Two More Corp-o-Rats Flee the Sinking ALEC Ship - 9th and 10th

I would hate to have this happening over the weekend news cycle to cause these stories to slip below the radar of reader's attention.  Like the advertisers who bailed on Glenn Beck, along with a decline in audience numbers; like the advertisers who have left and not returned, and largely not having been replaced on Rush Limbaugh, along with a decline in audience numbers; with the attention paid to ALEC corporations and legislators, their support and membership appears in sharp decline as corporations flee. 

I don't expect that there will be new corporations joining, or new legislators eager to take their cash and other benefits as we enter the early days of the 2012 election cycle.  If in fact we have citizens and bloggers and news media FOIA'ing those legislators to uncover the details of how ALEC acts as puppet master to the legislators puppet shows, information which could be used by the opposition, and information that should be available to their constituents in determining who it is that their legislators really served instead of the people who live in their districts.

 I have been comparing ALEC to pirates, stealing and hijacking the wealth of this nation for themselves legislatively, out of the pockets of the ordinary every-day average citizen.  Like Pirates, there is a certain code of secrecy about their location and activities when they have their meetings and events.  They are exclusively conservative, and nearly entirely Republican.  They do not want people to know that it is corporations that are drafting the legislation relating to their regulation and taxation.  They do not want US to know how our government really works. 

We very much need to continue to press corporations - corrupt Corp-o-RATS to leave the sinking ship of ALEC.  We need as well to press the legislators who are the crew of the ALEC pirate ship to leave as well.  We need an end to the special interests being served, we need an end especially to the SECRECY of ALEC.

To those companies which have left - WELL DONE!  You have corrected a bad mistake.
To those companies who continue?  Shame on you for being corrupt, for corrupting our government and for engaging in secrecy, exploitation, manipulation, and unregistered lobbying.

World Bank definition of corruption - abuse of public office for private gain.  THAT IS THE ESSENCE of ALEC.

From Think Progress :
9th And 10th Companies Drop ALEC

By Faiz Shakir on Apr 14, 2012 at 12:16 pm

Reed Elsevier — a personal information provider (of services such as Lexis-Nexis) — and American Traffic Solutions — a provider of traffic technology solutions — have become the 9th and 10th companies to drop ALEC.
Reed Elsevier stated that the campaign to highlight ALEC’s promotion of measures that disempower and disenfranchise minorities played a role in its decision. “We made the decision after considering the broad range of criticism being leveled at ALEC,” said a Reed Elsevier spokesman.
American Traffic Solutions spokesman Charles Territo said his group’s decision not to renew its membership with ALEC “was based on how best to allocate our resources.”
To recap, here is the list of companies that have dropped ALEC so far:

Coca-Cola
PepsiCo
Kraft
Intuit
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Wendy’s
Mars, Inc.
Arizona Public Service
Reed Elsevier
American Traffic Solutions

Zaid Jilani reports that, while complaining about “bullying” and “intimidation” by others, ALEC is “apparently deleting comments on its Facebook page that are critical of the corporate front group.”

For those of you unfamiliar with how ALEC - the American Legislative Exchange Council - works, this diagram is excellent in outlining how the abuse of public office results in private gain - gain for the legislators, gain for the corporations.  Gain occurs for everyone EXCEPT the public who should be served by their elected government.  Corruption is a conservative value, apparently and hypocrisy is their aphrodisiac.