BIG News on ALEC! May 31, 2012 | By ThinkProgress War Room More Corporations Abandon Right-Wing Group Under Pressure from Progressives There’s big news on the ALEC front today: both retail giant Wal-Mart and Medtronic, a medical device company, have decided to dump the secretive right-wing group. It appears that ALEC’s campaign to promote controversial voter suppression and so-called Stand Your Ground laws played a role in Wal-Mart’s decision to part ways with the group: “Previously, we expressed our concerns about ALEC’s decision to weigh in on issues that stray from its core mission ‘to advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets,’” Maggie Sans, Wal-Mart vice president of public affairs and government relations, said in a May 30 letter addressed to ALEC’s national chairman and executive director. “We feel that the divide between these activities and our purpose as a business has become too wide. To that end, we are suspending our membership in ALEC.”
Here’s the recap of where we stand on ALEC: 54…state legislators have now dropped ALEC. 19…major corporations have dropped ALEC, including big names like Amazon.com, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Kraft, Wendy's, Mars, Inc., Kaplan, Procter & Gamble, Yum! Brands, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Intuit, 4…non-profit organizations have dropped ALEC, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It appears that ALEC may be headed toward the same fate as the notorious climate-denying Heartland Institute, which has been abandoned by many of its corporate donors after it crossed the line one too many times. Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed NEW DATA: Elections supervisors throughout Florida confirm U.S. citizens improperly targeted in voter purge. Two conservative federal appeals court judges agree that DOMA is unconstitutional. Why did an Oklahoma hospital refuse to treat a young rape victim? Amid Florida’s ongoing voter purge, a federal judge has blocked the states’s voter suppression law. The Romney campaign put forth an extremely bizarre conspiracy theory about the Obama administration today. Karl Rove’s secret money group attacked President Obama in an ad over a company that once received taxpayer money from Mitt Romney. Politico put out a hatchet job on its competitors today. It didn’t go very well. The gender gap in wages is real — and that’s why people should tell each other how much they’re making. Paul Krugman became an economist because he loves science fiction so much. | 
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