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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: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 15 2019, @01:40AM (2 children)
Nursing home owners, including investors, are citizens too... and if you think that all citizens are created equal, you should learn the new phrase: "all lobbyists' dollars have equal value."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday April 15 2019, @05:01AM (1 child)
Actually, I don't think that's true. I think there's a concentration effect, so that if (potentially) n dollars might come from a single source they are much more influential than that same (potentially) n dollars from a source distributed among many people.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 15 2019, @05:21PM
That's somewhat the bird in the hand phenomenon.
1 million dollars from 1 lobbyist might be less attractive than 900,000 dollars from 3-4 lobbyists, because of the appearance of "being owned" by the one, but 900,000 dollars from 3-4 lobbyists is far more attractive than 1.2 million dollars from 50-60 lobbyists due to the cost of herding the cats, keeping everyone happy, etc. You can associate a real dollar cost per lobbyist, just from the lunch you have to attend...
🌻🌻 [google.com]