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Coca-Cola quit ALEC; Georgia candidates should do the same

So far, four major corporate sponsors of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have indicated they will not renew their memberships to the controversial conservative organization. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola was the first corporate member to announce its decision publicly. Others who have followed include accounting software maker Intuit, PepsiCo, and Kraft Foods, Inc.

Better Georgia calls on every candidate for and member of the General Assembly to terminate his or her ALEC membership or pledge to refuse a membership, if elected. Among Georgia politicians with known ties to ALEC:

  • Sen. Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-21), ALEC State Chairman, recipient of ALEC’s 2011 State Chair of the Year Award
  • Rep. Calvin Hill, Jr. (R-21), ALEC State Chairman
  • Sen. Nan Orrock (D-36), Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force
  • Sen. Don Balfour (R-9)
  • Rep. Terry England (R-108), ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force
  • Rep. Michael Harden (R-28), Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force

A complete list of Georgia’s legislators with known ties to ALEC can be found here:

http://bttrga.us/ALECGA

“If ALEC is too toxic for Coca-Cola, our elected officials shouldn’t go near the group,” said Bryan Long, executive director of Better Georgia. “There are very few no-brainers in politics but quitting ALEC is one of them. I can’t think of a single reason a politician would want to stand on the side of a shadowy corporate legislative club instead of standing with voters in their own districts.”

Until last year, few people outside of conservative political circles knew anything about the mysterious group. What has been discovered is that ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that.

Behind closed doors with ALEC, corporations like UPS and Coca-Cola give state legislators “model legislation” that directly benefits their bottom line. The legislators then advocate for these ghostwritten bills without the public ever knowing who wrote the bill. Unless they forget to edit properly, as happened recently in Florida.

ALEC’s legislation promotes the disenfranchisement of American voters through “Voter ID” laws, which discriminate against racial minorities and hurt poor people and those who live in rural areas. ALEC also promotes privatizing public education, privatizing prisons. The group creates tax giveaways to the corporations that write the laws and give tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest families, which run the corporations. ALEC also works to limit workers rights, drain labor unions of resources for protecting employees and undermine consumer protections.

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