Lisa Graves's News Articles

Five Republican appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court just struck down critically important laws regulating corporations' influence on election and public policy. The Center for Media and Democracy strongly opposes this radical decision by a bare majority of the Supreme Court to rewrite the First Amendment and give corporations even greater influence in elections and public policy. With this decision, huge corporations like Goldman Sachs and AIG will be able to use their enormous wealth to run campaigns against the president or any person who might oppose their agenda.

In our view, this decision is terrible for our democracy. The corruption of policy development we have already seen by the big insurance companies in the health care debate, by the big banks opposing regulations to protect our economy, and the big oil companies slowing efforts to address global warming, even under the current rules that the Court just struck down, show this decision will make things worse. We cannot sit on the sidelines and let this radical decision stand.

You can help us stand up to the Court by casting your vote against this judicial activist decision and sending a strong rebuke. Please sign our petition and help put Americans before corporations. Please tell your friends, family and colleagues about this important issue and urge them to sign the petition. We also have a new "Corporate Rights portal" we are launching in SourceWatch to help educate the general public about these issues and provide a gateway for getting more involved. You can bookmark this link to the Corporate Rights portal to stay up-to-date on the latest news about this issue.

Thank you for demanding a full investigation into the health insurance industry's expensive double-dealing.

We, the people, deserve to know the true extent of the double-dealing of the insurance industry. And, we deserve to know how much of our health insurance premiums have been spent not on providing health care but on underwriting ads and lobbying against health care reform.

We'll deliver this petition to Congress and let you know about it.

Please share this [http://tinyurl.com/investigatenow] with your friends.

This Holiday Season, for too many Americans, "It's Not Such a Wonderful Life." Reckless Wall Street gambling collapsed the economy. The big bankers, like Mr. Potter, got theirs – an unbelievable $3 trillion in government help! It worked so well that Wall Street will pay out some $140 billion in bonuses this year.

But what about George Bailey and the rest of us? Where is the help for the 16 million Americans who are now out of work? The millions of unemployed facing foreclosure? The millions more teetering on the brink of personal bankruptcy?

Here is a letter the Center for Media and Democracy's Wendell Potter recently sent to the Senate about the health care reform efforts and corporate spin:

My name is Wendell Potter, the former insurance industry insider speaking out about how insurance companies have hijacked our health care system in service of Wall Street's relentless profit expectations. I am joined in this letter by Andrew Kurz, a former chief financial officer for Wisconsin Blue Cross and Blue Shield who shares these concerns.

We stand together for immediately reforming the plainly broken U.S. health care system with its spiraling premium costs and harmful loopholes. Business as usual is taking a terrible toll on Americans, on government budgets, and on our nation's ability to compete in the global marketplace. This is unacceptable and unsustainable.