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North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names

bismarcktribune.com

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Re: North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names

#21

Post by georgefrowny »

delichon wrote: post #17

Proposed constitutional amendment: Within 30 days after a bill is made law, legislators that voted must pass an automatically generated comprehension test of the legislation at a 6th grade level. On failure they lose voting privileges for 90 days. On three strikes they leave office and a new election for that seat is called.

Why not make it a condition of the vote in the first place? Don't understand it? No vote for you. If your constituency wanted a say, they can let you know what they think about that.

Re: North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names

#22

Post by jfengel »

ctoth wrote: post #8

> The fake minerals are friezium and stralium, apparent references to Christopher Friez and David Straley, attorneys for North American Coal who were closely involved in drafting the bill and its amendments. > “It would be kind of embarrassing for the rest of the country to look at us and say ‘Really? Do you guys even know what you’re doing?’” > Anderson said the amendments were prepared by a group of attorneys and l…

Why should they be embarrassed? They got the law that they wanted passed. Not a single one will lose an election over this. Even if a challenger brings it up, they have a very grateful industry behind them (and now with even more money to throw at elections).

If there is any embarrassment to be felt, it would be on the part of their constituents, who voted for this legislature and came out behind because of it. But I strongly suspect that they will re-elect the incumbents.

Re: North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names

#23

Post by atlasunshrugged »

culi wrote: post #10

It's ridiculous how much of our bills are completely written by interest groups like the coal industry. I'm surprised they even reviewed it enough to catch it In 2010 Arizona passed an anti-immigrant bill written by the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic). We know it was written by CCA because they literally left the logo on the bill

In a former job I worked on a tech co's policy response to a major piece of California AI legislation a couple of years ago and was stunned to learn that nonprofits (at least, I'd be shocked if this didn't also include companies) basically sponsor bills and just find lawmakers to introduce and champion them.

Re: North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names

#25

Post by zdragnar »

ctoth wrote: post #8

> The fake minerals are friezium and stralium, apparent references to Christopher Friez and David Straley, attorneys for North American Coal who were closely involved in drafting the bill and its amendments. > “It would be kind of embarrassing for the rest of the country to look at us and say ‘Really? Do you guys even know what you’re doing?’” > Anderson said the amendments were prepared by a group of attorneys and l…

You've literally described most state legislators and federal Congress.

The Affordable Care Act was 906 pages long (nevermind the accompanying 11,000 some odd pages of regulations typically quoted).

You can bet very few Congress critters actually read all 906 pages.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (the year is part of the name) was over 5,500 pages long. Definitely none of the people in Congress bothered reading any of it- there wouldn't have been time to do so.

Re: North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names

#26

Post by phil21 »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #23
culi wrote: post #10

It's ridiculous how much of our bills are completely written by interest groups like the coal industry. I'm surprised they even reviewed it enough to catch it In 2010 Arizona passed an anti-immigrant bill written by the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic). We know it was written by CCA because they literally left the logo on the bill

In a former job I worked on a tech co's policy response to a major piece of California AI legislation a couple of years ago and was stunned to learn that nonprofits (at least, I'd be shocked if this didn't also include companies) basically sponsor bills and just find lawmakers to introduce and champion them.

Many Judicial opinions are done in the same manner. An attorney from the winning side prepares a draft opinion and a judge reviews/edits it and away it goes. The edits in the couple I've personally seen are incredibly light - more or less a rubber stamp with the judge's name on it.

I imagine this holds true (via chatting with insider friends) for many such "industries" including lawmaking, scientific/academic papers, industry RFCs, etc. More or less credential washing.

Re: North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names

#27

Post by georgefrowny »

culi wrote: post #10

It's ridiculous how much of our bills are completely written by interest groups like the coal industry. I'm surprised they even reviewed it enough to catch it In 2010 Arizona passed an anti-immigrant bill written by the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic). We know it was written by CCA because they literally left the logo on the bill

> I'm surprised they even reviewed it enough to catch it

Maybe they forgot to tack it onto 5000 pages of unrelated legislation at 10pm the night before the vote.

Re: North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names

#29

Post by simonw »

I find the fact that nobody seems to know how those names got into the bill particularly frustrating.

Lawmakers really need to learn to use version tracking properly. It's shouldn't be possible for a single line of text to make it into a bill without a digital trail leading back to whoever added it.

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