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November 11, 2014

Tell Ebay to Stop Supporting ALEC

By Public Citizen

ALEC's agenda is so extreme that many tech companies -- including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo! -- are withdrawing their membership. But eBay, the popular online auction service, is still a member of ALEC.

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Do you know about the shadowy group behind some of our country's most regressive laws?

It's called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

But don't be fooled by its wonky name or chummy acronym.

Outside the spotlight on federal lawmakers in Washington, D.C., ALEC operates at the state level, matching up giant corporations with conservative politicians to push local legislation devised to advance Big Business and far-right policies.

ALEC's agenda is so extreme that many tech companies -- including Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Yahoo! -- are withdrawing their membership.

But eBay, the popular online auction service, is still a member of ALEC.

eBay, Paypal
eBay, Paypal
(Image by Janitors)
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Take action with our allies at Sierra Rise and urge eBay to discontinue its membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council.

ALEC's network of right-wing politicians introduces around 1,000 bills in various state legislatures each year, such as:

  • discriminatory "voter ID" laws
  • laws blocking implementation of the Affordable Care Act
  • laws opposing limits on carbon emissions and incentives for homeowners who install solar panels on their houses
  • NRA-influenced "stand your ground" laws
  • laws (crafted in the 1990s with the notorious Enron) deregulating the electricity industry
  • laws benefitting the fracking industry and the builders of the Keystone XL pipeline
  • laws privatizing our prisons and other "tough on crime" laws to keep for-profit prisons filled
  • school voucher laws
  • laws preventing cities and counties from building public broadband networks to compete with the near monopolies of the telecom giants
  • laws keeping the minimum wage low
  • laws reducing the retirement security earned by public employees

And that's only a small sample of the radical and regressive policies pushed by ALEC -- which, you won't be surprised to learn, is partly funded by the Koch Brothers.

It's time for eBay to join other tech companies in disassociating from a group with such a backwards agenda.

Take action today with our allies at Sierra Rise: Tell eBay to quit ALEC.

The more companies withdraw from ALEC, the less influence it will have on laws in your state and the rest of the country, so please take action today.



Authors Website: http://citizen.org

Authors Bio:

Public Citizen is a non-profit advocacy organzation


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