ALEC's 'Electricity Freedom Act' Systematically Attacks State Renewable Energy Standards

In October 2012, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) adopted the ‘Electricity Freedom Act’—a model bill co-written with the fossil fuel-funded Heartland Institute that called for the nullification of state Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS). The legislation was …

New England Compounding Center Fungal Meningitis Outbreak Kills 64, Sickens 798 - FDA and State Regulators Ignored Decade of Violations

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began investigating a multistate fungal meningitis outbreak in September 2012 that ultimately killed 64 people and sickened 798 individuals across multiple states who received contaminated methylprednisolone steroid injections from the New England …

Google Fined Record $22.5M for Deliberately Overriding Safari Privacy Settings

On August 9, 2012, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google would pay a record $22.5 million civil penalty—the largest ever levied against a single company in FTC history—to settle charges of deliberately circumventing Apple Safari browser privacy settings to track users without their …

Senate Harkin Report Documents Massive Fraud and Abuse in For-Profit College Industry

On July 30, 2012, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee released the Harkin Report, a devastating two-year investigation documenting systematic fraud, abuse, and taxpayer exploitation in the for-profit college industry. The 2,000-page report, based on subpoenaed …

Congress Overrides Army to Fund $255 Million in Unwanted Abrams Tank Upgrades to Protect General Dynamics Ohio Plant

Congress approved $255 million to upgrade M1 Abrams tanks through 2014 despite explicit Army testimony that it had ceased ordering tanks and wanted to save billions by halting production to develop next-generation armor. The appropriation represented a direct override of military leadership by both …

Supreme Court Makes ACA Medicaid Expansion Optional, Enabling State Obstruction

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius that the Affordable Care Act’s mandatory Medicaid expansion was unconstitutionally coercive, making it optional for states. While Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the individual mandate as a valid …

38 Studios Files Chapter 7 Bankruptcy After $75 Million Rhode Island Loan Guarantee, Leaving Taxpayers with $38.6 Million Loss

On June 7, 2012, 38 Studios LLC—the video game development company founded by former baseball star Curt Schilling—files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with $151 million in debt and just $22 million in assets, leaving Rhode Island taxpayers to absorb $38.6 million in losses from a $75 million state loan …

Bureau Investigation Exposes CIA Double-Tap Drone Strikes Killing Rescuers and Mourners

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism publishes comprehensive evidence that the CIA conducts “double-tap” drone strikes—following an initial strike with a second strike targeting rescuers, medical personnel, and civilians who rush to help victims. The investigation documents at least …

New Orleans Police Launch Secret Palantir Predictive Policing Program

The New Orleans Police Department launches a secretive predictive policing program in partnership with Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. The program operates without public knowledge or oversight, escaping scrutiny …

New York Times Exposes Obama's Kill List and Terror Tuesday Assassination Meetings

The New York Times publishes an explosive investigation revealing that President Obama personally approves every name on a secret “kill list” for drone strikes during regular Tuesday National Security Council meetings dubbed “Terror Tuesdays.” The article exposes how the …

Kansas Governor Brownback Signs ALEC-Laffer Tax Plan Eliminating Pass-Through Business Income Taxes - 'Kansas Experiment' Becomes Test Case for Supply-Side Economics

On May 22, 2012, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed Senate Bill Substitute HB 2117, implementing what became known as the ‘Kansas experiment’—the most aggressive implementation of ALEC’s corporate tax-cutting agenda ever attempted by a U.S. state. The legislation eliminated state …

Facebook IPO Market Manipulation by Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley and other underwriters engaged in selective disclosure during Facebook’s initial public offering, revealing sensitive financial information only to institutional investors. Massachusetts securities regulators fined Morgan Stanley million for creating an ‘unlevel playing …

Heartland Institute Billboard Compares Climate Scientists to Unabomber

On May 4, 2012, the Heartland Institute erected a digital billboard on the Eisenhower Expressway near Chicago featuring Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) with text reading “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” The billboard remained live for 24 hours before widespread …

Obama Administration Counts All Military-Age Males Killed by Drones as Combatants

The New York Times reveals that the Obama administration has adopted a secret policy counting “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” This Orwellian methodology allows the administration to …

Major Corporate Exodus from ALEC: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, McDonald's, Wendy's, Mars, and Intuit Drop Membership After Public Pressure Campaign

Seven major corporations—Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Mars, Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and software maker Intuit—announced they were dropping their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in April 2012, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ceasing new …

Facebook Acquires Instagram for Billion to Neutralize Potential Competitor

Facebook acquired photo-sharing app Instagram for billion, implementing what the FTC would later characterize as a ‘buy or bury’ strategy to eliminate competitive threats. Internal emails revealed CEO Mark Zuckerberg explicitly stated the acquisition was motivated by a desire to …

Magnitsky Act Passed by US Congress

The Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act was introduced in the US House of Representatives, targeting Russian officials responsible for human rights violations and corruption. Named after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who exposed a $230 million tax fraud scheme and subsequently died in …

STOCK Act Signed into Law

President Barack Obama signed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act into law, addressing long-standing concerns about insider trading by members of Congress. The bipartisan legislation, passed with overwhelming support (96-3 in Senate, 417-2 in House), prohibits members of Congress …

Greece Accepts Second Troika Bailout of €130 Billion with 53.5% Private Debt Haircut

The Eurogroup endorses Greece’s Second Economic Adjustment Programme, providing €130 billion through the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) mechanism along with approximately €12 billion from the IMF, running until June 2015. The EFSF ultimately disburses €141.8 billion total. …

Iowa Governor Branstad Signs Nation's First Modern Ag-Gag Law Criminalizing Undercover Documentation of Agricultural Facility Abuses, Using ALEC Model Legislation to Shield Corporate Factory Farms from Whistleblower Investigations

In March 2012, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, a founding member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), signed into law the nation’s first modern ag-gag statute, the Agricultural Production Facility Fraud law (Iowa Code Section 717A.3A), criminalizing whistleblower documentation of …

Trump Foundation Illegally Used $158,000 in Charity Funds to Settle Mar-a-Lago Legal Dispute

The Donald J. Trump Foundation used $158,000 in tax-exempt charitable funds to settle a legal dispute between the Town of Palm Beach and Trump’s for-profit Mar-a-Lago Club over an illegal 80-foot flagpole. The town had fined Trump’s private club for violating local ordinances by erecting …

25 Billion Mortgage Settlement Provides Banks Immunity for Minimal Payments

$25 billion settlement with five major banks over foreclosure abuses provides limited relief to homeowners. The agreement settled widespread ‘robosigning’ practices where banks mass-signed foreclosure documents without proper review. While nominally $25 billion, only $1.5 billion went …

Indiana Becomes 23rd Right-to-Work State Using ALEC Model Legislation

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signs right-to-work legislation making Indiana the 23rd state and the first in the Rust Belt manufacturing region to prohibit mandatory union membership or fees as a condition of employment. The bill is sponsored by multiple ALEC members and follows ALEC’s model …

PredPol Predictive Policing Company Founded

PredPol, a predictive policing software company, is founded in Santa Cruz, California by UCLA Professor of Anthropology Jeff Brantingham and mathematician George Mohler. The company emerges from research begun in 2010 when Brantingham recruited UCLA mathematicians to develop algorithms for …

Amazon Implements Automated Worker Surveillance and Tracking System

Amazon Implements Automated Worker Surveillance and Tracking System

Beginning around 2012, Amazon deployed comprehensive automated surveillance systems in its warehouses that tracked worker productivity per second through handheld scanners, creating what labor advocates described as algorithmic …

Erik Prince Sells Xe Services (formerly Blackwater), Rebranded as Academi with John Ashcroft on Board

Xe Services (formerly Blackwater) was acquired by a group of private investors and renamed Academi, with Erik Prince exiting the company he founded. The acquisition and rebranding represented the second major corporate transformation designed to distance the entity from Blackwater’s documented …

GAO Audit Reveals Massive $16.1 Trillion in Secret Federal Reserve Crisis Loans

The first comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve revealed it secretly provided $16.1 trillion in emergency loans to major financial institutions during the 2008-2010 financial crisis, far exceeding the $700 billion TARP program. The audit exposed unprecedented scale of financial sector bailouts, …

Michigan Emergency Manager Seizes Control of Flint, Stripping Democratic Governance

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appoints Michael Brown as emergency manager of Flint, effectively stripping all power from the city’s democratically elected mayor and city council under Public Act 4 of 2011. The law, signed by Snyder on March 16, 2011, granted appointed emergency managers …

STOCK Act Gains Momentum After 60 Minutes Exposes Congressional Insider Trading

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act gained explosive momentum after CBS’s 60 Minutes aired an investigation on November 13, 2011, revealing that several members of Congress allegedly used non-public information obtained through their official positions for personal …

MF Global Bankruptcy: $1.6 Billion in Customer Funds Missing Under Jon Corzine

MF Global Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, becoming the eighth largest bankruptcy in U.S. history at that time. The firm, led by former U.S. Senator and New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, reported that up to $1.6 billion in customer segregated funds were missing. The collapse came …

U.S. Drone Strike Assassinates Anwar al-Awlaki, American Citizen, Without Trial

A CIA drone strike in Yemen kills Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and Islamic cleric, without charges, trial, or judicial process. Al-Awlaki becomes the first American citizen to be deliberately assassinated by his own government since the Civil War era. President Obama personally approved placing …

Amazon Lehigh Valley Warehouse Heat Exhaustion Scandal Exposed

Amazon Lehigh Valley Warehouse Heat Exhaustion Scandal Exposed

On September 18, 2011, The Morning Call newspaper published a landmark investigation exposing brutal working conditions at Amazon’s warehouse in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania (Lehigh Valley). The investigation revealed that during …

FBI Surveils Occupy Wall Street as "Terrorist Threat" Before First Protest

FBI field offices around the country began surveilling Occupy Wall Street organizers as early as August 2011—a month before the first protesters arrived at Zuccotti Park—treating the nonviolent economic justice movement as a potential terrorist threat despite acknowledging internally that organizers …

Boeing Abandons New Aircraft Design, Chooses to Re-Engine 737 to Compete with Airbus

Boeing’s Board of Directors approved the launch of the re-engined 737 MAX on August 30, 2011, abandoning plans to develop an entirely new aircraft design. The decision came after Airbus launched the A320neo in December 2010 and captured 1,029 orders by June 2011, including a historic defection …

ALEC Exposed: Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation Publish Leaked Archive of 850 Corporate Model Bills

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), in cooperation with The Nation magazine, launched the ‘ALEC Exposed’ web project on July 13, 2011, posting 850 model bills created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) over a 30-year period and exposing the systematic corporate …

Wisconsin Republicans Pass Act 43 Gerrymandering Plan in Secret Process

Wisconsin Republicans pass 2011 Wisconsin Act 43, implementing extreme partisan gerrymandering through an unprecedented secret process. The redistricting plan, drawn behind closed doors at a private law firm with rank-and-file Republican legislators required to sign confidentiality agreements, …

Rep. Anthony Weiner Resigns After Sexting Scandal and Cover-Up

U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) announced his resignation from Congress effective June 23, 2011, after admitting he sent sexually explicit photos and messages to at least six women over three years through Twitter, Facebook, email, and phone—and then lied about it to the public and media. …

Department of Education Issues Gainful Employment Rule to Regulate For-Profit Colleges, Industry Immediately Challenges in Court

The U.S. Department of Education under Secretary Arne Duncan published the final “Gainful Employment Rule” on June 13, 2011, establishing that career training programs at for-profit colleges and non-degree programs at all institutions must demonstrate that graduates earn sufficient …

Judd Gregg Joins Goldman Sachs as International Advisor After Banking Committee Role

Goldman Sachs announced the appointment of former Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) as an international advisor to the firm, making him one of 17 such advisors providing strategic counsel to Goldman’s executives and clients. Gregg had served three terms in the U.S. Senate from 1993 to 2011, serving as …

FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker Joins Comcast Four Months After Approving NBC Universal Merger

FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker announces her resignation to join Comcast-NBC Universal as senior vice president of governmental affairs, just four months after voting to approve the company’s merger with NBC Universal. Baker was part of the 4-1 majority that approved the $30 billion …

Pam Bondi Fires Foreclosure Fraud Investigators After Campaign Donations from Lender Processing Services

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi pressured two senior prosecutors, June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards, to resign from their positions leading the state’s investigation into foreclosure fraud and robo-signing by major banks and mortgage servicers. The attorneys had uncovered massive fraud …

Trump's Birtherism Campaign Forces Obama to Release Long-Form Birth Certificate

After weeks of Donald Trump loudly questioning President Obama’s citizenship and claiming to have sent private investigators to Hawaii, Obama released his long-form birth certificate to address what he called ‘silliness.’ Trump had appeared on Good Morning America in March 2011 …

Trump Launches Political Career with Racist Birther Conspiracy

Donald Trump launched his political career by promoting the racist “birther” conspiracy theory, publicly questioning whether Barack Obama—the nation’s first Black president—was born in the United States and therefore eligible to serve as president. In a March 23, 2011 appearance on …

CIA Drone Strike Massacres 42 Civilians at Pakistani Tribal Council Meeting

A CIA drone strike on a tribal jirga (council meeting) in Datta Khel, North Waziristan kills at least 42 people, the vast majority of them civilians including tribal elders gathered to resolve a local mining dispute. The massacre represents one of the deadliest single drone strikes of Obama’s …

Wisconsin Act 10 Crushes Public Sector Unions Using ALEC Model Legislation

Governor Scott Walker signs Wisconsin Act 10, eliminating collective bargaining rights for most public employees and marking one of the most significant defeats for organized labor in modern American history. The legislation, introduced February 14, 2011, ends collective bargaining for everything …

Chris Dodd Becomes Hollywood's Chief Lobbyist After Promising No Lobbying

Former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) was named chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), becoming Hollywood’s chief lobbyist in Washington despite having “repeatedly and categorically” promised he would not work as a lobbyist after leaving the Senate. Dodd …

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report Released, No Banker Prosecutions Follow

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), established in 2010 and led by Phil Angelides, released its final report concluding the 2008 financial crisis was caused by a “systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics” on the part of corporate executives. The commission was …

House Republicans Launch Six Years of Symbolic ACA Repeal Votes

Three days after taking control of the House, Republicans passed H.R. 2, the ‘Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act,’ in a 245-189 vote with three Democratic defections. The bill was never considered by the Democratic Senate. This initiated a six-year campaign of symbolic repeal …

Evan Bayh Joins Apollo Global Management and Five Corporate Boards After Senate

Former Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) joined private equity giant Apollo Global Management as a senior adviser and McGuireWoods as a strategic advisor immediately after leaving the Senate in January 2011. Within months, Bayh also secured positions on five corporate boards: Marathon Petroleum, Berry …

Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin Begin Systematic NRA Infiltration Operation

In 2011, Maria Butina founded the Russian gun rights organization “Right to Bear Arms” as a front operation and was hired as “special assistant” to Alexander Torshin, a Russian Senator with Kremlin connections. Together they initiated a systematic multi-year intelligence …