A progressive exchange

For more than a couple decades we’ve had to deal with the success of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which writes model legislation to implement hard conservative ideas, then sends them out to GOP controlled state legislatures for enacting. An example (that I’m thinking about because I just read about it in one of Dad’s old issues of Mother Jones) is the Stand Your Ground laws that shield citizen shooters if there is even the slightest hint of firing in self-defense. Many anti-LGBT bills have also come out of ALEC, such as the various Religious Freedom Restoration Acts that are essentially a license to discriminate. Both corporations and legislators buy membership in ALEC, though the recent round of RFRAs prompted several corporations to withdraw.

And on the progressive side? Similar organizations to ALEC have sprung up, but usually fail to gain traction. Maybe not as many corporate members?

Many progressives have hopes for SIX, the State Innovation Exchange. It is now a couple years old. Though it doesn’t write model legislation it did inherit from a predecessor group a library of 2000 progressive bills enacted in various states. SIX has developed a blueprint, what it calls a 100-day project. It calls for: clean energy, equal pay for women, raising state minimum wages, crack down on wage theft, make tax systems more progressive, and more.