Lee Fang of Wonk Room has the story and the video.
Well before the conglomerate Koch Industries plunged $1 million into Prop 23 — a ballot initiative in California to essentially repeal the state’s revolutionary clean energy climate change law AB 32 — the Wonk Room revealed that front groups controlled by Koch had been working to promote Prop 23. Americans for Prosperity, the front group founded and financed by Koch Industries’ executive David Koch, had organized Tea Party rallies in favor of Prop 23 and produced online ads distorting California clean energy. The Pacific Research Foundation, also funded by Koch-run foundations, produced junk studies promoting Prop 23.
Today, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Van Jones spoke to ThinkProgress about Prop 23 and the oil interests polluting the energy debate. Asked about the influence of Koch in supporting Prop 23, Jones slammed the company for “trying to shove” its politics on California. To respond to the Tea Parties and other radical right groups, many of which have been organized by Koch and big business fronts, Jones encouraged the public to “stay involved and to get involved,” because otherwise the people “screaming and yelling at these Tea Party events” will win control of government. He added, “I don’t think you want the Tea Party running your community, running your family, running your government”:
JONES: Koch Industries has promoted awful environmental policies. They’ve been literally poisoning rivers, poisoning streams, and making money off of that. They’ve promoted now this awful economic idea that if you grow new industries in California you somehow hurt the economy. That’s nuts. And now they’re promoting bad politics by backing I think extreme movements in the United States. Here you have a bad actor, three strikes and you’re out. They’re bad on the environment in terms of their practices, they’re bad in terms of their economic philosophy they’re trying to shove down the throats of California, and they’re bad in their politics in terms of their supporting extreme political ideas in America. I think if you start connecting those dots, California voters are very sophisticated, and I don’t think any of them think the people who run Koch Industries wake up in the morning thinking how can Californians have better jobs?
JONES: If you think things are bad now, what will happen when the people are screaming and yelling at these Tea Party events are actually in charge of your government, and in charge of your life, and in charge of your kids’ future? That is, maybe you have some hope fatigue, but you got a lot of reason to be fearful enough I think to stay involved and to get involved. I don’t think you want the Tea Party running your community, running your family, running your government.
Watch it:
As Jones states, Koch is not only corrosive to our politics because of its funding of angry and paranoid Tea Parties, but the company also manipulates the political system to pad its profits. For instance, Business Week reported on how Koch Industries used then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) to try to suppress an investigation into Koch Industries’ massive theft of oil from Indian reservations. In another case, Koch Industries faced a $55 million civil suit for causing more than 300 oil spills over a five-year period. Again, Dole, a major recipient of Koch money and support, sponsored a bill that would allow Koch to easily defend itself from the oil spill charges. After Koch helped to elect George Bush in 2000, the Bush Justice Department abruptly settled a criminal case with $350 million in penalties Koch faced for discharging toxic chemicals from a refinery in Corpus Cristi, Texas.
Why is the “Kochtopus” flexing its muscle of campaign donations, Tea Parties, and front groups to enact the clean energy-killing Prop 23? In its corporate newsletter, Koch Industries explicitly states that the low carbon fuel standard California is set to adopt to comply with AB 32 carbon emissions regulations would harm its bottom line because Koch imports mostly high-carbon crude oil from Canada. Another Koch newsletter warns that its Pine Bend Refinery in Minnesota specializing in high-carbon Canadian crude would become much less profitable for Koch if low fuel standards mirroring AB 32 are adopted around the country.
Related Posts:
- Koch Industries among hosts of Carly Fiorina fundraiser
- The NY Times on AB 32: “Who wins if this law is repudiated? The Koch brothers, maybe, but the biggest winners will be the Chinese, who are already moving briskly ahead in the clean technology race.”
Yesterday during an education forum on NBC’s Today Show, President Obama was asked why his children are going to a prestigious private school while most D.C. schoolchildren remain stuck in a school system that is, at best, sub-par:
President Obama reopened Monday what is often a sore subject in Washington, saying that his daughters could not obtain from D.C. public schools the academic experience they receive at the private Sidwell Friends School.
But the city, accustomed to the mantra that its schools need reform, seemed to view the judgment as self-evident.
Obama made his comments on NBC’s “Today” show in response to a woman who asked whether Malia and Sasha Obama “would get the same kind of education at a D.C. public school” that they would get at the D.C. private school that has educated generations of the city’s elite.
“I’ll be blunt with you: The answer is no, right now,” Obama said. D.C. public schools “are struggling,” he said, but they “have made some important strides over the last several years to move in the direction of reform. There are some terrific individual schools in the D.C. system.”
Even the people in charge of the D.C. schools admit that the President is right:
Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, who recently referred to the primary election loss of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) as “devastating” to the city’s schools, did not publicly object to Obama’s remarks. She has strongly suggested that she might resign rather than work for Fenty’s presumptive successor, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D).
“In terms of the comment from the president, it is a fair assessment,” Rhee said. “We have indeed seen good progress over the last few years, but we still have a long way to go before we can say we’re providing all children with an excellent education.”
Gray also took no apparent offense. “It would be wonderful to have a president who stood up and said, ‘I’m going to demonstrate my commitment to public education by placing my children in public education in the city,’ but again, you know, we’re all parents at the end of the day, and I’m sure he feels like he and his wife are making the best decision for their children at this juncture,” Gray said.
Now, personally, I have no problem with the fact that the President and his wife chose to send their children to Sidwell Friends rather than a D.C. Public School. Quite honestly, given the choice and the resources, it would be incomprehensible to me for any parent not to choose the superior private school over a public school which not only isn’t up to par, but also may not be safe. The problem is that President Obama apparently thinks that only wealthy people like him should have the opportunity to make that choice:
Most troubling in the Today interview, though, was the President’s failure to even mention school choice - giving parents, not politicians, control of education money — as even a potential means for reforming education. He did, though, fully embrace his own educational freedom: When asked whether the DC public schools were good enough for his kids, he said no. That’s why they go to private school.
Here’s where we see the injustice of Obama’s and other like-minded people’s “reform” offerings. Rather than giving real power to the parents and kids public education is supposed to serve, they insist on keeping them subject to the authority of politicians and politically potent special interests. They refuse to let all parents make the same choice the President has made, and they continue to force all Americans to hand huge sums of money over to government schools. Indeed, at the same time the President’s kids were heading off to private school, he was letting die an effective, popular, school-choice program in DC, a program that enabled poor families to make the same kinds of choices the President did.
At the same time that the President’s children were settling into their classes at one of the most prestigious private schools in the D.C. area, the Obama Administration was helping to kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school choice program that allowed inner city D.C. kids to attend private schools, including the same private school that Barack Obama’s daughters attend. As one parent of a child who was benefiting from this scholarship program asked last year, why, Mr. President ? :
The only question that I have after watching this is —- if the D.C. Public Schools aren’t good enough for the President’s children, why are they good enough for the Mercedes Campbells of the world ?
H/T: Jason Pye
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Lee Fang of Wonk Room has the story and the video.
Well before the conglomerate Koch Industries plunged $1 million into Prop 23 — a ballot initiative in California to essentially repeal the state’s revolutionary clean energy climate change law AB 32 — the Wonk Room revealed that front groups controlled by Koch had been working to promote Prop 23. Americans for Prosperity, the front group founded and financed by Koch Industries’ executive David Koch, had organized Tea Party rallies in favor of Prop 23 and produced online ads distorting California clean energy. The Pacific Research Foundation, also funded by Koch-run foundations, produced junk studies promoting Prop 23.
Today, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Van Jones spoke to ThinkProgress about Prop 23 and the oil interests polluting the energy debate. Asked about the influence of Koch in supporting Prop 23, Jones slammed the company for “trying to shove” its politics on California. To respond to the Tea Parties and other radical right groups, many of which have been organized by Koch and big business fronts, Jones encouraged the public to “stay involved and to get involved,” because otherwise the people “screaming and yelling at these Tea Party events” will win control of government. He added, “I don’t think you want the Tea Party running your community, running your family, running your government”:
JONES: Koch Industries has promoted awful environmental policies. They’ve been literally poisoning rivers, poisoning streams, and making money off of that. They’ve promoted now this awful economic idea that if you grow new industries in California you somehow hurt the economy. That’s nuts. And now they’re promoting bad politics by backing I think extreme movements in the United States. Here you have a bad actor, three strikes and you’re out. They’re bad on the environment in terms of their practices, they’re bad in terms of their economic philosophy they’re trying to shove down the throats of California, and they’re bad in their politics in terms of their supporting extreme political ideas in America. I think if you start connecting those dots, California voters are very sophisticated, and I don’t think any of them think the people who run Koch Industries wake up in the morning thinking how can Californians have better jobs?
JONES: If you think things are bad now, what will happen when the people are screaming and yelling at these Tea Party events are actually in charge of your government, and in charge of your life, and in charge of your kids’ future? That is, maybe you have some hope fatigue, but you got a lot of reason to be fearful enough I think to stay involved and to get involved. I don’t think you want the Tea Party running your community, running your family, running your government.
Watch it:
As Jones states, Koch is not only corrosive to our politics because of its funding of angry and paranoid Tea Parties, but the company also manipulates the political system to pad its profits. For instance, Business Week reported on how Koch Industries used then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) to try to suppress an investigation into Koch Industries’ massive theft of oil from Indian reservations. In another case, Koch Industries faced a $55 million civil suit for causing more than 300 oil spills over a five-year period. Again, Dole, a major recipient of Koch money and support, sponsored a bill that would allow Koch to easily defend itself from the oil spill charges. After Koch helped to elect George Bush in 2000, the Bush Justice Department abruptly settled a criminal case with $350 million in penalties Koch faced for discharging toxic chemicals from a refinery in Corpus Cristi, Texas.
Why is the “Kochtopus” flexing its muscle of campaign donations, Tea Parties, and front groups to enact the clean energy-killing Prop 23? In its corporate newsletter, Koch Industries explicitly states that the low carbon fuel standard California is set to adopt to comply with AB 32 carbon emissions regulations would harm its bottom line because Koch imports mostly high-carbon crude oil from Canada. Another Koch newsletter warns that its Pine Bend Refinery in Minnesota specializing in high-carbon Canadian crude would become much less profitable for Koch if low fuel standards mirroring AB 32 are adopted around the country.
Related Posts:
- Koch Industries among hosts of Carly Fiorina fundraiser
- The NY Times on AB 32: “Who wins if this law is repudiated? The Koch brothers, maybe, but the biggest winners will be the Chinese, who are already moving briskly ahead in the clean technology race.”
Yesterday during an education forum on NBC’s Today Show, President Obama was asked why his children are going to a prestigious private school while most D.C. schoolchildren remain stuck in a school system that is, at best, sub-par:
President Obama reopened Monday what is often a sore subject in Washington, saying that his daughters could not obtain from D.C. public schools the academic experience they receive at the private Sidwell Friends School.
But the city, accustomed to the mantra that its schools need reform, seemed to view the judgment as self-evident.
Obama made his comments on NBC’s “Today” show in response to a woman who asked whether Malia and Sasha Obama “would get the same kind of education at a D.C. public school” that they would get at the D.C. private school that has educated generations of the city’s elite.
“I’ll be blunt with you: The answer is no, right now,” Obama said. D.C. public schools “are struggling,” he said, but they “have made some important strides over the last several years to move in the direction of reform. There are some terrific individual schools in the D.C. system.”
Even the people in charge of the D.C. schools admit that the President is right:
Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, who recently referred to the primary election loss of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) as “devastating” to the city’s schools, did not publicly object to Obama’s remarks. She has strongly suggested that she might resign rather than work for Fenty’s presumptive successor, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D).
“In terms of the comment from the president, it is a fair assessment,” Rhee said. “We have indeed seen good progress over the last few years, but we still have a long way to go before we can say we’re providing all children with an excellent education.”
Gray also took no apparent offense. “It would be wonderful to have a president who stood up and said, ‘I’m going to demonstrate my commitment to public education by placing my children in public education in the city,’ but again, you know, we’re all parents at the end of the day, and I’m sure he feels like he and his wife are making the best decision for their children at this juncture,” Gray said.
Now, personally, I have no problem with the fact that the President and his wife chose to send their children to Sidwell Friends rather than a D.C. Public School. Quite honestly, given the choice and the resources, it would be incomprehensible to me for any parent not to choose the superior private school over a public school which not only isn’t up to par, but also may not be safe. The problem is that President Obama apparently thinks that only wealthy people like him should have the opportunity to make that choice:
Most troubling in the Today interview, though, was the President’s failure to even mention school choice - giving parents, not politicians, control of education money — as even a potential means for reforming education. He did, though, fully embrace his own educational freedom: When asked whether the DC public schools were good enough for his kids, he said no. That’s why they go to private school.
Here’s where we see the injustice of Obama’s and other like-minded people’s “reform” offerings. Rather than giving real power to the parents and kids public education is supposed to serve, they insist on keeping them subject to the authority of politicians and politically potent special interests. They refuse to let all parents make the same choice the President has made, and they continue to force all Americans to hand huge sums of money over to government schools. Indeed, at the same time the President’s kids were heading off to private school, he was letting die an effective, popular, school-choice program in DC, a program that enabled poor families to make the same kinds of choices the President did.
At the same time that the President’s children were settling into their classes at one of the most prestigious private schools in the D.C. area, the Obama Administration was helping to kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school choice program that allowed inner city D.C. kids to attend private schools, including the same private school that Barack Obama’s daughters attend. As one parent of a child who was benefiting from this scholarship program asked last year, why, Mr. President ? :
The only question that I have after watching this is —- if the D.C. Public Schools aren’t good enough for the President’s children, why are they good enough for the Mercedes Campbells of the world ?
H/T: Jason Pye
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Fox <b>News's</b> Obama 'Loves Gangsta Rap' Headline Is Pulled Down
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Should Facebook Buy Skype?: Tech <b>News</b> «
Facebook wants to mesh communications and community together, which explains why Facebook Phone is in the cards. If Skype wants to become the communication console of tomorrow, it needs to embrace newer forms of communication.
Fox <b>News's</b> Obama 'Loves Gangsta Rap' Headline Is Pulled Down
Drop to the end of Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone interview with President Barack Obama, and you'll get to the part where Wenner asks the president to talk about the music he's been listening to lately. Here's Obama's answer, in its ...
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