Weekly Audit: Crashing the Koch's Billionaire Caucus

by: The Media Consortium

Tue Feb 01, 2011 at 11:44

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Oil barons Charles and David Koch held their annual billionaires’ summit in Palm Springs on Sunday, Nancy Goldstein reports in The Nation. Every year, the Kochs gather with fellow plutocrats, prominent pundits, and Republican legislators to plan their assault on government regulation and the welfare state. This is the first year that the low-profile gathering has attracted protesters.

Campaign Cash: Corporations Get More Power, Political Parties Get Less

by: The Media Consortium

Tue Oct 26, 2010 at 12:49

by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger

War chests from right-wing billionaires and corporate titans are funding tremendous portions of political activity, from the so-called grassroots activism of the Tea Party to the streamlined lobbying assaults of the nation’s largest corporations.

Morning No: Different Priorities

by: Natasha Chart

Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 07:09

– Obama finally makes some recess appointments. Craig Becker is in, labor should be happy. Dawn Johnsen isn’t, more evidence the president thinks women’s health care is icky. Islam Siddiqui, a notorious pesticide pusher from an industry association that freaked out about the White House organic garden, is in.

– In case you missed it, health insurance reform added back $250 million to abstinence-only education, a program known to have no lasting effect on teen sexual behavior besides to reduce condom and birth control use.

– If you follow environmental issues, you probably know that ExxonMobil has been a huge funder of climate science denial. Though as it turns out, Koch industries is the biggest supporter of climate misinformation, outspending Exxon Mobil by close to 3:1. If you don’t follow environmental politics though, Koch’s funding of Heritage, Cato and the Manhattan Institute probably puts a wrench in your day now and again, anyhow.

– KBR will finally have to face Jamie Leigh Jones in court after she was raped by several fellow KBR employees, locked in a shipping container and then told by the company that her contract barred her from suing them over it.

– Russia reels from a second set of twin suicide bomb attacks in Dagestan, a North Caucasus republic. A local police official is among the 12 dead.

– The systemic implications of peak oil are all very well and good, but peak copper?

– Pedophiles and their accomplices seem to have no end of enablers. Eeeew.

– The wingnuts, they’re coming for your Social Security. And they might have plenty of friends at the president’s deficit commission. Via Avedon.

– Here’s the lowdown on government housing support programs, along with the bad news that not only might the market not be coming back, it might be headed for another dive.

– A small amount of chocolate every day may be good for your heart. I know what I’m getting at the store today.