Interesting ALEC Quotes

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(This is an ongoing list of interesting quotes from or with regard to ALEC conferences and meetings, started in July 2011. CMD encourages reporters, citizens journalists, and others to add verified quotes to this list.)

• In 1980, ALEC co-founder Paul Weyrich told a group of 15,000 conservative preachers in Dallas, "Now many of our Christians have what I call the "goo goo" syndrome. Good Government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

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• In December, 2008, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels crowed to an American Legislative Exchange Council State and Nation Policy Summit, “this is a terrific time to shrink government.”

• In August, 2005, "Dr. John Kalmar, an oral pathologist and professor at Ohio State University, said during the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council in Washington, DC that smokeless tobacco products can play ‘a positive health role’ because it is more effective in delivering nicotine than current alternatives such as nicotine gum and the nicotine patch. He criticized the US government and anti-smoking campaigners for overlooking the potential benefits of smokeless tobacco in helping smokers quit. He said nicotine gum takes 30-50 minutes to give a blood level that is equivalent to a cigarette, while smokeless tobacco provides it in 10-15 minutes. He said no correlation has been shown between smokeless tobacco and heart disease or lung or throat cancer. Steven Milloy, author of JunkScience.com, also criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for claiming that 400,000 people die every year from alleged smoking-related illnesses, saying that studies linking smoking to heart disease are not entirely reliable. He pointed out that smokers have higher heart disease rates than non-smokers partly because smokers also tend to be people who do not exercise, have worse diets, avoid doctors and havc less healthy lifestyles overall."

• In a luncheon speech to ALEC in 2002, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, later the Bush administration's Health and Human Services secretary, is quoted as saying:

Myself, I always loved going to these meetings because I always found new ideas. Then I'd take them back to Wisconsin, disguise them a little bit, and declare that 'It's mine.'

• In a June, 1989, letter from Margaret Rita, Manager of Legislative Issues for the Tobacco Institute, to Norman Sharp, President of the Cigar Association of America about planning of an ALEC Task Force meeting, tobacco lobbyist Rita wrote:

For your information, yesterday I attended two workshop planning meetings for the toxics and degradable packaging workshops being held at the ALEC Annual Meeting in Monterey. ... Michele and I will be involved in the planning of the toxics workshop only to the extent of ensuring that there is no industry bashing in the panel presentations.

About ALEC

ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our ExposedbyCMD.org site.