Investigating Power
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation—one of the right-wing institutions underwriting the Supreme Court lawsuit—for example, was identified last year by the Center for Media and Democracy as a major financial supporter of Richard Berman.
Lakeland attorney Kristen Carlson entered the Democratic primary for Florida’s 15th Congressional District only two days before the deadline, but a poll released by her staff shows her ahead of her two opponents, each of whom has been running for the spot for a year or more.
Employers know that. They have lawyers, lobbyists, politicians and political parties on their side. And they have one another. Epic enjoyed abundant “concerted activity” from a rogues’ gallery of big-time, big-business advocacy groups that filed amicus briefs in favor of denying workers’ rights. Here are highlights of just a few — with ties to the notorious Koch brothers — that Sourcewatch uncovered in its extensive research:
ALEC, Bradley Files, Koch, SPN
In Bradley Foundation records obtained by the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy, the foundation’s staff recommended providing funds to the Freedom Foundation because West Coast union money “is used to subsidize the left’s national agenda and obstruct the mission and program interests of the Bradley Foundation and its allies.”
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In a major blow to organized labor and good paying government jobs, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that government workers who choose not to join a union cannot be charged fees to reimburse the union for the cost of representing them in collective bargaining.
“To refute the argument that was made about microgrids recently, the following dubious statement was made on Sound Off: ‘”Energy in Depth” is a national publication with both sides represented fairly with both opinion and documented studies…’ I did some research… SOURCEWATCH.org: ‘Energy in Depth (EID) is a pro-oil-and-gas drilling industry front group formed by the American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and dozens of additional industry organizations. … Of the 137 unique studies on EID’s list that could be located, only 19 were peer-reviewed.’
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) named Missouri Republican state Rep. Bruce DeGroot as a “Legislator of the Week” in June.
But perhaps the scariest prospect of all sits just over the horizon for Loudon: competition. According to a 2017 exposé by the Center for Media and Democracy, the conservative Bradley Foundation donated $115,000 to the Koch-funded Capital Research Center (which, incidentally, financed and produced one of Loudon’s films) in 2016 for the purpose of creating a “wiki-style encyclopedia of the Left.” (Apparently Loudon’s dossier of leftist Facebook activity isn’t cutting it for them.) If it ever gets off the ground, Loudon may well end up getting to experience one of the quintessential joys of capitalism: seeing his mom-and-pop operation muscled out by a bigger, better-funded competitor.
When asked by the CSM [Christian Science Monitor] if ALEC had been influential in the passage of the 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in Indiana—a law signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence that would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people before public pressure forced its amendment—Meierling responded, “We do not work on firearms, marriage equality, immigration, any of those things people frequently say are ours.” According to a Source Watch report, however, three of RFRA’s co-authors were ALEC Task Force committee chairs. Additionally, the Center for Media and Democracy’s acquisition of 800 ALEC-written bills has revealed extensive ALEC state legislation having to do with gun laws and immigration—namely due to their involvement with Stand Your Ground Laws and anti-immigration laws such as the “No Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigrants” Act.
The report cites the Chamber for its hypocrisy, and notes that the Chamber is a longtime member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)’s Civil Justice Task Force, an entity “devoted solely to weakening or eliminating corporate liability for wrongdoing.” An investigative report by the Center for Media and Democracy found that bills proposed by ALEC “make it harder for average Americans to access the civil justice system” and “provide relief and protections for the industries who wrote them.”