Reply #359: ID (Idaho) States legislation packaged and promoted by big business Op-Ed Mt Express & Guide Aug 10 [View All]

Anyone who has watched national politics closely has noticed eerily similar new laws proposed in several states within months or weeks of each other.

Last winter, Idaho embraced a public-union-busting bill just before government employees in Wisconsin took to the hallways of their own statehouse and to the streets outside to protest a similar bill.

Idaho also approved a bill that requires voters to present a valid photo identification in order to vote. Voters without one may sign an affidavit to affirm their identity. Idaho joined six states that passed such measures last year. Seventeen states now have such requirements, which opponents claim were designed to stifle minority voting. An amazing total of 33 states considered such laws within the last year.

In 2010, Idaho passed the Health Freedom Act, designed to set the state squarely against a national health-care plan that had been approved by a Democrat-controlled Congress. Supporters claimed that the health-care law violated states' rights under the 10th Amendment.

These bills were no accident, no coincidental upwelling of popular sentiment. They are just three examples of legislation first designed by the American Legislative Exchange Council.