Brock to Dems: Brace for $1 billion deluge from Koch brothers | T

 

Brock to Dems: Brace for $1 billion deluge from Koch brothers

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By Alexander Bolton - 10/03/15 10:34 AM EDT

David Brock urged Senate Democrats this week to look for ways to limit the political influence of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, who have vowed to spend millions in 2016.

But some political experts think striking at the Kochs is questionable in its effectiveness.

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Brock, one of Hillary Clinton’s chief defenders, and Democratic pollster Geoff Garin met with Senate Democrats on Thursday to discuss the strategies for minimizing the influence of Koch-backed groups such as Concerned Veterans for America and Generation Opportunity.

“I talked about why I thought this was an important issue to be raising,” Brock told The Hill. “The Kochs say they’re going to spend up to $1 billion in 2016. What are they spending it on? I talked about five different areas or capacities they were spending money on from message to data to advertising to grassroots organizing.”

Brock, who is chairman of a Democratic-aligned super PAC, founder of Media Matters for America  media watchdog group and founder of a group defending Clinton from political attacks, emphasized that Koch-backed political groups are active all the way down to the city-council level in Iowa.

“They have the capacity to be in every race they want to be in,” he said.

“They may well lose the next election but the lesson we have to learn this year is that they lost 2012 but they got up, they picked themselves up, they dusted themselves off and doubled down. This is a long-term challenge,” he said.

The challenge for Democrats isn’t just the Koch brothers, but the strategy the party uses to counter their efforts.

Some Democrats like the idea of an outside group filing a suit against what they call Koch-funded “front groups,” alleging fraud on the basis that they do not represent real constituencies.

Other Democrats are exploring the option of executive orders to force these groups to disclose their funders.

“I had no idea the breadth and depth of it,” said a Democratic senator who attended the meeting.

“I understand the First Amendment but if you’re saying one thing and doing another thing with malicious intent, that’s not covered,” the lawmaker said, suggesting a lawsuit by an outside ally might be welcome.

Brock’s super-PAC American Bridge has put out reports detailing the activity of Koch-backed groups that are trying to make inroads with key constituencies -- Hispanics, young people, women and veterans.

Brock argues these groups, LIBRE, Concerned Women for America, Concerned Veterans for America, and Generation Opportunity, are front groups that don’t really have the interests of the voters their targeting at heart.

“Concerned Veterans for America isn’t at all honest about who they are and who they support. They consistently represent themselves as a non-ideological group, just looking out for veterans. That’s not correct,” American Bridge wrote in a report. “The group promotes proposals that are extremely conservative in nature, and indeed, often opposed by every major Veterans Service Organization (VSO).”

Concerned Veterans for America declined to comment.

Freedom Partners, a group that has received substantial funding from Charles and David Koch, and has supported the advocacy organizations cited by Brock, pushed back against his allegations.

“Our efforts are focused on expanding opportunity for all Americans; theirs is about demonizing two private citizens who have created tens of thousands of jobs. The contrast is clear,” said James Davis, a spokesman for Freedom Partners.

Some Democratic strategists question whether bashing the Koch brothers is a sound political strategy, given that voters are most concerned about jobs and the economy.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) took to the Senate floor dozens of times in the last election cycle to bash the Koch brothers but the strategy didn’t stop Democrats from losing nine seats in November.

Former White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer recently cautioned against relying too heavily on an anti-Koch message.

“Targeting the Kochs is a good tactic for generating donor activity and base enthusiasm and the Kochs are a good metaphor for GOP policies. The press shouldn’t confuse this tactic with an overall strategy, which is not what the Dems are doing,” he wrote on Sidewire, a Web forum for insiders and newsmakers.

Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman and host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” slammed Reid last year for pursuing what he called an ineffective strategy.

“This Koch brothers thing, it’s ridiculous,” Scarborough said at the height of the battle for control of the Senate.

“It doesn’t even work in Manhattan, where people thank God for David Koch,” he said inference to millions of dollars in philanthropic gifts. The ballet theatre at Lincoln Center is named after David Koch.

Garin, however, argued that Democratic candidates can gain traction against Republican opponents backed by Koch-funded groups.

He told Democratic senators that GOP candidates can be discredited if linked to the Koch brothers, pointing to data from focus groups conducted in August.

“If you tell people that these groups like Libre or Generation Opportunity that they’re Koch funded, it was very easy to discredit the group,” Brock told The Hill, summarizing Garin’s findings.

“If you tie unpopular aspects of the Koch agenda to the candidate, it raised questions in voters’ minds about the character of the candidate,” he added. “If they learned that the candidate was receiving Koch support, they very quickly drew the conclusion that that they were bought and paid for.”

Brock described the reception from senators “as entirely positive and encouraging. 

“We continue to follow the vast right wing conspiracy, which gets vaster and more conspiratorial. We got a briefing on that,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) after the meeting. 

“We’re going to continue to [push] the idea that the American people should decide elections. Not just people who have the deep pockets to buy the election,” she said.

Brock to Dems: Brace for $1 billion deluge from Koch brothers | T

Representative Wants Special Session | Alton Daily News

 

At least one Republican member of the General Assembly says Gov. Bruce Rauner should call a special session until a budget agreement is reached.
State Rep. David McSweeney (R-Barrington Hills) says Rauner should keep members of the General Assembly in Springfield until the state budget stalemate ends.
Rauner has maintained he wants his legislative agenda considered before he’ll agree to a tax hike in this year’s budget. McSweeney says he supports the governor’s proposals, but fears the long-term damage being done to the state due to court-ordered spending outpacing revenue.

“I don’t think anyone knew how this was going to turn out, but it’s been a failed experiment,” McSweeney said. “It’s not working. Nothing good is happening. Mark me down as a yes on the governor’s agenda. Let’s get it over with, let’s vote on it.”
McSweeney may be alone on the Republican side in believing a special session is the solution. State Rep. Ron Sandack (R-Downers Grove) says it’d be a waste of time.
“Being hauled down there to stare at one another in hopes that that brings an end to gridlock I think is largely wishful thinking,” Sandack said.
Sandack himself had called for a similar open-ended special session to settle the pension reform debate in 2013, but he feels what McSweeney is advocating would be “futile.”
Illinois is now into its fourth month of the fiscal year with no budget being in place, and lawmakers aren’t set to return to the Capitol until October 20

Representative Wants Special Session | Alton Daily News

RICO for climate deniers

 

 

The following is the text of a letter written by a number of scientists asking for a federal investigation of climate science denial under the RICO statute.

Letter to President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren

September 1, 2015

Dear President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren,

As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects of human-induced climate change on human health, agriculture, and biodiversity. We applaud your efforts to regulate emissions and the other steps you are taking. Nonetheless, as climate scientists we are exceedingly concerned that America’s response to climate change – indeed, the world’s response to climate change – is insufficient. The risks posed by climate change, including increasing extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and increasing ocean acidity – and potential strategies for addressing them – are detailed in the Third National Climate Assessment (2014), Climate Change Impacts in the United States. The stability of the Earth’s climate over the past ten thousand years contributed to the growth of agriculture and therefore, a thriving human civilization. We are now at high risk of seriously destabilizing the Earth’s climate and irreparably harming people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.

We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress. One additional tool – recently proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change. The actions of these organizations have been extensively documented in peerreviewed academic research (Brulle, 2013) and in recent books including: Doubt is their Product (Michaels, 2008), Climate Cover-Up (Hoggan & Littlemore, 2009), Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes & Conway, 2010), The Climate War (Pooley, 2010), and in The Climate Deception Dossiers (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2015). We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse’s call for a RICO investigation.

The methods of these organizations are quite similar to those used earlier by the tobacco industry. A RICO investigation (1999 to 2006) played an important role in stopping the tobacco industry from continuing to deceive the American people about the dangers of smoking. If corporations in the fossil fuel industry and their supporters are guilty of the misdeeds that have been documented in books and journal articles, it is imperative that these misdeeds be stopped as soon as possible so that America and the world can get on with the critically important business of finding effective ways to restabilize the Earth’s climate, before even more lasting damage is done.

Sincerely,

Jagadish Shukla, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Maibach, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Dirmeyer, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Barry Klinger, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Paul Schopf, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
David Straus, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Edward Sarachik, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Michael Wallace, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Alan Robock, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Eugenia Kalnay, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
William Lau, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
T.N. Krishnamurti, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Vasu Misra, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
Ben Kirtman, University of Miami, Miami, FL
Robert Dickinson, University of Texas, Austin, TX
Michela Biasutti, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Mark Cane, Columbia University, New York, NY
Lisa Goddard, Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY
Alan Betts, Atmospheric Research, Pittsford, VT

Above is from:  BruceS — RICO for climate deniers

Newsweek Once Again Fails To Disclose An Op-Ed Writer's Oil Industry Ties | Blog | Media Matters for America

 

Magazine Ignores Author's Koch And Exxon Ties Despite Acknowledging Past Disclosure Mistake

Blog ››› October 2, 2015 2:07 PM EDT ››› DENISE ROBBINS

 

 

The last time Newsweek published an anti-environment op-ed without disclosing the author's oil industry ties, the esteemed news outlet was forced to acknowledge the error and provide proper disclosure to its readers. Now it's happened again.

On October 1, Newsweek published an op-ed by the Cato Institute's Walter Olson that argued against calls for the government to investigate climate science deniers under the federal racketeering law. But Newsweek identified Olson only as "a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies," failing to disclose that Cato has received funding from the oil industry, including ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil is currently under fire after an InsideClimate News investigation revealed that although Exxon's own scientists discovered decades ago that fossil fuel emissions could lead to catastrophic climate change, the company subsequently "spent more than 20 years discrediting the research its own scientists had once confirmed." Additionally, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and a group of 20 prominent scientists have called for an investigation of "corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change" under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the same law that tobacco companies violated by deceiving the public about the health risks of smoking.

In his Newsweek op-ed, Olson pushed back against the idea of investigating climate science deniers under the RICO statute, claiming it threatens the right to free speech. Olson asserted that "controversial speech need not be true to be protected" and defended the right to use "half-truths, selectively marshaled data, [and] scientific studies that spring from agendas," arguing that these tactics are merely "common currency of everyday debate in Washington."

Newsweek failed to disclose the Cato Institute's industry funding, which includes at least $125,000 from ExxonMobil. Cato was co-founded by the oil billionaire Koch brothers and has received millions of dollars from the Koch family.

The Cato Institute is also home to long-time climate science denier Patrick Michaels, and once published a fake "addendum" to a federal climate report, which Climate Science & Policy Watch characterized as "counterfeit."

In April, Newsweek published a deeply-flawed op-ed attacking wind energy by Utah State University professor Randy T. Simmons without disclosing that Simmons' full title at Utah State was the Charles G. Koch professor of political economy, or that he is a senior fellow at the Koch- and ExxonMobil-funded Property and Environment Research Center. After Media Matters and others drew attention to the lack of disclosure and other problems with the op-ed, Newsweek added a correction and an editor's note disclosing Simmons' oil industry ties, and also published an op-ed responding to his misleading claims.

Following the incident, Newsweek Managing Editor Kira Bindrim told Politico: "Admittedly, we did not do an outside vetting of Simmons, and we are not in the habit of fully fact-checking opinion pieces picked up like this from outside sites. These are aspects of our workflow that we're looking at now."

Newsweek Once Again Fails To Disclose An Op-Ed Writer's Oil Industry Ties | Blog | Media Matters for America

Jobs being created through the winds of change

 

Sweetwater, Texas, 225 due west of Dallas, made its mark in the late 1800s as a railroad hub. Today, it's known for the power of wind that blows in off the prairies.

Sweetwater is the county seat of Nolan County, home to 1,371 turbines, according to Sweetwater's Chamber of Commerce. It is also home to Texas State Technical College (TSTC), which has offered an associate's degree in wind energy and applied engineering since 2006.

"If my students get through the program and graduate with no background issues, I can pretty much guarantee they will get a job," said Heath Ince, chairman of the college's wind energy technology program and applied engineering department.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the number of jobs for wind-techs, as they are known, to increase by 24 percent from 2012 to 2022, well above the average growth rate for all jobs of over 11 percent. Still, it's starting from a small base. In 2012, there were 3,200 wind tech jobs; by 2022, it is expected to jump to around 4,000.

Source: Guy Morton

Ron Widup, Shermco Industries CEO

"We have the jobs, but we can't find the people," said Ron Widup, CEO of Irving, Texas-based Shermco Industries, which provides maintenance and repair services to the wind industry, among others. "There's a tremendous demand for that classification of technician and engineer."

Behind this growing demand for wind technicians and engineers is the growing demand for wind power. From 2008 to 2012, the amount of electricity generated by wind increased by 154 percent. Wind is now the fifth largest source of electricity in the U.S. While wind only accounts for 4.4 percent of the total, it could generate 10 percent of all electricity in the U.S. by 2020, according to the Department of Energy.

"I think it's got a big future" said Harold Perrigo, a 33-year-old student in TSTC's wind program, when asked why he wants to be a wind technician. "It's a young industry and it is something that's going to grow exponentially over the next 10-15 years."

The history of wind power has not been without its doubters, or its stops and starts. In the past, its development and growth have relied heavily on federal and state tax incentives. As the incentives expired and were renewed, the industry's growth waxed and waned.

Still, the American Wind Energy Association said the cost of generating electricity from wind has been cut in half in the last five years, and the investment bank Lazard points out that producing electricity from wind is almost as cheap as traditional sources like coal and gas, even without the subsidies.

Lights! Camera! JOBS! But not where you might think

Shermco, which counts wind power as 20 percent to 25 percent of its business, has had to work closely with colleges like TSTC to assure it has the workers to repair wind turbines and service the industry's substations. Widup said his company is always looking to hire a couple of technicians a year, at competitive salaries.

"You are coming in as an entry-level job probably $40,000 to $45,000 a year and with overtime very quickly can get to $60,000 to $80,000," he said. "Then in a few years it's not uncommon to get to six figures pretty quickly in this field."

Source: Guy Morton

Students in Wind Energy program at Texas State Technical College in Sweetwater, TX.

Thirty-four-year-old Jeremy Brackenridge joined Shermco a few months ago. A veteran of the oil and gas industry, he is going through in-house training to become a wind technician. It is a job that pays him more than he was earning fixing gas turbines.

"I'm making about 10 percent more than I was," he said.

Brackenridge also expects to make a career at Shermco. He bounced around after high school working odd jobs, and in manufacturing and oil and gas before landing in wind. He hopes to become a project manager.

Source: Guy Morton

Jeremy Brackenridge, Shermco Industries wind turbine technician

For others like Perrigo, school is the path to getting into the industry. He relocated to Texas from Pennsylvania, where he worked in retail. He has a semester and a half to go before he graduates from TSTC with an associates degree in applied science degree in wind energy.

Ince said the industry is looking for people who can read schematics and have good electrical and mechanical skills. He said he meets with industry representatives once a year to make sure he is teaching his students what the industry tells him their future employees need to know.

 

Growing cyberthreat means more jobs in US

"We start off with them with just a basic introduction to wind energy," Ince said. "And then we elevate from there. We start talking about hydraulics, we teach them hydraulic schematics, we teach them some industrial automation."

The school also makes sure the students can handle a critical part of the job, working a couple of hundred feet off the ground. You can't have a fear of heights if your career takes you where the wind blows.

Mary ThompsonCNBC Reporter

Jobs being created through the winds of change

Voodoo Never Dies - The New York Times Opinion Piece on Tax Cuts

Paul Krugman

So Donald Trump has unveiled his tax plan. It would, it turns out, lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit.

This is in contrast to Jeb Bush’s plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit, and Marco Rubio’s plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit.

For what it’s worth, it looks as if Trump’s plan would make an even bigger hole in the budget than Jeb’s. Jeb justifies his plan by claiming that it would double America’s rate of growth; The Donald, ahem, trumps this by claiming that he would triple the rate of growth. But really, why sweat the details? It’s all voodoo. The interesting question is why every Republican candidate feels compelled to go down this path.

 

You might think that there was a defensible economic case for the obsession with cutting taxes on the rich. That is, you might think that if you’d spent the past 20 years in a cave (or a conservative think tank). Otherwise, you’d be aware that tax-cut enthusiasts have a remarkable track record: They’ve been wrong about everything, year after year.

Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.

Some readers may remember the forecasts of economic doom back in 1993, when Bill Clinton raised the top tax rate. What happened instead was a sustained boom, surpassing the Reagan years by every measure.

Undaunted, the same people predicted great things as a result of George W. Bush’s tax cuts. What happened instead was a sluggish recovery followed by a catastrophic economic crash.

Most recently, the usual suspects once again predicted doom in 2013, when taxes on the 1 percent rose sharply due to the expiration of some of the Bush tax cuts and new taxes that help pay for health reform. What happened instead was job growth at rates not seen since the 1990s.

Then there’s the recent state-level evidence. Kansas slashed taxes, in what its right-wing governor described as a “real live experiment” in economic policy; the state’s growth has lagged ever since. California moved in the opposite direction, raising taxes; it has recently led the nation in job growth.

True, you can find self-proclaimed economic experts claiming to find overall evidence that low tax rates spur economic growth, but such experts invariably turn out to be on the payroll of right-wing pressure groups (and have an interesting habit of getting their numbers wrong). Independent studies of the correlation between tax rates and economic growth, for example by the Congressional Research Service, consistently find no relationship at all. There is no serious economic case for the tax-cut obsession.

Still, tax cuts are politically popular, right? Actually, no, at least when it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy. According to Gallup, only 13 percent of Americans believe that upper-income individuals pay too much in taxes, while 61 percent believe that they pay too little. Even among self-identified Republicans, those who say that the rich should pay more outnumber those who say they should pay less by two to one.

 

So every Republican who would be president is committed to a policy that is both demonstrably bad economics and deeply unpopular. What’s going on?

Voodoo Never Dies - The New York Times

2015 Tax Assessments for Boone County Townships Now Available

The 2015 assessments are available in this week’s Boone County Journal or BCJ’s website at:  http://www.boonecountyjournal.com/news/2015/Boone-County-News-10-02-15.pdf#page=1Our Quadrennial Tax Assessment

 

 DEADLINE FOR APPEAL is November 2, 2015.

This is the Quadrennial Assessment and will be the only review of all property for four years.  Very important to appeal this assessment if your assessment is out of line.