Not much apparently ... just delete the file (the proposed legislation), scrub the ALEC Watermark, submit it again -- and hope no one will notice.
Unfortunately, far too often, no one ever does ... ALEC™ Who?
Oops: Florida Republican Forgets To Remove ALEC Mission Statement From Boilerplate Anti-Tax Bill
by Alex Seitz-Wald, thinkprogress.org -- Feb 2, 2012
[...]
In November, Florida state Rep. Rachel Burgin (R) introduced a resolution that would officially call on the federal government to reduce corporate taxes, but she apparently forgot to remove ALEC’s mission statement from the top of the bill, which she seems to have copied word-for-word from ALEC’s model bill:
F L O R I D A H O U S E O F R E P R E S E N T A T I V E S
HM 685 2012
1 House Memorial
2 A memorial to the Congress of the United States,
3 urging Congress to cut the federal corporate tax rate.
4
5 WHEREAS, it is the mission of the American Legislative
6 Exchange Council to advance Jeffersonian principles of free
7 markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty,
8 and
9 WHEREAS, the combined United States average federal-state
10 corporate income tax rate is over 39 percent, according to the
11 Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD),
12 meaning the United States imposes the second-highest overall
13 statutory corporate tax rates in the industrialized world, much
14 higher than the OECD average of 25 percent, and
15 WHEREAS, effective United States corporate tax rates are
15 out of step with the rest of the world, [...]
As the government transparency group Common Cause reports , “Burgin quickly withdrew the bill hoping that no one had noticed and then re-introduced it 24-hours later, with a new bill number (HM 717), but now without the problematic paragraph.” [...]
Unbelievable! ... Is this really how legislation gets made? With
invisible ALEC signatures that only the insiders can see?
How much legislation is simply a "cut and paste" operation, up for grabs to the highest bidder most influential Front Group?
Probably much, much more than we've been led to believe unfortunately ...
That "cut and paste" goof by Florida Rep Burgin would almost be laughable, if ALEC-scripted bills were not so common. And if they were not so wide-ranging in their scope and their ultimate intent -- to empower corporate interests, at the expense of average citizens ...
Case in point: Here's another ALEC How-To-Guide for the legislatively-impaired, buried several pages down on the ALEC web site.
Pssst! Reps, don't forget to remove the original author's name from the text, BEFORE you turn in your Homework. Come-on let's be professional about this -- ALEC is trying to keep a low profile, afterall.
From: ALEC’s Health Care Freedom Initiative
★ ★ The State Legislator's Guide to
Repealing ObamaCare
(pdf)
2011
Published by
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
1101 Vermont Ave., NW, 11th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: (202) 466-3800
Fax: (202) 466-3801
www.alec.org
[pg 17-18]
★ How Can You, As a State Legislator, Stop ObamaCare?
Introduce ALEC’s Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, the primary legislative vehicle for state pushback of the individual mandate and Canadian-style, single-payer health care.
In 2008, ALEC endorsed this model language co-authored by the Goldwater Institute, Arizona’s free-market think tank, and Dr. Eric Novack, a Phoenix-area orthopedic surgeon and founder of the U.S. Health Care Freedom Coalition.
The legislation — which can be introduced as a statute or a constitutional amendment — prohibits any person, employer, or healthcare provider from being compelled to purchase or provide health insurance; protects the right of a person or employer to pay directly for lawful healthcare services; protects the right of a health care provider to accept direct payment for lawful healthcare services, and protects the existence of a private health insurance market.
[...]
Legislators in at least
42 states have introduced or announced their intention to introduce ALEC's
Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act.
You too, can go to the head of your class, like Eric Cantor did. Just follow these simple ALEC-think-tank rollback formulas. They're so easy, even a Tea Party yahoo can do it ... just copy, paste, edit, and add your own Name! See how easy that was.
It's so simple everyone's jumping on ALEC's libertarian free-market bandwagon ...
ALEC Exposed, for 24 Hours
What is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)?
by: Nick Surgey, CommonBlog, CommonCause.org -- Jan 31, 2012
For almost 40 years now, up to 300 of the largest US corporations—including Koch Industries, Verizon, Bank of America and Exxon — have used ALEC to push model legislation, which is beneficial to their corporate interests, into law in the states. ALEC boasts that a third of all state legislators in the US are members, introducing around 1,000 ALEC bills every year. By using ALEC to pursue their agenda, they are able to hide their fingerprints, avoid lobbying disclosure, and evade the kind of increased scrutiny that comes when citizens know it’s actually corporations that drafted some of their most important laws. Recent ALEC bills have rolled back voting rights, reduced environmental protections and stripped away collective bargaining rights for workers around the country. [...]
Stunning isn't it? It kind of makes a mockery of that schoolhouse song: "
I'm Just a Bill:"
For more on what ALEC is up to
compare their corporate-sponsored facade:
alec.org -- Initiatives
against the citizen-based effort to expose what's behind that facade:
ALEC Exposed.org
PS. Guess who is behind all those draconian Voter Photo ID laws cropping up around the nation, like so many weed?
If you said ALEC ... 3 gold stars for you. You have been paying attention ...
You know, there really ought to be a law against "cut and paste" legislation like this ...
Hmmmm? Maybe ALEC can provide us 'the Boilerplate' for one, eh?
That IS their specialty ... afterall.