Investigating Power
“The Koch network of funders considers vouchers the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of what can be accomplished in the public policy world,” Mary Bottari, deputy director of the Center for Media and Democracy, which studies and reports on the Koch network, told Truthout. “The terrible tragedy is that empirical research is increasingly showing that vouchers are actually harming kids.”
Documents stolen from the foundation in 2016 by international hackers, and released to the public by the Center for Media and Democracy and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, laid bare the organization’s ideological thinking. The documents show that Bradley donated to the National Right to Work Foundation, sponsor of the Janus case, because “Big Labor and trial attorneys are the two principal funding pillars of the left”.
In the past decade, a small group of people working for deep-pocketed corporate interests, conservative think tanks and right-wing foundations have bankrolled a series of lawsuits to end what they call “forced unionization.” They say they fight in the name of “free speech,” “worker rights” and “workplace freedom.” In briefs before the court, they present their public face: carefully selected and appealing plaintiffs like Illinois child-support worker Mark Janus and California schoolteacher Rebecca Friedrichs. The language they use is relentlessly pro-worker.
Behind closed doors, a different face is revealed. Those same people cheer “defunding” and “bankrupting” unions to deal a “mortal blow” to progressive politics in America.
A key director of this charade is the State Policy Network (SPN), whose game plan is revealed in a union-busting toolkit uncovered by the Center for Media and Democracy. …
Here’s what Brooks doesn’t tell you about his friends “in the trust and respect business.” The Institute for American Values was founded in 1987 by money from the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Harry Bradley was one of the founders of the ultra-right John Birch Society. As Wikipedia puts it, the IAV has “been critical of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth.” The Center for Media and Democracy describes the Bradley Foundation as “one of America’s largest right-wing foundations.”
The Center for Media and Democracy also reported in 2014 that [Wendy] Lowe, a former Peabody Energy lobbyist, gave a presentation titled, “Increasing Travel Reimbursement Income” at an ALEC meeting in Chicago in 2013. But Lowe told DeSmog that, although she attended the Senate hearing on the bill, she did not know about it until it was proposed and is not lobbying for it.
ALEC, Climate, Environment, Koch
The Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit that documents corporate influence, has identified fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and Koch Industries as among ALEC’s financial backers. Amid a pressure campaign, dozens of companies including Google and Walmart dropped out, though not always explaining why, according to USA TODAY.
A report on IWF (Independent Women’s Forum) by the Center for Media and Democracy reveals the group’s close links to the Koch Brothers. While the relationship between the IWF and the Kochs is tenuous now, in the group’s early stages it shared space and leadership with David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity.
Since 2006, between two and three dozen Wisconsin lawmakers have been members of ALEC or attended ALEC conferences, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. And since 2011, at least three dozen bills or state budget provisions approved by the GOP-controlled legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Scott Walker were based on ALEC model legislation, according to the group.
“I believe that Donald Trump in the White House would be more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama – and that’s saying a lot,” Pruitt said in the interview.
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The audio was posted by a watchdog group called Documented that “investigates how corporations manipulate public policy that harms our environment, communities, and democracy,” according to its website. Documented was created in December, its co-director is also a fellow for another watchdog group called the Center for Media and Democracy.
Mary Bottari, deputy director of the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, a watchdog group that’s focused on ALEC, says the bill is a reasonable reaction to the agenda of the organization’s major corporate telecommunications members. “These companies are relentless and they will come back and back and back again because they want to make sure every neighborhood is available for a monopoly-based operation,” she said. “There’s no principle behind ALEC’s position. They are for whatever the corporations want.”