But the tax return revealing the contributions from the Illinois Policy Institute “clearly shows that Project Six is far from the independent government watchdog that it claims to be and seriously calls into question Khan’s motivation for establishing the group,” said David Armiak, a researcher with the Madison, Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, which has tracked funding to the institute and similar conservative organizations.
Research Cited
County Board Declines to Support National Schools Choice Week
“The National School Choice Week website’s Partners page provides a who’s-who gallery of (Koch Industries CEO Charles) Koch network groups, corporations and billionaires promoting privatization,” said Lisa Graves, The Center for Media and Democracy Executive Director in a press release. “Although the week features many local events, it is backed by national entities, some of which are hostile to the idea of public schools and whose goals have included full privatization.”
In ToxicDocs.org, a Treasure Trove of Industry Secrets
The project does have similarities to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents maintained by the University of California San Francisco — an archive of tobacco company advertising, manufacturing plans, marketing campaigns, scientific research, and political activities — as well as The Poison Papers collection, a project of The Bioscience Resource Project and The Center for Media and Democracy that does much the same with the chemical and pesticide industries.
Retribution and Revenge in the Wisconsin John Doe
The long running criminal investigation into whether or not Scott Walker and deep-pocketed dark money groups illegally coordinated the expenditure of some $30 million to win the 2012 recall elections should be old news by now. But the Wisconsin GOP is keeping it alive by undertaking a criminal investigation of a 2016 leak of documents to the Guardian newspaper, famous for its publication of the Snowden revelations and the Panama Papers.
Women’s Show 1/4 Begins 2018 with Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire; Mary Bottari, of the Center for Media and Democracy
Our constitution stands in the way of unbridled liberty…
Speaking of the well-laid plans developed over the last 30-40 years, our constitution stands in the way of the full realization of unbridled financial liberty. Liberty sounds great unless you are only defining it in terms of private property. There are many behind the scenes who are well on the way to having states call for a constitutional convention. Get out of the way Founding Fathers of 1776. The new founders of liberty circa 2018 want to redefine the parameters of liberty. Remember Dr. Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, on this show December 14th, warning us? MARY BOTTARI, Deputy Director, Center for Media and Democracy, will update us on the status of this movement. She helped launch CMD’s award-winning ALEC Exposed investigation in 2011 and is a recipient of the Hillman Prize for investigative journalism. She spearheaded CMD’s work on the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. I wonder if there will be any Founding Mothers involved in this?
Documentary Review: “United States of ALEC” Remains a Timely and Informative Film
Since ALEC does not list their corporate members on their site, it is hard to know who exactly is currently a member, but here is the best list that I could find, as compiled by The Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch.
Edison Electric Institute Tries to Rebrand Demand Charges
This week a joint report of the Energy and Policy Institute and the Center for Media and Democracy says utilities are trying to rebrand “demand charges”, which charge solar customers rates based on their highest consumption time (often a 15-minute or hour-long interval out of an entire month’s worth of consumption), to “efficiency rates” to slip them past public utilities regulators who have rejected “demand charges” in the past.
The Far-Right Campaign to Destroy Our National Monuments
The Sutherland Institute is also a member of the State Policy Network, or SPN, an association of state-based think tanks and advocacy groups that the Center for Media and Democracy describes as “the tip of the spear” of a “nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party.” SPN and its member groups have together received large cash contributions over the years from corporate interests and conservative billionaires, including the Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, the Bradley Foundation, and the Scaife Foundations.
Scott Walker Crushes Wisconsin Democracy to Advance Koch Brothers’ Agenda
“All of the bills (enacted by those states) are closely tailored to model measures being promoted by the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force,” reported the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy. “Funded and controlled by large corporations, including Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, telecom, and tobacco companies, ALEC has supported a balanced budget amendment since 1995 and renewed its push for a constitutional convention in recent years, publishing an Article V convention handbook for legislators and hosting numerous strategy sessions.”
Koch-Backed Business Group Splinters in Climate-Change Dispute
In addition to model legislation mirroring Trump’s executive order requiring two regulations be repealed for every new one, ALEC also is considering a resolution recommending that Congress repeal the 17th amendment, adopted over 100 years ago to allow citizens to directly elect their U.S. senators instead of state legislators.
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“It’s a new radically reactionary proposal that came up in this new period of Trump-dom,” said Lisa Graves, a former Justice Department attorney who launched the Center for Media and Democracy’s “ALEC Exposed” program in 2011. “This certainly seems to be evidence of them feeling emboldened to embrace an extreme counter-democratic measure.”