ALEC to Kick-Off ACCE (American City and County Exchange) at Dallas Meeting

[Triana]

ALEC is expanding. The group that’s long been known for promoting conservative legislation in states is now moving into local government. (Resist the Privatization of America first reported on this last March.)
It’s a smart step for ALEC. (Its formal name is the American Legislative Exchange Council.) There’s been an explosion of conservative think-tankery in states over the past decade, with many capitals and big cities now hosting groups that float ideas, which are then promoted heavily by corporate interests.

But, perhaps because there are so many thousands of localities, there’s nothing equivalent at the city or county level.

“As a conservative, as somebody who believes in more of a limited government and free-market solutions to some of the problems that exist in government, I found myself frustrated in my council experience because there weren’t resources available to me,” says Jon Russell, a former local official in Washington state who is leading the initiative, known as the American City County Exchange.

The organizations that do represent local governments don’t typically get into those sorts of ideological policy issues. The National League of Cities (NLC), for instance, tends to focus more on federal issues or to act as a clearinghouse for good ideas and practices among its members. “We don’t necessarily look at policy, or getting cities to do things differently,” says Gregory Minchak, an NLC spokesman.

Stepping into that breach, the American City County Exchange will run very much on the ALEC model, pairing up lawmakers with business groups to craft model legislation and other proposals. The effort is in its infancy — Russell only started working full time on the project in March — but ALEC is claiming hundreds of members have already signed up. The group will kick things off in a big way in July, at ALEC’s annual meeting.

THE REST:

http://respriv.org/alec-kick-acce-american-city-county-exchange-dallas-meeting/

[Ikonoklast]

1. The agenda is to privatize as many public assets as possible.

It takes very little money to actually control an entire city council, but the ROI to the wealthy that want to control all aspects of our city services previously done cheaper by public employees would be fabulous.

My city gave up public trash removal a few years ago, with a private contractor selling pie-in-the-sky bullshit, and city council bought it.

We now have limited pick-up that is five times as expensive as it was ten years ago, with the contractor telling the city it can no longer do five days a week pick-up as it is loosing money and the city will have to settle for four.


And if the city wants to sue, they won't pick-up anything until the suit is settled, the contract they signed means go fuck yourselves as far as they are concerned.


Libertarians are turning this nation into a giant hellhole.

[Triana]

2. Exactly. We're nationally screwed & tattooed IMO

Until/unless IRS and other laws are changed to disallow this pimping of public assets and services to corprats.