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Politics

REPORT: Everything You Need To Know About The Koch Brothers

By Guest Blogger on Apr 4, 2011 at 9:00 pm

Our guest blogger is Tony Carrk, Policy Director for Progress Central.

Today, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released a report shedding light on the vast Koch network and how it operates. The report shows that Charles and David Koch have used the considerable wealth (they are worth a combined $44 billion) to push policies that put their profits ahead of the interests of most Americans.

The report finds:

  • Grassroots organizing for big business. The Koch brothers use their considerable wealth to bankroll the right wing, including the Tea Party. This serves the purpose of furthering not only their right-wing ideology but also their bottom line. Koch Industries has a lot to gain from gutting government oversight and electing candidates who oppose government regulation, especially in the oil-and-gas industry.
  • $85 million to 85 think tanks. Identification of at least $85 million the Koch brothers have given to at least 85 right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups over the past decade and a half.
  • State organizing. The Koch brothers are active at the state level, spending $5.2 million on candidates and ballot measures in 34 states since 2003. They donated directly to 13 governors that won election last year.
  • Over 70% of the GOP Freshman. The Kochs donated directly to 62 of the 87 members of the House GOP freshman class.
  • 2012. The Kochs are not going away. In fact, they have already pledged to raise $88 million for the 2012 election and have started scheduling events for potential Republican presidential candidates.

Read the full report here.

This report is intended to be a guide to help progressives map out the vast network of influence the Koch brothers have built over the last decades. By exposing the Koch brothers’ agenda and shedding light on how they operate, progressives can force a public debate that will show that the Koch brothers are outside the mainstream of most Americans and that they are putting their self-interest and right wing agenda ahead of middle-class families.

Climate Progress

Report On The Koch Brothers: Everything You Need To Know About The Financiers Of The Radical Right

By Guest Blogger on Apr 4, 2011 at 9:00 pm

Our guest blogger is Tony Carrk, Policy Director for Progress Central.

Today, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released a report shedding light on the vast Koch network and how it operates. The report shows that Charles and David Koch have used the considerable wealth (they are worth a combined $44 billion) to push policies that put their profits ahead of the interests of most Americans.

The report finds:

  • Grassroots support for big business. The Koch brothers use their considerable wealth to bankroll the right wing, including the Tea Party. This serves the purpose of furthering not only their right-wing ideology but also their bottom line. Koch Industries has a lot to gain from gutting government oversight and electing candidates who oppose government regulation, especially in the oil-and-gas industry.
  • $85 million to 85 think tanks. Identification of at least $85 million the Koch brothers have given to at least 85 right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups over the past decade and a half.
  • State organizing. The Koch brothers are active at the state level, spending $5.2 million on candidates and ballot measures in 34 states since 2003. They donated directly to 13 governors that won election last year.
  • Over 70% of the GOP Freshman. The Kochs donated directly to 62 of the 87 members of the House GOP freshman class.
  • 2012. The Kochs are not going away. In fact, they have already pledged to raise $88 million for the 2012 election and have started scheduling events for potential Republican presidential candidates.

Read the full report here.

This report is intended to be a guide to help progressives map out the vast network of influence the Koch brothers have built over the last decades. By exposing the Koch brothers’ agenda and shedding light on how they operate, progressives can force a public debate that will show that the Koch brothers are outside the mainstream of most Americans and that they are putting their self-interest and right wing agenda ahead of middle-class families.

Climate Progress

Yes, wind and wave power are renewable; New Scientist pulls a Charlie Sheen

By Joe Romm on Apr 4, 2011 at 8:03 pm

In the annals of absurdly sexed up science stories crying for attention like, oh, some addled TV star, we have a new contender.  The once-excellent New Scientist, which has started running seriously flawed climate stories, as we’ve seen, now runs this stunner:

Wind and wave energies are not renewable after all

Build enough wind farms to replace fossil fuels and we could do as much damage to the climate as greenhouse global warming

Rubbish.  Indeed, what is surprising about this entire piece is just how much misinformation it contains.  You can read the original, unsexy, somewhat opaque (and probably wrong) paper submitted to Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society here.

Even if it were true that increasing global wind power capacity 300-fold (!) would do as much damage to the climate as greenhouse warming — and there’s no evidence in this study that it would — wind and wave power would still be renewable.  As NASA’s Gavin Schmidt wrote me (see below), “The NS headline is wrong.”

I’ve been bombarded with people asking me to respond to this in detail, so here goes.

Read more

Economy

Scott Walker Gives $81,500 Government Job To Top Donor’s 26-Year-Old College Dropout Son

By Guest Blogger on Apr 4, 2011 at 7:30 pm

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R)

Since taking office in January, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has stripped public workers of their collective bargaining rights, proposed wage cuts to local government employees, and insisted that his “state is broke” and that its public workers are overpaid. But Walker applies a different standard to himself.

Today, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reveals that Walker is using state funds to pay more than $81,500 a year to the 26-year-old son of a major campaign donor with no college degree and two drunken-driving convictions.

Despite having almost no management experience, UW Madison college dropout Brian Deschane now oversees state environmental and regulatory issues and manages dozens of Commerce Department employees. After only two months on the job, Deschane has already received a 26 percent pay raise and a promotion.

Deschane’s father, Jerry Deschane was a major financial backer of the Governor’s campaign:

Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association…bet big on Walker during last year’s governor’s race.

The group’s political action committee gave $29,000 to Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, last year, making it one of the top five PAC donors to the governor’s successful campaign. Even more impressive, members of the trade group funneled more than $92,000 through its conduit to Walker’s campaign over the past two years.

Total donations: $121,652.

Deschanes’ father admitted that during the gubenatorial campaign he may have put in “good words” for his son with Walker campaign manager (and current chief of staff) Keith Gilkes. A state official has confirmed that Gilkes “recommended Deschane for an interview at the agency.” Michael McCabe, the executive director of the Wisconsin democracy Campaign, said the appointment had “all the markings of political patronage.”

In the coming months, we may be seeing more cases of Brian Deschanes. The anti-union law Walker signed last month also included provisions that would convert more than thirty-seven civil service positions into political appointees chosen by the Governor.

– Kevin Donohoe

Health

Three Potential Consequences Of Paul Ryan’s Medicare Premium-Support Reforms

By Igor Volsky on Apr 4, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Jonathan Cohn explains that Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) pending Medicare reforms — so-called premium support — would transform the program from a defined benefit system, in which all seniors are guaranteed a certain set of health care benefits, to a defined contribution, under which the government would contribute a certain amount towards the purchase of private coverage. In practicality, this means that Republicans would take seniors currently under 55 out of traditional Medicare and give them a choice of private insurers that (for a multitude of reasons, including profit and overhead) don’t have a terribly good track record of controlling health care spending and have spent more per enrollee most years than Medicare. “[T]he government will pay about the first $15,000 in premiums” and “those who are poorer or less healthy would receive bigger payments than others,” the Wall Street journal reports. Seniors who choose a plan that costs more than the government’s contribution would be responsible for paying the difference between the two, while those who choose a plan a that costs less may be eligible for a rebate.

It’s unclear how the $15,000 contribution is determined. Ryan has said that he is moving away from the waiver proposed in his Roadmap, meaning that the premium support may hinge not on some predetermined amount, but on actual bids submitted by private insurance companies. Such an approach would better insulate seniors from sudden premium increases (since the government contribution would automatically increase if costs do), but beneficiaries will still face very significant changes:

1) INCREASED COSTS FOR LOWER INCOME SENIORS: Ryan is suggesting that lower-income seniors would receive a larger premium support, but since the goal of reform is to lower federal spending on Medicare, it’s likely that the government’s premium support won’t keep up with premium increases. As a result, seniors who may not be able to afford to pay anything above the government contribution may be stuck in cheaper and perhaps lower quality health plans that contract with lower quality providers or cover fewer expensive tests and procedures. Also, if the costs of premiums increase more rapidly than beneficiaries’ incomes, poorer seniors, find themselves unable to afford a higher-cost option.

2) INCREASED COSTS FOR SICKER SENIORS: Insurers would be encouraged to design policies that attract a healthier segment of the Medicare population by either advertising certain health benefits (like gym memberships) while under promoting benefits (like cancer treatment) that would enlist sicker applicants. This would lead to an “adverse selection” problem in which healthier beneficiaries will gravitate towards certain plans, increasing the costs for sicker individuals who need a broad range of services.

3) CONFUSION OVER POLICY OPTIONS: Seniors may have a hard time choosing and discerning between different health care plans, potentially enrolling in a plan that does not work well for them. Moreover, since plans will likely submit different bids every year, the government’s premium support may change annually, meaning seniors’ health care spending or health plan would also change frequently. Also, if insurers are not required to offer a standard set of benefits, seniors may have a hard time making a real apples-to-apples comparison of different policies.

All this represents a very serious change for a program that has remained fairly consistent since its enactment in 1965. Medicare premium support looks a lot like the managed competition arrangement that Republicans are seeking to repeal in the Affordable Care Act. But that actually represents a great step backwards for Medicare, which — unlike the ACA — was founded on the philosophy that all seniors are entitled to equal coverage and that economic risk should be spread across the rich, poor, healthy and sick. These reforms would segment seniors into different plans on the basis of health status and ability to pay, shift the costs and risks of insurance onto individual beneficiaries, and give private insurers a whole lot more control over the health care market.

Update

It’s worth pointing out that a Congressional Budget Office analysis of a similar proposal Ryan offered along with Alice Rivlin argues that given the higher costs of private coverage — private insurers are less efficient than Medicare — beneficiaries will have to spend more for the same amount of coverage:

Voucher recipients would probably have to purchase less extensive coverage or pay higher premiums than they would under current law, for two reasons. First, most of the savings for Medicare under the proposal stem from reducing the amounts that the federal government would pay for enrollees on a per capita basis, relative to the projections under current law. Second, future beneficiaries would probably face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare.

Politics

Issa Falsely Claims He Ended Earmark Requests Benefiting His Real Estate After Purchase

By Lee Fang on Apr 4, 2011 at 6:30 pm

Last week, ThinkProgress broke a story revealing that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) placed nearly $1 million in earmarks potentially benefiting real estate property that he owns. In early 2008, Issa publicly listed a multi-million earmark improvement on West Vista Way in Vista, California. Later that year, Issa purchased a $16.6 million medical office building on the same road where he had requested an earmark. He made the purchase with the knowledge that the earmark was pending, then finalized the deal before slipping the earmark into an Omnibus spending bill.

On Saturday, Jeff McDonald at the San Diego Union-Tribune published an article about the controversy. Reached for comment, Issa’s spokesman Frederick Hill called ThinkProgres “part of a left-wing attack machine.” However, in his next statement to McDonald, Issa’s spokesman appeared to concede that the earmark represented a conflict of interest:

“Representative Issa started making requests for West Vista Way in 2006,” Hill said. “After he bought the building, he didn’t make any more requests. The allegation by Think Progress is patently false.”

By claiming that the Issa consciously “didn’t make any more [earmark] requests” to improve the West Vista Road after the building purchase, Issa’s spokesman is tacitly acknowledging that the earmark would financially benefit Issa’s real estate, and that such earmark is unethical.

In fact, Issa did continue earmarking to improve the road leading to his office building after the purchase was made. According to the timeline we posted last week, Issa listed the earmark before the purchase, then fought to have two separate earmarks for the road approved months later. Unlike any other investors interested in buying the building, only Issa knew that he would follow through and secure the earmark later on. As a member of Congress, he was privileged with the knowledge that the earmark benefiting the property was not only pending, but that he would finalize the earmark after he bought the property. View a picture below of the map showing the location of the earmark and the property owned by Issa:

Issa has argued that an “earmark is tantamount to a bribe.” He has also declared that the public deserves to know that the earmark “requests we make benefit our communities, our country, and don’t line our pockets.” Since the West Vista Way earmark hasn’t begun yet (because of local budget problems), will Issa now withdraw the earmark request — especially given his spokesman’s comments acknowledging the ethical problems surrounding the project.

Update

Last week, MSNBC’s Cent Uygur covered the story. Watch it:

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 4, 2011 at 6:14 pm

Silent cries tonight:

— What does German competitiveness amount to?

— “Not just the military expeditions to the Orient of the last decade, but the financial bubble preceding and accompanying them, have tilted the relationship between the two states in Brazil’s favour.”

— Power Shift: Australia’s future between Washington and Beijing.

— What to look for in Paul Ryan’s budget.

— Do geezernomics drive deflation?

I think Lykke Li probably should have titled this one “Sadness is My Boyfriend” instead of “Sadness is a Blessing” but I like it either way.

Economy

Returning Union Membership To The 1980 Level Would Increase Middle-Class Incomes By $1,532 Per Year

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 4, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Republican governors in several states, as well as Republican lawmakers at the federal level, have sought to bust and restrict unions while setting barriers for those workers who want to unionize ever higher, in what amounts to a direct assault on the middle-class. In addition to securing important labor protections, when unions are strong, the middle-class is strong. As new research from David Madland, Nick Bunker, and Karla Walter shows, every percentage point increase in unionization builds middle-class incomes for both union members and non-union members:

Each percentage point increase in union membership puts about $153 more per year into the pockets of the middle class — meaning that if unionization rates increased by 10 percentage points (about the level they were in 1980) — then the typical middle class household would earn $1,532 more this year. This figure indicates how much better off all members of the middle class would be — not just those who are union members — if unions regained some strength. And these gains would continue year after year.

To put these results in context, our analysis indicates that increasing union membership is as important to rebuilding the middle class as boosting college graduation rates, results that while shocking to some, are consistent with previous research.

Wages for the working class have been essentially stagnant for wages, while income inequality in the U.S. is the worst its been since the 1920s. At the moment, the top one percent of households make almost 25 percent of the nation’s income, while making about ten percent in the 1970s. Last year alone, CEO pay grew by 27 percent, while worker pay grew by just two percent.

Increasing unionization can help reverse some of these trends, and can also help boost the overall economy. After all, “from 1947 to 1973, the period when unions were strongest and nearly one-third of workers were organized, U.S. economic output nearly tripled in size, growing at an average of 3.8 percent annually“; since 2001, economic output has been just 2.2 percent annually.

Politics

Gingrich Insists Hate Group He Funded Is Not A Hate Group

By Igor Volsky on Apr 4, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Last month, the Associated Press revealed that one of the cogs in Newt Gingrich’s vast network of business enterprises and front groups, ReAL Action, provided $125,000 to the American Family Association Action, an anti-gay activist organization that has been officially labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group’s outspoken policy directory Bryan Fischer has “proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior” and has even advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy.

This morning, ThinkProgress reminded Gingrich of his donation and asked him if he would condemn Fischer’s remarks. The former speaker of the House initially attempted to dodge the question by explaining his support for recalling judges who supported same-sex marriage in Iowa and only recanted Fisher’s extreme rhetoric after being pressed on the issue. Gingrich insisted, however, that AFA is not a hate group, but a “Christian” organization:

VOLSKY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Associated Press recently reported that one of your groups gave money to the American Family Association. This is a group that has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They’ve said that homosexuality should be criminalized, that gays should go into reparative therapy and I was wondering if you would be willing to condemn that kind of thinking today.

GINGRICH: Well, okay. You’ve just made a whole series of assertions that I’m not going to automatically accept your description of an organization that has a million and five hundred thousand members or more…The only thing I’ve done, which I was perfectly happy to defend, is I did help raise resources for a campaign to defeat three judges in Iowa. [...]

VOLSKY: But you’re not willing to condemn the fact that homosexuality should be criminalized?

GINGRICH: I’m not in favor of criminalizing homosexuality. But you didn’t ask me about my personal opinion.

VOLSKY: I was just asking why you were funding a group that has said such statements. You’ve appeared on Bryan Fischer’s radio show, who has made all of these allegations.

GINGRICH: You bring a series of allegations that I can’t check about a group that is largely a Christian based membership group, that is fairly widespread in its membership and I suspect most of those people do not in any way think of themselves as a hate group even if that’s how you would characterize them.

Watch it:

Gingrich is slow to condemn Fisher’s rhetoric because he himself seems to agree with it. For instance, the Iowa judges campaign that Gingrich is “happy to defend” was organized by the anti-marriage equality group Iowa for Freedom — which was also being funded by AFA Action — and was run by Bob Vander Plaats, who claims that homosexuality is a “public health risk.” During a very recent appearance on Fisher’s show, Gingrich also promised to “slow down the homosexual agenda” if he were elected president and told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly in 2008 that “there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us is prepared to use violence, to use harassment.”

Moreover, the Southern Poverty Law Center notes, “[g]ays aren’t the AFA’s only enemies.” “In late 2009, Fischer suggested that all Muslims should be banned from joining the U.S. military” and has repeatedly called “for a ban on immigration by Muslims and for local communities to ban the construction of mosques.” But according to Gingrich, this kind of sentiment should not reflect poorly on “a Christian based membership group.”

Culture

Against Mandatory Amateurism

By Matthew Yglesias on Apr 4, 2011 at 5:29 pm

Allison Schrager stands up for mandatory amateurism for guys who are skilled at football and basketball:

Second, playing on a college team instead of a professional minor league one is often better for the athletes. Most players, even in elite programmes, do not get a professional contract, so their alternatives would be a few years as a poorly paid minor-league athlete or a stint on a college team that includes access to a college education. The education alternative has the potential to diversify an athlete’s human capital, by developing skills other than those specifically related to basketball or American football. These skills are more valuable than wages they’d be paid as minor league athletes.

Maybe . . . but . . . do we apply this logic to any other field of endeavor? Maybe we should let movie and television studious form a cartel that refuses to pay actors in any form other than than University of California scholarships. After all, most aspiring actors won’t make it and the education they receive may prove to be more valuable than their wages. But nobody proposes that, because it would be insane. I think it just so happens to be the case that highly skilled 18 year-old football and basketball players tend to be politically disempowered individuals from politically disempowered families. Consequently, we’ve let the NCAA construct a cartel that wouldn’t be tolerated in other contexts and shouldn’t be tolerated in this one.

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