I guess anyone can have $100,000 wiped off their mortgage, even if they’re not a Republican rep
Sen. Tom Coburn and the C Street Boys have some explaining to do
An all-expenses-paid trip to pick up next year’s legislation
by David Safier
It's just this easy. Arizona legislators can travel to New Orleans from August 3-6 on ALEC's dime. ALEC is the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. There they'll learn what they should care about, and they'll be handed prewritten legislation with blanks they can fill in to turn it into an Arizona-specific bill. Bingo! Next year's legislative agenda. No muss, no fuss, no bother.
House Majority whip Debbie Lesko sent an email (you can read it after the jump) to all legislators of both parties. ALEC, after all, bills itself as nonpartisan, and you can't give something away for free unless you offer it to everyone. ALEC members get up to $1,900 worth of reimbursement for their travel expenses. Just fill out the form when you return. And membership is only $100 for two years. Such a deal!
Who's a member? A total of 52 Republicans, though Allen, Biggs, Melvin, Pearce, Pierce and Weiers better renew quick, because their memberships expired last December. You can see the complete list here.
If you think of that deal multiplied by Republicans from 50 states, you get the idea there's big money behind ALEC. And indeed there is. Koch brothers money. Big oil money. Big Pharma money. Private prison money. Anyone with a few million dollars and a legislative agenda can get in on the deal.
What does the money supporting ALEC buy? It buys legislation written to suit a corporation's ideological or financial agenda. When ideology and profits coincide, that's a twofer. SB1070 came from ALEC, to cite one example. So did the legislation that makes Arizona's private prisons so profitable.
Go to ALEC's Model Legislation page. From there, you can link to legislation concerning: Civil Justice; Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development; Education; Energy, Environment, and Agriculture; Health and Human Services; International Relations; Public Safety and Elections; Tax and Fiscal Policy; and Telecommunications and Information Technology. Each topic brings up 50 to 150 bills.
The Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development page, for instance, contains 146 separate bills. You want something to get rid of merit protection system of government employment, a topic we may revisit in a special session as soon as October? There's the "At-Will Employment Act," ready and waiting. Don't like the minimum wage? You have a choice of the "Living Wage Mandate Preemption Act" and the "Starting (Minimum) Wage Repeal Act."
Don't bother trying to look at the bills, by the way. They're password protected. You might ask your local ALEC member to let you take a peek.
If you've ever wondered why one state passes some conservative law (our own SB1070, for instance), then others follow suit almost immediately, it's not because some Florida legislator says, "SB1070? What a great idea. We should try that!" It's because they're all feeding at the same legislative trough. Arizona goes first. If it plays here, a dozen other states see if it will fly there. That's how the vast right wing conspiracy works.
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