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.
Research Cited
In Some Pennsylvania Pro-Fracking Corners, Name-calling, False Claims, and Swastika-Laden Images Circulate
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.”
Right-Wingers Urge Workers to Abandon Unions
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.
Out-of-State Corporate Interests Fighting Legislation to Protect Alabama’s Small Businesses
“Through videos and other techniques, IFA [International Franchise Association] has sought to vilify Americans seeking better wages and basic benefits,” according to Sourcewatch.org.
Right-Wing Legislator Offered to Help Enact Violence Against Constituents
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.
As Tenn. Workers Gear Up for Another Union Campaign, Local Media Shows Anti-Union Bias
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.
FCC “Consumer Advisory” Panel Includes ALEC, Big Foe of Municipal Broadband
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.
‘Virtually No Risk of Drilling Restrictions,’ West Virginia Official Tells Fracking-Reliant Petrochemical Industry
“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.”
McDonald’s Retreat on Fighting Wage Increases Shows the Tide Is Turning
According to the corporate watchdog group, SourceWatch, the National Restaurant Association is a key lobbying group that has fought hard in recent years to block worker-friendly issues such as paid sick days and increases in the minimum wage.
3 Questions That ‘Created Havoc’ in Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education
During our investigations, we came across a previous report published by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) in 2015, during the Obama presidential administration, that found similarly disturbing results, where federal grants had gone to hundreds of charter schools that had basically taken the money and run.