O Emmer Where Art Thou: Private prisons, SB1070, ALEC and Tom Emmer

In my last post, I noted how Minnesota's press corps reported a months-old endorsement in the First as breaking news.

It's not as if there aren't real stories out there to be uncovered.

Here's one instance ripped from today's headlines, where a bit of investigation might reveal more about one of the gubernatorial candidate's sources for legislative proposals as well as his alliances.

On another front and another issue, NPR reports in Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law:

But instead of taking his idea to the Arizona statehouse floor, Pearce first took it to a hotel conference room.

It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC.

It's a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.

It was there that Pearce's idea took shape.

"I did a presentation," Pearce said. "I went through the facts. I went through the impacts and they said, 'Yeah.'"

Drafting The Bill

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

One Minnesota legislator has been trotted out on Fox News as a spokesman for that "secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council" or ALEC.

That man is Tom Emmer.  Perhaps Minnesota's press corps could leave off its dedication to recycling Republican endorsements from last spring, and ask Tom Emmer how much his view that SB1070 was a "wonderful first step" was influenced by his membership in the corporate-sponsored ALEC.

Update 10/29: NPR has more on ALEC--the group that brought you SB1070--in part two: Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny.

 So when will Minnesota's crack political press corps even bother to ask which Minnesota legislators are members?

We know that Tom Emmer was on Fox News pimping a model bill for these folks--but I gather what we'll get from the press about Tom is more wanking like Doug Grow's wet fantasy today about a hockey brawler.

Comments

[Nikolas Stein]

Thanks for running this. On corporations writing legislation, there's this NLG Policy Paper: "How Corporate Interests Influence State Terrorism Legislation." It's almost a year old and is only partly on-point, but still pretty good -- http://tinyurl.com/27bqc65