Articles

Podcast
InfluenceWatch Podcast #223: Anti-Trust Crackdown
The actions of Big Tech companies—most prominently Twitter and Facebook’s decision to ban then-President Donald Trump from their platforms—have led conservatives to consider invoking anti-trust powers of which they have…
by Michael Watson on June 17, 2022

Deception & Misdirection, Featured Items
States Banning or Restricting “Zuck Bucks”—UPDATED 06/30/2022
Private financing of government election offices under the guise of COVID-19 relief skewed voter turnout in the 2020 election and may have tipped the presidential election to Joe Biden. As…
by Sarah Lee, Hayden Ludwig on June 17, 2022

Organization Trends
Patient Power Is Dead: Obamacare and Alternatives
On July 19, 2017, at least 155 demonstrators were arrested by U.S. Capitol police for creating a coordinated disturbance at U.S. Senate office buildings. The scofflaw infiltration was in response…
by Ken Braun on June 16, 2022

Organization Trends
Patient Power Is Dead: Medicare for All
Two years after the incursion at the congressional offices, the Center for Popular Democracy endorsed Medicare for All, one of many left-leaning nonprofits that have done so. Over the years…
by Ken Braun on June 16, 2022

Organization Trends
Patient Power Is Dead: Big Labor and Medicare for All
National Nurses United, another of the groups listed in the Washington Post accounts about the 2017 incursion into congressional offices, is a stridently left-wing labor union, which was one of…
by Ken Braun on June 16, 2022

Organization Trends
Patient Power Is Dead: Labor Unions and the ACA
While large in number, these supporters of single-payer schemes such as Medicare for All remain (though not always) the most left-leaning of the nonprofits, unions, political committees, and Democrats. In…
by Ken Braun on June 16, 2022

Organization Trends
Patient Power Is Dead: Promoters of the Status Quo
The Affordable Care Act wasn’t much of a reform for our broken third-party payment health care system, so much as a status quo effort to stuff millions more people into…
by Ken Braun on June 16, 2022

Organization Trends
Patient Power Is Dead: The Arabella Network
It is difficult to track the funding for many ACA advocates. There have been at least two dozen different Arabella subsidiaries with a major mission objective of promoting increases in…
by Ken Braun on June 16, 2022

Organization Trends
Patient Power Is Dead: Arabella’s Secretive 2018 Election Projects
During the 2018 federal elections, Arabella deployed more than a dozen state-specific political projects to agitate against Republicans who didn’t support left-leaning health care policies. An October 2018 report in…
by Ken Braun on June 16, 2022

Philanthropy
Inside Philanthropy Survey Finds Support for Reform of Philanthropy’s Legal Structure
A recent nonscientific survey of nearly 350 philanthropy professionals conducted by Inside Philanthropy found that an overwhelming majority of respondents supported changing the laws that govern philanthropy. Surprisingly, 51 percent…
by Michael E. Hartmann on June 15, 2022