Investigating Power
The Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch project has noted that both the Buckeye Institute and Americans for Prosperity have ties to brothers Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, who are known for supporting far-right policy positions.
Project Veritas, headed by self-described “guerilla journalist” James O’Keefe, is known for creating dubious videos in which they film political figures without their knowledge. The group then takes these videos, edits them in a heavily deceptive way, and uses them as “proof” to allege wrongdoings by those individuals they initially filmed, according to SourceWatch.org.
ALEC reports that it is the largest membership driven organization of legislators in the nation, and yet only two percent of its revenue comes from membership dues, according to The Center for Media and Democracy. The rest of the funding — as the organization works with a yearly deficit of approximately $1 million every year — is donated by captains of industry, Koch Companies, UPS, State Farm Insurance, the tobacco industry, the oil industry, the coal industry, big pharma, and big food-developers.
In February, the Center for Media and Democracy published a review of workplace discrimination and harassment lawsuits that found corporate members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has drafted template bills supporting fracking, “Are Leaders in Workplace Discrimination and Harassment.”
IPI [Illinois Policy Institute] is an ultra-conservative think tank with offices in Springfield and Chicago, and a member of the State Policy Network, according to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), an independent watchdog group based in Madison, Wis.
“Through videos and other techniques, IFA [International Franchise Association] has sought to vilify Americans seeking better wages and basic benefits,” according to Sourcewatch.org.
Washington State Rep. Matt Shea (R-Spokane) has found himself back in the spotlight again, this time for messages sent and received through the Signal app discussing acts of violence against and surveillance of left-wing activists, as revealed by The Guardian.
A 2014 exposé on NRTWC and NRTWLDF by the Center for Media and Democracy, an award-winning investigative watchdog group, described the organizations as “a powerful instrument of the corporate and ideological interests that want to keep wages low and silence the voice of organized labor in the political arena.” The exposé details the enormous financial resources that are funneled to both organizations from billionaires, like the Koch brothers and the Walton family, through their dark money foundations and nonprofits.
Sprint and T-Mobile had quit ALEC in 2012 and 2015, respectively, “leav[ing] Comcast, Charter Communications, CenturyLink, and Cox Communications as the last major telecom companies sticking with the corporate bill mill,” PR Watch reported in November 2018.
“We have earned an A from the Cato Institute in fiscal policies,” he told representatives from fossil fuel and petrochemical companies, referring to a libertarian think tank that Sourcewatch describes as “founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers.”