Welcome, to a story that’s been unfolding for more than 30 years but has gone largely untold. That’s the way the central characters wanted it. They were smart and understood something very important: that they might more easily get what they wanted from state capitals than from Washington, DC. So they started putting their money in places like Raleigh, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Phoenix, Arizona; and Madison, Wisconsin. That’s because what happens in our state legislatures directly affects our taxes, schools, roads, the quality of our air and water – even our right to vote.

Politicians and lobbyists at the core of this clever enterprise figured out how to pull it off in an organized, camouflaged way — covering their tracks while they put one over on an unsuspecting public. This is the story of how and why it worked. Our report was many months in the making. It’s collaboration between Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes, the filmmakers at Okapi Productions; and the Schumann Media Center that I head. Schumann supports independent journalism and public watchdog groups like the Center for Media and Democracy, whose investigators have been tracking the footprints of ALEC, an organization hiding in plain sight, yet one of the most influential and powerful in American politics.

via United States of ALEC.