Wisconsin's 2011-2012 legislative session saw the introduction of 32 bills or budget provisions reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model legislation -- including Governor Scott Walker's contentious attack on public sector collective bargaining, voter ID legislation, and bills that make it harder for Americans to hold corporations accountable when their products injure or kill -- and 19 of those proposals became law.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has joined an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the right of all Americans to access public records, regardless of which state they call home.
As Americans experienced epic droughts, freakish hurricanes, and other extreme weather over the past few years, many are eager to see our nation secure a sustainable energy supply for the future that won't break our climate. But others -- most notably the polluting fossil fuel industries -- are eager to double down on the same old technologies that are responsible for the climate crisis in the first place.
Despite Wisconsin residents overwhelmingly voting for Democrats in the 2012 elections -- sending progressive powerhouse Tammy Baldwin to the U.S. Senate and reelecting President Barack Obama by 6.8 points -- five of the state's eight newly-drawn congressional districts voted out of sync with the majority of Wisconsinites and went for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. This is largely because the GOP reworked congressional maps to their party's benefit during the redistricting process that followed the 2010 census and elections. Now, Republicans in Wisconsin are discussing plans to allocate the state's electoral college votes according to these new Congressional districts, giving the GOP a chance for victory in a state that has elected Democrats in each of the past seven Presidential elections.
When George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February, Zimmerman -- who considered himself a neighborhood watchman -- almost certainly thought of himself as a "good guy."
In November, 45-year-old Michael David Dunn likely thought he was playing the role of the "good guy" when he confronted a vanload of teenagers for playing their music too loud, then fired nine shots into their vehicle after claiming he saw a shotgun barrel. 17-year-old Jordan Russell Davis was killed, and neither Jordan nor anyone else in the van had a gun.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who became nationally known for severely limiting the union rights of teachers and other public employees, has indicated support for arming those same school officials who apparently cannot be trusted to collectively bargain.
You know you are not going to be seeing the brightest bulbs on TV defending America's loose gun laws the weekend after the mass slaughter of children. Even the NRA had gone dark, taking down its Facebook and Twitter accounts and refusing to respond to reporters.
Representative Tim Scott (R-SC), who was a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as a state legislator and was voted into Congress in the Tea Party wave of 2010, has been nominated to replace Jim DeMint in the U.S. Senate.
"I was a member of ALEC," Rep. Scott told the right-wing Washington Times earlier this year.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and its allies have been honored by the Business Ethics Network, which celebrates outstanding contributions to the advancement of corporate ethics, with two awards -- the BENNY Award and the Populist Category BENNY -- for our campaign asking corporations to "Dump ALEC".
CMD's Executive Director Lisa Graves was honored recently by the Wisconsin Association for Justice (WAJ). WAJ is the largest voluntary bar organization in Wisconsin representing the trial bar profession. WAJ presented Lisa with the President's Award for her ongoing work exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), particularly ALEC's "tort reform" efforts which make it harder to hold corporations accountable when their products injure or kill consumers. She was presented with the award at WAJ's Winter Seminar and Annual Meeting at the Pfister Hotel and Tower in Milwaukee.
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