Pages

Monday, October 24, 2011

ALEC TRIVIA - The Annual Meeting Pot o'Gold

How much does it cost corporations to buy ALEC legislators?

At the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - here's my calculation of how much corporations paid to buy your legislator - these are guesstimates, of course - based on information that I have from 2008 and 2010 - so the numbers are probably LOW.


Dinner and Speech Sponsorships $   495,000.00
Sponsorships of the Annual Meeting - 82 companies $2,005,000.00
Exhibitor Fees - 55 exhibitors (based on 2008 rates/member rate) $     99,850.00
Corporate Scholarships for Legislators to attend the conference $1,425,000.00
 $4,024,850.00


AND that's the mucho dinero for just one of three national meetings that ALEC holds.

And I'm sure that some company sponsored the Kiddie Kongress too - but I can't find the fee for that. 
Must cost a lot to brainwash kids for three days.

It's a deal at any price
to get in the pants of your legislator
so they can have pro-corporate legislation introduced at the state and federal level.

The corporations must be laughing all the way to their checkbooks to pay for the next meeting.

3 comments:

  1. Are the corporations able to write all of this off for tax purposes? Just wondering!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Based on my work in nonprofits - for most of the expenses listed, yes. The scholarship money from what I've read is a direct donation to ALEC - the 501c3 educational organization - from the corporations - which ALEC then distributes to legislators. The sponsorships would also be considered a "charitable" donation to a 501c3 to help ALEC meet their mission of "education".

    ReplyDelete
  3. If people only knew... thank you for continuing to get the word out. ALEC is the "Perfect storm".

    ReplyDelete