Portside

Each incarcerated worker in California generates $41,549 annually in revenue for the prison system, or $10,238 in profit. The financial losses to the California prison system are as much as $636,068 in revenue, or $156,736 in profit, for every day of the prison strike. For every day of the prison strike at the Central California Women’s Facility, the prison system lost $24,132 in revenue or $5,946 in profit. Moderator Note: Go to original source for endnotes.

AARP, the non-profit seniors organization that exists to promote the financial security, pensions and healthcare of those over 50, is secretly funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization whose bills have acted against the interests of ordinary Americans, including retirees and their families. What can you do? -- sign the petition below.

One of the group’s most high profile alumni is Scott Walker. It’s possible that no American politician who holds office today has worked harder to successfully advance ALEC’s agenda than Walker. And no previous candidate for the White House has ever owed so much to ALEC at the outset of his campaign.Walker’s longstanding association with the group dates back to his first days as a state legislator in the early 1990s.

At the recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), delegates barely glanced at exhibitors of right-wing groups. One booth promoted what may be the most extreme ALEC initiative yet — an attempt to trigger Article V of the U.S. Constitution in a historically unprecedented call for a national convention of states to amend the supreme law of the USA. Labor economist and veteran ALEC-watcher Jane Carter calls it “terrifying."

The 42nd Annual Meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) got underway July 22 in San Diego. The mood was convivial, attire corporate casual: Brooks Brothers suits without ties, Dockers and sports shirts. ALEC, (secretive rightwing bill mill funded by Koch Brothers and global multibillion dollar corporations), has been described as a legislative dating service that arranges hookups between mostly Republican state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists.

Hoosiers must also understand that this latest transgression of workers' rights - the Restoration of Freedom of Religion Act - is just the latest round in a sustained Indiana effort to undermine the entire working class. It shifts further wealth and power from the vast majority to the minority, while deepening the human misery that more and more Hoosiers experience; whether they are straight, gay, white, Black, Asian, Latino, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist.

Wisconsin has joined a host of other states whose right-to-work laws emulate "model legislation" produced by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) describes ALEC as a "bill mill" supported by several conservative foundations and dozens of high-profile corporations, like Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. So-called 'Right-to-Work" favors corporations at workers' expense.

Reader Comments- Race inequality...by the Numbers; Darren Wilson Acquittal; Workers and Students Leave Jobs, Classes in Nationwide Walkout for Ferguson; Thanksgiving; Univ of Virginia Finally Confronts Its Rape Problem; Madison Teachers Recertify Union; Walmart Black Friday Protests; Price of 13-Year War on Terror; Chile; Israel's Jewish State Bill; 2014 and Future Elections; ALEC Blueprint for 2015; Wanted: A Challenge to Clinton; Chicago's Mayoral Race (correction)

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), emboldened by the mid-term success of conservative Republicans at the state and federal levels, will be meeting December 3-5 in Washington, D.C. to develop its policy agenda for 2015 and beyond. ALEC will be seeking, among other things, to "preempt" state and local level minimum wage increases, promote local "right to work" legislation, forestall shareholder activism, and increase school privatization.