American Legislative Exchange Council

The Heritage Foundation, 1973.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, 1973.

The Cato Institute, 1977.

The Manhattan Institute, 1977.

And while some lament the difficulty of getting government to take action, the system was designed to diffuse power.

Jonathan Williams from the American Legislative Exchange Council has an American Radio Journal commentary.

I'm Lowman Henry, and welcome to American Radio Journal.

From a lack of inventory to high interest rates, getting into a new home has become challenging.

Catch me right back here next week on another edition of American Radio Journal.

Our government system of checks and balances can be frustrating, but they minimize the impact of bad public policies.

So says Jonathan Williams from the American Legislative Exchange Council on this American Radio Journal commentary.

Calls for a larger federal government are hardly new.

And I want you to understand because I, I happen to know this.

Well, how do I know this? How do I know that, that people like, like the Koch brothers and Soros are funding the legislation and doing this on a very nefarious agenda? Well, because the, the American Legislative Exchange Council, it goes by ALEC, is, is an organization that has almost unlimited power in your state and local elections, and they create legislation that they wash, rinse, and repeat and drop into dozens of states to force the federal government to adopt that standard, because federal has to have supremacy, and they, they see when an idea or law is being proliferated that they should step in and do the same.

Now, where did I get my knowledge? Well, I went to Arizona.

Remember I told you there were three states where private equity can really...

And I said, "What do you mean?" I had brought all these people, all these small business owners from all over the company to come and be there for it.

We were all there wa- ready and waiting.

A letter had arrived the night before from the American Legislative Exchange Council denouncing the legislation, saying it wasn't pro-corporate, that it was a business killer.

Because if businesses can't defraud veterans, what kind of country are we living in? And that any Republican who voted for my bill would be primaried in the next election cycle with Koch brothers funding.

They will vote for any party if they say they'll keep data centers out of their place.

Well, ALEC and the Koch brothers at the American Legislative Exchange Council had a meeting last year, and they said that they were going to get the Rust Belt to take all the data centers because Appalachia always bears the downside of everything that happens in America and has for generations.

And they said, "If we make them take coal-powered generators, Appalachia will take all the data centers, and they can get all the water rights." There's a ton of water in Appalachia, by the way.

There's no droughts here.

I also want to turn to a recent backlash against water protectors and against the climate justice movement.

There was a legislative initiative led by the American Legislative Exchange Council called the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act, which is model legislation that it's planned to go through state legislators to ban and to make illegal the divestment from fossil fuel companies as a form of energy discrimination.

If you're challenging a quarter of greenhouse emissions from both Canada and the United States against one of the most violent and destructive industries in human history, of course there's going to be backlash.

Of course there's going to be punishment and revenge against those who have hit the bottom line of this capitalist society.

Um, we're already well on our way there.

Uh, you know, every year I, uh, I, I'm a, I'm the task force chair for the Federalism, Homeland Security and International Relations Task Force at ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, which is a, a gathering of conservative legislators from across the country.

But I'm the subcommittee chair for elections, and I've already brought a lot of bills that we've passed in Kansas to that organization to, to pass as model policy so people can pull it off the shelf.

But we've still got some other laws we need to pass.

Right.

The American Legislative Exchange Council.

Yes.

ALC is a huge part of this.