This week in New Orleans, some 2,000 state legislators are being wined, dined and given their legislative battle plans by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to push a corporate agenda and undermine workers’ rights. The Koch brothers-funded and corporate-backed ALEC generates model legislation for right-wing grassroots activists and funds their attacks on workers’ rights, public employees and more.

The lawmakers will be sitting down with some of the biggest corporations in the world— Koch Industries, Bayer, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola Co., State Farm, AT&T, Wal-Mart, Philip Morris and more behind closed doors.

ALEC, writes Lisa Graves, executive director for the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD),

is little more than a bill factory for corporate-friendly legislation that often repeals people’s rights or fattens the corporate bottom line.

CMD recently made available to the public more than 800 “model” bills and resolutions voted on by corporations through their ALEC membership that have been introduced or approved by state lawmakers. Visit ALEC Exposed for the bills and more information.

At a press conference in New Orleans today, Graves and a teacher, a small business owner, a minister and a disenfranchised voter spoke about how ALEC generated legislation on so-called education reform, voter ID, health care and immigration has impacted their home states. Click here to view a video of the press conference.

In a column today on Firedoglake, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee says:

This covert coalition of state legislators and Wall Street moneymen has been surreptitiously working out of the view of Main Street Americans to dismantle health, safety and environmental regulations, privatize vital public services, restrict the ability of working men and women to make a fair wage, and reduce the ability of seniors, students, minorities and the poor to vote. All done behind closed doors without the press or public seeing whose palm is greased.

McEntee points out that many ALEC-groomed state legislators go onto higher offices, including Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

More than 70 members of Congress and governors have attended the closed-to-the public get-togethers where corporate CEOs lay out the agenda for the year ahead. It is no coincidence that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio made attacks on the middle class and collective bargaining rights their top priorities, rather than find real solutions and focus on job creation, when they took power earlier this year. They are both ALEC alumni.

Click here for the full column.

Also today, Common Cause released a report on the nearly $400 million ALEC’s corporate members have funneled into state elections to support their agenda that includes:

• Support of public subsidies for private schools;
• The development of privately owned prisons;
• Restrictions on voting rights;
• Unlimited, secret corporate spending on behalf of political candidates and parties;
• Opposition to federal and state environmental regulations; and
• Overturning the new federal health care reform law and state minimum wage laws and trade and public employee unions.

Says Common Cause President Bob Edgar:

ALEC is a stunning example of how deeply corporate influence penetrates our democracy and undermines the public interest….Then the companies put their muscle behind that legislation at state capitols and invest millions of dollars to elect and re-elect lawmakers who support it.

Click here for the full report.