Mark Zuckerberg’s political group funds ads promoting Keystone and ANWR drilling

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/news/mark-zuckerbergs-political-group-funds-ads-promoting-keystone-and-anwr-drilling/


Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, which bills itself as a bipartisan entity dedicated to passing immigration reform, has spent considerable resources on ads advocating a host of anti-environmental causes — including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and constructing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The umbrella group, co-founded by Facebook’s Zuckerberg, NationBuilder’s Joe Green, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, and others in the tech industry, is called FWD.US. …

FWD.US is bankrolling two subsidiary organizations to purchase TV ads to advance the overarching agenda — one run by veteran Republican political operatives and one led by Democratic strategists.

Both of those subsidiary groups have put out ads that praise efforts to expand the oil industry — by expanding offshore oil drilling and well as building Keystone XL and opening up ANWR. The ads don’t even mention immigration, but instead “appear to be trying to give political cover to vulnerable centrists, in hopes of ensuring their support for major immigration reform,” ThinkProgress writes.

[freshwest]

1. Not surprising, just disgusting. Exactly the kind of thing I expected him to do.

[GeorgeGist]

2. Derps

Kate Hansen, communications director for FWD.US told ThinkProgress: “FWD.us is committed to showing support for elected officials who promote the policy changes needed to build the knowledge economy. Maintaining two separate entities, Americans for a Conservative Direction & the Council for American Job Growth, to support elected officials across the political spectrum – separately – means that we can more effectively communicate with targeted audiences of their constituents.”

Source:http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/04/26/1925921/mark-zuckerbergs-new-political-group-spending-big-on-ads-supporting-keystone-xl-and-oil-drilling/

[xchrom]

3. +1