Are the Koch brothers teaching you?

For Koch Brothers Exposed by on January 24th, 2012

What’s happening to academia in Florida demands national attention. Billionaires Charles and David Koch are infringing on intellectual freedom and independence in colleges and universities. It’s an old fashioned quid pro quo where the Koch brothers get allied professors who’ll preach Ayn Rand, supply side economic policies and the values of the 19th century Guilded Age to students and the college gets some funding.

Every year, thousands of individuals move through the Koch-supported classes, lectures and fields of study, which in their totality amount to an ideological assembly line bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. There are Koch-funded agreements at more than 150 American colleges and universities.

“The Koch brothers have paid tens of millions of dollars to get their point of view instilled in classrooms, amongst faculty members and in students,” said Cary Nelson, President of the American Association of University Professors. “Programs they start tend to be one point of view only.”

Help us expose the Kochs by tweeting and asking our friend Ed Schultz to expose the Koch brothers’ psycho talk!

The Koch brothers’ business has annual revenue that are about 200 times the size ($100 billion) in one year than the entirety of Florida State University’s endowment ($423 million). At a time when governors like Florida Gov. Rick Scott are slashing spending on education, colleges and universities are virtually forced into restrictive and ideological funding agreements with questionable sources to meet students’ demands. Instead, they’re meeting the Koch brothers needs and the students are paying the intellectual price.

Enter the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, which has given more than $14.39 million in grants to universities like Florida State, Auburn, Clemson, West Virginia and Utah State. All five campuses are in financial agreements with Koch-supported groups requiring the university to hire candidates who adhere to defined ideological guidelines. In some cases, the Koch-supported groups recommend candidates to the faculty or have sway over the college’s hiring committee.

Conflicts of interest of this magnitude cannot be ignored, and Florida State students and professors didn’t swallow the Koch agreement willingly. There was an uproar on campus when the Koch brothers began infringing on academic freedom.

A campaign to organize the campus against the Koch brothers and wealthy so-called “philanthropists” who seek to use their wealth to influence academia is under way. Student leaders are fanning out across Tallahassee to organize against the Koch brothers and their ilk who would infringe on academic independence if given the chance. If the students are successful, they’ll have earned enough support to take action against the Koch brothers’ influence.

Their work deserves national exposed. We can do our part if we all tweet @ Ed Schultz and ask expose the Koch brothers’ psycho talk.

I invite you to join the conversation at our Koch Brothers Exposed page on Facebook.

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Who are the anti-Obama billionaires supporting the pipeline?

For Koch Brothers Exposed by on January 18th, 2012

Billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch were stopped today. The Keystone XL oil pipeline will meet its end today in a Washington DC press conference. The pipeline would’ve been one of the largest oil developments in American history. The pipeline would’ve destroyed American homes, farmlands and sensitive ecosystems along the nearly 2,000-mile path from Northwest Canada and through six U.S. states to the Gulf of Mexico.

But it also represented a win for brothers Koch, who’ve used their net worth to influence politicians and the media to support policies that would make them richer.

The Koch brothers helped fund and start the Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity. It’s Nebraska chapter has actively promoted and organized around the Keystone pipeline despite numerous concerns voiced by the Republican governor of Nebraska and thousands of Cornhusker residents. Many activists in our Koch Brothers Exposed network have said they’ve seen Americans for Prosperity commercials in their communities supporting the pipeline.

The Koch brothers have a profit and greed motive behind the pipeline too. The Kochs’ subsidiary company admits on its website that it is among Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters. Throughout the public hearings and process behind the Keystone pipeline’s formation, the Koch brothers have smeared journalists writing about their Keystone agenda. The Kochs and their Congressional allies stonewalled lawmakers when they began asking too many questions.

What are the Kochs hiding? They won’t even answer questions from Joel Francis, a college student and military veteran who’s passionate about protecting the environment.

There have been many cases of legal misconduct behind the Keystone XL pipeline like cost miscalculations and conflicts of interests. For years, the state department had one person handling the entire $7 billion project who virtually outsourced oversight to an unaccountable consultant company.

Peer review and independent analysis of the pipeline’s claims have exposed deception and legally corrupt tactics used to justify the project. The Canadian company building it is inflating the project’s value. Gas prices in the Midwest will be higher, and the pipeline won’t create jobs as advertised. Media Matters has documented the full spin campaign.

The Koch brothers’ echo chamber has also had devastating effects on popular programs like Social Security. We’ve been producing videos and activism that illustrate how the Koch brothers use their wealth to write script and set the goals for politicians, activists and influentials to follow. The Kochs use their wealth to launch think tanks, family foundations and nonprofit organizations to foment policies that make the Koch brothers richer.

This case has a different ending and one that puts people over profit. Organized people beat organized money and that’s reason to have hope as we confront the Kochs in 2012.

I invite you to join the conversation at our Koch Brothers Exposed page on Facebook.

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Is your Senator Representing Charles and David Koch?

For Koch Brothers Exposed by on January 13th, 2012

Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch look like they’re easy graders. Their tea party group released its rankings this week of senators and congressman who tow the Koch line most, and it gave a total of 44 A+’s for the 112th Congress.

Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group funded by the Kochs, based its grades on opposition to affordable health care, clean air, alternative energy and net neutrality. Scores were also boosted if the elected official signed the tea party group’s anti-revenue pledge.

In sum, the five senators who scored 100 percent on the Americans for Prosperity how-can-we-make-the-Kochs-richer test received $187,400 in campaign contributions from the Kochs and their allies.

These senators are Ron Johnson (R-WI), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and potential Republican vice presidential nominee Marco Rubio, a freshman from Florida. Indeed, Rubio, Johnson and Coburn have a lifetime of A+ scores!

Though the brothers are worth about $42 billion, a little political donation here and there goes a long way. Factor in the brothers’ self-serving “philanthropy” with the Kochs’ numerous other nonprofit foundations and academic think tanks and you’ve exposed a vast echo chamber of perpetuating myths and distortions designed to make the Kochs richer.

While the Koch brothers use their enormous wealth to influence democracy in the Capitol, they’re also funding or supporting groups that aim to replace the values of working families with policies that make the Koch brothers richer. At the same time, the Kochs are working to bolster their clout with influential members of the political and media elite to favor devastating environmental developments that would boost the soaring profits of Koch Industries.

To complement their political giving, the Kochs are also working with partners to curb access to the voting booth. The Kochs fund the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has helped facilitate the proliferation of voter suppression laws across the country. These laws would have their most adverse effect on students, seniors, minorities and disabled citizens.

At a local level, a Americans for Prosperity chapter helped make a community North Carolina school board race the most expensive in recent memory and favored candidates who pledged to resegregate public schools. They were ultimately rebuked by voters last year.

Exposing the Kochs reveals a pattern of selfish and manipulative priorities that consistently favor the most fortunate among us. In an era of Patriotic Billionaires, Occupy Wall Street and a decaying democratic process, the Koch brothers and their allies continue to demonstrate their satisfaction obstructing progress and social justice.

What do you think Martin Luther King Jr. would have to say about it?

I invite you to comment and take action at our Koch Brothers Exposed page on Facebook.

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Why Jamie Dimon Just Doesn’t Get It

For Who Are The 1 Percent by on December 21st, 2011

Jamie Dimon, the infamous CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is back to doing what he does best: defending the bankers of the 1% against the petulant 99%. “Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I just don’t get it,” he said at a recent investors conference. “Sometimes there’s a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole.”

Dimon says this as if he’s not one of the baddest apples in the barrel. Let’s review a few of his misdeeds:

  • Under his leadership, JPMorgan Chase “misled” investors (that’s “defrauded,” in plain English) on mortgage sales to help spur the financial crisis. The company then successfully lobbied for a $25 billion bailout and $391 billion in virtually interest-free loans.
  • He leaked false information about Washington Mutual’s finances so he could buy the company at a bargain price.
  • JPMorgan Chase was part of the “robo-signing” scandal in which banks foreclosed on homes without verifying that such action was legal and justified.
  • He hid the fact that one of JPMorgan Chase’s risky derivatives deals, known as “Squared,” was actually designed in part by a hedge fund that bet against a good chunk of the deal.
  • JPMorgan Chase recently engaged in bid-rigging and made illegal payments to win bond deals from municipal governments across the country.

This staggering lack of self-awareness is not limited to Dimon. A spate of one-percenters have been defending their tarnished image by insisting that they’re the ones who create jobs and allow the economy to succeed. They’re calling their critics “imbeciles” and saying an attack on them is an attack on “the very productive.”

Let’s forget, for a moment, that jobs are actually created when middle-class and lower-income consumers have enough money in their pockets to drive up demand. Let’s just look at what some of worst of the 1% have done to exploit the 99% and make our economy worse, not better.

  • Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs touted mortgage assets to clients while privately betting $10 billion they’d fail — fostering the kind of excessive risk-taking that caused the financial meltdown. Oh, and then he lied to Congress about it.
  • Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide Financial deceived investors into buying risky “subprime” mortgages, leading to thousands of foreclosures. He kept the law off his back by allowing key senators to take out mortgages for which the usual fees and rules didn’t apply.
  • Brian Moynihan of Bank of America overcharged customers for overdraft fees and kicked up to 10,000 people out of their homes illegally.
  • Darrell Issa, a Congressman from California who’s worth between $240-500 million, pressured federal regulators to back off a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs while holding millions in company assets. He also intervened in Congress on behalf of Merrill Lynch while being a major customer of the firm.
  • Hugh Grant, CEO of Monsanto, has established a virtual monopoly on the food supply by putting his company’s patented, genetically modified seed in about 95% of U.S. soybeans, 80% of U.S. corn, and massive amounts of other crops. Indeed, his company is helping destroy the American heartland by intimidating small farmers with frivolous lawsuits and intense pressure not to work with Monsanto’s competitors. (The ideal of “competitive markets” is invoked only when a company is trying to avoid regulation.)

This list could go on, of course — and it does, at the Who Are the 1 Percent website, where people are voting to determine which corporate bad guys I’ll make videos exposing. We started this vote, which will close by Christmas, to fight those who are making their fortunes on the backs of the 99%. Jamie Dimon is one of our nominees, and those who visit the site can rate him and many others on a scale of “ho-hum” to “pure evil.”

After all, the so-called “bad apples” actually reflect a systemic problem: those who use their wealth for destructive purposes are rewarded instead of punished, even when their tactics are illegal. Wealth doesn’t always come from making products that people enjoy or investing in small companies à la George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Things really are worse for the 99% because of a rigged system that allows certain rich people to play by different rules than everyone else.

So, Jamie Dimon, are you bad just because you’re successful? No. You’re bad because your success comes at everyone else’s expense. You’re right about one thing, though: you just don’t get it.

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How Revisionist Reporting Hurts Everyone

For War Costs by on December 15th, 2011

Media lapdogs are marked by stenographic tendencies, sympathetic frames and a reliance on industry jargon. Politico’s latest report about Congressional Republicans working to undo looming defense cuts meets all three criteria.

The piece is accurately headlined “GOP eager to scuttle defense cuts,” and nowhere in the article is any reference to data disputing the Republicans’ assumptions. The cuts on the table only take us back to the huge 2007 levels.

By the second paragraph, the story has begun parroting partisan talking points. The so-called Republican plan will “undo hundreds of billions of dollars in defense cuts by replacing it with budget savings elsewhere,” the article by Seung Min Kim says. However that’s the last we hear of the plan’s specifics until much later when the savings are pegged at $100 billion.

That’s a far cry from the original bipartisan plan that phases in several billion dollars more in budget savings (or cuts, depending on your point of view). Why the Republicans oppose the military savings they originally agreed to is obliquely mentioned in the sum of multiple paragraphs. A better and simpler way to report this would’ve been in a crisper “nut graf” that supports the article’s genesis: that after agreeing to across the board cuts as a way to force bipartisan agreements, Republicans are using Congressional purse strings to pick winners and losers.

By the third paragraph, there’s not much new information to report and the reporter’s forced into diving right into he-said journalism, which has the effect of elevating Republican senators onto an unchecked authoritative pedestal. There’s no caution that these Republicans senators could be misinformed (one of whom, Jon Kyl, coined the phrase “not intended to be factual statement“), under ideological and grassroots orders to oppose anything the White House favors, or anything that might help military families confront a 26 percent unemployment rate.

The article shifts halfway down and moves away from the issue of military cuts toward a showdown with Congressional Democrats. And voila: the reader is taken from a misleading overview of the story’s core issue to trite optics of hot potato budget knife fights. Favoring conflict more than the educational element inherent in the Fourth Estate is increasingly a systemic issue in journalism and one that threatens to accelerate the industry’s demise.

But that’s not Politico’s game. It sells papers on insiderness– something best thought of a Congress equivalent of Stephen Colbert’s truthiness, but with gridlock, name calling and deception in place of hypocrisy-busting laughs. It’s a drip-by-drip process that institutionalizes corporate jargon and ideological prisms into political factions and discourse.

It’s not about Republicans or politics or Congress or Barack Obama. It’s that revisionist reporting can make the internment of Japanese-Americans in 1940s, as another example, seem palatable to readers of The New York Times.

I invite you to fight back against war profiteering by clicking ‘Like’ on the War Costs page on Facebook.

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