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An investigation into nearly 1 million bills across all 50 US states showed a high proportion of proposed US laws being written by lobbyists. The investigation was based on computer analysis of the similarities in language used in the bills. Additionally, copycat legislation is a problem. That is where states copy-paste key parts of proposed legislation from each other, and often the original is can be traced back to lobbyists. Many tricks are used to increase acceptance of these bills such as use of deceptive titles, misleading endorsements, copied bills to override locally sourced bills, and more. The article includes several graphics showing the distribution of bad practices across the states.
A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.
USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bussdriver on Monday April 15 2019, @01:10AM (3 children)
You can tell somebody is extremely corrupt when they budget for NO STAFF necessary to create the laws or review them. The senate, house leadership that cuts budgets for their people do be able to do their job are always corrupt when they cut those staff budgets. Then you have each rep which can budget their money to hire a couple interns then misappropriate that money or they can pay actual decent staff the best wage they can afford. They should be able to hire well qualified staff but they are not able to do what they should because that can be called government waste! Despite the reality that so much waste and corruption happens as a result of poor staffing.
Hell, we couldn't even out lawyer the banks when they destroyed the economy. Just like the elite want.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 15 2019, @01:37AM (2 children)
I watched a crack dealer's lawyer run circles around the city attorneys for 10 years. He ran drugs and prostitutes out of his house all that time, 25 arrests a month, and they never managed to shut him down.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday April 15 2019, @04:42AM (1 child)
Do you have some case numbers for this?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 15 2019, @05:18PM
Smatt vs City of Miami - 1990 through 2000.
🌻🌻 [google.com]