But I Thought Wal-Mart Was My Friend

I like to stay up to date with politics. It's what I want to cover as a journalist. The presentation on ALEC really threw me off in terms of what I actually thought I knew about my government and the corporations. Hearing about ALEC and how some of the companies I support financial are actually working to create bills, whether I support them or not, was deeply disturbing. I know about lobbyist, and of course I expect companies to spend millions of dollars lobbying congress on behalf of their interests. But hearing about how this group, which is supported largely by corporations, is essentially drafting bills with the stamp of "democracy" to legitimize it, was pretty disgusting.

If you look at ALEC's mission statement, it says, "works to advance the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism at the state level through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America's state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public."

     From that, would you know that ALEC encourages corruption in congress? Would we have any idea it’s possible to trace some of the most controversial bills back to ALEC? Had people like Lisa Graves not investigated and exposed this, corporations might continue to be a part of ALEC without the people even knowing. Google, Facebook are just some of the big companies that have had to pull their support because of people like Graves.

If you look further into ALEC Exposed, we see how Wal-Mart is using its money to put shoplifters in jail no matter the cost of the item the person stole. So not only is Wal-Mart’s money helping to fill our jails, it also helped get pass the stand your ground law. 

http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Shoot_First_Bills

From what I remember, this is not something the main stream media covers. When I did my own search of ALEC on YouTube, I saw clips from DemocracyNow! clearly talking about ALEC's wrong doings. This was in 2011. Johnny Oliver from HBO did touch on it but it was in 2014. Nowhere in my Google search did I find ABC, NBC, CBS having covered this, although I could have missed something.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4q4meltt9I (DemocracyNow)

 My ABC News pride took a hit when I typed ABC News ALEC in a Google search. The first thing I got was Alec Baldwin Stories. 

Whether I want to admit it or not, we are longer in the time of Peter Jennings where hard news trumped celebrity news.

Overall, I think learning about ALEC and the investigation behind it goes behind some themes we have talked about in class, such as how the mainstream is less willing to target groups like this because some of the corporations that sponsor the groups, sponsor them as well through advertiser dollars.