Investigating Power
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.
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.
The Fraser Institute received $4.3 million in foreign funding over 10 years from billionaire U.S. donors, beginning in the early 2000s. More than half (approximately $2.7 million) of the total foreign funding came from the Eli Lilly and Co. Foundation, a charitable arm of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. According to the U.S.-based Center for Media and Democracy — an organization that tracks corporations’ PR campaigns and identifies corporate front groups — between 1995 and 2014 the Fraser Institute received over $1 million from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and $400,000 from the Searle Freedom Trust, a private foundation founded with wealth from G.D. Searle pharmaceuticals (now part of Pfizer, another pharma giant).
In a move away from how Soglin managed the mayor’s office, Rhodes-Conway announced she will bring on Mary Bottari as her chief of staff.
Bottari joined the Center for Media and Democracy in 2009 and serves on the advisory board of Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center in economic development and smart growth. Bottari previously worked in the Wisconsin Senate for Sen. Lynn Adelman and as press secretary for U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold.
Jobs related to solar energy alone employ more people than the coal industry. According to SourceWatch, “There are approximately 174,000 blue-collar, full-time, permanent jobs related to coal in the U.S.: mining (83,000), transportation (31,000), and power plant employment (60,000).” Bloomberg Business reports that “solar energy accounted for more than twice as many jobs, about 350,000 workers.” Wind energy, they found, accounted for just over 100,000 jobs. And while coal jobs are disappearing, the number of clean energy jobs is rapidly increasing.
If that had been the case, the beagles might have ended up in another laboratory. NAIA is “a front group and industry-funded lobbying organization” for “animal agribusiness, commercial breeding, hunting, fishing, trapping, fur ranching, animal testing, and animals in entertainment,” says SourceWatch, a website run by the national watchdog group, Center for Media and Democracy.
The closure of New Vision is by no means a fluke. A 2015 report by the liberal watchdog group The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) concluded that approximately 2,500 charter schools shut down across the US between 2001 and 2013, affecting 288,000 students, and noted that “the failure rate for charter schools is much higher than for traditional public schools.” As well, the report points out that school closures leave a lasting impact on students’ success rates and can contribute to higher rates of youth incarceration.
A couple of years back, the Center for Media and Democracy caught Berman on tape talking to an industry group: “We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors,” he said. “There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us.”
In 2013, Progress Florida and the Center for Media and Democracy issued a report criticizing JMI on issues such as its anti-environmental policies and funding by the Kochs. From the report:
“Over the years, JMI has released several ‘studies’ and reports that deny global warming is happening, call for an end to clean energy programs, advocate for expanded offshore drilling despite the risks to Florida’s shores from deeper wells (like BP’s Deep Water Horizon), and push for corporate tax breaks, all of which would directly benefit the Koch brothers’ corporate and personal interests.”
The plan was drafted using models produced by the Buckeye Institute, according to the report. This institute is a right-wing advocacy group based in Ohio, according to Source Watch.
“It is a member of the $83 million-a-year State Policy Network (SPN),” according to Source Watch. “Although SPN’s member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy’s in-depth investigation, ‘EXPOSED: The State Policy Network — The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government,’ reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders.”