"...Koch brothers screwed over the climate even more..."

[handmade34]

"...Since 2008, the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity has been urging candidates and politicians to sign its “No Climate Tax Pledge.” In 2010, we noted that many Republican House and Senate candidates had signed it, and in 2011, that at least one GOP presidential candidate had.

But it turns out the pledge has been far more widespread and influential than most people realized..."


http://grist.org/news/how-the-koch-brothers-screwed-over-the-climate-even-more-than-you-know/?utm_campaign=weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&sub_email=lynda.markison%40juno.com

[hatrack]

1. And what pegged my WTF-O-Meter was the David Koch & Nova On PBS

PBS stays afloat thanks to funding from people besides “viewers like you,” and one of those people is David Koch. David is the younger brother of Charles, his partner at Koch Industries, and the two were profiled by Jane Mayer in last week’s New Yorker.

The brothers’ involvement with PBS, however, is limited to David. He’s been contributing funding to NOVA, the station’s award-winning science documentary show, and his name has been mentioned as a sponsor. Now, with the New Yorker story inspiring more inquiry regarding the two Koch brothers and their involvement with Tea Party activities—not to mention Yasha Levine’s helpful Observer.com breakdown of their not-quite-libertarian taste for corporate welfare—people are starting to question the businessman’s motives behind funding an educational PBS series.

Letters started arriving in the inbox of PBS ombusdman Michael Getler when a three-part NOVA series called “Becoming Human” ran in the wake of the New Yorker story, Getler wrote on the station’s website. With the Koch conservative agenda now on everyone’s mind, a few jumped to conclusions regarding one of the messages of the “Becoming Human” special — that our species has endured climate changes before and shouldn’t worry about them. Because Mayer’s piece and Frank Rich’s column in the Times both mentioned that the Koch brothers have funded global warming deniers, the letters accused Nova of shaping the programming in order to keep the Koch wallet close. One viewer from Brooklyn wrote “I am unable to trust anything I saw on that program.” Dave Lucia from Denver wrote “What a shame that Nova sold itself to this pernicious bidder.” Arden Collier from Vallejo, California wrote “I expect better from PBS.”

NOVA Senior Executive Producer Paula Apsell wrote a statement denying these accuasations, assuring viewers that NOVA “maintains complete, independent editorial control of its content.” Getler, who is a pretty objective party in this whole mess, said he trusts NOVA, and called it a “consistently first-rate program.”

EDIT

http://observer.com/2010/09/could-david-koch-be-calling-the-shots-on-pbss-emnovaem/

http://watchdogprogressive.com/2011/04/the-curious-case-of-nova-and-david-h-koch/

[handmade34]

2. yes, that

and so much more...

http://watchdogprogressive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Koch-Report-2-FINAL.pdf


"...In our 2010 report, KOCH INDUSTRIES: SECRETLY FUNDING THE CLIMATE DENIAL MACHINE, funding to climate denial organizations from the Kochs were calculated from 1997 to 2008, and are described in detail in that report (pp. 21–28). Koch foundation tax records from 2009 shows that the Kochs contributed an additional $6.4 million to organizations that are part of the climate denial machine.
In total, the Koch foundations have spent over $55 million on grants to climate denial groups since 1997. Over $31 million of this figure was spent from 2005 to 2009. Over the same period of time, ExxonMobil provided $10.2 million to groups with similar activities.