Spectra, Duke, NextEra, Williams, all members of ALEC super-lobby group

All the companies behind the Southeast Market Pipelines Project have representatives sitting in those back rooms voting on draft bills on an equal basis with state legislators, according to the latest information publicly availlable. Back in the news a year after an Atlanta TV station reported on an ALEC meeting in Savannah, ALEC is not just for Georgia, every state has legislators in that super-lobbying group, including Florida and Albama, taking those draft bills back to their legislatures and often getting them passed. Now you know why the same bad bills to ban home rule on fracking, to block renwable energy portfolios, to impose a solar tax, and of course to promote fracked methane pipelines, show up at the same times in states all across the country.

Brendan Keefe and Michael King, WXIA-TV, 22 May 2015, Legislators and corporate lobbyists meet in secret at Georgia resort. They found out quite a bit before ALEC had off-duty deputies throw them out of their hotel.

SourceWatch has lists of known ALEC politicians in each state, including

To quote myself from a year ago in another venue, ALEC is not just a lobbying organization: it’s a shadow national congress in which corporations get equal votes with elected legislators.

Here are some specific examples of the corporate boondoggles ALEC’s shadow congress shops to many states at the same time: to prohibit disclosure of fracking chemicals, to make state PSCs subsidize pipelines, a Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline, a Resolution In Support of Expanded Liquefied Natural Gas Exports, a bill to revoke renewable energy portfolio standards, a solar generation tax, bills against water quality and air quality, for mandated private prison beds, against municipal broadband, the ALEC Model Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act, a bill whitewashing overuse of antibiotics on livestock in corporate farms, a bill defining photographing such practices as “ecological terrorism”, and far more. If your corporation has money to spend on “scholarships” to get legislators to ALEC meetings, you can probably get some model legislation approved that will get shopped to many state legislatures, and likely made into law.

ALEC members include all of the companies involved in all three components of the Southeast Market Pipelines Project: Sabal Trail (FPL, Spectra, and Duke), Hillabee Expansion Project (Williams Co.), and Florida Southeast Connection (FPL).

But remember: “Don’t say nothing.”

Or maybe we should say: revoke ALEC’s 501(c)(3) status and stop electing ALEC legislators.

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