An investigation by USA Today, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. Authors: Rob O’Dell and Nick Penzenstadler. Published on April 4, 2019. It’s terrific that mainstream corporate print media is finally catching on to this crisis of democracy story – good for them. But it’s a bit disingenuous for them to claim that they are “[revealing] for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.” Advocacy groups have been sounding the alarm about this for years! We’re just glad the story is now reaching a much wider audience. And we would be remiss if we did not point out that corporations would not be allowed to interfere in the legislating process of elected bodies (entirely via their First Amendment free speech “rights”) if We The People brought back the common sense laws of our nation’s entire first century that prohibited corporations from lobbying, making political donations, or in any way interfering in the democratic process. If we’re going to keep claiming that we live in a democratic republic, we better get busy and soon, getting corporations entirely removed again from such processes.

Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks.

Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called “model” bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them.

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.

The investigation examined nearly 1 million bills in all 50 states and Congress using a computer algorithm developed to detect similarities in language. That search – powered by the equivalent of 150 computers that ran nonstop for months – compared known model legislation with bills introduced by lawmakers.

The phenomenon of copycat legislation is far larger. In a separate analysis, the Center for Public Integrity identified tens of thousands of bills with identical phrases, then traced the origins of that language in dozens of those bills across the country.

Model bills passed into law have made it harder for injured consumers to sue corporations. They’ve called for taxes on sugar-laden drinks. They’ve limited access to abortion and restricted the rights of protesters.

In all, these copycat bills amount to  the nation’s largest, unreported special-interest campaign, driving agendas in every statehouse and touching nearly every area of public policy. MORE…