Prison-industry company helped shape Arizona immigration law

[BrainGlutton]

NPR reports on the activities of the little-known American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC):

Here’s how it works: ALEC is a membership organization. State legislators pay $50 a year to belong. Private corporations can join, too. The tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp. and drug-maker Pfizer Inc. are among the members. They pay tens of thousands of dollars a year. Tax records show that corporations collectively pay as much as $6 million a year.

With that money, the 28 people in the ALEC offices throw three annual conferences. The companies get to sit around a table and write “model bills” with the state legislators, who then take them home to their states.

Lobbying Or Education?

One of those bills is now Arizona’s controversial new immigration law. It requires police to arrest anyone who cannot prove they entered the country legally when asked. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could be locked up, and private prison companies stand to make millions.

The largest prison company in the country, the Corrections Corporation of America, was present when the model immigration legislation was drafted at an ALEC conference last year.

<snip>

The difference between passing bills and “finding” them is lobbying. Most states define lobbying as pushing legislators to create or pass legislation. And that comes with rules. Companies typically have to disclose to the public what they are lobbying for, who’s lobbying for them or how much they are spending on it.

If ALEC’s conferences were interpreted as lobbying, the group could lose its status as a non-profit. Corporations wouldn’t be able to reap tax benefits from giving donations to the organization or write off those donations as a business expense. And legislators would have a hard time justifying attending a conference of lobbyists.

Now, CCA representatives merely having been “present” at that meeting is a bit more alarming than it sounds, according to another NPR report this week:

NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

<snip>

The 50 or so people in the room included officials of the Corrections Corporation of America, according to two sources who were there.

Pearce and the Corrections Corporation of America have been coming to these meetings for years. Both have seats on one of several of ALEC’s boards.

And this bill was an important one for the company. According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in “a significant portion of our revenues” from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.

Issues for debate:

1. How does this reflect on the merits of the Arizona bill?

2. Should the laws on lobbying be expanded to encompass corporations’ participation in organizations like ALEC?

[Oakminster]

@BrainGlutton

Issues for debate:

1. How does this reflect on the merits of the Arizona bill?

The bill sucks on the merits regardless of whether it was the product of illegal lobbying or not. Possible shenanigans don’t really make it suck worse in my view.

[BrainGlutton]

@Oakminster

The bill sucks on the merits regardless of whether it was the product of illegal lobbying or not. Possible shenanigans don’t really make it suck worse in my view.

I dunno. A law crafted to give the cops a license/duty to hassle guys who look Canadian or Swedish is one thing; a law crafted to lock up such guys for as long as possible is quite another. And if you let a private-prison corporation get its fingers into crafting it . . .

[Voyager]

If you make it profitable for private companies to run prisons, and the profits are proportional to the number of prisoners, then the companies are going to do everything in their power to send more people to prison. Just wait until they secretly support the election campaigns of the law and order type.

Remember the case of the judge in Pennsylvania who send kids to a for-profit jail from which he benefited financially? That was a single instance of graft - this is basically the same, done with more class and more finesse.

And please don’t try to tell me these companies will give up profit to do what’s right. We’ve got the current financial crisis as a counterexample of that contention.

[Robot_Arm]

The difference between passing bills and “finding” them is lobbying. Most states define lobbying as pushing legislators to create or pass legislation. And that comes with rules. Companies typically have to disclose to the public what they are lobbying for, who’s lobbying for them or how much they are spending on it.

If ALEC’s conferences were interpreted as lobbying, the group could lose its status as a non-profit. Corporations wouldn’t be able to reap tax benefits from giving donations to the organization or write off those donations as a business expense. And legislators would have a hard time justifying attending a conference of lobbyists.

I would be curious how ALEC tries to justify its status as a non-profit. Do they do anything besides hosting these conferences?

Gotta hand it to 'em, though. Traditional lobbying is about trying to shovel as much money and gifts to the legistlators as you can get away with, but the quote says the legislators are paying money to ALEC! That is a respectable scam, right there.

So my next question is, how do the legislators justify paying that money? What are they getting from ALEC that’s worth $50? Have we really reached a state where lawmakers are willing to pay to have access to the heads of corporations, instead of the other way around?

[BrainGlutton]

@Robot_Arm

I would be curious how ALEC tries to justify its status as a non-profit. Do they do anything besides hosting these conferences?

According to the Wikipedia article, the conferences are the core of ALEC’s “policy-making process.”

SourceWatch says the organization’s main function is “mainstreaming right-wing causes.” Business-interest causes, that is – nothing about abortion, gay marriage, etc.

[Bricker]

How about this:

It requires police to arrest anyone who cannot prove they entered the country legally when asked.

You have been a participant in threads in which the law has been deconstucted and discussed in detail.

Yet you uncritically the quote which included this line.

And this line is false.

But, hey, the deception helps your point more, so why not keep repeating it?

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@Bricker

Yet you uncritically the quote which included this line.

If he promises to never uncritically the quote again, will you let him off the hook?

[Napier]

@Euphonious_Polemic

If he promises to never uncritically the quote again, will you let him off the hook?

Easy, easy. He already sounds ready to tell the guy to go himself.

[Bricker]

@Euphonious_Polemic

If he promises to never uncritically the quote again, will you let him off the hook?

That would be a start.

If he promised also to never again uncritically offer up the quote, it’d be even better.