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Progress Missouri today released a new report exposing direct ties between the Show‐Me Institute (SMI) and the Koch Brothers-funded State Policy Network (SPN), a national network of like‐minded 'think tanks' that promotes disinformation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) agendas in state Capitols. The Show‐Me Institute has also received significant funding from the Donors Capital Fund, which is also connected to the notorious Koch Brothers, and other out‐of‐state right‐wing organizations such as the Roe Foundation and the Cato Institute.

“The Show-Me Institute is far more than one of Rex Sinquefield’s pet projects,” said Sean Soendker Nicholson, Executive Director of Progress Missouri. “The Show-Me Institute is part of a national network of right-wing belief tanks, a franchise in the Koch Brothers-funded State Policy Network and supported by the Koch-connected Donors Capital Fund. With its national backers in mind, it’s not surprising to see the organization work to keep Missourians trapped in poverty wages, attack on Missouri’s middle class, oppose affordable health insurance options for Missouri’s working families, and work to make Missouri’s teachers and school administrators ‘at will’ employees.”

The new report also outlines the multiple streams of income and direct conflicts of interest for the Show-Me Institute’s “Chief Economist,” Joseph Haslag, who also serves as a campaign consultant and University of Missouri Ken Lay Chair of Economics. Beyond his public university salary, Haslag has also received at least $200,000 in salary from SMI in recent years and more than $75,000 in campaign consulting fees from ideological campaign committees. Meanwhile, Haslag advocates against defined retirement plans and against minimum wage increases for working Missourians. 

Jefferson City is full of good people working very hard to make Missouri a better place. It’s also full of small-minded, fearful silly people trying to remake the state in their image. Spend just a few days listening to the debate in the Missouri House or Senate, and it becomes abundantly clear how poorly our legislators represent the diverse, dynamic and intelligent people of the Show-Me State.

Progress Missouri today released a detailed research report exposing the influence of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the Missouri Capitol. Through ALEC, corporations hand Missouri legislators wish lists in the form of "model" legislation that often directly benefit their bottom line at the expense of Missouri families. Behind closed doors, numerous ALEC model bills are crafted by corporations, for corporations. Elected officials who are members of ALEC then bring their model legislation back to Missouri, where they claim them as their own ideas and important public policy innovations without disclosing that corporations crafted and pre-voted on the bills at closed-door meetings with legislators who are part of ALEC.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a corporate bill mill exerting extraordinary and secretive influence in the Missouri legislature and in other states. Through ALEC, corporations hand Missouri legislators wish lists in the form of "model" legislation that often directly benefit their bottom line at the expense of Missouri families. Behind closed doors, numerous ALEC model bills are crafted by corporations, for corporations. Elected officials who are members of ALEC bring ALEC legislation back to Missouri, where they claim them as their own ideas and important public policy innovations without disclosing that corporations crafted and pre-voted on the bills at closed-door meetings with legislators who are part of ALEC.

ALEC provides legislators with a means to appear highly active in the legislative process by secretly abdicating their job drafting legislation to corporate special interests. "It is funded and dominated by free-market and corporate interests," writes the Kansas City Star, "who work with like-minded legislators to shield corporations from legal action, limit the rights of workers, disenfranchise voters, radically privatize the public education system, hinder the ability of government to regulate and curb polluters, and further skew our democracy in the favor of corporations and their political allies."

More than 60 legislators in Missouri have been identified as having ties to ALEC, and the number may be much higher. Identifying the list of Missouri legislators who are part of ALEC is a difficult task, because ALEC operates largely in secret. Even though they claim to be a legislative membership organization, there is no full list of members made public by the organization. Missouri legislators with ALEC ties include Speaker Tim Jones, Majority Leader John Diehl, Lt. Governor Peter Kinder, and State Senator John Lamping.

Progress Missouri has identified more than 40 Missouri bills that directly echo ALEC models. ALEC bills in Missouri include so-called right to work laws, bans on implementation of the Common Core State Standards, resolutions supporting the Keystone XL pipeline, an act relating to wireless communication towers, voter registration hurdles, a "parent trigger act," a "parents’ rights" resolution, purely political resolutions "reaffirming 10th amendment rights," a "private attorney retention act," an Anti-Affordable Care Act ballot measure, a resolution opposing food and beverage taxes, an "asbestos fairness act," a resolution supporting the electoral college, a "castle doctrine" law, a resolution encouraging congress to undermine Social Security, and a "private property protection act."

A Missouri State Senator, ladies and gentlemen.

PROMO and Progress Missouri today launched www.FiredForBeingGay.com, an informative microsite and story collection project to raise awareness of inadequate legal protections against discrimination for LGBT Missourians.

"Right now in Missouri, you can be fired, be evicted from your apartment or be kicked out of a restaurant just because you are LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender)," said AJ Bockelman, Executive Director of PROMO.  "That's just wrong. But we are very encouraged by the growing bipartisan support for simple updates to state law that would fix this injustice."

FiredForBeingGay.com highlights the more than 55 sponsors and co-sponsors of the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act in the General Assembly, including leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties.

A new video of Rep. Anne Zerr (R-St. Charles) outlining her support for the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act (MONA) is prominently featured on the site.  

Missourians are encouraged to write their legislators directly on the FiredForBeingGay.com site, and are also able to submit their own personal videos or images for publishing.

The White House has released state-by-state reports on some of the programs and services that would be impacted under the sequestration cuts that are scheduled to go into effect on March 1. Here is their breakdown by program for Missouri:

Teachers and Schools
Missouri will lose approximately $11.9 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 160 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition about 17,000 fewer students would be served and approximately 60 fewer schools would receive funding. In addition, Missouri will lose approximately $10.8 in funds for about 130 teachers, aides, and staff who help children with disabilities.

Work-Study Jobs
Around 1,280 fewer low income students in Missouri would receive aid to help them finance the costs of college and around 750 fewer students will get work-study jobs that help them pay for college.

Head Start
Head Start and Early Head Start services would be eliminated for approximately 1,200 children in Missouri, reducing access to critical early education.

Military Readiness
In Missouri, approximately 8,000 civilian Department of Defense employees would be furloughed, reducing gross pay by around $40.3 million in total. Army: Base operation funding would be cut by about $56 million in Missouri. Air Force: Funding for Air Force operations in Missouri would be cut by about $14 million.

Law Enforcement and Public Safety Funds for Crime Prevention and Prosecution
Missouri will lose about $298,000 in Justice Assistance Grants that support law enforcement, prosecution and courts, crime prevention and education, corrections and community corrections, drug treatment and enforcement, and crime victim and witness initiatives.

Who's behind all the anti-worker attacks in the Missouri General Assembly, pushing so-called ‘right to work’ and ‘paycheck deception’ bills? The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), among others. Check out all these connections between sponsors and co-sponsors and ALEC:

• Speaker Tim Jones is ALEC’s state co-chair, and has enjoyed numerous ALEC junkets. He is the first co-sponsor of HB77 and HB91.
• HB77 sponsor Eric Burlison has been an ALEC member
• SB71 Sponsor Mike Parson has been an ALEC member
• SB238 sponsor Ed Emery is a former ALEC chairman
• HB95 sponsor Bill White has been an ALEC member
• SB134 sponsor David Sater has introduced other ALEC legislation as his own, even forgetting to remove “{insert state}” placeholders when filing in the Senate
• HB91 sponsor Donna Lichtenegger has been an ALEC member
• House Workforce Development and Workplace Safety Chairman Bill Lant has been an ALEC member
• Senate Majority Floor Leader Ron Richard has been an ALEC member
• HB95 sponsor Bill White has been an ALEC member
• HB95 co-sponsor Rick Brattin has been an ALEC member

Moreover, all of the following so-called ‘right to work’ bills lift mirror ALEC’s model directly, and are not written by Missourians or for Missourians: SB 76, SB 134, SB 238, HB 77, HB 91 and HB 95. A head to head comparison of the bills may be found below.

"Legislators need to be listening to ordinary people, not corporate special interests pushing an extreme agenda," said Sean Soendker Nicholson, Progress Missouri’s Executive Director. "The bills being pushed by ALEC put corporate profits ahead of the well being of average Americans. It's time to make sure that ordinary people--not corporate interests--are in charge of our government."

At least 37 major corporate sponsors have abandoned ALEC in recent months amid mounting criticism of the organization’s extreme agenda, including prominent companies like General Electric, Amazon.com, Coca-Cola, and Walmart. However, corporations such as Koch Industries remain fiercely loyal to the corporate bill factory.

Through ALEC task forces, unelected corporate lobbyists actually vote as equals with state legislators on 'model' bills in closed-door meetings where the press and public are not allowed. Corporations give gifts to ALEC ‘scholarship’ trips for legislators and their families to attend junkets where lobbyists and special interest groups give legislators their wish lists for changing laws. The ALEC corporate bill mill represents the institutionalization of a kind of corruption and distortion of our democracy that is unacceptable to a free people, especially in an era in which corporations and CEOs already have too much influence over our elections and public policies.

Side-by-Side comparison of ALEC Models and bills currently filed in Missouri’s General Assembly below. 

Rep. Stanley Cox (R-Sedalia) has been tasked by GOP leaders with carrying this year's anti-voting proposal in the Missouri House.  He was asked basic questions about why Missouri needs an anti-voting proposal that disproportionately impacts minorities, students and citizens with disabilities -- with predictable results.