According to Democracy Now!, police and private security forces raided a protest encampment of anti-fracking activists in Pennsylvania this week. For two weeks, neighbors and other concerned citizens had been helping to stave off the 
eviction of more than 30 families in the Riverdale Mobile Home Park in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, after residents were told they had to vacate the property and move their homes after the land was sold to the giant private water corporation Aqua America. The company plans to pump million of gallons of water from the nearby river to funnel through a pipeline to other parts of the state to be used in industrial drilling for shale gas, through controversial hydraulic fracturing or "fracking."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 14, 2012

CONTACT: Sara Jerving, sara@prwatch.org

"Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama" Spent Tens of Thousands of Dollars on Ads Backing Walker in the Recall Election, But Did Not Comply with State Election Law

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has filed a complaint requesting that Wisconsin's elections board investigate a Tea Party-affiliated group from California that spent tens of thousands of dollars on ads supporting Governor Scott Walker in the June 5 recall election, but did not register as a political committee in the state or report its funding and spending, as required by Wisconsin election law.

Two months after it was first announced, the "I Stand With ALEC" website supporting the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has finally gone live -- and it is underwhelming.

For the past year, ALEC has been under intense public scrutiny, starting in July 2011 when the Center for Media and Democracy launched ALECexposed.org. Since then, Common Cause has filed complaints with the IRS challenging ALEC's charitable status, groups like People for the American Way and Progress Now! have helped produce reports about ALEC's influence in individual states, Color of Change has been privately and publicly urging corporations to leave ALEC because of the ALEC agenda's negative impact on the African American community, and labor unions and shareholder groups have put increasing pressure on publicly traded companies to drop their ALEC membership. CMD has continued its investigation of ALEC, its operations, and its members through reporting on PRWatch.org, and documented ALEC's role in ratifying as a "model" bill the Stand Your Ground law cited initially to protect Trayvon Martin's killer from arrest or prosecution.