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Throwback Tuesday: John Oliver Exposes ALEC

We couldn’t think of a better throwback than John Oliver’s hilarious take-down of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This group of corporate lackeys is hell-bent on pushing their anti-worker agenda on any elected official who takes them up on their offer for an all-expense-paid vacation to their annual meeting, this year in sunny San Diego.

ALEC, funded mostly by corporate special interests and billionaire extremists like the Koch Brothers, spares no expense in pursuit of their goal to make life even easier for 1% and more difficult for everyone else. How do they do it? By authoring cookie-cutter bills that they push through state legislatures with the help of the politicians whose campaigns they fund. . Discriminatory voter ID laws? Check. Laws to dismantle unions to benefit CEOs and hurt workers? Check. Roll back clean energy standards? Champion controversial and discriminatory laws? Check. Check.

On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver summed up ALEC as “a conservative bill mill which has helped develop model legislation from Arizona's notorious SB 1070 immigration bill to bills expanding private prisons, payday loan companies and for-profit colleges”

That’s why a progressive coalition is holding a massive protest at ALEC’s conference in San Diego. While ALEC attendees are getting talking points on things like climate change denial, thousands will be in the streets to make sure they know their shady agenda isn’t welcome in California.

Watch the video above to see the segment. Here's the text:

OLIVER: It's basically a conservative bill mill which has helped develop model legislation from Arizona's notorious SB 1070 immigration bill to bills expanding private prisons, payday loan companies and for-profit colleges, all of which we've talked about on this very show. In fact, I'm going to list ALEC in the credits for our show as associate producer of creating horrifying things for us to talk about. Great work, ALEC! See you at the end-of-season wrap party, you pieces of shit.

The thing is, ALEC is everywhere. Roughly 1 in 4 state legislators are members, and it's not hard to see why. ALEC makes their jobs troublingly easy. Here's their model electricity freedom bill, which at one point says, “be it therefore enacted that the state of, insert state, repeals the renewable energy mandate.” So, as long as you can remember and spell the name of your state, you can introduce legislation.

Join us in San Diego! RSVP here & find more information on the protest.

Don’t let ALEC get away with their #ALECSanDiego twitter campaign. Get loud & join our Thunderclap on Facebook and Twitter!

Join thousands of Californians! Sign our petition saying California is a #NoALECZone