American Legislative Exchange Council

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pages: 484 words: 131,168

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop, Robert G. Cushing

1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, big-box store, blue-collar work, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, David Brooks, demographic transition, desegregation, Edward Glaeser, immigration reform, income inequality, industrial cluster, Jane Jacobs, knowledge economy, longitudinal study, Maslow's hierarchy, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, music of the spheres, New Urbanism, post-industrial society, post-materialism, Ralph Nader, Recombinant DNA, Richard Florida, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, union organizing, War on Poverty, white flight, World Values Survey

The ballroom at the Gaylord Texan hotel, a continent-size resort near the Dallas airport, holds just over 7,000, and in the summer of 2005, it was packed with mostly Republican state legislators, staff, lobbyists, and representatives from the Fortune 500, the Russell 1000, and, it seemed, half the businesses found in the Dallas yellow pages, all trampling over the gold and maroon carpet decorated with massive woven belt buckles, Stetsons as big as Pontiacs, and longhorns that stretched twenty yards tip to tip—a rug clearly ordered from the J. R. Ewing Collection. At that time, there were about 7,500 state legislators in the United States. Some 2,000 of them were there for the thirty-second annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). President George W. Bush addressed the crowd from a riser set between jumbo screens that later listed the event's sponsors: Boone Pickens, Exxon, Peabody Energy, Pfizer, R. J. Reynolds, and the National Association of Home Builders. Nothing is really hidden about this joint venture of legislators and industry.

By the 1990s, ALEC had become the "voice of corporate America in the states."5 The story ALEC members tell of the organization's founding is somewhat less awe-inspiring. Mark Rhoads was working for a member of the Illinois senate in 1973 when he proposed a "caucus for conservative lawmakers with a conservative staff." Rhoads called this new outfit the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators, switching to the American Legislative Exchange Council after consulting with other activists. "Times were different in 1973," Rhoads told me. The word "conservative" wasn't a particularly good draw. Conservatives at the time felt powerless. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, every institution appeared to be under the dominion of big-government types—the foundations, the mainline denominations, Congress, the existing organization of state legislators.

Binder, "Elections and Congress's Governing Capacity," Extensions: A journal of the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center (Fall 2005). 10–14. 4. Defenders of Wildlife and Natural Resources Defense Council, "Corporate America's Trojan Horse in the States. The Untold Story Behind the American Legislative Exchange Council," 2002, http://alecwatch.org/report.html. 5. People for the American Way and Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, "ALEC and the Battle of the States," January 2003, http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/dfiles/file_169.pdf. 6. Jason DeParle, "Goals Reached, Donor on Right Closes Up Shop," New York Times, May 29, 2005, p.


pages: 382 words: 107,150

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages by Annelise Orleck

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, card file, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate social responsibility, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, export processing zone, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, food desert, Food sovereignty, gentrification, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, immigration reform, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, land reform, land tenure, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, McJob, means of production, new economy, payday loans, precariat, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Skype, special economic zone, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor

See also farmworkers; land theft; migrant workers/undocumented migrants Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), California, 203 agroecology practices, 230–31, 233, 248–49 Aguinaldo, Emilio, 234 airport workers, 79–80 Akhter, Nazma, 139–40 Akter, Kalpona: campaign against workplace violence, 55; changing view of activists, 49; organizing strategies and activities, 32, 37, 39–41, 116, 118–19; 146–47; on the Rana Plaza factory collapse, 135; retaliation against, 139; sponsors, 39; and the Tazreen factory fire, 137–38; on working conditions for Bangladeshi garment workers, 119–20, 131–34, 136–37. See also Bangladesh Fire and Safety Accord; garment industry Alfreda, Zapoteca migrant field-worker, 213-14, 222 alcohol, as wages, 19, 209 ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), 81–82, 96, 255 Allen, Will, 197 Alliance of Progressive Labor, 49, 63, 167, 173–74 Alta Gracia Project, Dominican Republic, 249–50 Altieri, Miguel, 248–49 Amazon, working conditions at, 103 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), 81–82, 96, 255 amnesty programs, for migrant workers, 219, 224 Anacapa, frozen berry distributor, 202 Apartheid Group Areas Act of 1950, 244 Aquino, Benigno, III, 180–81 Aquino, Corazon, 172, 180, 235 Aran, Virgilio, 57–59 Arcos Dorados (McDonald’s in Brazil), court case against, 73–74 Arroyo, Gloria Macabal, 180 Arthur Svensson International Prize, 154–56 Asbed, Greg, 253 ASEAN-India trade pact, 183 Asia Floor Wage, 152 Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact, 231–32 Asian Peasants’ Coalition, “Day of the Landless” actions, 183–84 Ath Thorn, 135, 152, 155–57 Atienza, Em, 45, 49, 99, 240 Bagong Silangan barangay dancers, 62–63 Baja California, Mexico, berry picking, 16, 213–15, 216–17 Baker, Ella, 59 Balcazar, Enrique “Kike,” 192–93, 195, 197–99 Bangladesh: garment industry in, 119–20, 123–24, 134; minimum wage increases, 141; monitoring of social media in, 44; organizers/activists in, 45, 139–40, 145, 147; preferential trade status, 19–20; response to protests, 128, 148, 158; Tuba Group demonstrators, 143.

Right-to-work bills were first introduced amid the anti-Communist fervor of the 1950s and 1960s. For decades, they remained limited to the South and a few Rocky Mountain states. Where they became law, union membership plunged, poverty rates rose, gaps between men and women grew. In the 2010s, “right-to-work” returned with a vengeance, courtesy of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a consortium of business leaders and conservative politicians that, by 2011, included one-quarter of the country’s state legislators and eighty-five members of Congress. Their goal was to roll back the tide of wage increases and strip local governments of the right to lift wage floors or guarantee paid time off.

It was simple, Janis recalls: If you change contractors, you must give workers ninety days’ notice, move them to a new job, recognize their union if at least 50 percent are unionized. That model for fighting the worst effects of subcontracting is as replicable as any anti-labor law generated by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Janis believes. But in the age of state preemption laws, activists will have to work on the state level as well as the local. In California, they have been able to do that. Los Angeles also passed the first broad living-wage ordinance in the country, in 1997, expanding a narrower one that had passed in Baltimore in 1994.


pages: 273 words: 87,159

The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy by Peter Temin

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, clean water, corporate raider, Corrections Corporation of America, crack epidemic, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, full employment, income inequality, independent contractor, intangible asset, invisible hand, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mandatory minimum, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, mortgage debt, Network effects, New Urbanism, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, plutocrats, Powell Memorandum, price stability, race to the bottom, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, the scientific method, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, white flight, working poor

They can, however, support points of view by choosing who to hire and retain in return for tax-exempt contributions by corporate interests. This kind of influence extends from general think tanks like the Brookings Institution, which supports corporate efforts to rebuild damaged cities, to the United States Institute for Peace, which supports defense spending here and abroad.11 The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC, was formed in 1973 in order to influence state legislation. Charles and David Koch founded and funded ALEC as a nonprofit corporation to advance conservative principles of free market, limited government, and individual liberty. ALEC drafts model legislation to achieve these ends and distributes them to state legislation.

And of course, they have all experienced disappointments as whatever they were able to do was limited in the face of the forces of racecraft.12 Unlike the 1 percent as a whole who give money and talk to government officials, some members of the Forbes 400 formed a secret organization in the 1970s to promote their ends. Charles Koch, who with his brother, David, is in fifth place in the 2015 Forbes 400, was energized by Powell’s secret memo of 1971. He started ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, in 1973. This state lobbying organization operates under the radar of most people interested in national politics because even interested observers cannot keep all states in view. But, as explained in chapter 2, ALEC is most successful when state legislators lack resources of their own to investigate proposed laws.

The shadowy trail of prisons for immigrants provides glimpses of what goes on in the varied jails and prisons around our country.21 The private prison firms communicate their interest in more prisoners to state legislators in various ways: by campaign contributions, personal relations, and lobbying. The Corrections Corporation of America has spent over $20 million on political campaigns and lobbying and is continuing these efforts today. They also lobby through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative, nonprofit organization founded and funded by the Koch brothers in 1973 and described in chapter 2. ALEC promoted model bills on mandatory minimum sentencing and three-strikes legislation that helped promote the growth of mass incarceration in the 1990s. The influence of the private prison firms and ALEC impedes efforts to reduce American incarceration.


pages: 324 words: 93,606

No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy by Linsey McGoey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, American Legislative Exchange Council, Bear Stearns, bitcoin, Bob Geldof, cashless society, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, crony capitalism, effective altruism, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, financial innovation, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, germ theory of disease, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Ida Tarbell, impact investing, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, John Elkington, Joseph Schumpeter, Leo Hollis, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Michael Milken, microcredit, Mitch Kapor, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, Neil Armstrong, obamacare, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school choice, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, Steve Jobs, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, tacit knowledge, technological solutionism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trickle-down economics, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators

In 2001, a year after ECOT was established, an investigation by Ohio state auditors found that while the state had paid ECOT to educate more than 2,000 students during one month, only seven children had logged on to ECOT’s computer system. Stephanie Mencimer from Mother Jones reports that state auditors were unable to determine ‘whether the rest of its student body even existed’.32 For companies such as K12 and ECOT, the primary vehicle for influencing state policy is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization that has introduced dozens of model bills on digital education adopted by state legislatures across the US in recent years. ALEC is a registered charity managed by a rotating board of individual state legislators who pay $50 a year to belong to the organization.

Index Africa: and African markets, 216–9, 222; agricultural challenges in, 216–7, 221–2; and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, 217, 218; and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, 228; and Coca-Cola, 222–3; and diseases, 190–1, 223–4; economic infrastructures in, 39, 170–1; and genetically modified maize, 218–9; Ghana, 1–3, 5, 21, 150, 170–1; and Monsanto, 206, 216–9, 221–2; and M-PESA bill-pay system, 81–2; Uganda, 14, 219, 228; and World Food Programme’s Purchase for Progress, 208; and World Health Organization, 226 African Americans: and education, 10, 54; and schools established by Rosenwald, 118; as source of labour for industrialists, 46–7; and students’ gap in test scores, 138; and voting rights, 45 Allen, Paul, 181–3 altruism, 48, 90, 146 American Legislative Exchange Council, 131–2, 200 Apotex, 103–4 Apple, 143, 246 Argentina, 188–9 Ashoka, 66, 68, 72 Asia: and Coca-Cola, 222–3; and World Food Programme’s Purchase for Progress, 208; and World Health Organization, 226 Balsillie, Jim, 106–7, 245 Band, Doug, 29–32 Barefoot College, 67, 68 Barkan, Joanne, 128, 139, 140, 144 Bastiat, Frédéric, 198, 200 Baudelaire, Charles, 12–13, 14 Berkshire Hathaway, 8, 173–4, 215 Bishop, Matthew, 6, 7, 8, 111 Bloomberg, Michael, 127–8 Boldrin, Michele, 199–200 Bourdieu, Pierre, 19–20, 65 Brazil, 17, 96, 221 Broad Foundation, 9, 122, 139 Buffett, Howard, 216, 221 Buffett, Warren: and Berkshire Hathaway, 173, 216; and Coca-Cola, 173, 222; as a donor to African farming programmes, 216; and Gates Foundation, 8, 173, 174; and the Giving Pledge, 24, 117; and Goldman Sachs, 215; and philanthropy, 24, 26, 146 Bush, George H.

., 46, 47 Duncan, Arne: and charter schools, 139; and No Child Left Behind, 121; and performance pay for teachers, 139; and Race to the Top, 144 Duti, Vida, 177–8 Dvorak, John, 183–4 economics: and agricultural commodities, 212–3; and capital gains tax, 22; and commodities markets, 210–4; and currency speculation, 22; and economic development, 30, 38–9; and global financial markets, 27, 86; and governmental and philanthropic aid, 38–9, 84–7; and Henry George, 115; and impact investing, 80–1; and income inequality, 24, 39; and laissez-faire policies, 51, 93, 179, 236–8; and Ludwig von Mises, 236; and microfinance, 7–8, 21, 63, 68, 77–81, 83–4; and patents, 180; and positive capacity of business, 17, 86–7; and pro-market solutions, 86; and social entrepreneurs, 63, 66–72, 86–7; and state planning, 235–6; and supply-side economics, 111–2; and tacit knowledge, 235–6; and tax cuts for the wealthy in the UK, 76; and treatment of poor countries by IMF and World Bank, 171–2; and virtues of free-market, 239 education: and African Americans, 10, 54, 118; and American Legislative Exchange Council’s conservative agenda, 132; and Arne Duncan, 139; and Broad Foundation, 9, 122, 139; and charter schools, 118, 123–8, 131; and college acceptance rates, 134; and Common Core, 137–8; and debate over class size, 127–8; and efforts of Carnegie and Rockefeller, 27–8; and evaluation of teachers using value-added modelling, 140–2, 144; and firing of teachers, 139; and for-profit schooling, 133; and funding for the Measure of Effective Teaching study, 140–1; and Gates Foundation, 27–8, 121–2, 132–47; and gathering of data on students, 133–4; governmental spending on, 8–9; and growth of charity schools, 92; and higher education, 121, 242; and John Dewey, 72; and Michigan’s schools, 133; and No Child Left Behind programme, 118–22, 139, 240; and online schools, 129–31; and Peer Assistance and Review programme, 144; and performance pay for teachers, 139, 145; and poverty, 7, 128–9; and primary and secondary schools, 9, 24, 115, 122, 129–30; and privatization of public education, 116; and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, 128; and public education, 109; and public shaming of teachers, 142, 144–5; and Race to the Top, 139, 144; and standardized testing for students, 134, 139; and teacher effectiveness, 134, 139, 140–2, 144; and teacher performance, 132, 138–42, 144, 145; and teachers’ remuneration, 127, 134, 139; and US students compared to international peers, 128; and value of teachers, 126–7, 140; and views of Maria Montessori, 72; and William Bennett, 130 Edwards, Michael, 8–9, 229, 241 Eisenberg, Pablo, 229–30, 234 Eli Lilly, 104–5 Elkington, John, 66–7 Emerson, Jed, 80–1 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 11–12, 245 Ford, Henry: business practices of, 56–8; and the Dearborn Independent, 57; and employees’ productivity, 56; as an opponent of labour unions, 56; and philanthropy, 11, 56, 117; and shorter work week, 56; as supporter of high wages, 56–7 Ford, Henry, II, 60–1 Ford Foundation: establishment of, 56; and McGeorge Bundy, 61; money of, 22; and philanthropy, 28; projects of, 58 Ford Motor Company, 56–7, 60–1 Foucault, Michel, 114, 147 Foundation for Excellence in Education, 132, 133 Foundation Strategy Group, 89–90 France, 220, 237 Freeland, Chrystia, 64, 108, 199–200 Frick, Henry Clay, 10–11, 42–3 Fries, Foster, 108, 109, 111 Galbraith, James, 24, 111 Gandhi, Mahatma, 68, 72 Gates, Bill: as a businessman, 246; and campaign for a global tax on currency speculation, 22; and Coca-Cola, 174, 222; and Common Core, 137; donations of, 22–3, 85, 108, 117; and efficiency of philanthropic spending, 24; and ethical investing, 175; and favoring increase in class size, 127–8; and fight against AIDS, 193; and fight against polio, 154, 155, 157, 159; and focus on Africa, 223–4; fortune of, 9, 177, 183; and funding for Purchase for Progress programme, 207–8; and the Giving Pledge, 24, 117; and global health issues, 177, 192; as head of Gates Foundation, 21, 107, 244; and home in Seattle, WA, 134, 245–6; and interest in Carnegie’s writings, 41, 111; and intervening to try to delay guidance on antiretrovirals, 196–7; and investment in companies with bad records on health issues, 173; and patent rules, 205; philanthropic ethos of, 183, 245; and philanthropy, 5–7, 9–10, 23–4, 26, 116–7, 146, 159; and position on intellectual property, 198–9; and pre-exposure prophylactic treatments for HIV, 194; and presence at G20 consultations, 154; and primary and secondary schools, 9, 24; and public shaming of teachers, 142, 144–5; and science grants for minority students, 59; and small schools, 134–6; and support for HIV prevention, 193; and support for increasing the capital gains tax, 22; and support of charter school movement, 125–6; and support of tighter firearms controls in WA, 23; and taxes paid by Gates Foundation, 85; and teacher performance, 126; and teachers’ remuneration, 127; and time at Harvard, 63, 181, 182, 183; as trustee of Gates Foundation, 8, 174; and views on foreign aid, 27; and views on patents, 26, 181, 186; and wealth tax, 24; and William H.


pages: 406 words: 113,841

The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives by Sasha Abramsky

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, bank run, basic income, benefit corporation, big-box store, collective bargaining, deindustrialization, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, government statistician, guns versus butter model, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, job automation, Kickstarter, land bank, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, microcredit, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, profit motive, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Works Progress Administration

By 2012, twenty-three states had adopted so-called “right to work” laws, which made it harder to organize workers into trade unions. The “right” they codified was, in reality, a right to work for lower wages than was the case in states where unions retained more power. A majority of these states were in the South; but, increasingly, as conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce championed the legislation, this was a movement with national legs. States such as Utah and North Dakota adopted these laws in the 1950s; Idaho, which had once had a proudly militant union culture, in 1985; Indiana, in 2012. In states with these laws, union membership plummeted, and, predictably, wages fell.10 As a result, even before the Great Recession hit, real incomes for working-class Americans were lower in the early 2000s than they had been a generation earlier.

For employees, too often it was a place of crushing drudgery.12 Unfortunately, where Texas goes, so goes much of the nation, an argument developed by New York Times columnist Gail Collins, in her 2012 book As Texas Goes. Increasingly, at the state level, conservative GOP legislators and governors, at the urging of groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Legislative Exchange Council, have moved against public sector unions, welfare recipients, against services offered by federally funded programs like Medicaid, and even against the unemployed—in Florida and elsewhere, legislators have pushed for unemployment insurance applicants to have to be fingerprinted and drug-tested, essentially putting in place practices that send out the none-too-subtle signal that the unemployed are to be viewed and treated as criminals.

First, existing programs, both for the unemployed or jobless, and also for the working poor, have withered, either through benign neglect or through active political opposition—an assault on the Keynesian project, launched by think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, policy-crafting entities such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, and business organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In 1996, 45.7 percent of poor kids were getting some form of cash assistance from the government. Thirteen years later, only 18.7 percent received such aid. “The Great Recession,” Randy Albelda wrote in a report for Dollars and Sense, “pushed 800,000 additional families into poverty between 2007 and 2009, yet the TANF rolls rose by only 110,000 over this period.”1 And, she might have added, most of those receiving TANF benefits were getting far smaller monthly checks than they had been a few years earlier.


Because We Say So by Noam Chomsky

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, Chelsea Manning, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, high-speed rail, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, means of production, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, Powell Memorandum, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Slavoj Žižek, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that. . . .” The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy. One current illustration of their concern is the “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act” proposed to state legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth. The ALEC Act mandates “balanced teaching” of climate science in K–12 classrooms. “Balanced teaching” is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to “balance” mainstream climate science.

Index Abrams, Elliott, 87 Abu Muamar, Mustafa, 27 Abu Muamar, Osama, 27 Acheson, Dean, 138 Adamsky, Dmitry, 164 Affordable Care Act, 136 Afghanistan, 33, 84, 116, 154, 160, 178 Africa, 26, 86, 155, 176, 180 African National Congress, 32 African Union (A.U.), 25–26, 179–180 AFRICOM, 25 Ageel, Ghada, 101 Ahmed, Akbar, 160 al-Khawaja, Abdulhadi, 48 Allende, Salvador, 111 al-Libi, Abu Anas, 137 Allison, Graham, 55–57 Al-Muslimi, Farea, 105, 106 Alperovitz, Gar, 93 al-Qaida, 178 American Enterprise Institute, 135 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), 95 American Newspaper Publishers Association, 29 Anaya, James, 47 Anglosphere, 100 Angola, 156 Arab League, 26 Araboushim, 74 Arafat, Yasser, 125 Aristotle, 150 Asia, 171, 176, 191 Assad, Bashar, 190 Assange, Julian, 61 Atwan, Abdel Bari, 178 Australia, 100, 118 Austria, 122 Baghdad, 189 Bagram, 32 Bahrain Center for Human Rights, 48 Baker, Peter, 169 Barsamian, David, 89 Baskin, Gershon, 79 Basque region of Spain, 93, 147 Batniji, Rajaie, 74 Becker, Jo, 52 Bedouin, 27 Belgian Congo, 180 Belloc, Hilaire, 165 Ben-Gurion, David, 100 Benn, Aluf, 79 Besikci, Ismail, 49 Bill of Rights, 31 bin Laden, Osama, 105, 106 Birol, Fatih, 23 Blackstone, William, 51 Blair, Tony, 189 Bolender, Keith, 56 Bolivia, 54, 123 Boron, Atilio, 121 Bosch, Orlando, 124 Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, 46 Boston, 105, 107, 109 Brandeis, Louis, 62 Branfman, Fred, 107 Brazil, 25, 42, 140, 153 BRICS countries, 25 Britain, 25, 36–37, 116, 174 Brookings Institution, 160 Brooks, David, 131, 132 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 143 Burchinal, David, 55 Bush, George H.


Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, Anne Wojcicki, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, biodiversity loss, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, CRISPR, David Attenborough, deep learning, DeepMind, degrowth, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Flynn Effect, gigafactory, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Hyperloop, impulse control, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Bridle, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kim Stanley Robinson, life extension, light touch regulation, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, Menlo Park, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, ocean acidification, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart meter, Snapchat, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, strong AI, supervolcano, tech baron, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, traffic fines, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, Y2K, yield curve

It was increasingly clear that the Kochs had milked the administration for what they really wanted (tax cuts, deregulation, Supreme Court justices) and were now looking forward to the Pence years. And their work was by no means confined to Washington. Many state governments have been transformed by the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council. Meanwhile, in cities and towns across America, the Kochs ran expensive campaigns opposing projects such as public transit, both because it dried up demand for the gasoline they sold and because buses and trains “go against the liberties Americans hold dear.” As a spokesman for Americans for Prosperity patiently explained, “If someone has the freedom to go where they want, do what they want, they’re not going to choose public transit.”17 Especially if there isn’t any.

By 2017, as countries around the world accelerated their efforts to put up windmills and solar arrays, growth in rooftop solar came to a “shuddering halt” in the United States, mostly because of a “concerted and well-funded lobbying effort by traditional utilities, which have been working in state capitals across the country to reverse incentives,” according to the New York Times.30 The utilities had turned to the (Koch-funded) American Legislative Exchange Council for model legislation, and in one place after another, Koch-funded utility commissions were putting the brakes on renewables. Take Arizona, which should be about the easiest place on the planet to make solar power work—Phoenix boasts 299 sunny days a year. On an agreeably cool March morning a few years ago, I stood on the roof of a suburban ranch house in Surprise, a suburb of Phoenix, with Elon Musk’s cousin Lyndon Rive, who was at the time the CEO of Solar City, the biggest installer of rooftop solar in the country.

Abou, Naore accelerating information returns Adirondacks Advanced Cell Technology Africa African Americans agriculture AIDS/HIV air-conditioning air pollution Alabama Alaska Alberta Alcor Algeria algorithms Allen, Paul alligators Allpress, Bob Alpha Centauri Altman, Sam altruism Amazon (company) Amazon Basin Ambrosia American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) American Petroleum Institute (API) American Revolution Americans for Prosperity American Society for Testing and Materials Amoco Andrea, Lembris Anoh, Jean Antarctica anthrax Anthropocene epoch Apollo missions aquifers Arab Spring archaeology Archer Daniels Midland Arctic aridification Aristotle Arizona Arizona Public Service (APS) Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Neil artificial general intelligence (AGI) artificial intelligence (AI) Ashland, Kansas asphalt shingle Athens athletes Atlas Shrugged (Rand) Atlas Society atmospheric temperature, rise in.


pages: 336 words: 95,773

The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials' Economic Future by Joseph C. Sternberg

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, blue-collar work, centre right, corporate raider, Detroit bankruptcy, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, employer provided health coverage, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, future of work, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, independent contractor, job satisfaction, job-hopping, labor-force participation, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, oil shock, payday loans, pension reform, quantitative easing, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, stop buying avocado toast, TaskRabbit, total factor productivity, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, unpaid internship, women in the workforce

For instance, the median state retirement-plan administrator in 2016 assumed a future investment return of 7.5 percent, at a time when the interest rate on thirty-year Treasury bonds was barely above 2 percent.25 Correcting for those implausible estimates can yield wildly varying guesses as to the true state pension shortfall. One of the more alarmist, but still plausible, estimates comes from the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council, which pegs a funding shortfall of around $6 trillion using a discount rate of around 2.1 percent.† By their reckoning, states have only around 34 percent of the assets on hand that they’d need to meet their future obligations to current and future retirees.26 The one thing that unites all of these fiscal gaps, whether for Social Security, Medicare, or state and local pensions, is that someone will have to pay more for them in the future, or some beneficiaries will have to receive less.

Boards of Trustees, Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, “2018 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds,” June 5, 2018. 23. Ibid. 24. Pew Charitable Trusts, “The State Pension Funding Gap: 2016,” Brief, April 2018. 25. Ibid. 26. Thurston Powers, Elliot Young, Bob Williams, and Erica York, “Unaffordable and Unaccountable 2017,” Report from the American Legislative Exchange Council, December 13, 2017. 27. Board of Trustees, “2018 Annual Report.” 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and US Office of Management and Budget, Federal Surplus or Deficit as Percent of Gross Domestic Product, retrieved from Federal Reserve Bank of St.

Index Abe, Shinzo/“Abenomics,” 206–207 abortion views, 217n Affordable Care Act/Obamacare “Cadillac tax,” 167, 168 CLASS (Community Living Assistance and Support) program, 169 Congressional Budget Office on, 168 description/problems, 166–170, 186, 233 education loans and, 100 employers and, 66–69 labor costs and, 66–69 Medicaid and, 167 medical-device tax and, 167, 168 Millennial support, 218–219 overtime rule/effects, 68–69 subsidies and, 66, 67n, 167 African economies, 178–179 Alternative Minimum Tax provision and inflation, 169 American Legislative Exchange Council, 159 amortizing mortgage, 120, 120n Anderson, Kristen Soltis, 215 Andreessen, Marc, 41 Asian Financial Crisis, 206 Auerbach, Alan J., 171–172 Autor, David, 35–36 Average is Over (Cowen), 41–42 avocado/coffee controversy, 1–3 “avolatte,” 3 Bagehot, Walter, 130 bailouts with financial crisis, 59 “Basel” standards, 138n Bear Sterns, 11, 128, 129 Benson, Guy, 215 Bernanke, Ben financial crisis/aftermath and, 60, 64, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134 interest rate at/near zero and, 132, 133 Bertelsmann Foundation think tank, 199 birth cohort vs. generations, 7 BNP Paribas bank, 128, 180 Boomers childhood era, 46–47 definition/description, 6, 7, 8 government views, 221–222 near-lifetime employment and, 46–47 numbers, 8 politicians/policy and, 18, 19–21 retirement finances and, 80, 81 working/voting beginnings and, 51 See also specific activities; specific individuals Britain/Millennial housing disposable income and, 178, 188–189 “green belts,” 191 Help-to-Buy programs, 192–193 housing shortage reasons, 191–192 housing shortages, 187–192, 195 interest rates/Bank of England and, 192–193 living with parents, 188 locations/London and, 189n, 190, 195 middle class, 188 overview, 187–195 ownership encouragement/consequence, 192–194 ownership statistics, 190 problems summary, 194–195 rent costs and, 189n “shared ownership,” 192 subsidies/taxes and, 192, 193 zoning/process, 191–192 Britain/Millennials economic growth and, 189 unemployment and, 189 United Kingdom minimum wage and, 184 Brynjolfsson, Eric, 41 Buchanan, Pat, 217 Bunkeddeko, Adem, 219 Burns, Scott, 172 Bush, George W.


pages: 296 words: 83,254

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back by Juliet Schor, William Attwood-Charles, Mehmet Cansoy

1960s counterculture, Airbnb, algorithmic management, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American Legislative Exchange Council, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, bike sharing, Californian Ideology, carbon footprint, clean tech, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Community Supported Agriculture, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deskilling, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, financial independence, future of work, gentrification, George Gilder, gig economy, global supply chain, global village, haute cuisine, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Kelly, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, Mason jar, mass incarceration, Mitch Kapor, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, peer-to-peer rental, Post-Keynesian economics, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent gap, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ruby on Rails, selection bias, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, Stewart Brand, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, wage slave, walking around money, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, working poor, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

So far, platform activity has been concentrated in urban areas, because they provide sufficient density. To the companies’ dismay, municipalities are the most progressive unit of government in the U.S. and have been most active in passing regulations. So Uber embarked on a strategy that Big Tobacco, the National Rifle Association, and the ultraright, Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have successfully pioneered—getting state legislatures to pass laws overriding local ordinances and regulation. In a mere four years (from 2014 through 2017), using language provided by ALEC, Uber and Lyft succeeded in getting forty-two states to pass laws with preemption provisions.34 This deregulation spree included taking away workers’ rights, outlawing employee status for drivers (in thirty-two states), and blocking city-wide minimum wages.35 Although they’ve been most successful in the United States,36 the big companies have also been pursuing a deregulatory strategy in Europe.37 The federal government has also been disinclined to regulate the companies.

Index Aaron, 56, 60, 98 Abigail, 10, 29, 60–61, 74, 79 access economy, 192 African Americans, 3; platform participation, 95; racial bias, 82, 84, 86, 88–89; and ratings, 92 AgentAnything, 35 Agyeman, Julian, 13 Airbnb, 2, 4–6, 38, 90–95, 151; access to, 46; costs, 155; deregulatory strategy, 158; earnings, 73; education levels, 98; in Europe, 153–54; financial model, 35; host incomes, 104; host satisfaction, 11, 52–53; and hotel industry, 102, 109; individual control, 77; induced travel effect, 119; lodger experience, 108; opposition to, 107; origin story, 24–25; racial bias, 82–84, 86–88; ratings by race, 91; regulation, 153–54, 157–58, 160; and rental/housing market, 105–6; residential segregation, 93–95; social interaction, 111–12; transaction fees, 86 #AirBnBWhileBlack, 82, 84 Alexandra, 129 algorithmic activism, 68 algorithmic control, 31, 66–70, 169 alienation, 3 Allegra, 84 Amazon, 151 Amelie, 28, 111 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), 157–58 Amsterdam, 172 Amy, 141, 144 Anand, 54, 78 Andy, 54–55 Angela, 168 Angelo, 33, 154, 161–62 Anne, 128 apartment rentals, 160 Aptekar, Sofia, 146 Arnould, Eric J., 193 artificial intelligence (AI), 67 assembly line, 67 Atkin, Douglas, 37–38 Attwood-Charles, Will, 14, 68, 126, 137, 142, 179, 183, 191 Aviva, 131 background checks, 46 Barb, 29 Barcelona, 172–73 BarCola, 173 bartering, 125, 131 Baumann, Shyon, 134 “beer for work” economy, 131, 137–38 Belk, Russell, 193 Bellotti, Victoria, 145–46 Ben, 45 Benkler, Yochai, 163–64, 191, 193–94 Bev, 8–10 Bezos, Jeff, 95 Bill, 154 Blecharczyk, Nate, 37 blinding job destinations, 67 Bob, 142 Bologna, 172–73 Boston, 15–16, 58 Botsman, Rachel, 12, 16, 191 Bourdieu, Pierre, 138 Bowles, Samuel, 70 Brand, Stuart, 22 Brian, 139 Buffett, Warren, 95 Burnham, Brad, 38 Business to Business (B2B) platforms, 192 Business to Consumer (B2C) platforms, 192 Busque, Leah, 25, 34 Cain, Taylor, 181 California legislation, 161 Californian ideology, 21–24 Cameron, Lindsay, 68, 77 Camp, Garrett, 25 Cansoy, Mehmet, 14, 90, 182 capitalism: platform, 13, 30, 150–52; and sharing economy, 2, 6, 37–39; and work, 3–4; and young people, 7 Care.com, 27 Carfagna, Lindsey, 14, 126, 146, 178, 180 car sharing, 112, 114.


pages: 501 words: 145,943

If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities by Benjamin R. Barber

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, classic study, clean water, congestion pricing, corporate governance, Crossrail, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, digital divide, digital Maoism, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, gentrification, George Gilder, ghettoisation, global pandemic, global village, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, income inequality, informal economy, information retrieval, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Lewis Mumford, London Interbank Offered Rate, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, megacity, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, Norman Mailer, nuclear winter, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, plutocrats, Prenzlauer Berg, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RFID, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart meter, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technological solutionism, TED Talk, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, Tony Hsieh, trade route, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, unpaid internship, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, War on Poverty, zero-sum game

INDEX Adewale, Ayodele, 210–212 Afghanistan, crime in, 202–203 African-Americans: access to parks, 206, 207; housing integration, 190; in prison, 185 Agenda 21, 158–159 Aging city bailouts, 186–187 Agriculture: and population of cities, 35; and rural society, 64; and urban slums, 191 Air pollution, 130, 206, 382n72. See also Carbon emissions ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), 374n7 Alliance in the Alps, 132–133 al Qaeda, 124, 125 Amazon, 254 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), 374n7 Americans for the Arts, 293 Anarchy, 12, 61 Annawadi, 182–183, 201 Antideclinists, 167–168 APAP (Association of Performing Arts Presenters), 290, 293 Apple, 253–256 Arab Spring, 157, 251, 259 Architectural contests, 18 Argentina, economic inequality, 383n2 Artificial naturalism, 35 Arts.

Sabrina Tavernise, “As Gas Drilling Spreads, Towns Stand Ground over Control,” New York Times, December 15, 2011. 6. “60% in City Oppose Mayor’s Soda Ban, Poll Finds,” New York Times, August 22, 2012. 7. The influence of private wealth on public decision making is perfectly reflected in the work of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful national lobby masquerading as a nonpartisan tax-deductible charity. ALEC has several thousand state legislators as members and represents more than forty corporations, including Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, and General Motors. Over more than thirty years, ALEC has offered hundreds of “model bills” on policy decisions of interest to them and on the dockets of state legislatures.


The Cigarette: A Political History by Sarah Milov

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", activist lawyer, affirmative action, airline deregulation, American Legislative Exchange Council, barriers to entry, British Empire, business logic, collective bargaining, corporate personhood, deindustrialization, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, G4S, global supply chain, Herbert Marcuse, imperial preference, Indoor air pollution, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Kitchen Debate, land tenure, military-industrial complex, new economy, New Journalism, Philip Mirowski, pink-collar, Potemkin village, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, scientific management, Silicon Valley, structural adjustment programs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, Torches of Freedom, trade route, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, War on Poverty, women in the workforce

It is likely that Powell’s intimate familiarity with the cigarette’s rapid fall in social standing—and his observation of the industry’s attempts to thwart the trend—shaped his recommendation for American businesses writ large. By the late 1970s, Powell’s vision of corporate activism had inspired new forms of lobbying. The Tobacco Institute and some individual cigarette manufacturers became important contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative nonprofit responsible for drafting and disseminating model legislation on a range of issues. In 1979, the executive director of ALEC wrote to the president of the Tobacco Institute to solicit financial support.125 The $10,000 yearly dues paid by member organizations were a good investment for an industry plagued with credibility problems.

Weissman, “Lewis Powell Recommendations Re: Cigarette Industry Environment”, September 22, 1969, Philip Morris Records, https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/yngb0131. 124. “Cigarette Industry Environment,” n.d., Philip Morris Records, https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/pngb0131. 125. K. Teague, American Legislative Exchange Council, December 28, 1979, Tobacco Institute Records, UCSF Library, https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/gnlv0134. 126. Memorandum from Angle Walker, December 10, 1981, Tobacco Institute Records, UCSF Library, https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/gzjb0033. 127.

See also farmers (of tobacco); Jim Crow regime; New Deal; race Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933), 48–53, 58, 65–71, 74, 258 Agricultural Adjustment Act (1938), 69, 71, 73–74, 98, 251, 292–293, 317n16 Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 51, 51–65, 72–77, 84–85, 103, 133, 324n16 Agriculture Trade Development and Assistance Act (1954), 91 AHA (American Heart Association), 119, 146, 266, 275 AIDS, 268–270 Airline Deregulation Act, 174 airlines, 3, 164–165, 168, 171–175 Air Quality Act (1967), 185–186 alcohol, 23–24 ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), 272–273 Allen & Ginter, 16 AMA (American Medical Association), 119, 189, 242, 275 American Academy of Pediatrics, 366n84 American Airlines, 168 American Association for Respiratory Care, 371n140 American Cancer Society, 119, 136, 146, 148, 150–151, 264, 266 American Lung Association, 146, 148, 209, 214, 220, 233, 264, 266, 275 American Nonsmokers’ Rights Association, 287 Americans for Non-Smokers’ Rights, 268, 275 Americans United for Life, 261 Annual Reports (Extension Service), 62 Anti-Cigarette League, 24 Anti-Saloon League, 24 antiwar activism, 119, 140 Arizona, 196 Arkansas, 65 Arnold, Fortas & Porter, 129–130 Arnold, Thurman, 137 Arnold and Porter, 122 Aronow, Wilbert, 193 asbestos, 233–234 ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), 143–152, 160–172, 191, 196, 200, 207, 212–213, 224, 242, 273–275 Ashcroft, John, 289 Ashes to Ashes (Kluger), 305n40 ASH v.


pages: 295 words: 90,821

Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy Is a Sign of Success by Dietrich Vollrath

active measures, additive manufacturing, American Legislative Exchange Council, barriers to entry, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, creative destruction, Deng Xiaoping, endogenous growth, falling living standards, hiring and firing, income inequality, intangible asset, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, old age dependency ratio, patent troll, Peter Thiel, profit maximization, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, tacit knowledge, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, women in the workforce, working-age population

., rules related to treatment of wastewater at a coal plant) and general (e.g., rules governing minimum wage), and looked at whether those general regulations are related to the start-up of firms or the reallocation of workers. Again, they didn’t find anything showing that they were. Consistent with this evidence is data using the American Legislative Exchange Council’s ALEC-Laffer ranking of state competitiveness. ALEC is a think tank and lobbying group that promotes limited government and free markets, according to its own promotional materials. Laffer refers to Arthur Laffer, of the eponymous curve that relates tax revenues to tax rates. ALEC and Laffer combined information on several measures of state economic policies to determine which states are the most competitive.

American Economic Review 105 (12): 3531–63. Young, A. 2014. “Structural Transformation, the Mismeasurement of Productivity Growth, and the Cost Disease of Services.” American Economic Review 104 (11): 3635–67. Index accounting profits, 105 agricultural yields, 76 agriculture industry, 5, 85, 88 American Legislative Exchange Council, 175–77, 182, 183, 246 artificial intelligence, 8, 215 baby boom. See demographics Baumol, William, 5, 94–98, 100, 101, 234, 235, 250 Boskin Commission, 74, 254 Canada, 111 China, 9, 19–23, 182. See also trade Clayton Act, 136, 241 commuting zone, 201, 202 concentration: of firms, 105, 121–24, 137, 153, 154; of income, 185 constant returns to scale, 43, 224, 225, 227 construction industry, 74, 85, 165, 167, 181, 182, 209 contraception, 4, 68, 208, 231; birth control pill, 4, 35, 68, 124, 231 copyright, 130, 133 cost disease of services.


pages: 341 words: 98,954

Owning the Sun by Alexander Zaitchik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, business cycle, classic study, colonial rule, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, desegregation, Donald Trump, energy transition, informal economy, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, knowledge economy, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Menlo Park, Mont Pelerin Society, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, Philip Mirowski, placebo effect, Potemkin village, profit motive, proprietary trading, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, The Chicago School, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Whole Earth Catalog

“I think that it is perfectly fine,” he replied. “It is simply an expression of the fact that you cannot please everybody. Now that I am in the private sector, I understand a little bit more about these things.” 38.The campaign anticipated the fifty-statehouse strategy of the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, founded in 1973 with pharmaceutical industry contributions. 39.In 2010, a Democratic Congress passed a Hatch-Waxman lookalike bill called the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act. It replicated the Hatch-Waxman tradeoff, establishing expedited approval for generic biologic drugs in exchange for giving companies new pathways to delay competition and defend market exclusivity, which the bill guarantees for twelve years.

INDEX ACT Accelerator, 228–29, 235 Adams, Samuel Hopkins, 38, 39 Adrenaline, 41–42 Adriani, John, 175 AFL-CIO, 80, 177 Africa, 107, 206, 208–209, 212–13, 231, 237, 238, 244, 248, 258 Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 59n Agriculture, Department of, 71, 103, 104, 108 AIDS and HIV, xvii, 114n, 180–89, 206, 207–209, 211–14, 219, 221, 231, 235, 237, 244–46, 254, 258 Alcoa, 61–62, 76 Allen, Frederick I., 37–38 Allen, Joe, 161–62, 164, 166 Alsop, Joseph, 67 Alton, Gregg, 226 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 52 American colonies, 9–10 American Economic Association, 145 American Enterprise Institute, 149 American Legislative Exchange Council, 175n American Medical Association (AMA), 25n, 26, 33, 43, 52, 54, 55, 99, 119–24, 128, 129, 136, 175, 176 American Patent Law Association, 67–68 American Pharmaceutical Association, 26, 33, 36, 43 American Radio and Research Corporation, 77–78 American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 20–21 Amin, Tahir, 181 amphetamines, 98, 129 Ancker-Johnson, Betsy, 159 antibiotics, xvi–xvii, 93, 95–97, 106–108, 171; penicillin, 75, 101–11, 125, 131, 191, 195, 196, 258; streptomycin, 106, 191; tetracycline, 106, 130, 196 Antitrust Project, 142–45 Argentina, 207–208 Arnold, Thurman, 62–68, 80–81, 94, 121, 141, 145 Asclepius, 22–23 Aspirin, 33–39, 42, 93, 127n, 173 AstraZeneca, 180, 181, 222, 227, 234 AT&T, 85, 95 Austrian School, 139–41, 143 Azar, Alex, 223 AZT, 184–89, 206 Baker, Brook, 237–38 Bale, Harvey, 204n, 236 Bancel, Stéphane, 253 barbiturates, 126–27, 130 Barnett, Gerald, 51 Barnum, P.


pages: 349 words: 99,230

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice by Jamie K. McCallum

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, carbon tax, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, occupational segregation, post-work, QR code, race to the bottom, remote working, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, side hustle, single-payer health, social distancing, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, The Great Resignation, the strength of weak ties, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce, working poor, workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

Low-wage work has been mandated by the American business class and its allies in government. To call it a conspiracy isn’t far off. In the wake of the Great Recession, a fierce new movement emerged to challenge public sector unions, where the largest percentage of union members are today. Led by corporate-backed organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and emboldened by Republican electoral victories in the 2010 midterm elections, this movement struck out to transform American labor law. In 2011 and 2012, fifteen states passed laws that restricted the rights of public employees to collectively bargain. During the same time, nineteen states introduced “right-to-work” laws that try to bankrupt unions by prohibiting them from collecting dues from all workers covered by their contracts.9 The decline of worker voice and poverty wages at the bottom of the labor market are compounded by other factors that make for miserable jobs across industries.

The protestors quickly attracted widespread media coverage as well as support from powerful right-wing lobbyists. The demonstrations’ impact was grossly magnified, and reshaped national politics. The Save Our Country Coalition—a network of conservative think tanks including FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Patriots, and the American Legislative Exchange Council—was just one of the billionaire-backed drivers of these protests. Still, authentic anti-elite politics filtered into the workplace during the pandemic. Searing critiques of pandemic profiteering, the comparable safety of the telecommuting crowd, and the deplorable conditions under which essential workers toiled created a kind of workplace populism.


Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe by Noam Chomsky, Laray Polk

Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, British Empire, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, energy security, Higgs boson, Howard Zinn, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Kwajalein Atoll, language acquisition, Malacca Straits, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, nuclear ambiguity, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, University of East Anglia, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

John Donnelly, “Price Rise and New Deep-Water Technology Opened Up Offshore Drilling,” Boston Globe, December 11, 2005; Mark Finley, “The Oil Market to 2030—Implications for Investment and Policy,” Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy 1, no. 1 (2012): 28, doi:10.5547/2160-5890.1.1.4. 3 Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), 226. Abbreviations ACHRE: Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments AEC: Atomic Energy Commission ALEC: American Legislative Exchange Council API: American Petroleum Institute ARPA-E: Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy BIOT: British Indian Ocean Territory BLEEX: Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton BP: British Petroleum CDB: China Development Bank CIA: Central Intelligence Agency CND: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament COP: Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC CTBT: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty CW: chemical weapons DARPA: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DEFCON: defense readiness condition DOD: Department of Defense DOE: Department of Energy DU: depleted uranium EPA: Environmental Protection Agency GE: General Electric HEU: highly enriched uranium IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency IBM: International Business Machines ISN: Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies IT: Information Technology LEU: low-enriched uranium MAD: mutually assured destruction MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology NAM: Non-Aligned Movement NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization NAVSTAR GPS: navigation system for timing and ranging, Global Positioning System NEPA: National Environmental Policy Act NIH: National Institutes of Health NNI: National Nanotechnology Initiative NPT: Non-Proliferation Treaty NSC: National Security Council NSF: National Science Foundation NSG: Nuclear Suppliers Group NWFZ: nuclear-weapon-free zone OPEC: Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries OSRD: Office of Scientific Research and Development PNE: peaceful nuclear explosion POW: prisoner of war PTBT: Partial Test Ban Treaty R&D: research and development RADAR: radio detection and ranging SDS: Students for a Democratic Society START: Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty TRIPS: Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights UN: United Nations UNFCCC: UN Framework on Convention on Climate Change WgU: weapon-grade uranium WTO: World Trade Organization 1.


pages: 128 words: 38,187

The New Prophets of Capital by Nicole Aschoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, basic income, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, clean water, collective bargaining, commoditize, crony capitalism, do what you love, feminist movement, follow your passion, food desert, Food sovereignty, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global value chain, helicopter parent, hiring and firing, income inequality, Khan Academy, late capitalism, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, means of production, microapartment, performance metric, post-Fordism, post-work, profit motive, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school vouchers, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, structural adjustment programs, Susan Wojcicki, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

The response by parents, students, and communities is building, but they face an uphill battle, because despite their frustration and anger they have little say in the education reform process. The Gates Foundation is a private institution that is free to use its money as it sees fit. It’s not just Bill and Medinda Gates. Education reformers lobby Congress to pass legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of conservative legislators and business groups that writes sample legislation for political representatives to present to Congress and state legislatures. When Mark Zuckerberg decided to donate $100 million to “fix” the Newark Public School System, the foundation board established to decide how to use the money had only a single community member on it—(former) Mayor Cory Booker.48 Foundations are not only unaccountable and undemocratic—they often also implement programs and structures that are undemocratic.


pages: 476 words: 125,219

Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy by Robert W. McChesney

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, access to a mobile phone, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, AOL-Time Warner, Automated Insights, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, classic study, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collective bargaining, company town, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Brooks, death of newspapers, declining real wages, digital capitalism, digital divide, disinformation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Dr. Strangelove, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, fulfillment center, full employment, future of journalism, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Google Earth, income inequality, informal economy, intangible asset, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, Post-Keynesian economics, power law, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, single-payer health, Skype, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Spirit Level, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, yellow journalism, Yochai Benkler

“What’s a nonprofit digital news operation? Consumer Reports online?” asks Newton. “The highly ethical digital info gathering part of Human Rights Watch?”126 In 2011, for example, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) produced award-winning exposés of the secretive and corporate-dominated American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). A few years earlier, the work might have been done by traditional journalists, but there were simply too few left to take on that assignment. As exciting as it is to have NGOs get into the journalism business, we should not romanticize the development and make a virtue out of a necessity.

See corporate acquisitions Acxiom, 265n125 Adams, John, 57, 243n100 addiction, 10, 11, 45 Advance Publications, 177 advertising, 20, 41–46, 52–53, 58–59, 75, 123, 154–58, 185 Jerry Mander on, 240–41n65 on mobile apps, 148 tax break for, 78 Twitter stance on, 153 See also broadcast advertising; Internet advertising; newspaper advertising; personalized advertising advertising and marketing to children, 76–77, 216, 247n46, 266n151 advertising-free media, 211–14 advertising regulation, 93, 146, 216 Africa, 2, 8, 163 agriculture, 25, 70–71 Alabama, 177 Alden Global Capital, 185 Alinsky, Saul, 220 alphabet, 71 Alterman, Eric, 272n25 Amazon, 127–28, 131, 136–37, 138, 140, 142, 193 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 165, 167, 270n238 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), 198 America Online. See AOL ancient Greece, 71 Anderson, Chris, 101, 132, 141, 143 Andrews, Lori, 142, 149 Android, 133, 134, 150 Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), 125–26 antiterrorism, 160–62, 170 antitrust regulation, 142, 143 AOL, 103, 111, 123–24, 137, 149, 189, 191 Apple, 28, 32, 101, 108, 127–28, 131, 137, 139, 140 cloud computing, 136 government relations, 142 monopolistic enterprises, 138 patents, 134, 260n25 proprietary platforms, 135 tax evasion, 145 Apple iPad, 131, 187 Apple iPhone, 135, 150 Apple iTunes, 127, 131 apps, mobile.


pages: 464 words: 121,983

Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe by Antony Loewenstein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, benefit corporation, British Empire, business logic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Chelsea Manning, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, Corrections Corporation of America, do well by doing good, Edward Snowden, facts on the ground, failed state, falling living standards, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, full employment, G4S, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Leo Hollis, mandatory minimum, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, open borders, private military company, profit motive, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satyajit Das, Scramble for Africa, Slavoj Žižek, stem cell, the medium is the message, trade liberalization, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, work culture

“They leave the most expensive prisoners with taxpayers and take the easy prisoners.”22 This left an army of mentally ill inmates rotting away in state-run prisons that were often in worse shape than when they had arrived, according to a 2014 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center.23 According to a 2012 study by the same organization, 356,000 mentally disturbed people were held in prisons nationwide, while only 35,000 were housed in psychiatric facilities.24 This is how it worked. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was a body that brought together conservative legislators and the private sector to draft market-friendly policies around the country. In Arizona, ALEC routinely indulged politicians making decisions about immigration policy with parties and exclusive access to sports events—and yet the politicians only needed to disclose that they had attended an ALEC conference.

Index Abbott, Tony 279, 286 Abdul (asylum seeker) 286 Abu Ghraib prison 15 abuse 258–62 aid 123 child 102 drug 37–9 human rights 110 labor 29 outsourced 260–1 in prisons 216–17, 218 sexual 252–8, 280–1 accountability 16, 30–1, 180, 277, 291, 310 Adam, Harry 118 AECOM 53–4 Aegis Defence Services 33 Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies 44 Afghanistan 12, 19–56, 59–63, 117, 175 arrival of PMCs 20 asylum seekers from 69–70 Australian contractors 60 casualties 32, 326n27 Chinese support for 37 contractors 28–31 corruption 22, 24, 27, 42, 45, 328n48, 329–30n58 counterinsurgency 43, 52–3 departure of foreign troops 62–3 dependence on America 45 development support 62–3, 324n2, 324n3 drug economy 37–9 election, 2004 31–2 election, 2009 32 election, 2014 32 entrepreneurs 56 fear of resurgent Taliban 44–5 financial situation 62–3 future of PMCs in 23 GDP 330n61 human rights 42 inequality 56 insurgency 12, 32 intelligence gathering 51–6 intelligence-sharing nations 21 invasion of 20, 31 labor abuses 29 laws against PMCs 21 locals’ view of 48 mineral rights 24, 330n65 mining industry 24, 49–50, 330n65 Ministry of Interior 21, 40–2 Ministry of Mines 50 natural resources 49 night raids 43, 46, 52, 54, 55, 328–9n50 occupation of 22, 31–5, 36, 43, 44, 52–3, 63, 325n10 official line 40–3 past conflicts 36–7 PMC numbers 20 population surveys 330–1n66 private military companies 16, 19–25, 33–5, 41–3, 44, 46–8, 48, 50, 59–62, 331n69 propaganda 26 reconstruction 325n11 resource exploitation 49–50 security forces 27, 330n61 Soviet invasion 37 suicide attacks 41 suicide rates 332n83 Taliban rule 25 translators 55, 325n19 USAID 327–28n46 US military bases 28 violence 20 war economy 25–31, 38, 63 warlords 32–3, 44, 326n28, 326–7n30 women in 44, 47–8, 48–9, 50–1, 330n59 Afghanistan Analysts Network 54–6, 328–9n50 Afghanistan Reconstruction Group 26 Afghan police force 27 Afghan Public Protection Force 21 Africa 23 African-Americans, incarceration rates 195, 196 Agility Logistics 124 aid Afghanistan 62–3 Australia 50 contracts 123–5 corruption 126, 171 criticism of process 144–7 food 145–6 fraud 123–4 Haiti 12, 108, 120, 144–7, 340n56, 342n89 human rights abuses 123 NGO-ization of 137–41 Papua New Guinea 13, 158–9, 167, 171–5, 179 profiteering 139 waste 146 aid dependency 121, 126 AIDS 89 Alexander, Michelle 195–6 Alex, Commander 156–7 Al-Hussein, Zeid Ra’ad 277 Al Jazeera America 29 American Correctional Association (ACA) conference, 2014 202–11 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) 201 American University of Afghanistan 43–4 Amnesty International 259 Anastasiou, Vassilis 102 Anti-Defamation League 93 anti-fascist activism 93–4 anti-Semitism 90–1, 93 Arab Spring 97, 127–8 Arawa, Papua New Guinea 158, 167, 180–4 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand 26, 112–13, 151 Arizona 200–2 AshBritt 108 Ashton, Paul 201 assassinations 323n33, 331n69 Assessing Progress in Haiti Act (US) 124 Asylum Help 234 asylum seekers abuse 258–62 austerity 69 Australia 269–305 children 249–50 closed hospitality centers 67–8 costs 304 demonization of 77, 288 deportations 258–63 destinations 68 detention centers 13, 64–71, 76, 77–80, 230–5, 245–51, 271 detention costs 281–3 detention network privatization 77 Greece 64–71, 75–7, 77–80, 89 indefinite detention 68 lack of sympathy for 287–8 medical care 77–80, 256–8 mental health 254–5, 285, 286, 295, 302 motivation 68, 302–3 numbers reaching Europe 96 privatized housing 230–5 processing times 300–1 public sympathy 271 racist violence 71 reception centers 67 refugee crisis 95–8 self-harm 295–6 sexual abuse 280–1 Syntagma Square protest, 2014 70 United Kingdom 230–5, 244, 245–51, 252–8, 258–63 women 253–4 Athens 67, 102–3 Metropolitan Community Clinic 80–4 AusAID 158–9, 161, 171–5, 182, 189–91, 331–2n77 austerity, opposition to 72–5 Austin American-Statesman 108 Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility 190 Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) 282 Australia 8, 104 and Afghanistan 50 aid 50 asylum policy development 275–85, 286, 357n4, 357n9 asylum seeker network 269–305 asylum seekers 13 Community Assistance Program 304 complicity with BCL 160 Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) 271, 274, 279, 281–2, 284,286, 289–93, 295, 297–8, 300–1, 303 detention centers 13, 271, 274, 276, 278–9, 280–5, 285–305, 356n2, 357n11 detention costs 281–3 economic reforms 322n16 exploitation of Papua New Guinea 169–75 foreign policy 173–4 goals in PNG 172 immigration policy 278 “Mining for Development” initiative 190 the Pacific Solution 276–81 and Papua New Guinea 154, 160, 163, 167, 169–75, 176–7, 179, 188–91 PMC contractors 60 privatization 361n51 and Rio Tinto 162 state-ownership approach to resources 177 tender process 289–90 turnback policy 280, 286 Australian Mercy 285 Australian Navy 276 Australian Strategic Policy Institute 190 Autonomous Bougainville Government 161, 167, 178–80, 184, 346n33 Avera eCare 205 Avon Protection 203 Bagram prison 31 Bainimarama, Frank 346–7n41 Baker, Charles 117 Baldry, Eileen 285 Balkonis, Thomas 78–80 Bamazon (TV program) 306–7 Bangladesh 341n65 bank bailouts 3 bankers bonuses 4 Ban Ki-moon 113 Bank of America 3 Barnardo’s 249–50, 266 Barrick Gold 174 Batay Ouvriye 126 Bauer, Shane 204, 207–8, 210 bearing witness 9–10 Becket House, London 263 Bedford, Yarl’s Wood detention centre 252–8, 265 Behavioral International 227 Berati, Reza, murder of 283 Berghorn, George H. 204 Berman, Steve 187 BHP Billiton 172–3, 187, 189 Bigio, Gilbert 108 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 114 Bishop, Julie 176, 182 black sites 16 Blackwater 16, 35, 59, 323–4n40, 331n69 Blair, Tony 60, 236 Blanchard, Olivier 99 bloggers 308 Bloom, Devin D. 307 Blue Mountain Group 30 Boeing 15–16 Bolivia 26, 125 Booz Allen Hamilton 15 border controls, privatization 241 Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) 159, 159–61, 162, 163, 184–6, 188, 190, 343n6 Bougainville, Papua New Guinea 154–64, 167–9, 176, 178–80, 184–5 Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) 154–5, 163–4, 176, 343n6 Bougainville Women in Mining 183–4 Bozorg (asylum seeker) 232–3 Brand, Russell 267–8 bribery 22, 38, 41, 329–30n58 Brown, Bob 174 Brown, Michael, killing 203 Buckles, Nick 283 Burma 14 Bush, George W. 7, 25, 43, 118, 149 Cable, Vince 236 CACI 15–16 California 5, 196–7, 208 Callick, Rowan 176 Call Sense 210 Cambodia 276 Cameron, David 50, 62, 243, 244, 252, 263 Campbell, Chad 201 Campbell, David 284, 359n30 Campsfield detention facility 246–9, 266–7 Canada 120, 304 Capita 241–2 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty) 6 capitalism 1–2 critiques 361n5 disaster 6–9 Klein’s critique of 7–8 predatory 11, 13–14, 162, 310–11 unregulated 135–6 Caracol industrial park, Haiti 116, 128–33, 133–6, 148 Carol (senior analyst) 54–6 Carr, Bob 188–9 Cash, Linda 279 Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) 124–5 Centre for Public Integrity 34 Chalmers, Camille 151–2 Chaman (Afghan refugee) 64–71 Channel 4 News 253, 267 Chaparro, Enrique Mari 137–9 cheap labor 117, 127, 132, 133, 144 Chemonics 123 Cheney, Dick 28, 30 CHF International 138–9 child abuse 102 children detention 249–50, 272 immigrants 212, 225 malnourished 82 in prisons 208 child slaves 145 China 14, 16, 24, 37, 49, 170 China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) 24 cholera 113–16 Chomsky, Noam 238, 310 Christmas Island 269–75, 356n1 Christmas Island Community Reference Group 356–7n3 Christmas Island detention facility 271, 272–3, 274, 276, 278–9, 285–9, 299–305, 356n2 Chrysohoidis, Michalis 67–8 CIA 15, 59, 110, 331n69, 331n73 Citizens for a Free Kuwait 25 City AM (newspaper) 236–7 civilian casualties, Afghanistan 32 Clarke, Victoria 26 Clayton Homes 118 climate change 1–2, 8 Clinton, Bill 116, 118–19, 122, 123, 135 Clinton Foundation 118, 126, 136 Clinton, Hillary 8, 30, 118, 125, 131, 135, 171 Clive (information management consultant) 51–2 Clive (Serco contractor) 289–92 Coffey International 162 Colas, Landry 131 Cold War 33, 111 Collective Against Mining 121 colonialism 109, 160 Comcast 5 Commission on Wartime Contracting (US) 34 Community Assistance Program, Australia 304 community mapping 58 Conflict Mapping in Afghanistan since 1978 (Independent Human Rights Commission) 32 Congo, Democratic Republic of 120 contractors, Afghanistan 28–31 Conway, Jim 208–9 copper mining, ecological damage of 173 Corcoran, Thomas J. 110–11 Corinth detention centre 64, 78–80 Corizon 209 corporate ideology 14 corporate power 7 Corporate Responsibility Coalition 187–8 Corporate Watch 255, 263 CorrectHealth 199 Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) 13, 197–8, 199, 201–2, 211–22, 227, 228, 284–5 corruption Afghanistan 24, 27, 42, 45, 328n48, 329–30n58 aid 126, 171 Greece 64, 72 Haiti 141 overcharging 240–1 Papua New Guinea 170, 171, 188 price-gouging 292 counternarcotics information campaign 26 Crocker, Ryan C. 43 Crockett, Greg 204–5 Crossbar 204–5 Cuba 122 cultural sensitivity 21 Daily Mail 235 Daily Telegraph (Sydney newspaper) 172 Damana, Chris 184–5 Das, Satyajit 309 Daveona, Lawrence 177–8 David (Serco source) 292 Davis, Raymond 57, 331n73 Davis, Troy 199 Davos conference, 2015 2–3 debtocracies 99 Defence Logistics Agency 29 democracy 16, 311 Democracy Now!


Masters of Mankind by Noam Chomsky

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, Berlin Wall, failed state, God and Mammon, high-speed rail, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), land bank, land reform, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, nuremberg principles, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, scientific management, Silicon Valley, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, union organizing, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system

These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.8 The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy. One current illustration of their concern is the Environmental Literacy Improvement Act being proposed to legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth. The ALEC act mandates “balanced” teaching of climate science in K–12 classrooms. “Balanced teaching” is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial in order to “balance” mainstream climate science.


pages: 558 words: 168,179

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

Adam Curtis, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Bakken shale, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carried interest, centre right, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, collective bargaining, company town, corporate raider, crony capitalism, David Brooks, desegregation, disinformation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, energy security, estate planning, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, George Gilder, high-speed rail, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, independent contractor, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, job automation, low skilled workers, mandatory minimum, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, More Guns, Less Crime, multilevel marketing, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, plutocrats, Powell Memorandum, Ralph Nader, Renaissance Technologies, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, Solyndra, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, the scientific method, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, War on Poverty, working poor

“We are basically a conduit to and from the Heritage Foundation to and from conservative members of the House,” its director, Don Eberly, said in 1983. Weyrich, with Scaife’s financial backing, launched several other ingenious political organizations during this period. One was the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group aimed at waging conservative fights in every state legislature in the country. From 1973 until 1983, the Scaife and Mellon family trusts donated half a million dollars to ALEC, constituting most of its budget. “ALEC is well on its way to fulfilling the dream of those who started the organization,” a Weyrich aide wrote to Scaife’s top adviser in 1976, “thanks wholly to your confidence and the tremendous generosity of the Scaife Family Charitable Trusts.”

Coordinating with the think tanks were over a hundred “associate” members that included conservative nonprofit groups like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which the Kochs also helped to fund. Adding clout to the Right’s reach at the state level was the American Legislative Exchange Council. Weyrich’s brainchild had grown impressively since the 1970s, when Richard Mellon Scaife had provided most of its start-up funding. Critics called it a conservative corporate “bill mill.” Thousands of businesses and trade groups paid expensive dues to attend closed-door conferences with local officials during which they drafted model legislation that state legislators subsequently introduced as their own.


pages: 222 words: 70,132

Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy by Jonathan Taplin

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "there is no alternative" (TINA), 1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American Legislative Exchange Council, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, basic income, battle of ideas, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, bitcoin, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Clayton Christensen, Cody Wilson, commoditize, content marketing, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, David Brooks, David Graeber, decentralized internet, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, equal pay for equal work, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, future of journalism, future of work, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Golden age of television, Google bus, Hacker Ethic, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Rheingold, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Silverman, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, life extension, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, packet switching, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, pre–internet, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, revision control, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skinner box, smart grid, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, software is eating the world, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, tech billionaire, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Chicago School, the long tail, The Market for Lemons, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, unpaid internship, vertical integration, We are as Gods, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, you are the product

Jane Mayer quotes public-relations expert Fraser Seitel about the Koch brothers’ effort to remake their image: “They’re waging a charm offensive to reset the image of the Kochs from bogeymen shrouded in secrecy to philanthropists who are supporting black colleges and indigent defense.” By 2013 both Google and Facebook followed Koch Industries and joined the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Founded in 1973 as the Conservative Caucus of State Legislators, ALEC states that its current goal is to further “the fundamental principles of limited government, free markets, and federalism.” ALEC is the principal climate-change opposition group at the state level, but it also has focused on “opposing insurance coverage for birth control in the US; opposing the individual health insurance mandate enacted by the Affordable Care Act; expanding the ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws that allow citizens the right to self-defense if they feel their property is under attack; prohibiting cities from building public broadband networks; urging state legislatures to demand voters produce state-issued IDs.”


Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein

8-hour work day, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Alistair Cooke, Alvin Toffler, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Apollo 13, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 747, Brewster Kahle, business climate, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, death of newspapers, defense in depth, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, equal pay for equal work, facts on the ground, feminist movement, financial deregulation, full employment, global village, Golden Gate Park, guns versus butter model, illegal immigration, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, index card, indoor plumbing, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Julian Assange, Kitchen Debate, kremlinology, land reform, low interest rates, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, oil shock, open borders, Peoples Temple, Phillips curve, Potemkin village, price stability, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Suez crisis 1956, three-martini lunch, traveling salesman, unemployed young men, union organizing, unpaid internship, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, wages for housework, walking around money, War on Poverty, white flight, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, yellow journalism, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

A Palos Verdes life insurance executive was quoted offering a typical response from the state’s middle class: “It’s time to bring those cotton-picking legislators down to their knees.” * * * AT THE END OF MAY in the Chicago suburb of Lincolnshire, with the vote in California a week way, two hundred activists met at a National Tax Limitation Conference. An aide for one of sponsors, the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization controlled by Paul Weyrich that wrote conservative “model legislation” for state legislators to introduce, described tax limitation as the perfect issue to build a broader conservative movement—to organize discontent: “It crosses all philosophies. Everybody is concerned with the increase in taxes.”

The Institute for Educational Affairs, established the previous year by William Simon and Irving Kristol with gifts of $100,000 each from Bechtel, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Mobil, and Nestlé, began distributing grants to promising conservative undergraduates and PhD candidates, and subsidized conservatives to take otherwise unpaid internships at activist organizations, periodicals—and even unsuspecting federal agencies. Organizations for grown-ups were thriving, too—like the American Legislative Exchange Council, which, along with what New Right Report called a “coalition of pro-life, pro-Right-to-Work, pro-Defense, pro-gun, pro-free-enterprise, pro-balanced-budget, pro-tax-limitation, pro-farmer, and anti-left activists,” helped crush a constitutional amendment granting statehood to the heavily Democratic District of Columbia.

experts’ bluff Ibid., 73. “Save the American Dream” KTLA, May 31, UCLA Film and Television Archive, YouTube.com, accessed April 2, 2020. “cotton-picking legislators” “Homeowners Get Tax News, Vow to Back Prop. 13,” LAT, May 19, 1978. Tax Limitation Conference AP, May 22, 1978. American Legislative Exchange Council Dan Kaufman, The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018), 133–34. Newsweek agreed “The Great Tax Revolt,” Newsweek, June 19, 1978. “The damn thing” William Safire column, February 27, 1979.


pages: 283 words: 85,824

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age by Astra Taylor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Brewster Kahle, business logic, Californian Ideology, citizen journalism, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, Community Supported Agriculture, conceptual framework, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital Maoism, disinformation, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, Gabriella Coleman, gentrification, George Gilder, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, hive mind, income inequality, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Laura Poitras, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, Naomi Klein, Narrative Science, Network effects, new economy, New Journalism, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, oil rush, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, post-work, power law, pre–internet, profit motive, recommendation engine, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, slashdot, Slavoj Žižek, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the long tail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, vertical integration, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, Works Progress Administration, Yochai Benkler, young professional

See Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, “In China, Human Costs Are Built into an iPad,” New York Times, January 25, 2012; and Spencer Soper, “Inside Amazon’s Warehouse,” Morning Call, September 18, 2011. All the tech giants are getting in on the lobbying game, but for one particularly controversial initiative, consider the Facebook-led lobbying group FWD.us. In 2013, Google, Facebook, and Yelp all joined ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council—a lobbying organization notorious for supporting climate change denial, undermining gun control, and busting unions—even as companies including Kraft Foods and Pepsi left due to consumer pressure. 1: A PEASANT’S KINGDOM 1. For the 450,000 jobs figure, see Sarah Lacy, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 (New York: Gotham, 2008), 13.


pages: 267 words: 85,265

That Wild Country: An Epic Journey Through the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands by Mark Kenyon

American Legislative Exchange Council, bank run, clean water, Donald Trump, land tenure, off-the-grid, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald Reagan

These types of anti-public-land bills were notable, despite their similarity to the failed movements in prior decades, because they had disproportionately deep pockets funding the cause. Much of the energy, lobbying, and funding for land-transfer legislation and proposals over the past few years can be traced back to two organizations—the American Lands Council and the American Legislative Exchange Council. The ALC, founded by Rep. Ken Ivory of Utah, was the primary lobbying group supporting land transfers across the country, while the ALEC was responsible for drafting the majority of the model state-level legislation that ended up passing in state capitols across the West. Both of these organizations received funding from the famed Koch brothers and a variety of mining and fossil fuel industry interest groups and corporations.


pages: 377 words: 110,427

The Boy Who Could Change the World: The Writings of Aaron Swartz by Aaron Swartz, Lawrence Lessig

Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, Alfred Russel Wallace, American Legislative Exchange Council, Benjamin Mako Hill, bitcoin, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brewster Kahle, Cass Sunstein, deliberate practice, do what you love, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, failed state, fear of failure, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, full employment, functional programming, Hacker News, Howard Zinn, index card, invisible hand, Joan Didion, John Gruber, Lean Startup, low interest rates, More Guns, Less Crime, peer-to-peer, post scarcity, power law, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, semantic web, single-payer health, SpamAssassin, SPARQL, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, unbiased observer, wage slave, Washington Consensus, web application, WikiLeaks, working poor, zero-sum game

Lee Liberman Otis was just a law student when she started pitching Scaife and others on the need for the Federalist Society.† The field even has its serial entrepreneurs. Paul Weyrich was the press secretary for a Republican senator when he met Joseph Coors. Over the next few decades, Weyrich used Coors’ money to start the Heritage Foundation, the Free Congress Foundation, Moral Majority, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and various other groups that haunt any history of modern conservatism’s rise. Just like the vendors at the inauguration, political entrepreneurs sought out people with money and tried to sell them something they didn’t even know they wanted. (Manne to Goodrich: “The Augean stables were cleaned by diverting a stream of water through them. . . .


pages: 388 words: 111,099

Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics by Peter Geoghegan

4chan, Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-globalists, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, corporate raider, crony capitalism, data science, deepfake, deindustrialization, demographic winter, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, East Village, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, fake news, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Greta Thunberg, invisible hand, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open borders, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, plutocrats, post-truth, post-war consensus, pre–internet, private military company, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, Torches of Freedom, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, éminence grise

The reporter’s description of Fox as “almost the Donald Rumsfeld of Great Britain”21 was more accurate than he might have realised, at least in terms of Fox’s aspirations: at the time, the shadow defence secretary’s Westminster office was decorated with a detailed map of Afghanistan and a photograph of himself with President Bush. Fox’s transatlantic relationships were not merely personal. In 2007, Atlantic Bridge established a “special partnership” with the American Legislative Exchange Council, one of the most influential forces in US conservative politics. ALEC, whose funders have included the Kochs, the Philip Morris tobacco conglomerate, ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association, is famous for aggressively lobbying state legislators to adopt corporate-backed policies.


Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America by David Callahan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, automated trading system, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, carried interest, clean water, corporate social responsibility, David Brooks, demographic transition, desegregation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Thorp, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial independence, global village, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, income inequality, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, John Markoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, medical malpractice, mega-rich, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, NetJets, new economy, offshore financial centre, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, power law, profit maximization, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Florida, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, short selling, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stem cell, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, systematic bias, systems thinking, unpaid internship, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, working poor, World Values Survey

“The strategic piece of the puzzle we’d been missing— consistent across almost every legislature we examined—is that it’s often just a handful of people, two or three, who introduce the most outrageous legislation and force the rest of their colleagues to vote on it,” Gill told the Atlantic in 2007. “If you could reach these few people or neutralize them by flipping the chamber to leaders who would block bad legislation, you’d have a dramatic effect.” Going back to the early 1980s, right-wing groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council had spent tens of millions of dollars to elect Republicans at the state level, and those investments had yielded enormous dividends. Not only did the right exercise huge influence in state legislatures, but it used this arena to nurture a farm team of young pols, and many stars of the movement—such as Rick Santorum—started their political careers in backwater state capitals.


pages: 320 words: 87,853

The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information by Frank Pasquale

Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American Legislative Exchange Council, asset-backed security, Atul Gawande, bank run, barriers to entry, basic income, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, bonus culture, Brian Krebs, business cycle, business logic, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Chelsea Manning, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, computerized markets, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Debian, digital rights, don't be evil, drone strike, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, Flash crash, folksonomy, full employment, Gabriella Coleman, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Earth, Hernando de Soto, High speed trading, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Ian Bogost, informal economy, information asymmetry, information retrieval, information security, interest rate swap, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Bogle, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, kremlinology, late fees, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, mobile money, moral hazard, new economy, Nicholas Carr, offshore financial centre, PageRank, pattern recognition, Philip Mirowski, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, regulatory arbitrage, risk-adjusted returns, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, search engine result page, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social intelligence, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steven Levy, technological solutionism, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, two-sided market, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

If a would-be Sinclair tried to document today’s food horror stories, there’s a good chance he’d be fi ned, jailed, or even labeled a terrorist. In Iowa, Utah, and Missouri, undercover investigations of factory farms are illegal. Nearly every major agricultural state has proposed similar legislation. A shadowy corporate-government partnership known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has proposed “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” to deter filming that is designed to “defame” such facilities or their owners.176 Any violators would end up on a “terrorist registry.” Good luck fi nding out exactly how ALEC came to propose that law: a Washington Post reporter who tried to attend a gathering found that its “business meetings are not open.”177 Police escorted him away, and if he had persisted, who knows—maybe he’d have been labeled a terrorist, too.


pages: 470 words: 130,269

The Marginal Revolutionaries: How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas by Janek Wasserman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Wald, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, different worldview, Donald Trump, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, Internet Archive, invisible hand, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, New Journalism, New Urbanism, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game, éminence grise

The future of civilization may really depend on whether we can catch the ear of a large enough part of the upcoming generation of intellectuals all over the world fast enough.” Today the renamed Atlas Network consists of more than 480 think tanks, including the Michigan-based Acton Institute, which offers religious arguments for libertarian policies; AEI; the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which produces model legislation for conservative US politicians; Americans for Prosperity; the Ayn Rand Institute; Cato; FEE; Heritage; the Hoover Institution; IHS; the Liberty Fund; the Manhattan Institute; Mercatus; and a half dozen Mises Institutes.46 Of course, neither Hayek nor the Austrian School was primarily responsible for IEA’s or Atlas’s roles in the sharp rightward turn in Western politics after 1973.


pages: 491 words: 141,690

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire by Jeff Berwick, Charlie Robinson

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, airport security, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, Corrections Corporation of America, COVID-19, crack epidemic, crisis actor, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, dark matter, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy transition, epigenetics, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, fiat currency, financial independence, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, illegal immigration, Indoor air pollution, information security, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, mandatory minimum, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, microapartment, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, new economy, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pill mill, planetary scale, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, pre–internet, private military company, Project for a New American Century, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, South China Sea, stock buybacks, surveillance capitalism, too big to fail, unpaid internship, urban decay, WikiLeaks, working poor

Energy Transfer Partners is the hated company behind the very controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, and they have been accused of using their money to fund lobbying to change the laws surrounding protesting because so many people have protested against their project. Rather than adjust their project, talk with the protestors, or bribe officials to push their proposal through, they instead hired the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to lobby for measures to increase the length of prison sentences for protests related to “critical infrastructure”. They have made a decision that if they cannot win an argument with the people that disagree with their pipeline, they will just try to criminalize free speech and make sure that the laws put those people that are protesting them in prison for long stretches of time.


pages: 391 words: 22,799

To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise by Bethany Moreton

affirmative action, American Legislative Exchange Council, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, collective bargaining, company town, corporate personhood, creative destruction, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, emotional labour, estate planning, eternal september, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Gilder, global village, Great Leap Forward, informal economy, invisible hand, liberation theology, longitudinal study, market fundamentalism, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage tax deduction, Naomi Klein, new economy, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, prediction markets, price anchoring, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Nader, RFID, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand, strikebreaker, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, union organizing, walkable city, Washington Consensus, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , Works Progress Administration

As liability insurance premiums grew by as much as 500 percent, liability reformers could look for federal support from the Reagan administration’s Tort Policy Working Group and from their number-Â�one conÂ�gresÂ�sional champion, Senator John Danforth, a Missouri Republican. But much of the fight would take place in the states.64 Concerned, the chemical companies joined a coalition under the auspices of the American Legislative Exchange Council and set out to generate a citizen outcry against tort abuse.65 It was an uphill battle, but as the SIFE competition demonstrated, Dow and the industry group Chemical Manufacturers Association had a valuable asset in Mrs. Nute, wife of Dow lobbyist Leslie F. “Lee” Nute. At an association meeting, Mrs.


pages: 651 words: 161,270

Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism by Sharon Beder

American Legislative Exchange Council, battle of ideas, benefit corporation, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, business climate, centre right, clean water, corporate governance, Exxon Valdez, Gary Taubes, global village, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Elkington, laissez-faire capitalism, military-industrial complex, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, old-boy network, planned obsolescence, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, shareholder value, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, two and twenty, urban planning

He sued for the loss in real estate value of his property when the Coastal Commission changed their management plan so as “to prevent development on sensitive coastal land”. 76 It is claimed that “almost all of the ‘takings’ bills that have been proposed in state legislatures around the county are written by a little right-wing think-tank, the American Legislative Exchange Council, funded by the usual long-lived cast of conservative businesses and foundations.”77 The Council is aiming to introduce stronger takings laws in various states with its model takings legislation, which gives property owners automatic compensation if the value of their land is diminished by fifty per cent or more by government regulations or plans.


pages: 486 words: 150,849

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History by Kurt Andersen

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, airport security, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, American ideology, American Legislative Exchange Council, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, blue-collar work, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, Burning Man, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, computer age, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, Erik Brynjolfsson, feminist movement, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Future Shock, game design, General Motors Futurama, George Floyd, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, High speed trading, hive mind, income inequality, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, Joan Didion, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, Naomi Klein, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Overton Window, Peter Thiel, Picturephone, plutocrats, post-industrial society, Powell Memorandum, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Seaside, Florida, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, tech billionaire, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, urban planning, urban renewal, very high income, wage slave, Wall-E, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional, éminence grise

In the 1980s the Koch groups started producing papers and articles and advertisements arguing the Koch line—against labor unions, against expanded Medicare and Medicaid, against the findings of climate science about global warming. And actually writing laws. They helped underwrite and build the American Legislative Exchange Council, a very effective organization that drafts right-wing bills in Washington for right-wing state legislators to introduce and get their states to enact. Although ALEC is ostensibly an association of elected officials, its operations have been funded almost entirely by members of the Business Roundtable and other big corporations.


pages: 589 words: 167,680

The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism by Steve Kornacki

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, American Legislative Exchange Council, Berlin Wall, computer age, David Brooks, Donald Trump, employer provided health coverage, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Future Shock, illegal immigration, immigration reform, junk bonds, low interest rates, mass immigration, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, power law, Ralph Nader, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Savings and loan crisis, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, Thomas L Friedman, Timothy McVeigh, trickle-down economics, union organizing, War on Poverty, women in the workforce

The New York Times: “Aggressive Republicans Choose House Whip,” New York Times, March 23, 1989. “Suffering through”: Ross Baker, “Gingrich As Whip Shows GOP Desperation,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1989. While making sure: Michael Kranish, “Conservative Gingrich Elected House GOP Whip,” Boston Globe, March 23, 1989. FIVE “By God”: “Remarks to the American Legislative Exchange Council,” American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=19351. “The view”: Robin Toner, “Defying the Wisdom for ’92, Ex-Senator Tsongas Dives In,” New York Times, April 10, 1991. The chairman: Richard Benedetto, “GOP Chief: War Stance to Be Issue,” USA Today, April 18, 1991.


pages: 850 words: 254,117

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

affirmative action, air freight, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, bank run, barriers to entry, big-box store, British Empire, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cotton gin, cross-subsidies, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversified portfolio, European colonialism, fixed income, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, global village, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, informal economy, inventory management, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, land reform, late fees, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, payday loans, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price discrimination, price stability, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, rent control, rent stabilization, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, surplus humans, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, transcontinental railway, Tyler Cowen, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, We are all Keynesians now

{470} John Tierney, “Betting on the Planet,” New York Times Magazine, December 2, 1990, pp. 52–53, 74–81. {471} “1,001 Years of Natural Gas,” Wall Street Journal, April 27, 1977, p. 26. {472} “Is the World Running Out of Oil?” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2005, p. A5. {473} Robert L. Bradley, Jr., Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability (Washington: American Legislative Exchange Council, 2000), p. 42. {474} Patrick Barta, “Comeback in the Outback,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2007, p. C6. Chapter 14: Stocks, Bonds and Insurance {475} “Uncle Sam Stocks Up,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2008, p. A14. {476} Natalie McPherson, Machines and Economic Growth: The Implications for Growth Theory of the History of the Industrial Revolution (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 40


pages: 1,123 words: 328,357

Post Wall: Rebuilding the World After 1989 by Kristina Spohr

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, central bank independence, colonial exploitation, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, G4S, Japanese asset price bubble, Kickstarter, mass immigration, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, open economy, operational security, Prenzlauer Berg, price stability, public intellectual, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, software patent, South China Sea, special economic zone, Thomas L Friedman, Transnistria, uranium enrichment, zero-coupon bond

Bush’s Address to the Nation on the Suspension of Allied Offensive Combat Operations in the Persian Gulf 27.2.1991 9.02 a.m. Oval Office APP Back to text 193. Diary Entry 26.2.1991, printed in Bush & Scowcroft A World Transformed p. 484; Inaugural Address, 20.1.1989 APP; Remarks to the American Legislative Exchange Council 1.3.1991 APP; and Radio Address to United States Armed Forces Stationed in the Persian Gulf Region 2.3.1991 APP. For a contemporary reflection on the Vietnam syndrome, see George C. Herring ‘America and Vietnam: The Unending War’ Foreign Affairs 70, 5 (Winter 1991/2) pp. 104–19 Back to text 194.