After the Koch brothers secretly mobilized $100 million from fellow billionaires to unseat President Barack Obama last weekend, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) wrote an op-ed in Politico today accusing the Obama administration of harassing the co-owners of Koch Industries and Pompeo’s greatest contributors. Calling Charles and David Koch “U.S. citizens, taxpayers, entrepreneurs and employers,” Pompeo claimed that the administration is taking a “Nixonian approach to politics”:

Liberal blogs and publications have published countless slanted pieces on Koch Industries, heavy on innuendo and light on facts.

The Obama administration has long been criticized for maintaining a de facto “enemies list” of its perceived political opponents, whether they are respected Supreme Court justices, disfavored reporters or private citizens who just want to keep their own doctors. The Democrats’ obsession with the Kochs as a political target is, indeed, additional evidence of a truly Nixonian approach to politics.

That the Obama administration and its allies use private citizens as symbols to be attacked and vilified is unfair and deeply threatening to our civic life and the rule of law.

In fact, the Koch brothers have made themselves very public figures. After Charles Koch founded the Cato Institute in 1977, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket he bankrolled in 1980. In person and through their latest front group, the astroturf organization Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs have “attacked and vilified” the Obama administration to a level that approaches “obsession”:

Charles Koch: Obama Is ‘Greatest Assault On American Freedom.’ In his letter inviting fellow conservative millionaires and billionaires to a secret Palm Springs retreat in January 2011, Charles Koch accused President Obama of “the greatest assault on American freedom and prosperity in our lifetimes.” [ThinkProgress]

Charles Koch: Obama Is ‘Saddam Hussein.’ At another secret retreat in the fall of 2011, Charles Koch compared President Obama and the 2012 elections to Saddam Hussein and the Iraq War. “We have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we’ve got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country.” [Mother Jones, 9/6/11]

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(Hint: They Pump $1 Billion into the State Economy and Support 13,000 Jobs)

by Jessica Goad, cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney likes to sing about America the beautiful, but he mainly seems interested in mining it.

In an interview with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal last night, Mitt Romney expressed his ignorance of why the United States owns and manages approximately 80 percent of Nevada‘s land, most of it uninhabitable mountains and desert.  In response to a question about whether he would sell public lands back to the state, Romney stated that that “I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land”:

I don’t know the reason that the federal government owns such a large share of Nevada.  And when I was in Utah at the Olympics there I heard a similar refrain there.  What they were concerned about was that the government would step in and say, “We’re taking this” — which by the way has extraordinary coal reserves — “and we’re not going to let you develop these coal reserves.”  I mean, it drove the people nuts.  Unless there’s a valid, and legitimate, and compelling governmental purpose, I don’t know why the government owns so much of this land.

So I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land, so I don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m about to hand it over.” But where government ownership of land is designed to satisfy, let’s say, the most extreme environmentalists, from keeping a population from developing their coal, their gold, their other resources for the benefit of the state, I would find that to be unacceptable.

Watch it:

Romney’s statement stands in stark contrast to the conservative tradition of knowing the value of protecting the lands that belong to all of us places for future generations. Teddy Roosevelt, the great Republican conservationist, once said, “Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.”

Read more

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This morning ThinkProgress Green reported on Mitt Romney’s statement to the Reno Gazette-Journal that he doesn’t know “what the purpose is” of public lands.  Romney is scheduled to attend a rally in Colorado tomorrow, where recent polling shows Coloradans have a clear sense of what purpose public lands serve in their state.  Here are a few facts to consider:

-  Coloradans view public lands as essential to their state’s economy. A recent poll from the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project found that 93 percent of voters in the state believe that “our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of Colorado’s economy.”  This includes 75 percent of people who support the Tea Party. [Colorado College, 1/30/12]

-  Coloradans feel that public lands are essential to their quality of life. The Colorado College poll also asked whether voters agreed with the statement that “our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of Colorado’s quality of life.”  The response was overwhelming, with 97 percent of Coloradans agreeing. [Colorado College, 1/30/12]

-  Interior Department activities in Colorado leverage $8.3 billion every year.  This includes oil, gas, mining, recreation, timber, grazing, and other uses.  This number does not include lands managed by the Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

-  Some of America’s most treasured natural places are located on Colorado public lands. Rocky Mountain National Park, Pikes Peak, Great Sand National Park, Mesa Verde National Park, and the Maroon Bells are just a few of examples of the dozens of places that are protected for all of us to enjoy.  Tourism in Rocky Mountain National Park alone supported nearly 4,000 jobs in 2009. [Headwaters Economics, 2011]

-  Recreation opportunities abound on Colorado’s public lands.  Nearly every ski area in Colorado is on public lands, including Vail, Aspen, and Breckenridge.  Additionally, families across the state can boat down the Cache la Poudre River (a Wild and Scenic River managed by the Forest Service), see golden eagles at Colorado National Monument, and can even camp in a Forest Service campground after catching the jams at the world-famous Telluride Bluegrass Festival.  Recreation on Interior Department lands in Colorado provided $1.3 billion in economic benefits in 2010. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

-  Outdoor recreation – a $10 billion economy in Colorado – often takes place on public lands. Tourists travel to Colorado from around the world and country to experience a wide range of outdoor recreation opportunities.  The Outdoor Industry Association found that the active outdoor recreation economy contributes over $10 billion annually to Colorado’s economy and supports 107,000 jobs across the state.  Hiking, climbing, camping, hunting, fishing, and mountain biking are just a few of the outdoor activities enjoyed on public lands. [Outdoor Industry Association, 2006]

-  Hunting and angling—a $1.8 billion economy in Colorado—often take place on public lands. Millions of acres in Colorado are open to hunting for game and waterfowl and to fishing for species including cutthroat trout, the official state fish.  The Colorado Division of Wildlife reported that in 2007 hunting and angling provided $1 .8 billion in impacts to the state. [Colorado Division of Wildlife, 9/08]

-  Oil, gas, and minerals from Colorado’s public lands provide $6 billion per year in economic impacts. Mining and drilling on Interior Department-managed lands in Colorado create a tremendous amount of economic opportunity. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

Romney likes to sing “America the Beautiful” to show his love of the country. He may not know the song was inspired by the poetic beauty of Pikes Peak, one of the “purple mountains majesty” of Colorado’s public lands.

I love riding my bike. But clearly not as much as Guillaume Blanchet, who “lived” on his bicycle for 382 days in Montreal — cooking food, showering, shaving and reading his email.

Blanchet’s short film, “The Man Who Lived on His Bike,” is a delightful celebration of the bicycle. Perhaps it should mandatory viewing for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who are now considering legislation that would cut funding for bicycle promotion programs in favor of building more highways?

THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.

On “The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur,” Josh Fox, the Oscar-nominated director of “GasLand,” described his arrest on Capitol Hill at a public House Science Committee hearing on hydraulic fracturing. Fox had hired a video crew that was credentialed to cover Congress, but that crew was rejected access by the committee chair Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX). When Fox came to the hearing and set up his camera to shoot, he was swarmed by security and eventually led out in handcuffs:

This access used to be granted quite regularly when the Democrats ran the House. . . . The video you see was shot by Congressional staffers — they’re all recording. The only person who’s being threatened with arrest is me. This is not government, this is thuggery. That is what happened. They threw out John Boehner’s promise for transparency in Congress in handcuffs with me yesterday. And they threw out the First Amendment. They threw out the Constitution.

Watch it:

Fox’s arrest has spurred outrage and increased attention about the apparent poisoning of Pavillion, WY by the natural gas industry.

Last week, ThinkProgress Green reported that Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN), joined the oil industry in lobbying Congress on behalf of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, using taxpayer dollars. Although the proposed pipeline does not go through Indiana, and few, if any, Indiana workers are expected to be employed in its construction, the state’s DC representatives received $66,000 from Indiana taxpayers to lobby Congress in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Citing the ThinkProgress Green report, House Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote one of those lobbyists yesterday, noting that her disclosed Keystone KL lobbying “seems unusual” as Indiana lacks any “obvious interest” in seeing the pipeline completed. In the letter, addressed to lobbyist Deborah Hohlt, Waxman “would appreciate the opportunity to learn about Indiana’s interests in the proposed Keystone XL pipeline” and requested a briefing from her.

“You’re kind of catching me off-guard,” Hohlt told Politico when asked about her tar-sands lobbying:

Hohlt had no answers when POLITICO contacted her Thursday, saying she still hadn’t seen Waxman’s letter. “You’re kind of catching me off-guard,” she said.

But Jane Jankowski, the press secretary for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, said Hohlt simply listed in her disclosure report “any topic she’s spoken about on behalf of the state.”

“Gov. Daniels has talked about the need for the Keystone pipeline and issued a statement about it, which she passed on to our delegation, so she included it on her report,” Jankowski wrote.

Hohlt’s disclosure form lists the pipeline as one of four energy-related issues on which she lobbied both Congress and the Department of Energy.

A second lobbyist, Griffin Foster, also reported lobbying Congress and the Obama administration on the Keystone XL pipeline on Daniels’ behalf, over the same period.

Have we learned nothing from the disastrous 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?

Below is the summary of a comprehensive report on the inadequate disaster response capabilities in the Arctic.

by Kiley Kroh, Michael Conathan and Emma Huvos

When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in the early morning hours of April 20, 2010 it spawned one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. BP Plc’s Macondo well blowout lasted 89 days, spewing nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and taking the lives of 11 men. The catastrophe showed the clear need for a massive, well-coordinated response when disaster strikes.

Though the refrain “never again” was echoed time and again in the wake of the BP oil catastrophe, we are now facing a new oil spill threat. After spending over five years and $4 billion on the process, the Royal Dutch Shell Group is on the cusp of receiving the green light to begin exploratory drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas next summer. Though Shell emphasizes it would drill exploratory wells in shallow water rather than establishing deep-water production wells like Macondo, the fundamental characteristics of the vastly unexplored and uninhabited Arctic coastline may increase the likelihood of a spill and will certainly hamper emergency response capability.

The decision to move forward with drilling in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth has deeply divided Alaska Native communities, drawn stark criticism from environmental groups, and caused other federal agencies such as the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to raise concerns about the glaring absence of sound science in the region. This is highlighted in a recent letter to the Obama administration, signed by nearly 600 scientists from around the world, calling on the president and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to follow through on their commitment to science and enact recommendations made by the U.S. Geological Survey before approving any drilling activity in the Arctic. In addition to the lack of a scientific foundation, the Arctic has inadequate infrastructure to deal with an oil spill, and response technologies in such extreme environmental conditions remain untested.

As we detail in this report, the resources and existing infrastructure that facilitated a grand-scale response to the BP disaster differ immensely from what could be brought to bear in a similar situation off Alaska’s North Slope. Even the well-developed infrastructure and abundance of trained personnel in the Gulf of Mexico didn’t prevent the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Our Arctic response capabilities pale by comparison.

Read more

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney likes to sing about America the beautiful, but he mainly seems interested in mining it.

In an interview with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal last night, Mitt Romney expressed his ignorance of why the United States owns and manages approximately 80 percent of Nevada‘s land, most of it uninhabitable mountains and desert.  In response to a question about whether he would sell public lands back to the state, Romney stated that that “I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land”:

I don’t know the reason that the federal government owns such a large share of Nevada.  And when I was in Utah at the Olympics there I heard a similar refrain there.  What they were concerned about was that the government would step in and say, “We’re taking this” — which by the way has extraordinary coal reserves — “and we’re not going to let you develop these coal reserves.”  I mean, it drove the people nuts.  Unless there’s a valid, and legitimate, and compelling governmental purpose, I don’t know why the government owns so much of this land.

So I haven’t studied it, what the purpose is of the land, so I don’t want to say, “Oh, I’m about to hand it over.” But where government ownership of land is designed to satisfy, let’s say, the most extreme environmentalists, from keeping a population from developing their coal, their gold, their other resources for the benefit of the state, I would find that to be unacceptable.

Watch it:

Romney’s statement stands in stark contrast to the conservative tradition of knowing the value of protecting the lands that belong to all of us places for future generations. Teddy Roosevelt, the great Republican conservationist, once said, “Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.”

Public lands in Nevada – and other western states—actually provide an enormous economic boost and sustain hundreds of thousands of jobs.  Indeed, recent Interior Department statistics show that federally managed public lands in Nevada provided over $1 billion in economic impacts and supported 13,311 jobs in 2010 (and this statistic doesn’t even include the economic impacts of Forest Service lands, managed by the Department of Agriculture).  Recreation, energy and minerals, and grazing and timber all play a part in the economic effects that public lands provide to Nevada.  Activities like skiing at Lake Tahoe, boating at Lake Mead, and hiking at Great Basin National Park all take place on public lands.

Even Romney himself once mentioned on the campaign trail that when on vacations with his family when he was young “we went from national park to national park.  And they [my parents] were teaching me to fall in love with America.”

He might want to have a better answer about the purpose and value of public lands before he arrives in Colorado tomorrow.  A recent poll from the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project found that 93 percent of Colorado voters agreed that “Our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of Colorado’s economy.”

by Greg Hanscom, reposted from Grist

It was apparently not enough to obliterate funding for bike lanes and walking paths and kids trying to get to school. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wants to keep our tax dollars from paying for public transit as well.

Earlier this week, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) unveiled a draft transportation bill that would cut all designated funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure, the Safe Routes to School program, and grants that have encouraged “complete streets” projects. Still, it looked like the more egregious provisions would be stripped away as the legislation — titled “The American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act” — ran through the lawmaking process. And at least the bill maintained the country’s longstanding, if weak, commitment to public transportation.

Then, Wednesday night, Boehner and the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee proposed killing a longstanding rule that sets aside a portion of the gas tax to fund trains and buses and other public transportation systems.

“We were all expecting some weird stuff,” says David Goldberg with the nonprofit Transportation for America, which has raised the alarm over the latest move. “But we weren’t expecting this now.”

In his attempt to reverse a longstanding commitment to transit (the “mass transit account” was created in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan), Boehner may have gone too far. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials — that is, the people who build this country’s roads — has come out against the move, and there are rumors that even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may oppose it.

What could Boehner possibly be thinking?

Read more

An investigation by the Corporate Crime Reporter blog forced the Sierra Club to admit that it secretly had taken millions of dollars from the Chesapeake Energy natural gas company to fund its Beyond Coal campaign from 2007 to 2010 under the leadership of Carl Pope. Time’s Bryan Walsh writes in the complete exposé that Michael Brune ended the relationship when he became executive director in 2010:

Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past. It’s also sure to anger ordinary members who’ve been uneasy about the Club’s relationship with corporations.

In a Sierra Club blog post, Brune explained his response when he became the executive director in 2010: “We cannot accept money from an industry we need to change. Very quickly, the board of directors, with my strong encouragement, cut off these donations and rewrote our gift acceptance policy.”

by Zachary Rybarczyk and Stephen Lacey

Republican presidential front runner Mitt Romney makes more money in one day than the average American makes in a year. With $20.9 million in income last year and a lower tax rate than most middle-class Americans, perhaps he’d be willing to join the thousands of homeowners around the country who are investing in solar?

A new analysis from the solar financing and installation company SunRun finds that it could be a fruitful investment not just for Romney, but for all the other Republican candidates. The company evaluated the solar resources, siting potential and electricity rates at each of the candidates’ primary homes (not second and third homes, in the case of Mitt Romney) and found that they could cumulatively save more than $300,000 over a 20-year period with a solar financing package:

This is assuming, of course, that one of these candidates doesn’t move into the White House. If so, perhaps they’ll speed up the installation of a system on the White House that was supposed to happen in April of last year.

Romney has made some strange comments about solar lately. Before the New Hampshire primary, he falsely claimed that the federal loan guarantee program has caused investors to “pull back” from the solar industry. In fact, the exact opposite happened: Solar installations more than doubled in 2011.

Maybe if the candidates make a personal investment in solar, they’ll change their tune.

Heck, even Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly said late last year that he would consider installing solar. Will the presidential candidates?

A major report on the prospect of offshore drilling in the Arctic by the Center for American Progress concludes that the oil industry is not prepared to prevent disaster to this remote and fragile region. The Obama administration’s offshore drilling oversight agency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, has approved Royal Dutch Shell’s plan to begin exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea beginning in the summer of 2012, pending approval by other agencies.

In “Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic,” the authors, Kiley Kroh, Michael Conathan, and Emma Huvos, investigate the prospect of drilling in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth, and find the preparations by the oil and gas industry, federal agencies, and Congress are inadequate, overstretched, and untested:

This report outlines the specific shortcomings in both Shell’s response plans and the private- and public-sector response capabilities to a devastating oil spill in the Arctic region of the United States. Failing to meet the targets laid out here will expose the residents and natural resources of one of the last unspoiled places on the planet to an unacceptable level of risk. Until the oil and gas industry and its federal partners can demonstrate with certainty that they can identify and respond to a true worst-case scenario incident, the Arctic should remain off-limits to exploration and drilling.

In one telling example of dangerous shortcuts in the rush to drilling, Shell’s spill response plan describes a “worst-case scenario” of a spill happening in the relatively warm month of August, although it submitted plans to drill into the drastically harsher month of October.

The report also contrasts the very limited infrastructure for oil spill response in Alaska to the robust infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico (which was still unable to prevent serious harm from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster).

In October, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator Jane Lubchenco told ThinkProgress Green that the implications of accelerating climate change by drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic has “huge implications for the global system.” Although NOAA is the nation’s top oceanographic agency, its scientists play only a minor, advisory role in the government’s approval of offshore drilling, which is run by the Interior Department. NOAA plays a larger role in cleaning up after oil spills.

Below is the summary of CAP’s recommendations for what needs to happen before offshore Arctic drilling should proceed: Read more

Other stories below: Cedar trees are victims of climate change; Poor minorities face greatest health risks from climate change

EU Climate Chief Seeks Doubling of Global Clean Energy at Rio

European Union Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said countries meeting at a conference in June should pledge to double the share of renewable energy they use by 2030 and give all citizens access to sustainable power.

The nations also need to double the world’s energy efficiency, Hedegaard told reporters today in New Delhi.

World leaders will gather in Rio de Janeiro in June for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, known as Rio+20 in policy circles. The first conference in Rio in 1992, known as the Earth Summit, drew 108 heads of state and set up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to stabilize increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

“If we could have these targets accepted by the whole world in Rio, then we could make a substantial step forward,” Hedegaard said, declining to say whether promises made at the conference should be legally binding.

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