Earlier this month, the release of a two-year study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University documenting Charles and David Koch's influence via Americans for Prosperity on politicians and elections focused on the little-known No Climate Tax Pledge, the New Yorker reported.
Minnesota's climate change deniers should be hanging their heads in shame on this one, as only the retiring Gentlewoman from Minnesota's Sixth, Michele Bachmann, and Minnesota House District 18B representative Glenn Gruenhagen have signed on to this particular loyalty oath to the Koch Brothers and their money.
In Koch Pledge Tied to Congressional Climate Inaction, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer writes:
The investigative study tracks the political influence wielded by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have harnessed part of the fortune generated by their company, Koch Industries, the second largest private corporation in the country, to further their conservative libertarian activism. Charles Lewis, the Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop explained that the I.R.W., a non-profit news organization attached to American University, spent two years focussing on Koch Industries because, “There is no other corporation in the U.S. today, in my view, that is as unabashedly, bare-knuckle aggressive across the board about its own self-interest, in the political process, in the nonprofit-policy-advocacy realm, even increasingly in academia and the broader public marketplace of ideas.” Formerly head of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, Lewis has focussed for years on the way money affects American politics. “The Kochs’ influence, without a doubt, is growing,” he believes. A spokeswoman for the Kochs declined to comment.
In its multi-part report, “The Koch Club,” written by Lewis, Eric Holmberg, Alexia Campbell, and Lydia Beyoud, the Workshop found that between 2007 and 2011 the Kochs donated $41.2 million to ninety tax-exempt organizations promoting the ultra-libertarian policies that the brothers favor—policies that are often highly advantageous to their corporate interests. In addition, during this same period they gave $30.5 million to two hundred and twenty-one colleges and universities, often to fund academic programs advocating their worldview. Among the positions embraced by the Kochs are fewer government regulations on business, lower taxes, and skepticism about the causes and impact of climate change.
Climate-change policy directly affects Koch Industries’s bottom line. Koch Industries, according to Environmental Protection Agency statistics cited in the study, is a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions, the kind of pollution that most scientists believe causes global warming. In 2011, according to the E.P.A.’s greenhouse-gas-reporting database, the company, which has oil refineries in three states, emitted over twenty-four million tons of carbon dioxide, as much as is typically emitted by five million cars. . . .
Check it out at the New Yorker; Steven Elbow looks at the influence of the pledge in Wisconsin in Scott Walker among signers of Koch-backed 'No Climate Tax Pledge', via the LaCrosse Tribune.
Since there's an election coming up next year, Bluestem anticipates those hoping to replace Dayton, Franken and Bachmann hopping on to this gravy train, a fulfilling vehicle for proving one's fealty to the Koch Brothers' various funding tracks.
Gruenhagen's floor statement blaming the United Nations for the "climate change lie"--video below from The Uptake--attracted nationwide attention in May.
This week, the Glencoe-area Republican and SD18 senator Scott Newman have launched a crusade against the wind industry, publishing this letter in area newspapers. They challenged a long-permitted wind farm in near Winthrop in Sibley County that's been scaled back from 13 turbines to 10 wind machines.
Photo: A still from Gruenhagen's famous floor speech.
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