How Did Wisconsin Become the Most Politically Divisive Place in America? - NYTimes.com:
Of the 36 sponsors and co-sponsors of Litjens’s bill, 25 were ALEC members. Mark Pocan is one of the few ALEC members who did not co-sponsor the bill. A liberal Democrat from Madison, Pocan became a member of ALEC several years ago. He told me he wanted to draw attention to the organization’s unseen effect on Wisconsin’s legislation. In his floor speech that night, Pocan described an ALEC conference in New Orleans that he attended last summer. “I remember going to a workshop and hearing a little bit about a bill they did in Florida and some other states to dismantle public education,” Pocan said. “There was a proposal to provide special-needs scholarships. Lo and behold, all of a sudden I come back to Wisconsin, and what gets introduced? A bill to do just that.”
The next day, Pocan outlined a strategy ALEC advises its members to use: “You have to introduce a 14-point platform,” he said, “so that you can make it harder for them to focus and for the press to cover 14 different planks.” He pointed to several bills introduced in the past two sessions, including one that allows more children to enroll in virtual charter schools. “It sounds good,” Pocan said. “Kids could access virtual schools for home schooling. But again,” he emphasized, the real purpose is “taking apart public schools, drip by drip.”
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