Right Wing

Revealed: Extensive Koch Links to New Right-Wing $250 Million Mega Fund

Freedom Partners (FP) -- a funding group previously unheard of before it shared exclusive and highly selective details about itself with Politico last week -- has extensive hidden connections to Koch Industries and to charities connected to Charles Koch, according to new research by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

WI Senate Fast-Tracks Bill to Close Forest to Benefit Out-of-State Mining Firm

A controversial out-of-state mining company is closer to gaining control over a 3,600-acre swath of publicly available forest near where it is planning a massive open-pit iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin. The Florida firm, Gogebic Taconite, has begun test drilling in the area and has already stirred controversy by hiring out-of-state armed security with automatic assault weapons to guard their activities. The Arizona firm was kicked out of the state after the media uncovered they were not licensed here. Now Gogebic Taconite is attempting to shut down whole forests to keep its controversial mining activities from protestors and curious eyes.

Koch-Funded Franklin Center "Watchdogs" Infiltrate State Capitols

As newsrooms across the country have cut staff reporters -- due in part to slipping ad revenue and corporate media conglomeration -- the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity has rushed to fill the gap, as the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has documented. The Franklin Center has 40 state news websites, with reporters in 34 states so far. Its reporters have received state house press credentials and its stories appear as news in mainstream print newspapers in each state without alerting readers to the heavy right-wing bias of the Franklin-related publications.

Americans for Prosperity Goes After ObamaCare (Again)

-- by Seep Paliwal

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative advocacy group founded and funded by David Koch, is spearheading an ad campaign aimed at young women attacking the 2010 federal health reform law dubbed "ObamaCare." It is spending more than $1 million to run the ad in Virginia and Ohio, with plans to expand it to a total of seven states.

What Do Guns Have to Do With Immigration? For Gun Owners of America, Everything

-- By Katie Lorenze

Gun Owners of America (GOA) has declared immigration reform a gun issue, warning that under the "scamnesty bill" currently in the U.S. Senate, "you can say buh bye to your guns and buh bye to the rest of your freedom."

Scaife-Funded Network Works Hard to Kill Immigration Reform

-- By Katie Lorenze

With immigration reform advancing through Congress, an anti-immigrant network funded by a small group of right-wing foundations is trying to kill reform by pressuring moderate Republicans and appealing to the party's xenophobic wing. The groups could stymie efforts by some Republicans to appeal to the country's growing Latino population by moving to the center on immigration.

New Report Exposes ALEC's Influence In Nevada

Bills introduced in Nevada to allow machine guns on the Vegas strip, privatize public education, and thwart federal healthcare reform can be tied back to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), according to a new report from ProgressNow Nevada detailing ALEC's influence in that state.

"Business Climate" Rankings Bogus Says New Report

Six influential state tax studies by anti-tax organizations including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), are "deeply flawed," include "highly inconsistent findings" and constitute "ideologically charged pseudo-social science published to further the interests of corporations and rich people," according to a major new report released by Good Jobs First, titled "Grading Places: What Do the Business Climate Rankings Really Tell Us?"

MacIver Institute Ideologues Manage to Turn Lemonade Into Lemons

In 2010, Governor Scott Walker ran for office on a simple message, that he would turn Wisconsin's economy around and create 250,000 jobs. There was good news for Walker in the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs numbers released April 2013. Although Wisconsin still ranked 44th in the country in terms of job creation, the staggering economy had created 64,500 more jobs since Walker took office than previously known. There was a large upward correction in the BLS jobs data stretching back more than a year that not only impacted Wisconsin, but many states.

A Reporters' Guide to the "State Policy Network" -- the Right-Wing Think Tanks Spinning Disinformation and Pushing the ALEC Agenda in the States

New Resource Details "Think Tanks" Tanking Americans' Rights

In this new online resource, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD, the publisher of the award-winning ALECexposed.org investigation) documents the more than $80 million that right-wing billionaires and corporations are spending each year to fuel Tracie Sharp's State Policy Network (SPN) and its 59 state "think tank" members, along with the controversial Heartland Institute, a SPN ally like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), that tries to change both state and federal law.

Syndicate content