Investigating Power
State lawmakers, corporate lobbyists, and right-wing operatives got together in Scottsdale, Arizona last week for the 2023 States and Nation Policy Summit hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The summit — one of the largest annual gatherings of the ALEC faithful, along with the summer meeting — caps off ALEC’s 50th anniversary year.
CMD guest contributor Alex Carlin reports on his observations at the United Nations climate conference.
On October 11, St. James Parish in Louisiana approved giving Koch Industries an 80% property tax break on a $150-million expansion of its local methanol plant, which will save the company $5.9 million over the next decade.
To hide their identities from public scrutiny, megadonors used the Koch political network’s favorite conduit, DonorsTrust, to funnel $134 million to groups promoting the Right’s culture wars and spreading climate misinformation, Trump’s big lie, and hate, as indicated in IRS filings obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy.
A new report by Greenpeace USA details the widespread coordination between the public and private sectors to monitor activism, punish protesters both physically and legally, and grease the wheels for proposed anti-protest bills that criminalize civil disobedience.
On September 13, 2023, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) fined Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, $1.2 million for abandoning a natural gas pipeline without notifying federal regulators and lying about work already completed once it did notify them.
The American Legislative Exchange Council is where corporations and far-right groups go to buy government policy.
Oracle, the fifth largest tech company in the U.S., has voluntarily disclosed that it has joined the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Ramaswamy’s own conflict of interest in attacking BlackRock shows just how difficult it is for public pension managers to avoid ESG investments if they own any ETFs — as do most pension funds — since they represent the most significant stocks bought and sold on the market every day.
In a remarkable ruling last Thursday, a Minnesota judge summarily dismissed misdemeanor charges against three Anishinaabe water protectors who had protested at a pipeline construction site in an effort to stop the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. “To criminalize their behavior would be the crime,” she concluded.