Investigating Power
“These are three sweeping areas that amount to a rewrite of the Constitution,” said Arn Pearson, general counsel for the Center for Media and Democracy, a Wisconsin-based organization that closely tracks ALEC. “I really see it as a return to the Confederacy. They want the ability for states to override Supreme Court rulings and any federal law they don’t like.”
Climate, Environment, SPN, Trump
In closed-door remarks to members of the conservative Jefferson Institute in Virginia on April 18, a recording of which was obtained by Reuters, Ebell said Trump’s administration had made a series of missteps, including delays in appointing key EPA officials, that could hamper efforts to cut red tape for industry.
“This is an impending disaster for the Trump administration,” Ebell, a prominent climate change doubter, said in the recording provided to the Center for Media and Democracy and shared with Reuters.
The Bradley Foundation, a Wisconsin-based conservative powerhouse, is taking its successful strategies targeting unions and public education to swing states including Colorado, according to new, separate reports by the Center for Media and Democracy and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
At least three staffers from conservative, anti-clean energy think tanks now have roles in the Energy Department. This comes after Thomas Pyle, a former Koch Industries lobbyist, ran Trump’s transition team for the department. Pyle is president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a think tank co-founded and partially funded by fossil fuel industrialist Charles Koch, as well as its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance. A leaked Pyle memo obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy from December revealed Trump’s energy plan, a “fossil fuel industry wish list.”
This is why we must pay attention: Donald Trump isn’t the only — or even the biggest — danger to our democratic republic. As Arn Pearson, general counsel of Center for Media Democracy, warns: “There are a lot of different parts of the Koch machine pulling on this oar. From their think tanks up through their elected officials, they’re pushing on it. Hard.”
Colorado labor and education are in the crosshairs of an anti-union Wisconsin foundation, according separate investigations by the Center for Media and Democracy and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation that supported the anti-union efforts in support of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (who grew up in Colorado Springs, coincidentally) are spreading their efforts nationwide, starting with Colorado and North Carolina.
Yet Bice ignores the elephant in the room: whether this charitable group is violating the federal law restricting a tax-exempt charity from engaging in activities to benefit a political party. As Mary Bottari of the liberal Center for Media and Democracy has reported, the documents show the Bradley Foundation has funded training schools for Republicans, has engaged in efforts to turn Democratic-leaning blue states into Republican-leaning red states, and funded many things that seem like purely partisan projects.
We welcome the Center for Media and Democracy’s Deputy Director, Mary Bottari to discuss their extensive investigation into the Bradley Foundation’s “weaponized philanthropy.” New recently released information reveals in tremendous detail how the Bradley Foundation has spent hundreds of millions in tax deductible money to build a huge partisan apparatus across the country molded on what they have already done to Wisconsin.
The Center for Media and Democracy PR Watch recently reported that since DeVos’ push for charter schools in Michigan, most of which are NHA-run charters, the state has dropped from 23rd in the nation (2003) for fourth-grade reading scores to 41st in the nation (2015), as documented by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Similarly, the fourth-grade math scores for the same years have dropped from 27th to 42nd in the nation.
Mary Bottari, from the Center for Media and Democracy, will tell us how her organization uncovered secret documents, from the right-wing Bradley Foundation, describing the game plan to defund and dismantle unions.
The Ring of Fire Network, Bradley Files Exposed, May 12, 2017, Part 1 (SoundCloud)
The Ring of Fire Network, Bradley Files Exposed, May 12, 2017, Part 2 (SoundCloud)