American voters and politicians are now more polarized than ever before across all aspects of climate change — from the cause, to the science and the impacts — a major new analysis has found. Campaigns funded by vested fossil fuel interests and pushed by a network of ideological think tanks, many linked to the oil billionaire Koch brothers, have helped to widen the gap, pushing …
PAUL STREET – Hillary Clinton’s Neocon Resumé
Liberal Democratic Hillary Clinton supporters get defensive when they hear that Mrs. Clinton is favored over Donald Trump by right-wing billionaires like Charles Koch and (with much more enthusiasm) by leading arch-imperial foreign policy Neoconservatives like Robert Kagan, Max Boot, and Eliot Cohen. But an honest look at Hillary’s record should make the support she is getting from such noxious, arch-authoritarian “elites” less …
Alex Kotch – Charles Koch’s Disturbing High School Economics Project Teaches ‘Sacrificing Lives for Profits’
Charles Koch is known for being CEO of industrial giant Koch Industries and a chief financier of the massive conservative political operation he runs with his brother David. In recent years, student activists and investigative journalists have exposed another of Koch’s hats: mega-donor to hundreds of colleges and universities, often funding free-market-focused academic centers housed at public and private schools …
Koch-backed Group Calls for End of National Parks By Joan McCarter
The National Park system is broke, argues Reed Watson, the executive director at the Koch-backed Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in an op-ed, so the only thing to do about it is stop creating national parks [3]. Because, of course, actually funding them is out of the question. “True conservation is taking care of the land and water you already have, …
Mass Incarceration: The Most Important Political Issue of 2016 No One Wants to Talk About By David J. Krajicek
Five years ago, while America clutched a tin cup during the recession, politicians shouted hallelujah about saving money by reducing the country’s grossly bloated prison population. The national inmate count declined fractionally for a few years, reaping celebratory headlines. One expert quoted by the New York Times declared “the beginning of the end of mass incarceration.” Then came the bipartisan …
Making Science History – Jim Hightower
We’ve all seen those touchy-feely TV ads with baby deer, butterflies, and sylvan streams — claiming that some big corporate polluter is nature’s best friend. There’s a word for such hokum: greenwashing. Leave it to the Koch brothers, however, to invent a whole new category of greenwashing. Doling out millions of their oil-smeared greenbacks, David and Charles Koch have been …
The Big Chill: How Big Money Is Buying Off Criticism of Big Money
Not long ago I was asked to speak to a religious congregation about widening inequality. Shortly before I began, the head of thecongregation asked that I not advocate raising taxes on the wealthy. He said he didn’t want to antagonize certain wealthycongregants on whose generosity the congregation depended. I had a similar exchange last year with the president of a …
If We Don’t Overturn Citizens United, Congress Will Become Paid Employees of the Billionaire Class
I recently introduced an amendment at the Senate Budget Committee. It was pretty simple. It asked my Senate colleagues to begin the process of overturning the disastrous Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United, and to bring transparency and disclosure to the political process. Here’s what I asked my Senate colleagues to consider: Are we comfortable with an American political system …