In politics, as in sports, you can’t win ‘em all. With a divided government and a House of Representatives firmly in the control of tea partiers, it was a tough year for progressives in Washington – one marked by the painful cuts of sequestration…
Tag: Dark Money (Page 3 of 4)
byLaura Clawson
The American Legislative Exchange Council has been influencing policy for the worse for decades; with the news that ALEC is struggling to keep members and raise the big corporate money to which it’s accustomed, let’s review just what all that money does:
by Kiley Kroh
Organizations that actively block efforts to address climate change are funded by a large network of conservative donors to the tune of nearly $1 billion a year, according to the first in-depth study into the dark money that fuels the denial effort.
The study, published Friday in the journal Climatic Change, analyzed the income of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups, and industry associations, funded by 140 different foundations, that work to oppose action on climate change. The study’s author, Robert Brulle, refers to these organizations as the climate change counter-movement, and concludes that their outsized influence “has not only played a major role in confounding public understanding of climate science, but also successfully delayed meaningful government policy actions to address the issue.”
“It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this,” Brulle told the Guardian. “This is a large-scale political effort.”
A holiday special brought to you by Third Way/Fox News
by Hunter
The obsessive centrists of the punditverse are abuzz with praise for supposed centrist Democratic organization Third Way and their grumbling op-ed condemnation of Democratic liberal populism in abstract and “economic populists” like Sen. Elizabeth Warren in particular.
But why would the Third Way, a very reasonable and centrist organization that just wants both parties to get along and agree to cut Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs be so very worked up about Elizabeth Warren, Wall Street reform, and the mere thought of breaking up large banks? Worked up enough to launch an apparently coordinated effort against those things?
Oh. I see.
It is not all that shocking that the Wall Street Way put out an editorial in the Wall Street Journal condemning attempts to point out that Wall Street has, long before the economic crisis and now long after, taken the lion’s share of America’s economic wealth and left the rest of the nation’s citizens to eek by on the increasingly meager crumbs. You form an organization made up almost entirely from wealthy Wall Street partners, ex-partners and other equity managers who don’t like the notions of regulation or taxes, that’s pretty much what you’re going to get.
It’s a bit more surprising that any supposedly astute political observer could look at the effort and declare it a “game changer.” Lord, now, that’s just embarrassing.
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