ALEC & Norquist - Their Anti-American Dream

A study that I recently ran into noted the following items, that blew me away -

Privatization in Practice
The key strategies as to how to downsize government and transfer programs to the private sector are described as:
• Privatization by attrition - Cessation of public programs and disengagement of government from specific kinds of responsibilities. Example might be the U.S. postal system.
• Transfer of assets - Direct sale or lease of public land, infrastructure, and enterprises. Examples might be federal and state parks, state-owned liquor stores and the proposed privatization of public libraries.
• Contracting out (public/private partnerships) or vouchers - Instead of directly producing some service, the government may finance private services, for example through contracting out or vouchers. Examples might be charter schools, prisons.
• Deregulation - Deregulation of entry into activities previously treated as public monopolies. Examples might be utilities, water, waste management, air traffic control and ports.

Sometimes I’m a little slow at processing information – in an introverted type of way.  Mulling – is my way of life, until the proverbial light bulb goes off and the facts hit me upside the head.

That list of “privatization in practice” is the game plan for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  Previously, I had viewed each of those bullet points as separate entities, separate but unrelated ALEC goals – but they are in fact, the bits and pieces of one agenda - “privatization”.

In that same study, they note in the overview (my emphasis):

The pace of the movement to privatize has escalated since 2008. The current economic recession and the trend in government over the years to reduce taxes have increased government budget deficits. The current recession is resulting in business failures, high unemployment, and a loss of tax revenues for federal, state and local governments. These revenue losses have added to the drive to downsize government by privatizing functions, services and assets. As was discovered throughout the study, as Connie Prince points out in the education article below, "information is limited because most of the operations are proprietary in a private company leading to a lack of transparency." That factor causes a bit of an unbalance in the study materials toward the negative effects of privatization in general. Failures are usually publicized and glaring, while actual facts are still behind the closed books of the private companies.

And at that point I am not only thinking of ALEC – but I am thinking of Grover Norquist and his “No New Taxes Pledge” that is creating havoc and destruction at the state and federal levels.

So I thought it was time to do a little research on if and how the two are associated.  Because while the supposition may be made that Norquist / ALEC may be working in tandem to achieve the same final goal, I had not found documentation that definitively linked them over any specific period of time.