Research Cited

EPA Administrator Once Said Trump Would Be ‘Abusive’ to Constitution

Source: ABC News | Published: 1/30/2018

“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.

…

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.

Pingree Backs Bill to Ban States from Blocking Municipal High-Speed Internet Projects

ALEC

Source: Portland Press Herald | Published: 1/29/2018

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.”

Report Slams Mesa’s Pensions Liability as City Says It’s Coping

ALEC, SPN

Source: East Valley Tribune | Published: 1/28/2018

A group called the Center for Media and Democracy, based in Madison, Wisconsin, calls TIA [Truth in Accounting] “a right-wing non-profit” and a “deficit alarmist organization” that is an associate member of the State Policy Network.

The State Policy Network “and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide,” according to the Center for Media and Democracy.

National Study Adds Urgency to Diciccio’s Debt Warnings

ALEC, Koch

Source: Ahwatukee Foothills News | Published: 1/24/2018

While Truth in Accounting describes itself as a nonpartisan group of accountants and other financial experts, the Center for Media and Democracy describes it a right-wing entity with ties to the Koch Brothers and the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council.

How the GOP Rigs Elections

Democracy, Wisconsin

Source: RollingStone.com | Published: 1/24/2018

The gerrymandering in Wisconsin, which experts call among the most extreme in U.S. history, is but one part of Republicans’ stealth plan to stay in office. Since Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature took power, they’ve also introduced some of the country’s harshest voting restrictions, passing laws that make it harder for Democratic-leaning constituencies to register to vote and cast ballots. At the same time, the state has become the “Wild West of dark money,” according to Lisa Graves, a senior fellow at the Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy, with Republican politicians like Walker raising unprecedented sums from billionaire donors to finance their campaigns.

‘Independent’ Watchdog’s Secret Funder: Conservative Small-Government Group

ALEC, SPN

Source: ProPublica | Published: 1/18/2018

But the tax return revealing the contributions from the Illinois Policy Institute “clearly shows that Project Six is far from the independent government watchdog that it claims to be and seriously calls into question Khan’s motivation for establishing the group,” said David Armiak, a researcher with the Madison, Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, which has tracked funding to the institute and similar conservative organizations.

County Board Declines to Support National Schools Choice Week

Education, Koch

Source: Effingham Daily News | Published: 1/16/2018

“The National School Choice Week website’s Partners page provides a who’s-who gallery of (Koch Industries CEO Charles) Koch network groups, corporations and billionaires promoting privatization,” said Lisa Graves, The Center for Media and Democracy Executive Director in a press release. “Although the week features many local events, it is backed by national entities, some of which are hostile to the idea of public schools and whose goals have included full privatization.”

In ToxicDocs.org, a Treasure Trove of Industry Secrets

Environment

Source: Undark Magazine | Published: 1/10/2018

The project does have similarities to the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents maintained by the University of California San Francisco — an archive of tobacco company advertising, manufacturing plans, marketing campaigns, scientific research, and political activities — as well as The Poison Papers collection, a project of The Bioscience Resource Project and The Center for Media and Democracy that does much the same with the chemical and pesticide industries.

Retribution and Revenge in the Wisconsin John Doe

Wisconsin

Source: Shepherd Express | Published: 1/9/2018

The long running criminal investigation into whether or not Scott Walker and deep-pocketed dark money groups illegally coordinated the expenditure of some $30 million to win the 2012 recall elections should be old news by now. But the Wisconsin GOP is keeping it alive by undertaking a criminal investigation of a 2016 leak of documents to the Guardian newspaper, famous for its publication of the Snowden revelations and the Panama Papers.

Women’s Show 1/4 Begins 2018 with Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire; Mary Bottari, of the Center for Media and Democracy

Democracy

Source: WMNF | Published: 1/3/2018

Our constitution stands in the way of unbridled liberty…

Speaking of the well-laid plans developed over the last 30-40 years, our constitution stands in the way of the full realization of unbridled financial liberty. Liberty sounds great unless you are only defining it in terms of private property. There are many behind the scenes who are well on the way to having states call for a constitutional convention. Get out of the way Founding Fathers of 1776. The new founders of liberty circa 2018 want to redefine the parameters of liberty. Remember Dr. Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, on this show December 14th, warning us? MARY BOTTARI, Deputy Director, Center for Media and Democracy, will update us on the status of this movement. She helped launch CMD’s award-winning ALEC Exposed investigation in 2011 and is a recipient of the Hillman Prize for investigative journalism. She spearheaded CMD’s work on the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. I wonder if there will be any Founding Mothers involved in this?