American Legislative Exchange Council

Another story from NPR that blew my mind. This one frames the scary truth of how mega corporations work around the accountability and records laws to lobby your government officials. Basically this membership club called ALEC offers education seminars on "how to draft a bill" and offers them, with airfare, hotel stay, food, child care etc free of charge to legislators. Conveniently the representatives of major corps have also been invited and the two groups work together to draft "practice" legislation. Shocking, those "practice" bills end up word for word as actual bills up for vote, such as the controversial Arizona immigration law, which was "practice" for Arizona legislators and the largest prison company. And a study done of the legislators records showed not a single legislator reported receiving any of the free benefits from ALEC.