Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Center for Media and Democracy”
My friend and former colleague Wendell Potter, the CIGNA insurance public relations chief who saw the evil of his ways and left his job, is starting a new non-profit journalism enterprise called Tarbell. The investigative story I want to see from Wendell is one I am sure he will never tell: an insider exposé of the ugly rise and fall …
AARP, the non-profit seniors organization that exists to promote the financial security, pensions and healthcare of those over 50, is secretly funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization whose bills have acted against the interests of ordinary Americans, including retirees and their families. The Center for Media and Democracy has learned that AARP has recently joined ALEC, and …
Did you know that a high percentage of powerful business executives represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or its more local affiliates actually support an increased minimum wage, paid sick days for employees, extended maternity and paternity leave, and other progressive policies that benefit workers and families? If you didn’t, there’s a reason for that. Newly leaked materials—including results from …
Cops Gone Wild; Justice Gives Deep Cover
Developments in Chicago and South Carolina bring into sharp focus the national crisis of police killings of unarmed people. Overwhelmingly they have been, and tend to be, people of color, statistics show, and were killed, or are likely to be killed, by white officers who rarely are successfully prosecuted for their crimes. Leid Stories explains how the judicial system provides deep cover to rogue cops and why efforts at “reform” simply won’t touch the matter of criminal complicity by prosecutors and even judges in aiding and abetting injustice.
To followers of Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan, and to all the business people who despise government, ‘community’ is a form of ‘communism.’ Even taking the train is too communal for them. Americans have been led to believe that only individuals matter, that every person should fend for him/herself, that “winner-take-all” is the ultimate goal, and that the winners have …
With most of America enduring major heat waves this week, mild and sunny San Diego is not a bad place to be — especially if you want to ignore climate change and block clean energy solutions. Turns out that’s where polluting companies and conservative state lawmakers are gathering right now for the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) annual summer conference. …
Between 2010 and 2015, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) awarded Colorado $46 million under the Charter Schools Program. Part of the reason the state landed the competitive grant was that charters are free to hire unlicensed teachers and then fire them at will, documents reviewed by CMD show. Designed to create and expand “high-quality” charter schools, the quarter-billion-dollar-a-year program …
Jeb Bush is the highest profile speaker at a secretive three-day retreat in Bristol, Virginia, hosted by the CEOs of six coal companies, according to materials for the invitation-only event obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and shared with the Guardian. The event, dubbed the “Coal & Investment Leadership Forum,” which started Sunday and goes through Tuesday, is taking …
“The waste of taxpayer money—none of us can feel good about,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education just last month. Yet, he is calling for a 48% increase in the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) quarter-billion-dollar-a-year ($253.2 million) program designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—an initiative repeatedly criticized by the …
Common Cause and the Center for Media and Democracy sent federal authorities new evidence today that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is falsely passing itself off as a tax-exempt charity and effectively using taxpayer dollars to subsidize its lobbying on behalf of private interests. Common Cause filed a supplement to its three-year-old tax whistleblower complaint against ALEC, and the two groups …
