This week in Washington, DC, Jeb Bush's "Foundation for Excellence in Education" (FEE) is meeting just five blocks away from the post-election conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the controversial corporate bill mill working on profitizing public education among other legislative changes, but the ties between the two groups are even closer.
Three right-wing organizations founded nearly forty years ago by conservative activist Paul Weyrich are rediscovering their shared origins. The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of 169 right-wing Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, is establishing a partnership with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the controversial "corporate bill mill" for state legislators, and their first meeting is scheduled at the Heritage Foundation headquarters. Each of those three organizations -- the RSC, ALEC, and the Heritage Foundation -- were founded in 1973 by Weyrich. (Weyrich passed away in 2008.)
Submitted by Anne Landman on
The health insurance lobby is laying the groundwork to block federal health care reform by working through think tanks to pass state laws invalidating federally-mandated reforms.
Submitted by Bob Burton on
The British climate change skeptic, Christopher Monckton, warned those attending an Australian conservative think tank seminar that bureaucrats will mastermind a "coup d'etat" in the aftermath of the COP15 climate change negotiations and establish a "world dictato
Submitted by John Stauber on
Conservative Transparency is a new website from the Media Matters Action Network of Media Matters for America.
This week's issue of Rolling Stone has an illuminating article, "The Lie Machine," by Tim Dickinson on anti-heath reform spin. Dickinson's article quotes internal corporate memos showing how Big Tobacco spun media stories about health care reform in 1994 and how its progeny are striking again.
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
Total media citations of think tanks were down for the fourth year in a row, according to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
Submitted by Bob Burton on
The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), an Australian corporate-funded think tank, has decided to dump its Senior Fellow, Jennifer Marohasy.
One of the things I hope to do with my post is to call out misleading statements and statistics, outright lies and illogical assertions by opponents of meaningful health care reform—and to rat out the front groups that insurers and other special interests are funding to kill reform or, failing that, shape it to their benefit.
I'm starting with a biggie, conservative author and columnist George Will, who suggests in his June 28 column in The Washington Post that, because of the complexity and expense of reforming the American health care system, maybe we would be better off just leaving well enough alone.
Well enough? For him, maybe. He's got a great gig at the Post and as a TV network pundit, and he has sold lots of books, so he probably doesn't have to worry, as most other Americans do, about being just one layoff away from joining the 50 million other men, women and children in the ranks of the uninsured. And even if the Post gave him a pink slip this afternoon, chances are he has stashed enough away that he can afford to shell out the nearly $13,000 that the average annual premium for decent family coverage costs these days (and that was in 2007).
Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
"Well aware that their cause is in trouble and unpopular, purity proponents are revamping their image to appear more mainstream," reports Jessica Valenti.
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