In this episode: If it walks like a labor union, talks like a labor union, acts like a labor union, and is funded by labor unions is it a labor union? That is the question our guest Maxford Nelsen, Director of labor policy at the Freedom Foundation, is asking about Working Washington. A Service Employees International Union front group active in the state of Washington. Freedom Foundation, alongside the Center for Union Facts, filed a complaint with the Department of Labor. They asked the labor ...
Aug 06, 2020•18 min
In this episode: With the world upside down, we are trying something new this week. Sarah Lee, Communications and External Relations Director at CRC, interviews this podcast’s regular host Michael Watson on the coronavirus lockdown and what we can expect in the future. We discuss school closures, union power grabs and more! Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twit...
Jul 31, 2020•27 min
In this episode: The demands are clear, government run Medicare for all, state welfare taxes and income tax hikes, and defunding the police. Those are just three of the demands that one teacher’s union, United Teachers Los Angeles, have set out as conditions to return to classrooms this fall. We are joined by Daniel DiSlavo, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and professor of political science at the City College of New York, to discuss the ongoing debate over schools in the fall and the r...
Jul 24, 2020•12 min
In this episode, we look at Marxist-inspired organizations looking to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to fundamentally transform America’s largely private housing market, we expose the institutional foundation behind the curtain of the national pro-abortion movement, and we take a 30,000-foot view of the rising militancy of Big Philanthropy and how it powers the broader Left. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.face...
Jul 17, 2020•9 min
In this episode: The message of the film Slay the Dragon is simple, straightforward, and honest: A grassroots movement of Michigander “Voters Not Politicians” outspent by an incalculable margin won a huge victory to defeat evil Republican plots to ensure minority rule. However, that third epithet—honest—cannot be supported by the tangled web of myths, misinformation, and political ignorance that Slay the Dragon puts before viewers. Today, I’m joined by Capital Research Center’s resident Michigan...
Jul 10, 2020•21 min
In this episode: We round up some developments related to the organizations behind the Black Lives Matter organization, teachers unions set themselves as a principal roadblock to re-opening American economic and social life, and vote-by-mail leads to shenanigans in Indiana and New Jersey. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch • Instagram:...
Jul 02, 2020•8 min
In this episode: Nationwide demonstrations continue against perceived American racial and ethnic groups. And while left-wing activists in the metropolitan press focus on Leftist wish lists and mob-initiated iconoclasm, our guest offers a different answer to improve the material and social circumstances of Black Americans. Jim Waters, President of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solution, offers one such solution, expanding charter schools. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of c...
Jun 25, 2020•16 min
In this episode, NBC’s factually challenged “News Verification Unit” tries to get a conservative website de-funded, Big Labor makes it harder to get fired for committing police brutality than for writing about it with less-than-impeccable left-progressive language, and we attempt to unpack the organizational structure of Black Lives Matter. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twit...
Jun 19, 2020•7 min
In this episode: Since the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in police custody, the country has been rocked by debates and demonstrations over police misconduct. And while radicals on the far-left demand the defunding or abolition of commentators across the ideological spectrum have noticed the problem of police unions, which often stand in opposition to accountability for the bad apples said to infest America’s police departments. Today, we are joined by Will Swain, President of the C...
Jun 12, 2020•16 min
In this episode, we’ll continue to cover the ongoing protesting, rioting, and looting and talk about how – although it may feel like we’re in unchartered territory – the country has actually seen this kind of upheaval before. And we’ll tell you a little bit about the primary groups involved in some of the violence. We’ll also discuss the blatant hypocrisy of journalists and legislators encouraging mass protests in the interest of social justice after spending months telling Americans they must s...
Jun 05, 2020•10 min
In this episode, we interview Capital Research Center’s own investigative researcher Hayden Ludwig on his five-part series on Margaret Sanger and her outsized influence on the modern left. In the first part of the series, “The Birth of Birth Control,” Ludwig introduces Sanger as a proponent of population control and birth control, parts of her history that are well-known and formed the basis for today’s Planned Parenthood. From there, in “The Tragedy of Overpopulation,” he examines in detail San...
May 29, 2020•18 min
In this episode, we’ll cover just how much Democrats love the things they profess to hate as we reveal they’ve outspent Republicans in the 2020 election cycle using “dark money” to pay for political ads; and discuss their recent embrace and affection for the devil they know, Super PACS. Next, we’ll revisit the vote-by-mail furor and tell you just what states like Michigan and Pennsylvania are willing to do to make sure voters won’t need to cast an in-person vote in the 2020 election cycle thereb...
May 22, 2020•10 min
In this episode: As the COVID-19 death rate continues to decline in the U.S., some states are beginning the process of cautiously re-opening for business. This has not stopped other states like California from embracing a complete vote-by-mail scheme in preparation for an absentee election in the Fall. Nor has it stopped federal Democratic legislators from attempting to mandate a vote-by-mail system nationwide by attempting to include funding for that scheme in their preferred iteration of the n...
May 14, 2020•8 min
In this episode: Last week, the Pulitzer Prizes announced that the prize for Commentary was awarded to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the architect of the New York Times’s highly controversial and factually suspect “1619 Project,” a nominally historical exercise to re-center the origins of the United States on the first importation of enslaved Africans to Virginia. Today, I’m joined by my Capital Research Center colleague Ken Braun, who wrote the Influence Watch profile on the 1619 Project to discuss the ...
May 08, 2020•14 min
In this episode: You’ve heard of the Green New Deal, that radical, socialist makeover of the American economy proposed by the hardline wing of the environmentalist movement. More than a few people—including this podcast, last week—have noted that the economy envisioned by the Green New Dealers resembles the economy of…right now, in the middle of government-ordered shutdowns of all forms of normal human interaction that have put over 30 million people into the unemployment lines. Joining us to di...
Apr 30, 2020•13 min
In this episode, supporters of the Green New Deal praise the destitution inflicted by the government response to the pandemic coronavirus, government worker unions and state-government-interest advocates try to use the crisis to shore up already-broken state finances, and we debunk a supposed “prudential conservative case” for the power of Big Labor. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcen...
Apr 24, 2020•7 min
In this episode: You’ve undoubtedly heard the name George Soros, but what do you actually know about the man and his philosophy? Today, I’m joined by my Capital Research Center colleague Shane Devine, who read and reviewed the left-progressive billionaire’s philosophical and political testament, In Defense of Open Society. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitt...
Apr 17, 2020•11 min
In this episode, a radical-left pressure group calls for the government to censor the government, labor union activists allege shenanigans in the succession to head the United Auto Workers amid its ongoing corruption scandal, and Big Labor and its congressional allies take aim at one of the few things making the ongoing pandemic lockdowns tolerable: Independent contracting work. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.fa...
Apr 10, 2020•8 min
In this episode, we discuss the ways in which progressive legislators have gone out of their way to not let the coronavirus crisis go to waste, first by going on a wild spending spree, purchasing political ads knocking the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic. But also by inserting legislative wish-list items into the coronavirus relief bills, efforts that could pave the way for voter fraud while potentially destroying the gig economy. And finally, we’ll reveal exactly why blindly sup...
Apr 03, 2020•7 min
Hello, I’m Sarah Lee and this is the InfluenceWatch Podcast. In this episode: SCOTUS considers and abortion case that has the backing of some strange bedfellows, and that has caused the Senate minority leader to issue what could only be called a threat; principled conservatives are revealed to be less principled and less conservative than they claim; and union fan Cenk Uygur loves collective bargaining, except when it comes to his own staff at the Young Turks News show. Subscribe to the podcast ...
Mar 06, 2020•8 min
In this episode, the National Labor Relations Board hands a major setback to the SEIU’s $180 million corporate campaign to unionize restaurants, local officials and free-market groups push back against California’s “gag rule” against discussing government workers’ Janus rights, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the Trump administration’s rule withholding federal family planning funds from organizations that perform or refer for abortions. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of c...
Feb 28, 2020•7 min
Last year, the hard-left—pressure groups like the Sunrise Movement, politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and labor unions like the Service Employees International Union—presented the “Green New Deal,” a package of radical environmentalist policy demands that ranged (according to an “FAQ” document that the Green New Dealers denounced and memory-holed shortly after its release) from banning air travel to retrofitting every building in the United States. Senate Republican Lea...
Feb 24, 2020•10 min
In this episode: Democrats announce a $50 million campaign to take control of drawing legislative district boundaries, the Pennsylvania Legislature considers legislation to enforce the Supreme Court’s Janus decision and government worker rights, and the Labor Department promulgates a rule to increase transparency of government worker unions. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twi...
Feb 13, 2020•7 min
In this episode, the Iowa Democratic Party’s reliance on a Democratic-establishment-connected political vendor results in vote-counting-chaos, the House of Representatives prepares to affirm its loyalty to the will of Organized Labor, and San Francisco lefties fight over campaign finance disclosure. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalresearch •...
Feb 07, 2020•7 min
Ten years ago this month, the Supreme Court handed down a controversial decision with bearing on influence and politics: Citizens United v. FEC. As liberal activists push ever harder to “overturn” the decision, I’m joined this week by Scott Blackburn, Research Director of the Institute For Free Speech, who recently authored a brief “Citizens United After 10 Years: More Speech, Better Democracy” laying out the case that far from “destroying democracy,” the Supreme Court’s holding expanded politic...
Jan 30, 2020•10 min
In this episode, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports continuing decline in Big Labor’s ranks, radical-left author Naomi Klein admits that the Green New Deal is about making your life worse, and as pro-lifers March for Life we consider the possible ramifications of Planned Parenthood losing public funding. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/capitalresearchcenter • Twitter: https://twitter.com/capitalr...
Jan 24, 2020•9 min
In this episode, the Department of Labor takes deregulatory action to undo a key Obama administration favor to its supporters in Big Labor, center-right scholar of philanthropy Bill Schambra offers an explanation for Americans’ declining trust in nonprofits that satisfies Ockham’s Razor, and we remember the eminent British Conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, who passed away this week. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: ...
Jan 17, 2020•9 min
In this episode, a union with close ties to top left-wing Senators targets the technology industry for an organizing campaign; our colleagues at Dangerous Documentaries take aim at the late, probably-Communist, and terribly influential historian-author Howard Zinn; and we remember Gertrude Himmelfarb, historian of Victorian-era philanthropy, who passed away before the New Year. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influencewatch.fireside.fm/ • Facebook: https://www.fac...
Jan 10, 2020•8 min
We’re starting off the New Year by taking one last look back at the old year, thanks to the “2019 Philanthropy Awards” published by Inside Philanthropy, a left-of-center news and commentary source on institutional funders. While listeners will likely be familiar with Inside Philanthropy’s “Philanthropist of the Year”—billionaire investor and founder of the Open Society Foundations George Soros—the website highlighted three other figures and institutions that bear watching in the left-of-center p...
Jan 02, 2020•7 min
In this episode, a lawsuit alleges that United Auto Workers leadership was prepared to sell out its membership as a result of kickbacks from Fiat Chrysler, my colleague Ken Braun exposes the taxpayer-funded “labor centers” that use public university resources for political organizing and policy advocacy, and “progressives” offer tax benefits to rich blue-staters and drivers of electric cars that start at $40,000 list price. Subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice at: https://influenc...
Dec 20, 2019•9 min
