Template:ALEC News

ALEC News

Koch Troops Queasy About Killing State and Local Tax Deduction to Fund Tax Breaks for the Rich The Koch brothers and their network of billionaire political spenders have made their marching orders to Republicans in Congress clear this year—kill the Affordable Care Act and pass sweeping new tax breaks for corporations and the top 1% or don’t come looking to us to bankroll your 2018 campaigns. But in order to execute those orders, lawmakers may have to pay a steep political price by eliminating health benefits and tax breaks that benefit millions of middle income voters as well as state and local governments. The Trump tax plan is already taking a pounding as a gift to the super rich and to Trump himself. The elimination of a popular tax deduction throws salt into the wound. Read the rest of this item here. ALEC's Corporate Sponsors Top Nation's Lawbreaker List The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has earned a reputation as a leading corporate influence group in recent years, with corporate lobbyists and legislators voting as equals in secret on scores of corporate bills to deregulate everything from the power and telecom industries to drug prices and health care. Well, it's no wonder. New research by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) shows that the pay-to-play lobby group’s biggest corporate funders are also among the nation's biggest violators of the health, safety, consumer, worker, and environmental protection laws ALEC seeks to dismantle. Read the rest of this item here. Voter ID Suppressed the Vote Exactly as Wisconsin Republicans Predicted Image: Michael Fleshman - CC BY SA 2.0 A new study of registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee Counties who did not vote in the 2016 presidential election found that approximately 17,000-23,000 eligible voters in those counties were prevented or deterred from voting by Wisconsin's voter ID law. Due to financial constraints, the social scientists were only able to do a study of two of Wisconsin's 72 counties, but the authors say that extrapolating statewide as many as 45,000 people stayed home because of the law. Donald Trump won the state of Wisconsin by only 22,000 votes, the first GOP presidential victory in the state since Ronald Regan in 1984. The shocking upset garnered national attention and helped deliver the electoral college to Trump as the popular vote went to Clinton. The study provides definitive evidence that the controversial voter ID bill, made it more difficult for targeted voters to cast their ballots. Read the rest of this item here.