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A coalition of groups, including the Center for Media and Democracy, People For the American Way, Common Cause, and Progress Now, have released a report that details the American Legislative Exchange Council's influence in New Jersey.

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Just one look at the cover of the brochure for this year's annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) reveals where some of the corporate bill mill's loyalties lie: with the "natural" gas industry. The full-page ad on the brochure's inside cover -- paid for by the American Gas Association, a trade group for gas utilities companies -- identifies just one of the corporate underwriters that litter the pages of the conference booklet shared with all of the elected representatives and unelected corporate lobbyists who attended the convention at the luxurious Grand America resort.

"People can invest what they want," billionaire industrialist David Koch recently told Politico.

-- by Mary Bottari and Sara Jerving

Well-funded advocates of privatizing the nation's education system are employing a new strategy this fall to enlist support for the cause. The emotionally engaging Hollywood film "Won't Back Down" -- set for release September 28 -- portrays so-called "Parent Trigger" laws as an effective mechanism for transforming underperforming public schools. But the film's distortion of the facts prompts a closer examination of its funders and backers and a closer look at those promoting Parent Trigger as a cure for what ails the American education system.