Investigating Power
The Detroit News recently reported the states with the largest percentages of charter school closures since 2000: Kansas (77 percent); Iowa (73 percent); Ohio (58 percent); Wisconsin (43 percent); Virginia (40 percent); Washington, D.C. (39 percent); Arizona (39 percent); Florida (38 percent); Missouri (34 percent); and New Jersey (34 percent).
MassFiscal is tied to other right-wing organizations. For instance, in its latest lawsuit it is represented by the Goldwater Institute of Arizona. The Center for Media and Democracy classifies Goldwater as “a right-wing advocacy group” with ties to the Koch brothers. One recent board member is Rebekah Mercer, whose billionaire family funded Donald Trump as well as Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News. Trump ally Christopher Ruddy calls Rebekah Mercer “the First Lady of the alt-right.”
ALEC drew scrutiny recently when white supremacist David Horowitz was given a platform to speak at the Aug. 2018 New Orleans convention. Horowitz knew he was among friends as he pushed for an Article V convention in order to embed his racist agenda in our Constitution. In response, The Center for Media and Democracy, with a coalition of 78 organizations, sent a letter to 20 of ALEC’s biggest corporations asking them to drop their memberships in the corporate bill-mill.
Mary Bottari, director of the Center for Media and Democracy’s Real Economy Project, lives in Wisconsin and has been participating in the protests this week. In an interview, she shared with me her shock at how brazenly and quickly the state’s Republicans moved to roll back gubernatorial power. “We’re still sorting through what the heck happened in the middle of the night,” she said. In addition to the bills, the GOP-dominated Legislature also rammed through a whopping 82 appointments by Walker of people to head various boards and agencies.
Wisconsin’s Republicans are sore losers. The GOP-dominated state government engaged in a brazen power grab this week working feverishly over several days and into the night on Tuesday to pass a sweeping set of bills by early Wednesday curbing the power of incoming Democratic elected officials. They faced thousands of protesters who marched, chanted, rallied, and denounced the GOP’s moves outside the State Capitol.
On his way out the door, Scott Walker and GOP cronies mull a lame duck session to manipulate Supreme Court elections for partisan advantage.
The three-day meeting comes as ALEC has shed 113 corporate members, as well as 19 non-profits since 2012, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, a non-profit watch dog group that tracks ALEC. ALEC disputes the timing of those departures.
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“They are taking positions out of the main stream that are uncomfortable for a lot of corporations,” said Arn Pearson, the Center for Media and Democracy’s executive director. “It gets embarrassing for them to [be] associated with those far-right positions.”
The 2016 Trump campaign reportedly paid at least $150,000 to the Daily Caller Foundation to rent its email list, which the campaign used to send fundraising messages in the months leading up to the general election, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. At the same time, Carlson was analyzing the election on Fox News without ever having disclosed this conflict of interest.
“The alarming number of closures raises major red flags about the performance and accountability of charter schools in Michigan and whether that negatively impacts students and taxpayers,” said Arn Pearson, executive director for the Center for Media and Democracy.
AFP [Americans for Prosperity] is a Koch-funded organization whose agenda is in line with other groups — such as Concerned Veterans for America, which is also funded by the Koch brothers — that work against progressive initiatives and protections for labor unions, healthcare reform and any effort to combat climate change, says David Armiak, a researcher for the Center for Media and Democracy, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit watchdog group.