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: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday April 15 2019, @01:16AM
about everyone's favorite telecom shill, Ajit Pai, appointing an ALEC flunkie to the FCC's Consumer Advisory Panel. [arstechnica.com]
Which is amusing, as ALEC is just a shill for corporations and actively lobby and write model legislation that shits all over consumers. Even better, Pai's panel includes exactly zero (count 'em) consumer advocates.
I was going to submit the article as a story, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr