Sadly, studies have determined that most folks stop learning when they leave school.
Please consider the source of funding when you read the 'news' and misinformation.
This is why media consolidation was crucial to 'them.'
Billionaires Secretly Fund Rightist Climate Crisis
Deniers
By Countercurrents.org
15 February, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Countercurrents.org
A group of billionaires donated $120m
to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate crisis
reality. The money from the rightists goes to rightist organizations, a normal
alliance.
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent,
guardian.co.uk, reported [1] on February 14, 2013:
Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to
channel nearly $120m to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science
behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.
The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast
network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to
redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing
"wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.
The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and
the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern
Virginia suburbs of Washington DC.
Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or
more.
Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the
Guardian that her organization assured wealthy donors that their funds would
never by diverted to liberal causes.
"We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to
be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," she said
in an interview.
By definition that means none of the money is going to end up
with groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to liberals."
Ball won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors
represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the
years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organizations
working to discredit climate science or block climate action.
Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball
said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives
to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions,
they found common ground.
"Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not,"
she went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a
lot of differences on things like defense, immigration, drugs, the war, things
like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the
environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."
By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102
thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a
human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.
The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican
Party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian
scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film
attacking Al Gore.
The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against
Barack Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking
action on climate change.
Graphic: climate denial funding
Graphic: climate denial funding
Those same groups are now mobilizing against Obama's efforts to
act on climate change in his second term. A top recipient of the secret funds on
Wednesday put out a point-by-point critique of the climate content in the
president's state of the union address.
And it was all done with a guarantee of complete anonymity for
the donors who wished to remain hidden.
"The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly
invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different
groups are growing," said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which
compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.
"These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that
are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for
the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them," Davies said.
The trusts were established for the express purpose of managing
donations to a host of conservative causes.
Such vehicles, called donor-advised funds, are not uncommon in
America. They offer a number of advantages to wealthy donors. They are
convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are
lawful.
In other words, American taxpayers are subsidized propaganda abd misinformation.
That opposition hardened over the years, especially from the mid-2000s where the Greenpeace record shows a sharp spike in funds to the anti-climate cause.
In effect, the Donors Trust was bankrolling a movement, said
Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who has extensively researched
the networks of ultra-conservative donors.
"This is what I call the counter-movement, a large-scale effort
that is an organized effort and that is part and parcel of the conservative
movement in the United States" Brulle said. "We don't know where a lot of the
money is coming from, but we do know that Donors Trust is just one example of
the dark money flowing into this effort."
In his view, Brulle said: "Donors Trust is just the tip of a
very big iceberg."
The rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In
2002, the two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That
was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil billionaire Koch
brothers donated to climate skeptic groups that year.
By 2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channeling just under $30m to a host of conservative organizations opposing climate action or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.
The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible
opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative
billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it came to blocking action on
the climate crisis, the obscure charity in the suburbs was outspending the Koch
brothers by a factor of six to one.
"There is plenty of money coming from elsewhere," said John
Mashey, a retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate
contrarians. "Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You can not ignore the
Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things, but they are not the only
ones."
It is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favorite
projects using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.
But the records suggest many other wealthy conservatives opened
up their wallets to the anti-climate cause – an impression Ball wishes to
stick.
She argued the media had overblown the Kochs support for
conservative causes like climate contrarianism over the years. "It's so funny
that on the right we think George Soros funds everything, and on the left you
guys think it is the evil Koch brothers who are behind everything. It's just not
true. If the Koch brothers didn't exist we would still have a very healthy
organization," Ball said.
[Typical response for those who refuse to fact-check. The 'support' is not even comparable.]
On the issue Suzanne Goldenberg’s report [2] provide a more
detail account:
The secretive funding channel known as the Donors Trust patronized a host of conservative causes.
The secretive funding channel known as the Donors Trust patronized a host of conservative causes.
But climate was at the top of the list. By 2010, Donors Trust
had distributed $118m to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of
denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing
environmental regulations.
Recipients included some of the best-known thinktanks on the
right. The American Enterprise Institute, which is closely connected to the
Republican Party establishment and has a large staff of scholars, received more
than $17m in untraceable donations over the years, the record show.
But relatively obscure organizations did not go overlooked. The
Heartland Institute, virtually unknown outside the small world of climate
politics, received $13.5m from the Donors Trust.
Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group seen as the strike force of the conservative oil billionaire Koch Brothers, received $11m since 2002.
Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group seen as the strike force of the conservative oil billionaire Koch Brothers, received $11m since 2002.
Levi Russell, spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, declined
to comment on the importance of that support to the organization. "We're very
grateful for each of the millions of activists and donors that make what we do
possible," he said in an email.
The secretive funding network also funded individuals, such as
Jo Kwong, an official at the Philanthropy Roundtable who was awarded $200,000 in
2010. And there was strong interest in funding media projects.
Some of the groups on the Donors Trust list would have struggled
to exist without being bankrolled by anonymous donors.
The support helped the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
(Cfact) expand from $600,000 to $3m annual operation. In 2010, Cfact received
nearly half of its budget from those anonymous donors, the records show.
The group's most visible product is the website, Climate Depot,
a contrarian news source run by Marc Morano. Climate Depot sees itself as the
rapid reaction force of the anti-climate cause. On the morning after Obama's
state of the union address, Morano put out a point by point rebuttal to the
section on climate change.
The gregarious Morano is a former aide to the Republican senator
Jim Inhofe notorious for declaring climate change the greatest hoax on
mankind.
According to Cfact's tax filings, Morano, listed as
communications director, was the most highly paid member of the
organization.
However, Craig Rucker, the group's executive director, insisted
the funding was not critical to their work. "It is not crucial in the least.
Climate Depot's continued operation is not linked to funding from any particular
source," he said.
Source:
[1] “Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial
thinktanks”,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network
[2] guardian.co.uk, Feb 14, 2013, “How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups”, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/donors-trust-funding-climate-denial-networks
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc150213A.htm
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