Monday, May 14, 2012

ALEC Act Would Give Legislatures Power Over AGs

NPR, text and audio.

The conservative group that helped spread Florida's Stand Your Ground gun law across the country holds a closed-door issues conference in Charlotte on Friday. On its agenda is legislation that would prevent a state's attorney general from pursuing lawsuits except as authorized by the state legislature. Peter Overby is at the conference and talks with Audie Cornish.
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OVERBY: Yeah, one proposal is called the ALEC Attorney General Authority Act. And to really boil it down, it would give state legislatures more power to tell attorneys general when they can and cannot file lawsuits. Just for example, it says the attorneys general's client is the state, not necessarily the people of the state.

This bill comes from a law firm in Mississippi. One of the firm's clients is a big utility company, Entergy. And in Mississippi the Democratic attorney general has a three-year lawsuit going against Entergy. His question is whether Entergy manipulated prices and overcharged consumers. So this seems like the kind of case that could be reined in by the ALEC Attorney General Authority Act.

Gee, Repug legislatures would never do that, would they?

Of course they would, and the rest of us would be the worse for it.

The right wing's state-by-state power grab is proceeding apace.

A dead and dismembered ALEC needs to be found alongside the road like the narcotraficantes do in Mexico.

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