Corporations

Workers at the Palermo pizza factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin are entering their fourth week on strike, demanding recognition for a union and demanding the reinstatement of workers who have been terminated for organizing and participating in the union drive. Palermo Villa, Inc. prepares and markets frozen pizza under many brand names across the United States and Canada.

Striking workers are joined every day by supporters on the picket line outside the factory, calling for a boycott of Palermo's pizza until it recognizes the Palermo workers union. Members of the AFL-CIO, Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI), Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association (MTEA), United Steelworkers Union (USW), and others have joined the striking workers, carrying umbrellas to keep the hot sun off their backs as they march back and forth in front of the factory. The "nuns on the bus" who are traveling around the country in opposition to Representative Paul Ryan's austerity budget, also visited the striking workers, sending a message of support and solidarity.

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.

Think Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and special interests supporting him spent a lot in the Wisconsin recall race, at $45 million? Well, tobacco companies spent even more to defeat the ballot measure to raise California's cigarette taxes. How much? $47 million.

The ballot measure, Proposition 29, would have raised California's cigarette tax from its current 87 cents a pack -- half the national average -- to $1.87 a pack. This would still only have been the 16th highest cigarette tax in the country. The revenue created would have financed cancer research and smoking prevention programs.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has spent as much as 10 million dollars in Wisconsin in recent months influencing the potential recall of Governor Scott Walker, whose administration has been backed by AFP.