Undercover at ALEC.

• Author: Taylor, Chris
• Position: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR - American Legislative Exchange Council - Column

ON DAY ONE OF MY FIRST ALEC CONVENTION, I WORE MY MOST conservative outfit and did my best Michele Bachmann impersonation. Progressive Democrats don't generally go to meetings of the American Legislative Exchange Council unless they are protesting outside. But after my predecessor, Mark Pocan, moved on from the state legislature in Wisconsin to the U.S. Congress, I decided to follow in his footsteps and become an ALEC member--something any state legislator can do.

To say I had no idea what to expect is an understatement.

In fact, after joining ALEC, registering for the conference, and shelling out almost $1,000 in fees, I still couldn't get my hands on the conference agenda.

This led me to wonder what they were hiding.

After three attempts to obtain the agenda by my legislative office for the Chicago conference in August, I finally received a bootleg copy from another interloper.

While I arrived in Chicago knowing little about what the day held, by the end of the day one thing was clear: I was on another planet.

ALEC brings together a whole galaxy of resources to persuade state legislators to enact a special interest and corporate agenda that includes privatizing everything that is public so that corporations can make more money. ALEC is intent on eliminating federal regulations that could interfere with corporations making as much money as possible, and disabling the federal government so that it really can't do much.

As keynote speaker Stephen Moore, founder of the Club for Growth and editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal, stated, "What we really need is more rich people."

Though legislators and corporations supposedly coexist equally in the ALEC universe, it was abundantly clear to me that the special interests and big corporations run the show. During a workshop on limiting the power of the federal government, the Citizens for Self-Governance promised a bevy of resources, including bundling campaign contribution-sand training an army of grassroots activists, to legislators leading their states in calling for a constitutional convention to, among other things, prohibit federal mandates on states. The presenters entreated legislators to act now to "save the Republic."

As I attended workshops on education, labor and employment, "federalism," tort "reform," energy, and the environment, I realized that ALEC had invaded Wisconsin in a far more comprehensive way than I had believed. Our state has become an ALEC petri dish in...