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Forum > Fossil Fuel Folly
Re: Fossil Fuel Skulldugggery
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AGelbert:
Tue Sep 30, 2014 at 03:06 PM PDT.
Koch brothers freak out in response to Rolling Stone expose
by Joan McCarter David Koch, not holding up well under scrutiny.
Tim Dickinson's fantastic expose of the Koch brothers in the latest issue of Rolling Stone has gotten plenty of attention. For very good reason: it's a well-sourced, deep dive into the very toxic—literally toxic— business that earned the Kochs enough money to buy up an entire political party. That and the wrongful death judgement, six felony and numerous misdemeanor convictions, the tens of millions of dollars in fines, and the trading with Iran are all included in the story, well worth your time. No one has given it more attention, it seems, than the notoriously thin-skinned Kochs. In typical Koch fashion, they don't argue the facts of Dickinson's story. They attack Dickinson, who responds here. Here's the nut of his detailed response.
--- Quote ---Koch, in particular, takes umbrage with my reporting practices. For the record: In the weeks prior to publication, beginning September 4th, Rolling Stone attempted to engage Koch Industries in a robust discussion of the issues raised in our reporting. Rolling Stone requested to interview CEO Charles Koch about his company's philosophy of Market Based Management; Ilia Bouchouev, who heads Koch's derivatives trading operations, about the company's trading practices; and top Koch lawyer Mark Holden about the company's significant legal and regulatory history.
The requests to speak to Charles Koch and Bouchouev were simply ignored. Ultimately, only Holden responded on the record, only via e-mail and only after Holden baselessly insinuated that I had been given an "opposition research" document dump from the liberal activist David Brock. (This is false.) From my perspective as a reporter, Koch Industries is the most hostile and paranoid organization I've ever engaged with—and I've reported on Fox News ;D. In a breach of ethics, Koch has also chosen to publish email correspondence characterizing the content of a telephone conversation that was, by Koch's own insistence, strictly off the record. […]
n the main, the Koch responses attempt to re-litigate closed cases — incidents where judges, juries, and, in one case, a Senate Select Committee, have already had a final say. They only muddy waters that have been clarified by a considered legal process.
--- End quote ---
Dickinson then provides an exhaustive, 14-point taken down of each of the Kochs' complaints about his story, including every instance in which the Kochs do not actually dispute the facts that he has reported, but attempt to obfuscate them and whine about that fact that he reported them. They also don't acknowledge that Dickinson attempted to give them the opportunity to talk to him about his story while reporting, but they refused.
The Kochs clearly do not stand up well to close scrutiny, and clearly are not prepared for it. For some reason, probably because they're richer than god, they seem to assume that they should be able to swoop into our political system and attempt to buy it without being subject to close examination.
That attitude, along with their long history of abusing people, the environment, and the political system, is doing them no favors. They've made themselves the subject of this election, and if Democrats hold the Senate, it will largely be because the Kochs have made themselves such good enemies.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/30/1333457/-Kochs-brothers-freak-out-in-response-to-Rolling-Stone-expose
AGelbert:
10/17/2014 04:08 PM How Big Coal & Big Oil Control Elections
SustainableBusiness.com News
We didn't hear "war on typewriters" when the industry disappeared as the Internet emerged, and we aren't hearing "war on newspapers" even though thousands of journalists have been laid off.
But coal is a different story. Even though the industry supplies just 0.6% of Kentucky's jobs, both the Democrat and Republican Senate candidates are falling over themselves on who can defend it the most.
Coal isn't under attack because of impending EPA regulations as both Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell would have us believe. Thousands of workers have been laid off in recent years because of automated production and because production as a whole is down - cheaper, abundant natural gas is taking its place.
Only 11,885 people work for coal companies in Kentucky, down from 75,000 in the 1940s. While the industry fights back against regulations that would protect workers' health, locals love it when they donate money for schools and other public services. And some rural areas of the state do still rely on coal for employment, reports InsideClimate News.
Mountaintop Removal Mining requires many fewer workers:
Instead of telling the truth about all this, and pointing to clean, renewable energy as a future job engine, the candidates and out-of-state donors stoke the coal card.
How about saying, We can be like Massachusetts which will soon have 100,000 clean energy jobs?
The Kentucky Opportunity Coalition (tied to Karl Rove), for example, spent $750,000 on a 12-week digital ad campaign "to educate Kentuckians on the disastrous policies of the Obama Administration when it comes to the Commonwealth's coal-based economy, reports InsideClimate News.
As usual, we have to look to where the money comes from. Most of McConnell's contributions come from the Koch Bros, the fossil fuel industry and investors in coal plants.
Read our article, While Feds Fund Coal Miner Re-Training, Conservatives Lie in Ads.
Chevron Buys An Election
Meanwhile in Richmond, California, Chevron is hard at work on the local level, making sure the mayor and council members don't regulate its massive refinery there.
It started in 2012, when an explosion at the refinery sent 15,000 people to the hospital as chemicals spewed into the air. The city sued and has been putting the clamps on the plant.
In response, Chevron is spending about $3 million in this tiny election to get the "right" ;D mayor and city council members elected . It's spent over $1 million on the mayor's race alone, in contrast to the opponent's $22,000. Most disgusting is Chevron's "Richmond Standard" website - a "community news service" that produces propaganda that puts Chevron and its candidates in a positive light, while demonizing the others.
Thanks to the Supreme Court Citizens United decision, corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money in federal and local elections.
But the fossil fuel industry has been rigging the system for a long time. Just since 2008, the oil industry spent over $1.1 billion - $961 million to lobby Congress and $146 million on campaign contributions - enough for each member of Congress to get $2 million, according to Fuels America.
Learn how a student exposed Chevron:(at link below) Website: www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-chevron-deluge-of-campaign-money-20141013-column.html#page=1
AGelbert:
More Proof that Mens Rea is the DEFAULT position of polluters while our DYSFUNCTIONAL COURT SYSTEM (unless you are a fascist polluter, of course! ) pretends otherwise. >:(
Secret Tape Exposes Fracking Industry Playing Dirty
Right-wing public relations consultant/astroturf king Richard Berman probably wasn’t very happy when he saw yesterday’s New York Times. Like the now infamous American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Berman’s success depends in large part on anonymity. He is known for his use of what’s called “astroturf” groups—organizations that appear to be community or citizen advocacy groups with names like “Center for Consumer Freedom” but are really shell groups for untraceable corporate donations—to attack labor unions, environmental laws, attempts to regulate the food industry and anti-smoking measures. Lately, he’s been a conduit for fossil fuel interests with his Big Green Radicals campaign, based on the mockery and personal destruction of those who advocate for the environment.
But one industry executive had enough. The anonymous executive leaked a tape to the New York Times of a June event in Colorado Springs at which Berman and Jack Hubbard, a vice president at Berman & Company, were soliciting money from oil and gas executives for the Big Green Radicals effort, telling them that they needed to exploit fear, greed and anger, and to stoke resentment against environmentally-minded celebrities. The executive told the New York Times the presentation left a bad taste in his mouth.
Last spring, that campaign placed billboards in a pair of states where the explosive growth of fracking has raised community opposition and demands for more regulation or banning the process altogether—Pennsylvania and Colorado. They mocked celebrities who had records of environmental advocacy such as Lady Gaga, Yoko Ono and Robert Redford. “Demands green living. Flies on private jets,” said the Redford Billboard.” “Would you take energy advice from a woman who wears a meat dress?” said the Lady Gaga billboard. The head-scratching billboard featuring Yoko Ono said, “Would you take energy advice from a woman who broke up the Beatles?”
At the secretly taped presentation, Berman and Hubbard laid out their strategy of playing dirty, saying “You can win ugly or lose pretty.”
Winning ugly is what he specializes in. The BigGreenRadicals website attacks big environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch and the Natural Resources Defense Council, saying these organizations “have morphed into multi-million dollar lobbying machines that use questionable tactics to scare the American public and policymakers into supporting unnecessary and unreasonable policies.”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
Agelbert NOTE: See Orwell. Also, DON'T hold your breath waiting for some law firm to sue these villains for fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, libel, conspiracy to defame and libel in the service of profit at the expense of human health from polluting fossil fuel corporations, conspiracy to degrade democracy through mendacious propaganda, misuse of media, violation of truth in advertising (and so on, etc.). THAT is NOT what LAWYERS are PAID to DO in the HANDMAIDEN of FASCISM called the Court System. Get it? Don't worry, if you don't GET IT now, you soon will...
Full article here: http://ecowatch.com/2014/10/31/richard-berman-fracking-industry-plays-dirty/
AGelbert:
Agelbert NOTE: The fossil Fuelers DOING WHAT THEY DO --> see Orwell, Karl Rove tactics and also pots and kettles, etc.
11/07/2014 02:53 PM Conservatives Take Aim at Wind Production Tax Credit, Once Again >:(
SustainableBusiness.com News
Republicans are moving quickly on their first agenda items, starting with ensuring the Production Tax Credit (PTC) - so critical to the wind industry - doesn't get renewed.
The industry is simply too successful and they want it to go away, as well as state Renewable Portfolio Standards that support it. After Republicans filibustered a bill this spring, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) promised to get it to the floor after the midterm elections, and he plans to introduce a Tax-Extenders bill next week, which includes the PTC.
After its strongest year ever in 2012 with 13.2 gigawatts (GW) installed, the US wind industry struggled through 2013 after the PTC expired - with a mere 2.8 GW of projects.
"Efforts to renew these incentives are being blocked by Republicans in Congress," says Reid. "Letting these critical incentives expire is not an option. Tax incentives level the playing field for energy, they help make renewables more affordable for consumers and more attractive to investors."
But that goes against fossil fuel interests, who say the exact opposite: The wind tax credit "restricts access to affordable energy" and "hides the true cost of wind power."
Conservatives line up against the PTC
Using the headline, Nationwide Coalition Urges Congress to End Wind Welfare ;) ;D, 66 organizations sent a letter to Republican leaders of both houses, making it clear the PTC should not be renewed. It is signed by groups like Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, Club for Growth, Heritage Action for America and Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Agelbert NOTE: 66 Organizations? I think they left out one "6". ;D But then "666" would have been a bit obvious...
Here's an excerpt: Agelbert NOTE: Grab your barf bag before reading. ;D
"The PTC is a key part of President Obama and Majority Leader Reid's attack on affordable energy from natural gas, coal, and nuclear."
"Rejecting efforts to extend the PTC is a meaningful way for this Congress to oppose the President's climate plan.
"Extending the PTC restricts Americans' access to affordable and reliable energy. The PTC harms Americans in two important ways: it hides the true cost of wind power and encourages states to keep expensive wind power mandates. This makes it easier for the President to promote his restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants because the PTC hides the true costs from ratepayers.
The PTC enables wind operators to use the tax code to engage in predatory pricing against reliable and affordable nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants. The PTC is such a large subsidy that industrial wind facilities can actually pay the electrical grid to take their electricity and still make money. This predatory pricing is designed to drive nuclear, coal, and natural gas generators out of business and it is only profitable because of the PTC."
PTC Extension
Harry Reid wants the PTC renewed retroactively and is proposing a 2-year extension.
As many of you know, the PTC has been on-again, off-again, providing an uncertain climate for growth of the wind industry.
As part of the "fiscal cliff" deal, the PTC was renewed for 2013, and now the industry is struggling to get it through yet again.
Luckily, in the last go-round, the rules were changed so that projects just had to be started - not finished - by the end of 2013, opening a bigger window for new projects. Recently, the IRS helped by giving some more room for the industry to qualify for the credit.
Without the PTC, the US Energy Information Administration expects growth will slow significantly again after 2016, when current projects are finished.
And that's exactly what fossil fuel interests want!
Thanks to the wind PTC, the US is one of the largest, fastest growing wind markets, employing some 80,000 Americans in businesses that manufacture 70% of components in the US.
Prices for wind energy have dropped substantially and are the same or even lower than fossil fuels now in most cases!
It's laughable that fossil fuel advocates call the PTC "welfare," even as they continue fighting to keep their century-long tax credits. Because the US doesn't have an energy policy, the tax code has been used to spur growth in all kinds of energy, but most extravagantly, oil, coal, gas and nuclear ... not wind and other renewables.
In the same fiscal cliff deal that renewed the PTC, fossil fuel industries retained their tax advantages, amounting to $46 billion over the next 10 years. The wind PTC would cost $18 billion if it remained in place during that time.
Wind now supplies 5% of our electricity with 61 GW installed, expected to 9% by 2020. It provides almost 30% of Iowa's electricity and South Dakota is close behind.
To level the playing field with conventional energy, Obama's Science Advisors recommend broadening the PTC to include all forms of renewable energy and keeping it place for 5-10 years.
Chokecherry is an Example
As an example of the kinds of projects the PTC supports, the largest wind project in the world was recently approved for Wyoming - the 3 gigawatt Chokecherry/ Sierra Madre wind project, where 1000 turbines will be spread across 220,000 acres of land.
Wind Farm Chokecherry Wyoming
Sited in one of windiest places in the US, the $5 billion project will supply electricity to 1 million homes - creating 1000 jobs during construction. It is one of the projects President Obama expedited as part of his "We Can't Wait" (for Congress) initiative.
Because of the size of the project and the strong wind resources, the project is viable without the PTC, but with it, electricity will be cheaper for utilities and their customers, says the developer. That's an exception to the rule, he says, most projects still need the tax credit to be viable.
Here's the full letter:
Website: http://americanenergyalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Wind-PTC-Coalition-Letter-11-6-2014.pdf
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/25993
AGelbert:
Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General
By ERIC LIPTON DEC. 6, 2014
SNIPPET:
--- Quote ---“Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year … never before have attorneys general joined on this scale with corporate interests to challenge Washington and file lawsuits in federal court.
Out of public view, corporate representatives and attorneys general are coordinating legal strategy and other efforts to fight federal regulations…” --- End quote ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html
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