional districts had been going on for a long time. I think the article said somewhere that there are no limits on how much rich people can spend on this kind of thing.

One of their devices is an organisation called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which appears to exist to promote the interests of corporate America (a reasonably proxy for the rich), with a focus on state legislatures. One of the services they offer is model legislation, which states can take off the shelf and apply with a minimum of change. Makes it easier for states to, for example, privatise their prisons or their schools.

ALEC is also said to be big into climate change denial. One supposes that there is more to be made from fracking than there is to be made from wind - although not obvious from where I sit why this should be so. So perhaps it is more a matter of sunk investments and vested interests.

However, when one goes to reference 1, under the criminal justice reform bit, one finds: '...The American Legislative Exchange Council is proud to be a leader on criminal justice reforms in the states. Since 2008, the ALEC task force on criminal justice reform, called the Justice Performance Project, has brought state legislators and stakeholders together to combat the trend of unforgiving and harsh criminal laws. ALEC members focus on new and innovative state policies that reduce prison populations, prioritize criminal justice spending and help rehabilitate and restore offenders’ lives...'. Which even I could sign up to. So while I dare say the general tenor of the NYRB article is about right, they ought to deal with this sort of thing too.

The other side has set up website called ALECexposed at reference 2 which tries to counter the stuff put out by the first one.

Inter alia, they are big into guns and the gun lobby. Which is said to include Walmart, which sells lots of them.

I was sorry to read that all the big ticket technology companies - Google (the people who, not so long ago, were proud to do no evil), Microsoft and so on - were paid up members of ALEC. Pleased to read at reference 2 that they are no longer.

PS: paranoia being fed by Edge starting to behave very oddly around the ALEC website, not caring to have me copy the address to reference 1. Has it smelt out a commie? Chrome seems to be a little more relaxed.

Reference 1: https://www.alec.org/.

Reference 2: https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed.