Corporate Responsibility

Solar panel leasing deals on LI plagued by consumer complaints

"Nationally, Campaign for Accountability, a Washington-based group critical of solar, has tracked a sharp rise in company complaints by consumers in the past five years. 'Often the target customer who is ripe for abuse is somebody who is retired, has a fixed income, and who is taken in by the promise of a constant electric bill,' said its executive director, Daniel Stevens. 'The individual will wind up being charged more for their electric costs than they were before they installed solar panels. It’s one of the clearest ways that these companies mislead customers.'"

This Group Posed As Russian Trolls And Bought Political Ads On Google. It Was Easy.

“Google has admitted it’s trying to stop this activity when it comes to issue ads but its clear there’s a huge gap in their policing of this content,” Stevens told BuzzFeed News. “It feels like a flagrant abdication of responsibility and it’s in-line with the trend we see from Google — they're very hesitant to crack down on things that are a threat to their business model.”

Posing as Russian Troll Farm, Watchdog Buys Politically Divisive Ads on Google

On September 4, 2018, CfA released a report documenting how CfA bought politically divisive ads on Google using Russian rubles and a Russian IP address. CfA posed as the infamous Russian troll farm, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), and bought ads using similar language and the same images that the IRA deployed during its 2016 influence campaign. The ads ran on major U.S. media websites and their YouTube channels.

BlackRock’s Decade: How the Crash Forged a $6.3 Trillion Giant

"Yet BlackRock hasn’t entirely avoided scrutiny—its cozy relationship with Washington officials has been a source of more attention. The Campaign for Accountability, a Washington, D.C.-based organization, launched a project in June tracking the revolving door of BlackRock executives in and out of halls of power; these include Brian Deese, a climate adviser to the Obama administration who joined BlackRock to run sustainable investing in 2017, and Carol Lee, who went from BlackRock’s compliance department to be securities compliance examiner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year."

New Report Adds to Conflict of Interest Concerns Surrounding BlackRock’s Advisory Role in Trudeau’s Canada Infrastructure Bank

On August 27, 2018, CfA released a new report detailing how BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager – appears to have been intimately involved not only in advising the Trudeau government about the creation of its Canada Infrastructure Bank, a government-backed financial institution championed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but also in the government’s appointment of key Bank personnel and staff. The new revelations add to the growing conflict of interest concerns surrounding the Bank’s creation and provide new evidence for those calling for a full investigation of BlackRock’s advisory role with the Trudeau government.

New Report Reveals Facebook and Google Benefit from Placing Employees Inside Political Campaigns

On August 14, 2018, CfA released a new report, “Partisan Programming,” detailing how political campaigns utilize embedded staffers from Facebook and Google to help run their campaigns – an arrangement that provides companies with unique access to top politicians. CfA also called on the leaders of the House and Senate Rules Committees to investigate the arrangement and determine whether new laws or regulations are needed to prevent tech companies from abusing their relationships with politicians.

Campaign for Accountability Launches the “BlackRock Transparency Project” to Investigate the Political Influence of World’s Largest Asset Manager

On June 27, 2018, CfA launched the BlackRock Transparency Project to investigate the influence of BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager – on governments, public policy, and our everyday lives. As a part of the launch, CfA has released three new reports tracking BlackRock’s efforts to influence government.

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