Who Funds that?

In this episode: The hard lockdownists and their allies in the Biden administration repeat the mantra as often as a chanting monk: “Follow the science,” invariably before proposing some policy that continues the ongoing tyrannies ostensibly intended to reduce the burden of COVID-19. But what happens when the science conflicts with the permanent lockdowns, as it does over school closures? Then stak...

In this episode: CRC’s Communications and External Relations Director Sarah Lee interviews National Association of Scholars Senior Research Fellow Rachelle Peterson about her work related to the Confucius Institutes, ostensible Chinese cultural education centers that function as propaganda arms of the Chinese Communist Party. NAS has been following the Confucius Institutes for years, observing how...

In this episode: Federal law prohibits foreign nationals, except holders of permanent resident (or “green card”) status, from making political contributions in federal elections. But foreign billionaires are free to spend whatever they like on news organizations and advocacy groups that otherwise influence American public policy, and that brings us to Swiss billionaire Hansjoerg Wyss, the major en...

In this episode: We have covered extensively the prolonged and unprecedented closures of schools ostensibly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which continue to see teachers unions insist, even when their members receive vaccination priority or when school districts conduct extensively disruptive “pandemic theater” like closing for deep cleaning that even the teachers-union, er, “stakeholder” compro...

In this episode: Last week, Major League Baseball announced it would move the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver in protest of Georgia election-administration legislation that would make the state’s voter access more liberal than the pre-COVID status quo; in the eyes of Democratic activist and former gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams—who, presaging the actions of another prominent Georgia ele...

In this episode: We’ve discussed H.R. 1 before, see episode 161 with Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshal, and it is important enough to discuss it again. Joining us today is Capital Research Center president Scott Walter to discuss donor disclosure and his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights. Subscribe to t...

In this episode: It’s a tale so old it’s a cliché: The left-wing liberal Hollywood glitterati. But even the “normal” levels of bat-guano leftism from the hills above Los Angeles isn’t enough for some people, so at least one liberal billionaire built his own movie studio to make Hollywood even more of a left-wing propaganda outlet. Joining us to tell the story of Participant Media, that billionaire...

In this episode: H.R. 1: It might be the most consequential piece of legislation before the Congress this year—and that’s saying something in year when Congressional Democrats have already spent $1.9 trillion and advanced a fundamental restructuring of American labor relations. But what does this partisan-Democratic proposal to turn all American elections into copies of California’s often-criticiz...

In this episode: This week, the U.S. House of Representatives again advanced the odious catalog of Big Labor favors known as the “PRO Act” on a nearly party-line vote. While the legislation will likely stall in the Senate as long as the legislative filibuster remains in effect, the proposal remains a priority of the Biden administration, leaving Big Labor’s Sword of Damocles hanging over American...

In this episode: We welcome Stephen Soukup, author of The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business to discuss…well, woke capital and how political correctness captured big business. (Isn’t it helpful when a book does exactly what it says on the cover?) Soukup is publisher and vice president of the Political Forum, an independent research provider. Subscribe to...

In this episode: Across the country, bold political leadership from both parties has eased or overridden special interest groups’ resistance to reopening public schools, but linguini-spined leaders of both parties have permitted teachers unions to force children to endure nearly a full year of isolation and virtual learning. Fighting the battle at Ground Zero in the DC suburbs have been the parent...

In this week’s episode: We switch gears slightly and invite Capital Research Center’s Jake Klein, head of our in-house Dangerous Documentaries video production brand, to discuss its latest project: The Politically Incorrect Guides, an animated web-series featuring notable podcasters and authors Tom Woods and Michael Malice based on Regnery Publishing’s book series of the same name that educates vi...

In this episode: We discuss an issue that is well known to those involved in politics and to donors, but perhaps not as well known to the average voter. So we’re hoping to shed some light on it. The issue is donor disclosure, and we have as a special guest Jennifer Braceras, director of Independent Women’s Law Center, project of independent women’s forum, and a former member of the U.S. Commission...

In this episode: Continuing what has become something of a series on how American big business, big labor, and other “bigs” have gotten aggressively more aligned with progressive liberalism, today we turn to Big Business—Wall Street, Big Tech, and so forth. Groups like the Chamber of Commerce were once stalwarts of the Republican Party, but in the 2020 election they were far less aligned with thei...

In this episode: We welcome special guest Dan Judy, vice president at North Star Opinion Research in DC. He’s a Georgia native and a fellow UGA alumnus (Go Dawgs!) We discuss privacy rights and donor disclosure. For more reading go to: http://www.northstaropinion.com/about/our-team Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.f...

In this episode: It’s a new week, and there’s a new Presidential administration in town. And if his modern-era unprecedented early firing of the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board and his immediate re-entry to the Paris Climate Accord are any indication, the administration of President Joe Biden is going to be a series of favors for the left-wing special interest groups that hel...

In this episode: In recent years, American big business, big labor, and other “bigs” have gotten aggressively more aligned with progressive liberalism—even those bigs, like Big Philanthropy, that are technically required by law not to intervene in elections. While Big Philanthropy might always have been liberal-leaning ideologically, it has gotten so openly Democratic that as conservative philanth...

In this episode: We’re doing something different this week, because we're recording this on Thursday January 7, 2021. Yesterday, a riotous mob stormed the U.S. Capitol and attempted to prevent the certification of the votes of the Electoral College that make Democrat Joe Biden President-elect of the United States. There is no excuse for demonstrators, whatever their beliefs and goals, to overrun p...

In this episode: A strange thing happened on the road to the Emerging Democratic Majority. Even as Joe Biden won a roughly four-and-a-half percentage point national lead in total ballots cast, the “Rising American Electorate” demographics that were supposed to deliver “blue Texas” actually kept the Lone Star State and Florida in the Republican column while swinging to the right—even in deep-blue a...

In this episode: The federal government closed a substantial part of the book on its investigation into the largest labor union corruption scandal since the mob control over the Teamsters Union was broken. Federal prosecutors in Michigan announced that they had reached a settlement with the United Auto Workers to establish an oversight regime and adopt reforms to increase members’ ability to hold...

As states finalize their results or find the ballots they misplaced or lost the sticky notes for—looking at you, New York Twenty Two—the debate over election procedures shifts from the concluded 2020 elections to protecting election integrity for the future. And while much heat and light—arguably too much of the former—has focused on voting machine manufacturers, less light has shone on the influe...

In this episode: Last week, free-market economics lost one of its greatest evangelists: George Mason University professor, occasional Rush Limbaugh Program substitute host, book author, syndicated columnist, and Capital Research Center Advisory Board member Dr. Walter Williams. Joining us to reflect on Williams’s life and legacy is one of his colleagues, Mercatus Center scholar and columnist Veron...

In this episode: As all eyes are turned toward Georgia’s two Senate runoff races, we discuss proposed legislation that both the Democratic challengers in Georgia support, and that has serious implications for right-to-work laws nationally if the Senate flips from red to blue. The legislation is called the Pro Act, and it’s an expanded federal version of the controversial AB5 legislation in Califor...

In this episode: While the provisional results of the 2020 presidential election are disappointing to many conservatives, American voters threw roadblocks and cautions to an aggressive progressive agenda in even some of the bluest states. Illinois voters rejected a “progressive”—read, higher—income tax; California voters defeated the union-backed plan to override the commercial property tax limita...

In this episode: “Keep Portland Weird”—that is a common slogan for Oregon’s largest city. But the rest of the country would rather at least one particular weirdness stay in Portland: Antifa, the radical-left extremist faction that has spent most of the summer and fall rioting there. But what is Antifa? Is it an idea, an ideology, or a conventionally understood group? Joining us to explore this que...