Lisa Graves's News Articles

Special Report

A Reporters' Guide to the Goldwater Institute

by Lisa Graves — March 14, 2013 - 10:36am

Breaking: today, the Center for Media and Democracy and Arizona Working Families jointly issued a report titled "A Reporter's Guide to the Goldwater Institute: What Citizens, Policymakers, and Reporters Should Know." A link to that report is available for download below.

Op-Ed

Conversation with "Fix the Debt," Help Count the Pinocchios

by Lisa Graves — February 28, 2013 - 1:21pm
  • Topics: Astroturf, Corporate Campaigns, Crisis Management, Front Groups, Corporations, Democracy, Economy, Media, Public Relations, Real Economy Project, U.S. Government

    • Last week, the Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation magazine worked together to publish a package in The Nation and a new online wiki resource on Pete Peterson and the Campaign to Fix the Debt, an entity we consider an "astroturf supergroup" with a huge budget working hard to create the fantasy that Americans care more about national debt and deficits than jobs and the economy. Fix the Debt is currently exploiting the "sequester" debate in Congress to encourage steep cuts to incredibly popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security.

    News

    Pete Peterson’s Chorus of Calamity

    by Lisa Graves — February 21, 2013 - 8:58am
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Corporations, Politics, Public Relations

    • Fix the Debt financier Peter G. Peterson knows a thing or two about debt: he's an expert at creating it. Peterson founded the private equity firm Blackstone Group in 1985 with Stephen Schwarzman (who compared raising taxes to "when Hitler invaded Poland"). Private equity firms don't contribute much to the economy; they don't make cars or milk the cows. Too frequently, they buy firms to loot them. After a leveraged buyout, they can leave companies so loaded up with debt they are forced to immediately slash their workforce or employees' retirement security.

    Press Release

    Press Advisory: Exposing ALEC’s Economic Agenda in the States

    by Lisa Graves — February 1, 2013 - 8:14am
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Corporations, Democracy, Economy, Politics

    • Washington— On Wednesday, February 13, 2013, the Economic Policy Institute will host a media conference call on the economic policy agenda promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—an agenda that would weaken state economies, harm working families and put the interests of corporations and the most affluent households before the common good.

    News

    What Is Visa Hiding? Majority Shareholders Thwart Effort to Require More Disclosure of Money Spent on ALEC

    by Lisa Graves — January 31, 2013 - 7:08am
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Right Wing, Corporations, Democracy, Economy, Ethics, Lobbying

    • A majority of Visa shareholders rejected an effort to require the company to provide more disclosure about its role in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and related lobbying activities. Boston Common Asset Management, an investment firm focused on socially responsible investing, and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (UUA), a religious organization that affirms the inherent capacity for good in human beings, filed a resolution to require the company to disclose all payments used for lobbying purposes, including payments to groups like ALEC. In all, over 100 million votes were cast in favor of the resolution -- 37% -- but that substantial outpouring of support for greater transparency accounted for less than a majority of the votes cast by Visa shareholders.

    Op-Ed

    A 25% Cut for the Pentagon? Key Dems Say Unnecessary Defense Spending Is Crippling the U.S. and Should Be Part of Debt Debate

    by Lisa Graves — January 14, 2013 - 2:11pm

    The largest Democratic Party organization in the nation has called on Congress to support a 25% cut in Pentagon spending. The California Democratic Party -- which includes more than 2,000 representatives of the state's more than seven million Democrats -- adopted this policy in the past year in the face of threats by Republicans in Congress to refuse to allow the U.S. to increase its credit limit.

    Op-Ed

    Money OUT, Voters IN: Find an Event Near You!

    by Lisa Graves — January 10, 2013 - 2:45pm
  • Topics: Democracy

    • Last year, Americans witnessed an explosion in million-dollar checks from a handful of uber-wealthy people underwriting political campaigns and election ads. In 2012, there were also numerous efforts to make it harder for Americans to exercise their fundamental right to vote through restrictive voter ID legislation and limits on voter registration.

    Editorial

    A New Year's Message to Our Readers

    by Lisa Graves — December 31, 2012 - 11:04am
  • Topics: Campaign Finance, Corporations, Democracy, Economy, Energy, Environment, Media, Politics

    • You helped make the world a better place this year. You helped expose corruption and thwart efforts to distort our democracy.

    1. You helped force 42 major corporations and 70 legislators to do something they did not want to do, leave the American Legislative Exchange Council.

    News

    “Energy In Depth” – A Reporters’ Guide to Its Founding, Funding, and Flacks

    by Lisa Graves — December 28, 2012 - 10:34am

    What is Energy In Depth, really? EID describes itself as "a research, education and public outreach campaign focused on getting the facts out" about hydraulic fracturing, widely known as "fracking." It's a website created by a trade group for the gas industry -- the "Independent Petroleum Association of America" (IPAA) -- and a public relations firm.

    News

    Backgrounder: the History of the NRA/ALEC Gun Agenda

    by Lisa Graves — December 15, 2012 - 1:32pm
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Right Wing, Corporations, Democracy, Ethics, Marketing

    • "We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years," President Obama said in response to horrifying shooting massacre of 20 little children and six of their educators in Connecticut.

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