Paul Krugman has a great column on how right-wing special interests like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the NRA pushed so-called “stand your ground laws,” which empower gun owners to shoot first and ask questions later without fear of arrest.
Trayvon Martin’s killer escaped arrest for shooting an unarmed boy because of Florida’s stand your ground law, which served as a template for similar bills nationwide.
ALEC has developed legislation on a variety of issues from anti-minimum wage laws to anti-collective bargaining legislation to the promotion of the private prison industry.
ALEC brings together state legislators and corporate sponsors to write model bills, which the legislators often take home and pass into law. It costs a pittance for legislators to join, but the corporations and conservative foundations pay handsomely for the privilege of rubbing elbows with politicians. Since ALEC is nominally non-partisan, none of this counts as lobbying. Pretty clever, eh? If you want to send a lobbyist to meet with a politician about rewriting a law, that’s lobbying. If you want to write the law with the politician at the ALEC meeting, that’s not subject to disclosure.
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