Florida is the Latest State Trying to Get Their Legislators out of Corrupt ALEC

Bill Gates, wearing his pirate
hat, accompanied by
unidentified pirate Parrot

Progress Florida joins Progress Texas, Progress Iowa, and Progress Missouri in trying to get their conservative legislators off the corrupt corporate special interest boat.

From the Palm Beach Post:

ALEC quits gun policy, lefties want more

by Dara Kam | April 18th, 2012

It isn’t enough that the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, has backed down from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law after spreading it around the country, some left-leaning groups say.
Now they want lawmakers to quit the group as well. Progress Florida has launched a statewide campaign urging its supporters to tell legislators to “disavow the group’s extremist and secretive influence on Florida law making.” Other national groups are urging state lawmakers and more businesses to do the same.

The Corp-o-rats that fund ALEC to the tune of $20 million dollars are fleeing their sinking ship, like the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation that was nominally on board, pun intended, for philanthropic reasons, but where there was also access to push their software to schools.
Corruption is defined as the use - and abuse - of public office for private gain.  Nothing personifies that calculated and sustained corruption on the scale of ALEC.  Legislators get perks, they get cushy high paying jobs when they leave office (or are thrown out by voters) in exchange for selling out their constituents.  They get fat donations to buy their votes; they get PAC money beyond what they can receive as individual donations.
Nationwide, legislators paid in $250,000 to that $20 million paid by corporations for ALEC activities.  In some cases the exclusively conservative, effectively only Republican legislators rewarded for secret, often out of state meetings with their Corp-o-rat paymasters was at the taxpayer expense.  Nothing like soaking John Q. Public for the costs of serving the whims of the special interests.
Corporations get big profits, low taxes, lax regulation, carte blanche to enact any special sweetheart deal they want. The conservative legislators help them get it, in exchange for getting what they want.

The only people not represented at that legislative table is YOU the voters.  You don't get to sit, to speak, to listen or to watch any part of the drafting of the legislation they concoct, and you aren't informed when they pass that ALEC legislation in your own state.  All YOU the voters do is pay for it. In response to public attention, an increasing number of the Corp-o-rats are leaving the sinking ALEC ship. Shouldn't we encourage our legislators to abandon ALEC as well, and require them either to serve the interest of the public, the citizens they were elected to serve - or tell them to leave too?