VIDEO: Iowa Senate Candidate Denies Coordinating With Kochs After Attending Koch Summit

Posted by Brad Johnson Mon, 27 Oct 2014 19:06:00 GMT

U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst denied coordinating with outside groups who are involved in the race, despite her participation in a secret summit organized by the Koch brothers in June. Speaking at a Des Moines, Iowa, event on October 23, Ernst claimed she doesn’t have any contact with outside groups that are running negative ads.

“I can’t control the outside groups, with the independent expenditures,” Ernst said. “You know, I don’t have contact with them.”

However, at June Koch summit in Dana Point, Calif., Ernst thanked the Koch network, which is now spending millions of dollars in attack ads and get-out-the-vote efforts on her behalf, for discovering her and powering her candidacy.

“A little-known state senator from a very rural part of Iowa, known through my National Guard service and some circles in Iowa. But the exposure to this group and to this network and the opportunity to meet so many of you, that really started my trajectory,” Ernst was recorded saying. “We are going to paint some very clear differences in this general election,” she said. “And this is the thing that we are going to take back—that it started right here with all of your folks, this wonderful network.”

As of October 27, the Koch super PAC Freedom Partners Fund has spent over $3,158,815 for Ernst, and the Koch 501c4 Americans for Prosperity has spent $250,954, according to FEC records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ernst’s remarks in Des Moines were recorded by the Young Turks Undercurrent’s Lauren Windsor, who said Ernst was caught in a “big fat Koch lie.” Windsor had earlier released the audio recording of Ernst and other GOP Senate candidates speaking at the Koch retreat.

(Windsor is not associated with The Undercurrent, a right-wing libertarian campus magazine that promotes the Koch network.)

Rep. Paul Ryan: 'We Don't Even Know If The Science Will Change!'

Posted by Brad Johnson Wed, 15 Oct 2014 21:59:00 GMT

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, has again rejected the scientific fact of anthropogenic global warming. In a Carthage College debate with challenger Rob Zerban on Monday, Ryan expressed his doubt of “science.”

“Climate change is in large part due to human activity”: I don’t know the answer to that question. And I don’t think science does either. Uh, does climate change occur? Yeah, yes, of course we have climate change. We’ve had climate change forever. Uh, is human involvement involved? Yes, it is. What extent? I don’t know.

Ryan then cited economic figures from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century about the potential impact of climate regulations. The chamber’s directors include ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, American Ethane, Alliance Resource Partners, Pepco, Consol Energy, Black Hills Corporation, and Southern Company.

“We don’t even know if the science will change,” Ryan continued.

In reality, the carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect is a physical fact known since the 1800s. The only scientifically plausible systematic explanation for the rapid and continuing warming of the planetary climate since 1950 is industrial greenhouse pollution. The world’s national scientific societies and the world’s practicing climate scientists are in overwhelming agreement about this fact, based not on feelings but on evidence and laws of physics.

Still Not a Scientist: Mitch McConnell Gets Climate Science Wrong Again

Posted by Brad Johnson Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:27:00 GMT

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has again rejected the scientific fact of anthropogenic global warming. In a Kentucky Educational Television Senate debate with challenger Allison Lundergan Grimes on Monday, McConnell cited conservative columnist George Will as his expert on climate change, mocking scientists who feel that this is a problem>

“Look, there are a bunch of scientists who feel that this is a problem and that maybe we can do something about CO2 emissions. George Will, a columnist, wrote recently that back in the ‘70s a lot of scientists felt we were moving toward an ice age.”

In reality, the carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect is a physical fact known since the 1800s. The only scientifically plausible systematic explanation for the rapid and continuing warming of the planetary climate since 1950 is industrial greenhouse pollution. The world’s national scientific societies and the world’s practicing climate scientists are in overwhelming agreement about this fact, based not on feelings but on evidence and laws of physics.

“There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age,” actual scientists Thomas Peterson and William Connolley wrote in a 2008 review for the American Meteorological Society. “Indeed, the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature even then.”

UnKochMyCampus: New Grassroots Effort Launches to Fight Koch Influence on Higher Education

Posted by Brad Johnson Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:07:00 GMT

Koch Free ZoneStudents across the country have launched a new effort to protest the influence of the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers on their campuses. As part of their effort to influence the American political system, Charles and David Koch have flooded hundreds of universities with contributions intended to promote their economic agenda. Although the contributions go back for decades, the spigot has been opened wide in recent years; from only seven universities recorded to have Koch contributions in 2005 to over 250 by 2012. According to UnKochMyCampus, the new grassroots effort to oppose Koch influence on higher education, 390 different colleges and universities have received Koch money.

The UnKochMyCampus effort was launched by three young activists: Kalin Jordan, a graduate of Suffolk University, where the Koch-funded Beacon Hill Institute is housed; Lindsey Berger, a Missouri State University graduate and campus organizer, and Connor Gibson, a University of Vermont graduate and Greenpeace researcher. Jordan founded the Koch Free Zone campaign at Suffolk in 2013 to end the Koch influence over the Beacon Hill Institute, one of a nationwide network of right-wing think tanks. The UnKochMyCampus site has a organizer’s guide to help students launch campaigns on their own campuses, including background research on the Koch brothers.

There are now at least four campuses that have active student efforts opposing Koch influence:

All four universities have clear evidence of Koch influence over the educational system; George Mason houses the Mercatus Center, the Koch-powered deregulatory think tank. Florida State is the center of a scandal over a $1.5 million pledge from the Kochs that gave them control over hiring and curricula at the school. In 2001, the Kochs founded the University of Kansas Center for Applied Economics, modeled after the Mercatus Center, with a Koch lobbyist as its head.

There are also online efforts opposing Koch influence at the University of Arizona, Catholic University of America, and California State University at Northridge.

In September 2014, Gibson and Berger published an extended Greenpeace report entitled “Koch on Campus: Polluting Higher Education,” that detailed the $49.5 million known to have flown from Koch foundations to over 250 campuses, based on IRS filings.

This money is in addition to the $185 million David Koch has given directly to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and $20 million to Johns Hopkins University, primarily for cancer research. Although those seem like substantial sums, those amounts are dwarfed by the billions of dollars in cuts in public funding for cancer research that have come as a result of Koch political advocacy.

In addition to the website, UnKoch My Campus has a Twitter account.