CORPORATE AMERICA AT WORK

How does a bill become law?  http://kids.clerk.house.gov/grade-school/lesson.html?intID=17

Sometimes it is important to get back to basics and I found this link to an elementary school’s textbook on how a bill becomes law very instructive.

The text tells us that laws begin as ideas in the brains of our representatives. The next step is for that representative to put those ideas into writing in the form of a bill and find fellow representatives to co-sponsor the bill.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, a bill is introduced when it is placed in the hopper—a special box on the side of the clerk’s desk. Only Representatives can introduce bills in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Isn’t that quaint? I mean we have this wonderful hopper where all these ideas go in the hope that one day a new law will ensue.

Anywhoooooo, the bill comes out of the Sacred Hopper and is sent to committee where the bill is carefully researched and reviewed and revised after experts have testified regarding its positives and negatives. What a country!!!

The bill is then ‘reported’ to floor of the House of Representatives and debate ensues.

Following debate, then a vote is called for and our honored elected officials decide whether or not the bill should become law. If it is passed, it is sent to the Senate.

Forget for a moment that like most bills passed by a Democratic House of Representatives, it will languish in some corner of the Senate for eternity until it evaporates into thin air.

What a country!!!

Of course the law making process becomes tiresome and short cuts have been discovered so that the labor of the hard working representatives becomes less onerous.

State representatives face the same problems as our representatives on the national level but corporate America is there ready, willing and able to aid those lawmakers. What follows is an overview of the state legislative process with specific reference to recent legislation that passed in the great state of Arizona.

Corporations and interest groups like R.J. Reynolds, ExxonMobil, the NRA, and the Corrections Corporation of America host a regular conference for state legislators in DC. At last December's conference, the Corrections Corporation of America and Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce drafted the bill that eventually became the Arizona law.

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.

In the conference room, the group decided they would turn the immigration idea into a model bill. They discussed and debated language. Then, they voted on it.

"There were no 'no' votes," Pearce said. "I never had one person speak up in objection to this model legislation."

Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law.

They even named it. They called it the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act."

"ALEC is the conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group," said Michael Hough, who was staff director of the meeting.

Hough works for ALEC, but he's also running for state delegate in Maryland, and if elected says he plans to support a similar bill to Arizona's law.

Asked if the private companies usually get to write model bills for the legislators, Hough said, "Yeah, that's the way it's set up. It's a public-private partnership. We believe both sides, businesses and lawmakers should be at the same table, together."

When Pearce introduced his bill the next month, he immediately got 36 co-sponsors. The prison company hired a lobbyist. 30 of the co-sponsors began receiving campaign donations from prison companies and lobbyists.

And that's how a bill becomes a law.

http://www.salon.com/news/immigration/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/10/28/prison_industry_arizona_law

Isn’t this quaint?

What has happened down here is that the political winds have changed.

There has been a constant barrage of hate speech from the right against those evil illegal immigrants.

You know the right wing conspiracy theories include a gem concerning some secret prison set up somewhere in the West where President Obama has incarcerated thousands of American Citizens who disagree with his policies.

But in this article it becomes clear that there are secret private corporate detention centers already authorized by Arizona to help begin with the ‘round-up’.

And if you are deported and come back, well those private prisons are going to have your ass for twenty years!!!! http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2010/02/ice_immigrant_raids.php

Twenty years of slavery probably working on a chain gang picking cotton or Great Fruit. And the corporation will pay you fifty cents a day and bill you out at 8 bucks an hour and some corporate management pig will make a million bucks a year.

And the Arizona legislators did not have to spend all that time researching and review and revising and producing this wonderful piece of legislation.

The private corporate fascist slave owning pricks did it for them.

And did you notice that the corporate pigs are setting ‘conferences’ for state legislators all over the country to provide them all with ready made bills?

On the national level of course Dick Cheney would just have discussions concerning our national energy policy with top corporate officials who shall remain anonymous, and those corporate officials would draft, research and revise all legislation necessary for our energy needs. And in those days the repubs only needed to work three day weeks in both Houses of Congress because all of their legislation was prewritten by their corporate contributors.

And it will work just like those golden days following Tuesday’s elections.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!