Democracy

If you think the presidential debate last week was a little bit of a snooze fest you were not alone. What might jazz things up a bit? More candidates.

President Barack Obama rode into office in 2008 on a wave of small donations that some expected would change politics. The small-dollar strategy is still helping Obama fill his campaign accounts, but the electoral landscape has changed rapidly over the past four years and candidates' official campaigns are being overshadowed by unlimited spending from nominally "independent" groups funded by a handful of ultra-wealthy donors.

Bill Moyers' special "The United States of ALEC" aired nationwide this past weekend on his PBS show "Moyers & Company." The documentary threw a spotlight on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and featured the work of the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy and its award winning "ALECexposed" project.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Just one look at the cover of the brochure for this year's annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) reveals where some of the corporate bill mill's loyalties lie: with the "natural" gas industry. The full-page ad on the brochure's inside cover -- paid for by the American Gas Association, a trade group for gas utilities companies -- identifies just one of the corporate underwriters that litter the pages of the conference booklet shared with all of the elected representatives and unelected corporate lobbyists who attended the convention at the luxurious Grand America resort.