Maybe the Tea Baggers will consider where the $$$ comes from instead of blindly following the Kochs - one of the biggest threats to our nation and our planet.
Let's not ignore that the Kochs have generously funded Cape Wind opposition.
Oil Billionaires Back Climate Crisis Deniers: Koch
Connection And $500m
By Countercurrents.org
27 January, 2013
Countercurrents.org
The Independent, the UK daily, in an
exclusive report [1] by Steve Connor said a section of the super-rich linked to
fossil fuel industry back climate crisis deniers.
The report headlined “Billionaires secretly fund attacks on
climate science” said: A secretive funding organization in the US that
guarantees anonymity for its billionaire donors has emerged as a major operator
in the climate "counter movement" to undermine the science of global
warming.
The exclusive mentioned two organizations that help the job:
The Donors Trust, along with its sister group Donors Capital
Fund, based in Alexandria, Virginia, is funneling millions of dollars into the
effort to cast doubt on climate change without revealing the identities of its
wealthy backers or that they have links to the fossil fuel industry.
However,
an audit trail reveals that Donors is being indirectly supported by the American
billionaire Charles Koch who, with his brother David, jointly owns a majority
stake in Koch Industries, a large oil, gas and chemicals conglomerate based in
Kansas.
Millions of dollars, said the report, have been paid to Donors
through a third-party organization, called the Knowledge and Progress Fund, with
is operated by the Koch family but does not advertise its Koch connections.
Referring to a number of commentators assumption the UK daily
said: Such convoluted arrangements are becoming increasingly common to shield
the identity and backgrounds of the wealthy supporters of climate skepticism –
some of whom have vested interests in the fossil-fuel industry.
To back the climate crisis denial interests, millions of dollars
have already been contributed as the report found: The Knowledge and Progress
Fund, whose directors include Charles Koch and his wife Liz, gave $1.25m to
Donors in 2007, a further $1.25m in 2008 and $2m in 2010. It does not appear to
have given money to any other group and there is no mention of the fund on the
websites of Koch Industries or the Charles Koch Foundation.
The report said:
The Donors Trust is a "donor advised fund", meaning that it has
special status under the US tax system. People who give money receive generous
tax relief and can retain greater anonymity than if they had used their own
charitable foundations because, technically, they do not control how Donors
spends the cash.
Anonymous private funding of global warming skeptics, who have
criticized climate scientists for their lack of transparency, is becoming
increasingly common. The Kochs, for instance, have overtaken the corporate
funding of climate denialism by oil companies such as ExxonMobil. One such
organization, Americans for Prosperity, which was established by David Koch,
claimed that the "Climategate" emails illegally hacked from the University of
East Anglia in 2009 proved that global warming was the "biggest hoax the world
has ever seen".
$500 million
The report said:
Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University in
Philadelphia, has estimated that over the past decade about $500m has been given
to organizations devoted to undermining the science of climate change, with much
of the money donated anonymously through third parties.
The trust has given money to the Competitive Enterprise
Institute which is currently being sued for defamation by Professor Michael Mann
of Pennsylvania University, an eminent climatologist, whose affidavit claims
that he was accused of scientific fraud and compared to a convicted child
molester.
Dr Brulle said: "We really have anonymous giving and
unaccountable power being exercised here in the creation of the climate
countermovement. There is no attribution, no responsibility for the actions of
these foundations to the public.
"By becoming anonymous, they remove a political target. They can
plausibly claim that they are not giving to these organizations, and there is no
way to prove otherwise."
The two brothers
Steve Connor in another report [2] writes about the super-rich
Koch brothers:
Even by the standards of the super-rich, Charles and David Koch
are extraordinarily wealthy. Together they own most of Koch Industries, one of
the largest private conglomerates in America with annual revenues of around
$100bn (£62.5bn), and interests as diverse as energy, petrochemicals, pulp and
paper.
The two brothers share a similar political outlook. They are
right-wing libertarians who believe in minimal regulation of industry, smaller
government, lower corporate taxes and less generous social services. They are
also closet "skeptics" when it comes to climate science.
Charles, 77 and the elder of the two, has effectively run the
family business since the death of their father, Fred, in 1967. He is described
as a hands-on executive, whereas David has played a more junior role.
Nevertheless, the spectacular growth of the family firm has put
them both among the richest men in America – and the world.
Each of the Koch brothers has his own charitable foundation and
they have given generously to organizations that share their free-market
outlook. They have both funded opposition campaigns to many of the policies of
the Obama administration – so many, in fact, that their opponents have dubbed
their ideological network "The Kochtopus".
Together, the two brothers have given millions of dollars to
non-profit organizations that criticize environmental legislation and support
lower taxes for industry.
The Kochs have also contributed vast sums to promote skepticism
towards climate change, more even than the oil industry according to some
estimates. Greenpeace, for instance, has calculated that ExxonMobil spent $8.9m
on climate-skeptic groups between 2005 and 2008; over the same period the Koch
brothers backed such groups to the tune of nearly $25m.
Americans for Prosperity, a group established by David Koch, did
much to foment public outrage over the "climategate" emails stolen from the
computers of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2009. The organization
claimed the emails proved that global warming was the "biggest hoax the world
has ever seen".
Meanwhile, Charles and his wife Liz have established a
little-known organization called the Knowledge and Progress Fund, which appears
to have been set up to channel Koch money into a third-party organization called
the Donors Trust.
The Donors Trust is a "donor advised" fund, which means it has
special status under the US tax system. One of the benefits of donor-advised
funds for billionaires such as Charles is that their names are not linked to
funds given out by the Donors Trust to other organizations.
Among the
beneficiaries of Donor Trust money is the Competitive Enterprise Institute,
which is being sued for defamation by Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania
University, an eminent climatologist, whose affidavit claims that he was accused
of scientific fraud and compared to a convicted child molester.
Professor Mann was one of the scientists named in the stolen
emails from the UEA and has been a target of climate skeptics keen to rubbish
his work on temperature records, which produced the now famous "hockey stick"
graph showing a rapid temperature rise in the 20th century.
[I]n 2003, Donors received just 3 percent of the funding that
eventually went to climate skeptic groups such as the ultra-conservative
Heartland Foundation, which has led the attack on climate scientists. Professor
Brulle said this had risen by 2009 to about a quarter of the total funding of
the climate countermovement dedicated to denying the link between greenhouse gas
emissions from fossil fuels and global warming.
The link between the Koch family and Donors was discovered by
Professor Brulle and John Mashey, a retired software engineer living in
California, who has trawled through hundreds of official tax records, including
the US Inland Revenue Service's "990" forms of the Knowledge and Progress Fund,
which mention that it had given Donors millions of dollars for "general
support".
"The Kochs decided it was better to go underground and foster
all these think-tanks. Charles Koch has often said publicly that anyone should
be able to give money to anyone without having to make it public," Dr Mashey
said. "The point of all this is that Koch wants to anonymise his giving as much
as possible."
Whitney Ball, the chief executive of Donors Trust, said the fund
has given more than $400m to about 1,600 beneficiaries since it began in 1999
but that only a few of them are involved in promoting climate skepticism.
"We don't disclose our list of donors, any more than other
donor-advised funds… We are not legally required to do so. We have been referred
to as a black box but this is a misleading and unfair characterization. We are
no different from any other donor-advised fund," she said.
"There are all kinds of reasons why people want to be anonymous.
Imagine you lived a fairly modest lifestyle and you wanted to give charitably.
You could do it through a donors-advised fund and no one would treat you
differently," she said.
Asked whether the Donors Trust or Donors Capital Fund have any
connection with the Koch family, Ms Ball said: "I wouldn't say we have a
relationship. We are knowledgeable about some of the groups that they fund and
we are ideologically sympathetic."
Asked if she could explain how the money from the Knowledge and
Progress Fund was spent, she said: "There's been a lot of hyperventilating about
this… Like other donor-advised funds, we don't disclose that information."
The Koch Foundation and Koch Industries declined to
comment
Anonymous donations to Britain's leading climate-change skeptic
organization have more than doubled over the past year – but the registered
charity has consistently refused to comment on the identity of its backers.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation, which was set up in 2009
by Lord Lawson, the former Conservative Chancellor, received £408,641 from
anonymous donations in 2012, compared with £158,008 in 2011.
The foundation has repeatedly refused to name its financial
supporters, although a leaked email last year suggested that Michael Hintze, a
wealthy Tory donor and philanthropist, was one of its main backers.
Benny Peiser, a founder member of the foundation, said the
charity does not receive any corporate money from the fossil-fuel industry, but
denied it is being secretive about its backers.
"Our concern is about transparency of the science, not the
funding. We don't take funding from vested interests and we make sure there is
no conflict of interest before accepting donations," Dr Peiser said. "The main
reason why they want to remain anonymous is so that people like you [the media]
don't harass them," Dr Peiser explained.
Hate campaign against a
scientist
Steve Connor’s another report [3] said:
A climate scientist who says he has been subjected to a
vitriolic hate campaign has denounced the way that American billionaires have
been able to secretly finance the climate-skeptic organizations that have
attacked him.
Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania University, who has been
targeted by climate-change skeptics for his work on global temperature records,
said it was wrong for wealthy individuals such as the oil billionaire Charles
Koch to surreptitiously finance the “counter-movement” that denounces the
science of global warming.
It was only when he was researching a book that he became aware
Koch was assisting some of the organizations that he says have been attacking
him and his colleagues for so many years, Professor Mann said. He said the
skeptic organizations had “single-handedly sought to poison the public discourse
over human-caused climate change. In the process they have potentially mortgaged
the futures of our children and grandchildren. You couldn’t invent villains like
this if you tried.”
He said: “I think its intent is to frighten scientists away from
participating in the public discourse, and prevent communication to the public
of the true risks of the potential climate changes that will result from
fossil-fuel burning. No doubt it has frightened some scientists from
participating in the discussion or even from pursuing research that might incur
the ire of fossil-fuel vested interests,” he added.
Professor Mann said it is ironic that the same organizations
that he says have pursued him and his colleagues for alleged lack of
transparency are being funded anonymously by people who are so closely tied to
the fossil-fuel industry.
“There are some of us, however, who have been
emboldened by the attacks. We don't take kindly to propaganda campaigns intended
to smear scientists and confuse the public,” he said.
Source:
[3] The independent, Jan 25, 2013 “Top climate scientist
denounces billionaires over funding for climate-skeptic organizations”, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/top-climate-scientist-denounces-billionaires-over-funding-for-climatesceptic-organisations-8467665.html
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc270113A.htm
Published on Aug 23, 2012
Koch Brothers Exposed is a hard-hitting investigation of the 1% at its very worst. This full-length documentary film on Charles and David Koch—two of the world's richest and most powerful men—is the latest from acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, Rethink Afghanistan). The billionaire brothers bankroll a vast network of organizations that work to undermine the interests of the 99% on issues ranging from Social Security to the environment to civil rights. This film uncovers the Kochs' corruption—and points the way to how Americans can reclaim their democracy.
![More Republican hypocrisy… Thanks to @[192518057471204:274:Anti-Republican Crusaders] for sharing this.](https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/s480x480/542862_198693510255628_1807132395_n.jpg)
![The mining bills currently before the Wisconsin state legislature would allow for iron ore mines to open up in the pristine Penokee Hills of Northern Wisconsin. Inhabitants of the Mogpog River and Idaho Blackbird Creek could testify to their nightmare experience with iron ore mines and the destructive legacy of pollution they've left.
@[117610195068827:274:Idle No More]](https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/s480x480/205660_369962803101903_1875109003_n.jpg)
Posted: 01/28/2013
A Nevada Republican arrested for voter fraud in the 2012 election, after claiming she was trying to test the system's integrity, pled guilty and accepted a plea deal Thursday, forcing her to pay almost $2,500 and promise to stay out of trouble.
Roxanne Rubin, 56, a casino worker on the Las Vegas Strip, was arrested on Nov. 3, 2012 after trying to vote twice, once at her poling site in Henderson and then at a second site in Las Vegas. The poll workers at the second site said that she had already voted, but Rubin said that she hadn't and insisted on casting a ballot, which the poll workers refused to allow her to do.
Rubin said that she was trying to show how easy it would be to commit voter fraud with just a signature. "This has always been an issue with me. I just feel the system is flawed," she told the AP Thursday. "If we’re showing ID for everything else, why wouldn’t we show our ID in order to vote?”
Rubin, like many Republicans, claim that the threat from voter fraud -- which is close to non-existent -- is why voter ID laws need to be in place. But Nevada has no voter ID law -- other than for first-time voters who didn't show ID when they registered to vote -- and she was caught anyway.
The prosecutor in the case said he knew of no other voters in Nevada or elsewhere arrested for voter fraud.
Democratic Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, who has called for a photo ID law, slammed Rubin in a statement. "If Ms. Rubin was trying to demonstrate how easy it is to commit voter fraud, she clearly failed and proved just the opposite," he said.
Rubin's deal requires her to pay $2,481 to the state in restitution, complete 100 hours of community service, stay out of trouble and complete an impulse control course.
CORRECTION: This article originally misidentified the party affiliation of Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller. He is a Democrat.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/roxanne-rubin_n_2566297.html