Thursday, October 28, 2010

Legislative Ethics and Other Permeable Frontiers

Some totally unsurprising news -- especially if you happen to be a longtime reader of Phronesisaical -- from NPR today. Unsurprising as it may be, however, the story is profoundly important, and NPR is the only agency with the courage to touch it; many thanks to Laura Sullivan and the team who researched this:
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.
Yeah. And,
[Corrections Corporation of America] declined requests for an interview. In a statement, a spokesman said the Corrections Corporation of America, "unequivocally has not at any time lobbied — nor have we had any outside consultants lobby – on immigration law."

At the state Capitol, campaign donations started to appear.

Read the whole thing and think, again, about how money is speech.

2 comments:

Cheryl Rofer said...

Or why some government functions shouldn't be privatized.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, great work by NPR. They did a similar piece last year on California and the influence of the prison guards union that was excellent as well.