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VOICES: Privatizing America for their majesty, Kings Charles and David Koch
On an island off the coast of Florida, the billionaire brothers behind Koch Industries recently gave an order to push the privatization of schools, prisons and anything else standing in the way of the...
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Unions in the crosshairs
In her recent State of the State address, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley declared that unions were "not welcome" there -- part of a broader national assault against organized labor.Image: Facing...
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Another Supreme Court boost for corporate unaccountability?
As an ongoing case involving the parent company of Houston-based Shell Oil illustrates, conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court appear to want to put an end to the Alien Tort Claims Act, a key tool for...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: The backlash against big-money politics
A large majority of U.S. voters say super PACs should be illegal, and a growing number of actions are targeting the Supreme Court decision that made them possible.Image: Facing South Appreciate this...
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Con JOBS
A bill originally sponsored by ethics-challenged Congressman Stephen Fincher of Tennessee is being hailed as helping small businesses and workers, but watchdogs warn that it will erode transparency and...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: Duke Energy takes from the 99%, gives to data giants
A watchdog group has filed a petition with North Carolina regulators seeking to change the way the power giant sets its rates, which dramatically favor energy-hungry data centers run by well-heeled...
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Banking on Boeing
The bipartisan decision to extend the life of the Export-Import Bank of the United States -- which some conservatives have derisively dubbed "Boeing's Bank" -- shows that corporatists retain the upper...
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Fracking interests spent heavily to influence NC lawmakers
A report from North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections documents how companies with an interest in legalizing fracking in the state are investing heavily in legislators' campaigns.Image: Facing South...
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ALEC staggers but will it fall?
The campaign calling on companies to sever ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council is one of the most successful corporate accountability initiatives in history, but it now faces the...
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Billionaire privatization activists pushing 'neovouchers' for North Carolina
Conservative political activists connected to Wal-Mart and Amway are funding a campaign to funnel public money to religious and other private schools.Image: AFC's money has funded some rather nasty...
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VOICES: Walker & Koch Inc. pull it off but the fight continues
Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker's victory in this week's recall election is being called a crushing blow to organized labor, but the grassroots are stirring across the land -- even in the...
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Mississippi weakens its already weak workers' compensation law
Mississippi's revised workers' compensation law went into effect this month, putting the burden on workers to prove injuries are job-related. The Republican governor says it shows corporations that the...
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VOICES: The labor law reform we need
History shows that union membership has grown when labor has been on the offensive fighting for all workers. That's why SEIU organizer Rand Wilson argues that the movement's next fight should be for...
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VOICES: Cover story distracts from real reason Duke Energy merger might fail
The $2 billion to be poured into nuclear fleet upgrades turns the Duke-Progress merger into a public soaking instead of a public saving -- which violates the deal's key legal standard.Image: Facing...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: Protesting BP's Olympic greenwash
As the Olympics get underway in London, protesters are targeting BP for its corporate sponsorship of the games, which they say amounts to "greenwashing" its pollution in the Gulf of Mexico and...
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Backlash over Duke-Progress merger intensifies
Duke Energy is facing a credit downgrade, shareholder lawsuits, multiple investigations, and a legal move to reopen the regulatory proceedings that allowed it to take over Progress Energy in the first...
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Time for a new debate about business success
In debating what it takes to succeed in business, President Obama and Mitt Romney talk as if we were still in an early 19th Century economy of small enterprises. But with megacorporations dominating...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: Well-connected health care fraudster faces fresh scrutiny
Founded by the family of former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, previously led by Florida Gov. Rick Scott, and acquired by private equity firms including Bain Capital in 2006, Tennessee-based HCA was already the...
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Extraction and disclosure
The Securities and Exchange Commission stood up to intense pressure from the likes of ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute to approve rules that will shine a light on dealings between some...
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We subsidized it
The Romney campaign had a strangely inapt group of messengers promote the theme of Ayn Rand-style entrepreneurship at the Republican Convention: GOP governors who have presided over deals in which huge...
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Corporations are the real moochers
From arranging their affairs so they get checks from the IRS rather than writing them, to their reliance on government contracts, U.S. corporations show a serious dependency on public assistance.Image:...
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Keystone XL pipeline blockade continues in Texas
Protesters are sitting in trees in northeastern Texas in an effort to halt construction of a controversial pipeline designed to carry tar sands oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. Image: Facing...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: The big money behind the political conventions
Corporate cash flowed to both the 2012 Republican National Convention held in Tampa, Fla. and the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.Image: Facing South Appreciate this post? Please...
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VOICES: Presidential politics vs. workers' rights
As corporate money pours into the presidential race, workers have to fight for their own rights -- and they're doing just that at Walmart and a Louisiana salt mine.Image: Facing South Appreciate this...
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Mystery firm is election's top corporate donor at $5.3 million
The biggest corporate contributor in the 2012 election so far is a mysterious Tennessee company that doesn't appear to make anything -- other than very large contributions to the conservative super PAC...
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Citizens United at Three: The fight for democracy continues
Besides being Inauguration Day and the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, today also marks the three-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opening the floodgates for political...
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Obama's flip-flops on money in politics: A brief history
Critics say the president's plan for a new nonprofit group to push his second-term agenda opens the door to influence by corporations and other big donors.Image: Obama's new 501(c)(4) isn't his first...
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Secret TPP deal would void democracy
The Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a trade agreement written with help from the likes of Walmart and Halliburton -- would enhance corporations' power to sue governments over laws they don't like,...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: Will dark money lift Gov. McCrory's sinking popularity?
A private political nonprofit that does not have to publicly disclose its donors is running TV ads across North Carolina touting the governor's agenda amid widespread criticism and slipping poll...
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New report confirms what we already know, BP issues denial
A new study by Texas scientists finds that BP's oil will be causing damage to the Gulf sea bed for decades, confirming what locals have long been saying -- and what BP has been working vigorously to...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: Will Trayvon Martin killing bankrupt ALEC?
The American Legislative Exchange Council lost members and money after the 2011 shooting death of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his assailant under the state's Stand Your...
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After a political setback in NC, ALEC retools assault on renewable energy
Corporate interest advocacy groups including the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council made repealing North Carolina's renewable energy law a top priority last year. Their effort failed,...
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While Duke Energy dodges taxes, its pollution costs the public dearly
Already under scrutiny for its coal ash pollution, Duke Energy has been named in a new report about U.S. companies that don't pay corporate income taxes. Meanwhile, its dirty business model takes a...
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Coal ash polluting NC river was once Appalachian mountaintops
Before its coal-fired units were shuttered in 2012, Duke Energy's Dan River plant burned coal from mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia. The reality that the arsenic-laden ash now contaminating a...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: A Supreme Court win for the plutocrats sparks protests
This week the U.S. Supreme Court struck down limits on the total amount an individual can contribute in an election cycle. The decision spurred nationwide protests against what critics blasted as a...
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The likely targets of a climate boycott
This week international human rights campaigner Desmond Tutu called for a boycott of carbon polluters, much like the effort that helped bring down the apartheid regime in his native South Africa....
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New details emerge on Gov. McCrory's Duke Energy money ties
A national campaign finance watchdog group analyzed Duke Energy's political contributions to the nation's governors -- and found that North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) received three times more than...
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NC fracking bill orders prison time for disclosing chemicals, ignores health...
Legislation to open the state to oil and gas drilling would impose prison time for unauthorized individuals to disclose chemicals in fracking fluids that the industry wants kept secret. At the same...
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Cantor's collapse and crony capitalism
We tend to think that promoting anger at big business is a theme of the Left, but conservative libertarians such as David Brat, who defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor this week in Virginia's...
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Populists and Bourbons are fighting again, 21st century style, in Mississippi
State Senator Chris McDaniel's still-contested narrow loss to incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi's Republican runoff last month exposed a divide with the Republican Party possibly as wide...
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Republicans make big advances thanks to Citizens United
Two election cycles after the landmark Supreme Court decision loosening restrictions on corporate money in politics, research is emerging that assesses its impact on our political system -- and it...
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NC Supreme Court a 'virtual sinkhole' for environmental law, and it could get...
Over the past 15 years, North Carolina's high court has sided against the environment in every major environmental law case it's considered, a new study finds. And with the court's three Democrats...
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INSTITUTE INDEX: Tallying up returns on corporations' political investments
A report released this week by the Sunlight Foundation calculated what 200 of America's most politically active corporations invested in federal lobbying and campaign contributions over six years --...
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Governors' Big Oil-assisted lobbying pays off in Obama's Atlantic drilling plan
The Obama administration has proposed opening Atlantic waters to offshore oil and gas drilling after years of being lobbied by a coalition of coastal-state governors that had more than a little...
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Naomi Klein: Shock of oil price plunge is opportunity world must seize
Riffing on key ideas from her last two books, the Canadian author argues it's a perfect time to employ the "shock doctrine" for good by using climate change as opportunity to "change everything" about...
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Corporations under growing shareholder pressure to disclose political...
Over 100 corporations will receive shareholder resolutions this year calling on them to voluntarily disclose their political spending and lobbying activities. Some companies have already begun...
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Looting Louisiana: How the Jindal administration is helping Big Oil rip off a...
As Louisiana struggles with a looming $1.6 billion budget deficit, the Jindal administration is helping the state's oil and gas industry avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes and royalties. A new...
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VOICES: Under Republican 'grass-eater rule' in Mississippi
The Republicans running Mississippi have the prison system in shambles, workers' compensation gutted, education on a precipice — and journalist Joe Atkins looking back to populist Louisiana Gov....
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VOICES: Waving the wrong flag
Southern white working-class folks have a reason to feel rebellious — they're just waving the wrong flag to show it.Image: via Labor South.)" itemprop="image"...
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ALEC's fingerprints on harsh new NC immigration law
A North Carolina law that bans so-called "sanctuary city" ordinances uses language from a model bill crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate interest advocacy group whose...
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