Charles Koch awards himself
John Hinderaker of Power Line was one of the rightie smear merchants responsible for the phony perception that 60 Minutes II had “forged” Dubya’s National Guard truancy documents, and for successfully getting Dan Rather fired. He’s also an attorney working on retainer for the Koch Brothers. Keep that in mind as you read his petulant whine:
The Washington Post Responds To Me, and I Reply to the Post
John Hinderaker / Power LineOn Thursday, the Washington Post published an article by Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin titled “The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers.” The article’s first paragraph included this claim…
And here’s some more smear from lower down:
Let me offer an alternative explanation of why the Washington Post published their Keystone/Koch smear: 1) The Washington Post in general, and Mufson and Eilperin in particular, are agents of the Left, the environmental movement and the Democratic Party. 2) The Keystone Pipeline is a problem for the Democratic Party because 60% of voters want the pipeline built, while the party’s left-wing base insists that it not be approved. 3) The Keystone Pipeline is popular because …
Popular? In Hinderacher’s world, perhaps.
But instead of getting into the weeds with a shyster, or defending the Washington Post (who are Johnnies-Come-Lately, compared to my long coverage of the Kochs), I want you to read something from 2009, when this “Koch Brothers” stuff was merely the result of my paranoid, “conspiracy theory” fantasies and not taken seriously by the national media, nor, for that matter, many bloggers. Note that Crooks and Liars and The Moderate Voice didn’t see this as ‘fantasy.’ I want you to read it, and then I want to tell you what happened to the key players. This is how Kochs manipulate media:
Russian ‘Think Tank’ ties to Cato even MORE Suspicious
19 December 2009
Thanks and a tip o’ the cap to Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice for his mention of “An Inconvenient Poof” in the “Around the Sphere” blog roundup:
Who is It Who’s Really Pushing the “Climategate” Theme? It’s this guy.
A brief recap: Using the Telegraph (UK)’s “political blogger,” novelist James Delingpole, the whole meme of “Climategate” was launched on November 18.
Delingpole’s “Official” Telegraph (UK) blog photo
I warned that the meme ought to be challenged, but nothing was said, and “Climategate” pertsists — even though it’s really ever only been “Whitewarmer” — as meme of low innuendo and whispers and that last refuge of the trapped ideologue, solipsistic skepticism.*
[* This is a little technical, and you might want to skip it if that sort of thing bugs you. It’s not necessary to the article.
Solipsism is the belief that only “I” exist, and, therefore, the rest of the world is just a personal dream.
Solipsism is also the near-universal ideology of three-year-olds and ‘free marketeers’ MINE! MINE! MINE! Solipsism relies on a fundamental “tic tac toe” flaw in formal logic: “analysis” means, literally, “to break down” and with logical analysis, ANY question can be broken down and challenged to the point that NOTHING can be proven. This flaw in our thinking has been responsible for most of the major developments in formal philosophy since Kierkegaard, one might even argue since Hume noted that there was no necessary connection between “cause” and “efffect.”
OK: Existentialism, Language philosophy — specifically Wittgenstein and his irritating denialist followers — and even, gasp, Postmodernism, or, as I like to call it, “Existentialism Lite™”” — fewer ideas, less thrilling. The point is that certain assumptions MUST be agreed to to have ANY sort of intelligent argument.
If one rejects the fundamental assumptions, then no discussion is possible, i.e. I believe that humans are evolving into …. WHOAH! Hold on there, Darwin! The BIBLE says God made everything in six days! Don’t you believe in the Bible? No, says the athiest evolutionist, and so on and so forth.
Without the assumptions that 1) the Bible is the infallible Word O’God and/or 2) evolution is the mechanism by which life on planet Earth has progressed from one-celled organism, through dinosaurs, to Pat Robertson, if that’s not redundant, NO RATIONAL CONVERSATION, DEBATE or LEARNING is possible.
Jesus on his dinosaur, from Conservapedia
The point here is that “skepticism” about evolution, about modern geology, and, therefore paleontology, etc. is based on the same kind of “tic tac toe” reductionism that ANY argument can be reduced to in the rhetorial equivalent of an anarchist’s riot. This works equally well for any discussion of scripture.
And, alas, this rhetorical Molotov cocktail only accomplishes one end, logically, which is to make logic MEANINGLESS in the discussion. It is the debate equivalent of a boxer “tying up” his opponent by hugging him. The opponent can’t throw any blows until the referee separates them. Only here, there IS NO REFEREE.
Generally, the sure-fire proof of this childish reasoning is the citation that “just because the vast majority of scientists agree doesn’t make it right.”
Certainly a TRUE statement, but not a MEANINGFUL statement, since the statement is AUTOMATICALLY true in all cases, for ALL classes of human being, including skeptics.
The philosophical term for it is a “tautology.” It is a definition, but no new knowledge is imparted, e.g. “a bachelor is an unmarried man.” All right. But if you add that to “Tommy isn’t married,” the only “knowledge” that you come up with is “Tommy is a bachelor,” which doesn’t add anything to our knowledge about “Tommy.”
There is a vast difference between HEALTHY skepticism, and UNHEALTHY skepticism, which, in this case inCREASINGLY appears to break down into reflexive unhealthy skepticism and RECOMPENSED unhealthy skepticism. “Recompensed” can also include one’s blog attaining “world recognition,” note.]
As the Copenhagen summit was underway, Delingpole dropped the last piece of anti-global warming smear in his column: The “Russian media” was reporting that there was a “huge” skewing of the global warming data, calling it — hyperbolically even by hyperbolic standards — “the messy unravelling of the greatest scientific scandal in the history of the world.”
Little noticed has been the fact that, rather than DISPROVING the global warming data that the skeptics’ Molotov cocktail has been lobbed at, it CONFIRMS it.
The “Institute of Economic Analysis” are economists, not climatologists, and would undoubtedly become angry when even a meteorologist started lecturing to them on economics, but the converse doesn’t hold, evidently.
But, in international policy arguments these days, facts are definitely second-class citizens, and we must leave this ignored point behind to focus on the more important PEOPLE Magazine style of personalities over substance, and celebrity and media notoriety above rational policy.
This “meme” has roiled far and wide in the latest cranking up of the “tea party” Victrola on the tubes of the internets and in the Looking Glass world of Faux Nooz™.
Except, as noted, the “Russian media” was a citation of a paper released by the “Institute of Economic Analysis” in Mosco( [IEA Moscow), whose president is a Cato Institute Fellow earning $150,000 a year since the 2007 tax return was filed (here). Cato is a big league “global warming” skeptic, as are their patrons, the Koch Brothers, one of whom, David H. Koch, was a co-founder of Cato and sits on its board to this very day.
And here is where it gets very interesting.
You see, it’s pretty much stipulated that this entire campaign was launched specifically and in a very targeted and timed manner to coincide with the Copenhagen meeting of more or less all the nations of the Earth. To throw the golden apple of Discordia down at the table of the Olympian gods and sow the seeds of jealousy and enmity that would keep humanity from taking decisive action to do what humanity can to slow climate change.
This is called “anthropocentric global warming,” or “AGW” — an acronym, like MSM, “Main Stream Media” that is common currency among “climate change skeptics” or “climate change deniers” — depending on whom you’re talking to at the time.
I must confess that I had no idea what AGW was when I started covering this story back on November 18*. THEN, it was a lazy media response to the teabaggers’ bus arriving in Portland, Oregon to harass and “pr0test” Al Gore speaking on global warming. The teabaggers were overshadowed in the alternative coverage by a body-painted and topless PETA protester, even though the PETA protesters weren’t funded by Koch Brothers cash.
The Tea Party movement and the tea bagger bus in Portland were.**
[* “Teabaggers in Portland to Protest Gore” 18 Nov 2009.]
[** Here’s how incestuous it is. From the excellent and recommended Huffington Post article by Alexander Brandt-Zadowski “A Tale of Two Teabags” (emphasis added):
The bottom of the RecessRally.com pages used to list the site’s sponsors: American Liberty Alliance (ALA); American Liberty Tour (ALT); American Majority (AM); Americans for Limited Government (ALG); Americans for Prosperity (AFP); Let Freedom Ring (LFR); Michelle Malkin; Nationwide Tea Party Coalition (NTPC); NetRightNation; Patients First; RedState blog, Sam Adams Alliance (SAA), Smart Girl Politics (SGP), and Tea Party Patriots (TPP). Fifteen groups. In reality less than half are independent from one another.
AM and ALA (Odom’s organization) are both derivatives of SAA. The American Liberty Tour advertised itself as “a collaborative project of the American Liberty Alliance, Americans for Limited Government, and the Sam Adams Alliance.” NetRightNation is also a project of ALG. Patients First is a project of AFP. The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition site is registered to Michael Patrick Leahy of #TCOT, part of the “original organizing crew” of TaxDayTeaParty.com along with Tea Party Patriots co-founder Amy Kremer. Meanwhile TaxDayTeaParty.com’s RSVP page politely welcomes you “to the official RSVP system for the national Tea Party Coalition and TaxDayTeaParty.com.”
One of the hallmarks of astroturf is the creation of many small, interdependent groups to publicly support each other. For Recessrally.com, which was the driving force behind the anti-health care reform rallies at August town halls, we have gone from fifteen sponsors down to six, if you discount the media….]
And, oddly, the Cato Institute is funded by Koch Brothers cash, as well.
Remember, Ed Crane was Director of the Libertarian Party when David Koch literally bought his way onto the ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate in 1980. (Seriously: Koch said “Make me the VP candidate and I’ll pick up a big chunk of the tab for the campaign.” Whether he made good on his promise is a matter of much debate.)
Crane, Koch and Murray Rothbard FOUNDED the Cato Institute in 1977, before they pushed Rothbard out. And Koch still sits on the Cato board of directors.
Ed Crane, who runs the Cato Institute for David Koch
The Koch brothers are adamant “climate change skeptics” as are most oil and coal industry companies. Why? Because ramping down carbon and carbon dioxide emissions to help quell “greenhouse effect” warming necessarily means lowering use of, and, therefore profitability of oil and coal.
[* Koch Industries is the largest privately held company in the USA, and bought Georgia Pacific — Dixie Cups, Northern tissue, wood products, etc. — outright just about this time in 2006. Before that, Koch Industries was an oil field services company. Kinda like Halliburton before the first Gulf War.]
Suddenly, the energy industry has taken on the role of the tobacco industry in the 1960s and 1970s — it CAN’T be true, because we’d lose ALL THAT MONEY. And, ironically, some of the agents involved in this are the same agents who worked for Big Tobacco in the day.
There is another parallel here: we took international action on chlorofluorocarbons (spray cans) to deal with the hole in the ozone layer, and, lo and behold, recovery is under way. As herpes was the precursor to AIDS, so the ozone hole was the precursor to greenhouse gas levels (and sea levels) rising. By “precursor” I mean a social problem whose attempts at solution would presage the attempts at solution of the larger problem.
As we have moved to reverse the damage to the ozone layer, so, too, hopefully we can move to reverse the damage to the atmosphere of 7 billion humans with lots and lots of internal combustion engines and just plain combustion for heat and toasting marshmallows.
OK: the long campaign to create a firestorm around Copenhagen was begun on October 17 or 18 by the teabaggers and rolling protests against Al Gore (who has a new book out, also timed for Copenhagen). But this East Anglia hacking ALSO began about October 17 or 18, and the money trail for the latest Russian disinformation AND for the tea party movement leads back to Koch in both directions (including yesterday’s Washington D.C. teabagger rally, keynoted by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who works for FreedomWorks, Inc. ALSO founded — originally as “Citizens for a Sound Economy — with Koch money).
And so on and so forth. These facts are well known. The whole thing looks like a hillbilly family reunion.
As the Cato institute funds “like minded think tanks”. Here are, according to SourceWatch, some of the domestic think tanks:
Groups the benefited from Cato’s generosity were Agencia Americana ($30,000 “to help fund study on S.A. corruption”); the Philanthropy Roundtable ($5,000); the Manhattan Institute ($5,000); the American Enterprise Institute ($5,000); the Fund for American Studies ($10,000); the Bluegrass Institute ($50,000); the Cascade Policy Institute ($25,000); the Ethan Allen Institute ($50,000); the Evergreen Freedom Foundation ($100,000); the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii ($40,000); the Illinois Policy Institute ($50,000); the James Madison Institute ($100,000); the John Locke Foundation ($20,000); the Maine Heritage Policy Center ($50,000); the Maryland Public Policy Institute ($40,000); the Nevada Policy Research Institute ($50,000); the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs ($50,000); the Rio Grande Foundation ($50,000); the Show-Me Institute ($50,000); the South Carolina Policy Council ($90,000); the Sutherland Institute ($40,000); the Tennessee Center for Policy Research ($50,000); the Texas Public Policy Foundation ($100,000); the Virginia Institute for Public Policy ($25,000); the Yankee Institute ($68,000); and the Independent Institute ($60,000).
At least three of these were on the list of CSCCC Member Organizations I reported on in “An Inconvenient Poof,” as their “about” page notes:
The Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change seeks to educate the public about the science and economics of climate change in an impartial manner. The Coalition comprises 59 independent civil society organisations from 40 countries who share a commitment to improving public understanding about a range of public policy issues. All are non-profit organizations that are independent of political parties and government.
Well, they may be independent of political parties and government, but that doesn’t mean that they’re independent. Again, as reported, the ideology is consistently “libertarian” in the Cato sense, which is concerned with the civil rights and liberties of the NON-wealthy in the same way that Brutus was concerned with Caesar’s right to a fair trial.
And here are the three US CSCCC members who also got Cato (Koch) Cash above (See “An Inconvenient Poof“):
Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy, USA
John Locke Foundation, USA
Tennessee Center for Policy Research, USA
ALL of which I’ve covered before. (Including how the Tennessee Center for Policy Research were the ones behind the infamous post-“Inconvenient Truth” Oscar® smear using Al Gore’s electric bill, which they got from rooting around in his garbage. (See “An Inconvenient Poof“.)
Gee. Why is it that hacking the East Anglia server and stealing Al Gore’s trash both have kind of the same M.O.? From the Daily Mail (UK) special investigation:
Were Russian security services behind the leak of ‘Climategate’ emails?
By Will Stewart and Martin Delgado
Last updated at 1:29 PM on 06th December 2009… The server is believed to be used mainly by Tomsk State University, one of the leading academic institutions in Russia, and other scientific institutes.
Computer hackers in Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service (FSB) to shut websites which promote views disliked by Moscow.
Such arrangements provide the Russian government with plausible deniability while using so-called ‘hacker patriots’ to shut down websites.
In 2002, Tomsk students were said to have launched a ‘denial of service’ attack at the Kavkaz-Tsentr portal, a site whose reports about Chechnya angered Russian officials.
The FSB office in Tomsk put out a special Press release saying that what the students had done was a legitimate ‘expression of their position as citizens, one worthy of respect’.
A Russian hacking specialist said last night: ‘There is no hard evidence that the hacking was done from Tomsk, though it might have been.
‘There has been speculation the hackers were Russian. It appears to have been a sophisticated and well-run operation, that had a political motive given the timing in relation to Copenhagen.’
I don’t believe it was governmental, though. It reeks of corporate espionage, using ex- or moonlighting spooks. Remember, they tried the same “purloined letter” stunt in Canada, unsuccessfully.
Certainly the tactics in the Gore electric bill and the hacked emails are the same. But that is not a link; merely a similarity of operations — even though both used the same Rightie bloggers and media echo machine to disseminate a false “controversy.” For a similar reason, in fact.
What’s interesting here is that suddenly, a bunch of teabaggers are now citing a Russian think tank’s “analysis” chapter and verse, as holy writ, when it’s pretty conclusively actually wholly writ. Teabaggers, it must be noted, who formerly wouldn’t have trusted ANY Russian on ANYTHING, let alone a Moscow think tank (IEA Moscow) with intimate ties to Vladimir Putin!
Worse, Cato is having its own well-paid “fellow,” Andrei Illarionov, write about his own think tank’s “study” that conveniently gibes EXACTLY with his previously stated position:
He is a critic of the global-warming theory and of the Kyoto Protocol, stating in a 2004 interview that no link has been established between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.
Awful convenient, this refutation of that Inconvenient Truth, wouldn’t you say? Even … cozy.
Even more so, as reported yesterday, when another “Fellow” appeared with a similar “MEETOO” in the Wall Street Journal, and another Cato “Fellow” released a parallel taked0wn of that silly AGW:
Patrick J. Michaels / Wall Street Journal:
How to Manufacture a Climate ConsensusRoger Pilon / Cato @ Liberty:
Obama’s Copenhagen Speech
Here’s another little “Cato@Liberty” article:
New Study: Hadley Center and CRU Apparently Cherry-picked Russia’s Climate Data
Posted by Andrei IllarionovYesterday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA), of which I am President, issued a study (in Russian), “How Warming Is Being Made: The Case of Russia.” The report, prepared by IEA director Natalya Pivovarova, suggests that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) and the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (CRU) in Norwich (England) apparently cherry-picked Russian climate data.
The IEA report shows that Russian meteorological-station data in the last 130 years did not substantiate the rate of warming on Russian territory suggested by the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature (HadCRUT) database, which has now been partially released…
Yup. Andrei Illarionov is the president of IEA/Moscow.
Andrei Illarionov (L) and Vladimir Putin (R)
And, as I already reported, Illarionov is a Cato Fellow, earning $150,000 per year from Cato, while continuing to serve as president of the think tank he founded in 1994.
And he and Cato are old friends. From the Cato Unbound website:
Contributors
Andrei Illarionov is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. From 2000 to December 2005 he was the chief economic adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Illarionov also served as the president’s personal representative (sherpa) in the G-8. He is one of Russia’s most forceful and articulate advocates of an open society and democratic capitalism, and has been a long-time friend of the Cato Institute.
The bio blurb continues:
Illarionov received his Ph.D. from St. Petersburg University in 1987. From 1993 to 1994 Illarionov served as chief economic adviser to the prime minister of the Russian Federation, Viktor Chernomyrdin. He resigned in February 1994 to protest changes in the government’s economic policy. In July 1994 Illarionov founded the Institute of Economic Analysis and became its director. Illarionov has coauthored several economic programs for Russian governments and has written three books and more than 300 articles on Russian economic and social policies.
It’s not noted here, but elsewhere it is stated that Illarionov resigned from his position with Putin, as well:
Andrei Illarionov is currently a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. From 2000 to December 2005 he was the chief economic adviser of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Illarionov also served as the president’s personal representative in the G-8.
In December 2005, Illarionov offered his resignation in protest against changes in government policy, saying that Russia was no longer politically free, but run by state corporations acting in their own interests.
From 1993 to 1994 Illarionov served as chief economic adviser to the prime minister of the Russian Federation, Viktor Chernomyrdin. He resigned in February 1994 to protest changes in the government’s economic policy…
He is a critic of the global-warming theory and of the Kyoto Protocol, stating in a 2004 interview that no link has been established between carbon dioxide emissions and climate change.
Gee. Cato’s adamantly contrarian about “AGW” TOO! As are the tea baggers of Americans for Limited Government (see yesterday). And the “Tea Party Express” of Americans for Prosperity (David Koch, Chairman).
A real dog & pony show, that I’ve written about at length.
See “Swift Boat Moms in Winnebagos” 30 Aug 05
(cited by SourceWatch)
Long time friends? I guess you could say that. Prime Ministers of Russia come and go, but love for Cato springs eternal, evidently. The Cato archives only go back to 1999, but this is what we find:
How the Russian Crisis Was Manufactured (01/29/99)
A Cato Policy Forum featuring Andrei Illarionov, Institute of Economic Analysis. When the Russian ruble collapsed in August 1998, many Western observers saw it as a failure of capitalism. Andrei Illarionov, who predicted the currency’s fall, will explain how the policies of post-Soviet governments have kept Russia far from establishing a market economy and how they culminated into the current financial crisis. Dr. Illarionov will describe the perverse relationships between the state, Russian banks and private enterprises and their influence on monetary and fiscal policy. He will also discuss the International Monetary Fund’s role in creating the current turmoil and why official Russian economic statistics upon which the Western mass media and international organizations rely are highly misleading. You’ll want to hear his analysis and his views on what Moscow should have on its agenda.
Remember that Appalachian Family Reunion with the teabaggers up above?
Take a look here:
Lots of interconnected Cato/Koch groups, just like USA
Well, it’s just as bad in Overseas CatoLand. From the Frasier Institute’s report, on the Cato Website, and both are in the “Economic Freedom Network” noted below: (see “An Inconvenient Poof” for more interconnections):
[PDF] Economic Freedom of the World: 2009 Annual Report
James Gwartney Robert Lawson FloridaStateUniversity …
www.cato.org/pubs/efw/efw2009/efw2009title.pdfAbout the Members of the Economic Freedom Network
Co-publishers of Economic Freedom of the WorldRussia • Institute of Economic Analysis
The Institute of Economic Analysis is a macroeconomic research institute that analyzes the current economic situation and policies and provides expert analysis of acts, programs, and current economic policy. It will offer advice to Russian government bodies, enterprises, and organizations and prepares and publishes scientific, research, and methodological economic literature. It also conducts seminars, conferences, and symposia on economic topics. The Institute is an independent, non-governmental, non-political, non-proit research centre that works closely with leading Russian and international research centres. Its research focuses on macroeconomic, budget, and social policies.
E-mail: [email protected]; website: <http://www.iea.ru>.
So, that’s at least eleven years that Cato and Illarionov/IEA Moscow have been “long-time friends.”
And, yesterday, I showed how Americans for Limited Government ON WHOSE BOARD Cato Director Ed Crane SITS, used the “Russian” climate change denial “analysis” from IEA Moscow.
Ed Crane (bottom) from ALG’s 2007 Tax Return
The selfsame ALG that is co-sponsoring the Tea Party Express above. That sent out THIS letter to progressive political donors last year:
Right-Wing Intimidation Hits Home
Cato, Cato, Koch, Rich.
And, of course, that Moscow “think tank” that’s being used to push the phony “skeptics” meme.
There are inconvenient truths, and there are incredibly convenient coincidences of timing and sourcing.
Or, as noted earlier: very very COZY coincidences.
And this seems to be one of them.
Meantime, as a full month has passed, the leftie blogosphere seems to remain almost entirely comatose, with a few exceptions, like MediaMatters.
But mostly they’re just criticizing Hannity for twisting the “Climategate” meme. Still, some good research by MM.
Otherwise, on this story? Crickets.*
Is The Tea Party Unbeatable?
The Tea Party movement has surged ahead of both the Democratic and Republican parties in the polls, with 41 percent of respondents in a new NBC/Wall Street Journal survey giving the mostly conservative, limited-government activists a favorable rating….
Courage.
[* Note: Mike Finnegan at Crooks and Liars has featured “Warmergate? No It’s WhiteWarmer” in his blog roundup (and my sincerest thanks to him for it; see Steyn/Beck’s Fakes of Wrath) — I am not complaining about that. I am complaining about the inability of the leftie blogosphere to make a concerted defense of perhaps the most important gathering of world leaders they’ll see this year, if not this decade, or even in their lifetimes. Rather than waste pixels on Joe Lieberman, this is an important moment to push back against a literal conspiracy to muddy the waters of “fact” and public opinion after eight long years of Bushian Apocalypse Theology Do-Nothingism.]
=====================
Now, back to 2014.
The scariest part of this was how the Kochs used their patented “divide and conquer” technique to exploit the parochialism of a world press (as opposed to state presses) to create and feed a false scandal hatched in Wichita, Kansas, launched by a London “journalist” and abetted by a “Russian” Think Tank.
James Delingpole (among other journalistic abominations) ended up on a nice paid junket and with an award for his “reporting” at the Heartland Institute’s annual Global Warming Denial wingding in 2010, along with Art Robinson (of whom I’ve written at length, including his bogus “scientists disagree” with global warming petition and his shadowy backers in my congressional district.)
May, 2010
Delingpole was a speaker at the Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC4). His speech was titled “Climategate and the War against Man, Bear, Pig.”
Video is available here. The Heartland Institute also provides a transcript of his speech here. [1]
May 2010 — Delingpole wows the Climate Denial Conference
The fake “East Anglia Climategate” scandal lasted just long enough to essentially discredit the world summit in Copenhagen.
Here’s what Think Progress noted in the “Blogger From Koch’s Law Firm Defends Koch, Doesn’t Disclose Ties” article cited at the start:
The Koch spin machine is much larger than just Hinderaker. Koch recently retained Orion Strategies, a PR firm run by Weekly Standard writers like Michael Goldfarb, Wilson Miller Communications, and PR consultant Ron Bonjean, as well as government affairs firms like Cove Strategies, Hunton & Williams, ADS Ventures, the Palmetto Group, and Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti. In addition to their communication consultants, Koch is being aided by the right-wing media investments they have made over the years.
As ThinkProgress has detailed, Koch funds a number of conservative media positions using grants distributed by the Phillips Foundation, a conservative journalism front funded by Koch charitable foundations, the Koch-owned Institute for Humane Studies, and the Charles Koch fellowship. Moreover, the top conservative media outlets are owned by close associates of the Koch brothers: the Daily Caller is owned by Foster Friess, a friend of the Koch brothers and attendee of secret Koch fundraising meetings; the Washington Examiner and the Weekly Standard are owned by Phil Anschutz, another oil billionaire and Koch meeting attendee. Predictably, these outlets are now attacking us …
The Koch Brothers CONTINUED to do what they do, including, most recently, the “defense” of these “great Americans” on the floor of the US Senate by Ted Cruz, and then the EXACT SAME PHRASING and “Luntz words” were used by several Koch stooges. “Private citizens” being oppressed by the U.S. Senate!
Facing tough Senate races, Reid, fellow Dems turn their attack on Koch brothers
Published March 22, 2014
FoxNews.comPolitical attacks on the Koch brothers have emerged as a key, practically everyday part of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Democratic Party’s 2014 election strategy — accusing the wealthy conservative donors of trying to buy elections and block aid to Ukraine.
The attacks began in earnest last month when the Nevada Democrat in notable floor speeches accused Charles and David Koch of being “un-American” and “trying to buy America” and continued straight through this week.
“Across the country Republican Senate candidates are embracing a dangerous agenda that’s good for billionaires like the Koch Brothers and bad for nearly everyone else in the country,” the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said Thursday in announcing a record-breaking February fundraising haul of $6.8 million.
That Democrats would attack the Kochs, or mount a counter-attack, is to be expected, considering how their money was instrumental in helping conservative nonprofits assist Republicans in taking the House in the 2010 midterm elections. Furthermore, Reid argues the Kochs are really trying to “buy” elections to advance their self-serving corporate interests of lower taxes and less regulation.
Biased news media? I guess Faux Nooz is immunized, since they don’t actually report news anyway.
And here is John “Non Disclosure” Hinderaker concluding today that someone ELSE is lying and working for secret masters (no commentary on “projection” will be made by me, here):
So we have a contrast that couldn’t be clearer: the Washington Post published a false story about support for Keystone because it fit the Democratic Party’s agenda. It covered up a similar, but true story about opposition to the pipeline (and about “green” politics in general) because that, too, fit the Democratic Party’s agenda. I don’t think we need to look any further to connect the dots.
Nosiree, Johnny boy. Nosiree.
And Andre Illiaronov?
“Andrei Illarionov is a senior fellow at the
Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty
and Prosperity. From 2000 to December 2005
he was the chief economic adviser
of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “
Oh he’s STILL at the now-openly Koch-run CATO Institute.
Video here on the CATO home page of him opining on Crimea:
Oh, and the original point?
Hinderaker sure as hell has a lot of gall claiming that the Washington Post is intimately entwined in an unethical journalistic scandal, given who he will not admit to working for, and the manner in which their “journalists” like to twist the facts.
Duh.
Oh, and did I mention that the Koch Brothers put Hinderaker on the Board of Directors of the CATO Institute? Gee. Nobody else seems to have, either* (March 3, 2012):
Aside from those functionaries, they also nominated a couple of people with public profiles that make the jaw drop:
- John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog, whose firm counts Koch Industries as a client. Hinderaker has written, “It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.” Hinderaker supports the Patriot Act and the Iraq War and calls himself a neocon.
Hinderaker was appointed and the Kochs took complete control of CATO.
[* From the “Volokh Conspiracy” a libertarian law blog now included in the Washington Post and DEFENDING Hinderaker v. Washington Post. Which brings us full circle.]
Courage.
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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.