Koch Bros. - Follow-up to last week

This topic is too important for only one post. Last week, I wrote that a former professor mentioned that the Koch brothers were involved in a little school board election in his town. Hardly made the news. Well, two days ago, national news spotlighted that they were at it again (of course they haven't stopped - just doesn't make the news). In Jefferson county, Colorado, three school board members backed  by a Koch brothers PAC were removed in a recall vote.

I wondered - why are the Koch's involved with a school board or multiple school boards. Jefferson County where this event occurred has approximately 850,000 students whose education agenda is affected by just five individuals on the Board of Education. The conservative agenda can be parlayed across the country school system by school system.

From the Common Dreams website comes an excellent quote from one the newly elected members ""It appears to me public education in Jefferson County is not for sale," school board member-elect Ali Lasell told Chalkbeat Colorado on Tuesday night.

 http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/11/04/victory-public-ed-colorado-boots-koch-backed-school-board

 

The Koch Brothers - Bakers and more

The 2015 elections are a week away and in what will seem like no time at all the 2016, more comprehensive, elections will be here.
The biggest bakers of our politics are already in high gear. The brothers, Charles and David Koch, do their baking with money - LOTS of it. Their ability to pour massive funds into all levels of elections defies the imagination. One of my previous professors provided an example of them being involved in a little tiny school board election in his hometown. Of course, "their" refers to the PACS, SuperPACS, etc. that the Koch's money flows through.
There have been literally thousands of articles about the Koch's, but I would like to quote an article in the Rolling Stone entitled "Together, Charles and David Koch control one of the world's largest fortunes, which they are using to buy up our political system. But what they don't want you to know is how they made all that money"
Excerpts from the article (published just prior to the 2014 elections) "Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today's GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year's midterms." One might wonder what is the reason for the second largest private firm (larger than most public firms, IBM, HP, or Honda) to spend so much on Republicans. I think much of the answer lies in what they produce or invest in to make all their money.

From the article:"The volume of Koch Industries' toxic output is staggering. According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute, only three companies rank among the top 30 polluters of America's air, water and climate: ExxonMobil, American Electric Power and Koch Industries. Thanks in part to its 2005 purchase of paper-mill giant Georgia-Pacific, Koch Industries dumps more pollutants into the nation's waterways than General Electric and International Paper combined. The company ranks 13th in the nation for toxic air pollution. Koch's climate pollution, meanwhile, outpaces oil giants including Valero, Chevron and Shell. Across its businesses, Koch generates 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year."

I think this is a great article for a reminder of how massive amounts of money are "baking" our politics and our democracy. It includes some enlightening info regarding the in-fighting within the company prior to David and Charles taking control and the current path of the conglomerate.
(http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924#ixzz3pmUnmJOC)

Social Media - News Shaker MH17

I am a "late comer" to social media- this blog is barely two months old. I have always been of the opinion that social media could never replace investigative journalism of the Edward R. Murrow's. I was shaken positively with this week's events regarding the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

British blogger, Eliot Higgins, and his collaborators were able to track the movements of a Buk missile launcher through rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine on the day the plane was shot down.
(http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/731964/social-media-sleuths-cracked-mh17-missile-case.)

. "As part of our new report examining the open source evidence of the downing of Flight MH17 we tracked the movement of the Russian military convoy that transported the Buk missile launcher to the border with Ukraine. Using StoryMap we’ve put together this interactive map of the route the 53rd Brigade."

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2015/10/08/exploring-russias-53rd-brigades-mh17-convoy-with-storymap/

I found Higgins website quite interesting, it is definitely worth a look. The latest for the blogger(s) is the Russian activity in Syria

John Boehner- Shaker in the news

Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, made an announcement that shook not only members of his party, but the Democrats as well. He announced his resignation as Speaker. It has been reported that after the announcement, he sang a few bars of "zip-a-dee-doo-dah."
This announcement is significant for a number of reasons - Boehner is the most powerful Republican in America. He is only the fifth speaker to resign and the first to not be either moving to another government position or under investigation. The speaker is also the next person after the Vice President in the line of succession to the presidency.
It has been reported that he had "had enough" of the ideological combat in the Republican Party. What is almost as surprising was - the "odds-on" favorite to succeed him, Kevin McCarthy, subsequently announced he would not seek the Speaker position.
For me, this speaks volumes about America at this moment. Working "across the aisle" occurs no more in Congress. In fact, it looks they can't work across the invisible aisle within their own party. We have hard line members of Congress willing to shut down the government, as occurred in 2013, again this year and the year is not over and could still happen.

News Maker - Prison debate team

A very interesting incident occurred in the penal system of New York State - "Harvard debate team loses to prison debate team." (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/02/1427151/-Harvard-debate-team-loses-to-prison-debate-team)
A debate team formed in a prison facility in New York State defeated the debate team from Harvard University. The prisoners were prepared in a program created by Bard College and they accomplished this feat without access to the internet.  (http://bpi.bard.edu/ )
Last year, New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced plans to increase funding for prisoners to earn college degrees during their incarceration.
Georgia has one of the highest recidivism rates in the country and in our state, 1 in 13 residents is either incarcerated, on probation, or on parole. However, educational opportunities are not offered and the cycle continues to repeat itself.  L.C."Buster" Evans, assistant commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections, said: "It has been many years, if ever, since an inmate has completed his or her high school diploma while incarcerated in a state correctional facility for adults."
I say our state can and should do much, much more.

Meeting of the Presidents

For me, the meeting of Putin and Obama is larger than the current topic - Syria. The world is held under the threat of military escalations between our two countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there existed hope of a Russia with political philosophy more aligned with the US and multiple treaties including the START nuclear reduction treaty pointed to a normalization of relations.

President Putin's rise to power coupled with what Putin saw as an aggressive westernization of former Soviet states through NATO admissions created a "caged animal" response by Russia. We have witnessed several military exercises and armed conflict in Crimea and Ukraine, for example, and more recently the infringement of western airspace by Russian military aircraft. Our placing sanctions on Russia have not seemed to have the effect that many might have hoped for.

Earlier this year, KSU sponsored a talk by Dr. J Arch Getty, professor at UCLA. Getty discussed "Does Putin have a point?" in which he provided an interesting glimpse of his experiences in Russia and how the US is viewed and how Putin is perceived in Russia. What I took away was - if we were in Putin's shoes what would we do? What would we do if we saw Russian assimilation attempts to annex Puerto Rico, or Guam or American Samoa?

This is the area that I see as a bigger agenda item than Syria - for the US and Russia to respect each other's viewpoint and diminish the escalation of military exercises in Europe.

Pope Francis - Climate change

I am saddened by the attitude Fox news and specifically Dr. W. David Montgomery, take regarding the Pope's call to all inhabitants of this earth to address climate change. In his Encyclical Letter "LAUDATO SI’" sub-titled "On care for our Common Home" Pope Francis talks about numerous things that we should be addressing. He quotes previous Pope's, for example Pope Paul "he warned that human beings frequently seem to see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption.” Dr. Montgomery steps in and states "some leaders, including President Obama, who exaggerate the current impacts of climate change on the United States to promote the idea that self-interest demands action." He also stated "The poor in wealthy countries, however, will suffer additionally from the efforts Pope Francis proposes to limit emissions, as the price of energy rises against their small and sometimes shrinking incomes." Finally - "Laudato Si also blames wealthy countries for causing global poverty by exhausting the world's resources. This is simply false."

A documentary released this year "Merchants of Doubt" presents a fact filled assessment of the "experts" that corporations hire to combat the issues raised surrounding GMO's, climate change, water quality. The overarching theme - these "experts" are excellent public speakers and have minimal to no scientific training. Their entire goal is find the tiniest thread of uncertainty and build it to a level of doubt that is hard to overcome in the untrained public. In my search on Dr. Montgomery's background, I could not find one piece of evidence that he has had any scientific training on the causes of climate change. 

From the movie, "Merchants of Doubt" a scene that I think sums it up. Talk show host, Morton Downey Jr. challenged a scientist that was raising the alarm regarding the dangers of cigarettes (in the midst of spin doctors presenting evidence that those claims were false and could not be proved). Downey yelled at the scientist and said he, Downey, looked a lot younger than the scientist. Sadly on two fronts - the scientist seemed to lose the discussion, but Downey paid the ultimate price - he died from lung cancer at 67.

May we all have a more open mind to scientific alerts than Morton Downey and thousands of others.