Tag Archives: conservative

How the Koch Brothers Became the Koch Brothers

by LeonardoGrow Posted on May 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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Need some lunchtime reading? We have a long excerpt up from Daniel Schulman’s new book about the Koch brothers, Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty, and if you want to learn how and why David and Charles Koch became such ruthless fighters for the conservative cause, this will tell you. Long story short, they got it from their family. Their father passed down an obsessive, conspiratorial conservative streak, and endless fights with their brothers toughened them up for the political arena.

The excerpt is here. Enjoy.

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How the Koch Brothers Became the Koch Brothers

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Conservative Pro-Growth Policies Don’t Actually Produce Any Growth

by KatrinGascoigne Posted on May 7, 2014

Mother Jones

Michael Hiltzik draws my attention to something I missed when it first appeared a few weeks ago. Menzie Chinn decided to check out whether conservative pro-growth policies actually led to high growth, and the chart on the right shows the results. Chinn compared scores on the ALEC-Laffer “Economic Outlook” ranking to actual growth in 2013-14 and looked for a trend. There wasn’t one. “If there is any evidence,” he concludes after a more detailed look at the data, “it suggests that a higher ALEC-Laffer Economic Outlook score is associated with a worse economic performance.”

However, although a high ALEC-Laffer ranking may not stimulate any actual growth, Hiltzik points out that it does correspond to reduced taxes on the wealthy and slashed spending on state services that benefit the poor and working class. In other words, it may not affect growth, but it sure is a good deal for the rich. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?

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Conservative Pro-Growth Policies Don’t Actually Produce Any Growth

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Chernobyl’s Toll on Nature

by Myrna Posted on May 5, 2014

Biologist Timothy Mousseau has been studying the lasting effects of radiation on the flora and fauna of Chernobyl, Ukraine. Original article: Chernobyl’s Toll on Nature Related ArticlesBlistering barnacles! Ship’s paint can save 9% of fuel use, and even earn carbon creditsSherpa’s Family on AvalancheHow To Convince Conservative Christians That Global Warming Is Real

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Chernobyl’s Toll on Nature

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Running Away From Obamacare Is a Fool’s Errand

by Cheryle07G Posted on April 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Are red-state Democrat senators certain losers to Republican challengers in this year’s midterm election? According to recent polling, no. The races are all pretty close. But Greg Sargent points out that these Democrats do indeed have an Obamacare problem:

In Arkansas, 52 percent would not vote for a candidate who disagrees on Obamacare, versus 35 percent who are open to doing that. In Louisiana: 58-28. In North Carolina: 53-35. It seems plausible the intensity remains on the side of those who oppose the law. This would again suggest that the real problem Dems face with Obamacare is that it revs up GOP partisans far more than Dem ones — exacerbating the Dems’ already existing “midterm dropoff” problem.

However, in Kentucky, the numbers are a bit different: 46 percent would not vote for a candidate who disagrees with them on the law, while 39 percent say the opposite — much closer than in other states. Meanwhile, Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear — the most outspoken defender of Obamacare in the south — has an approval rating of 56-29.

I’m keenly aware that I’ve never run for dogcatcher, let alone had any experience in a big-time Senate race. So my political advice is worth zero. And yet, polls like this make me more, not less, invested in the idea that running away from Obamacare is a losing proposition. Electorates in red states know that these Democrats voted for Obamacare. Their opponents are going to hammer away at it relentlessly. It’s just impossible to run away away from it, and doing so only makes them look craven and unprincipled.

The only way to turn this around is not to distance yourself from Obamacare, but to try and convince a piece of the electorate that Obamacare isn’t such a bad deal after all. You won’t convince everyone, but you don’t need to. You just need to persuade the 5 or 10 percent who are mildly opposed to Obamacare that it’s working better than they think. That might get the number of voters who would “never” vote for an Obamacare supporter down from the low 50s (Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina) to the mid 40s (Kentucky). And that might be enough to eke out a victory.

Needless to say, this works best if everyone is pitching in. And surely this is the time to start. The early website problems have been resolved and the initial signup period has been a success. Conservative kvetching has taken on something of a desperate truther tone, endlessly trying to “deskew” the facts and figures that increasingly make Obamacare look like a pretty successful program. There are lots of feel-good stories to tout, and there are going to be more as time goes by. What’s more, the economy is improving a bit, which always makes people a little more sympathetic toward programs that help others.

Obamacare isn’t likely to be a net positive in red states anytime soon. But it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. It just has to be sold—and the sellers need to show some real passion about it. After all, if they don’t believe in it, why should anyone else?

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Running Away From Obamacare Is a Fool’s Errand

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Why Jeb Bush’s Greatest Political Achievement Could Sink a White House Run

by keithmelendez866 Posted on April 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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I met Jeb Bush’s biggest nightmare during a breakout session at March’s Conservative Political Action Conference held outside of DC. In a side room, Phyllis Schlafly, the octogenarian den mother of the religious right, was explaining why attendees should be afraid of a set of national educational standards, little noticed by the national political press, called Common Core. The standards are arguably Bush’s biggest political legacy. They are also the source of a rising tide of activism on the political right. One after another, conservative activists in the standing-room only audience stood up to express their alarm. “If you are a white male boy—God forbid you’re Jewish!—you’re being targeted and it’s very scary,” fretted a woman from Texas. “Very scary.”

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Why Jeb Bush’s Greatest Political Achievement Could Sink a White House Run

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SPECIAL EVENT: "Noah" Director Darren Aronofsky Discusses Faith and the Environment

by GiselleBatson Posted on April 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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There has been no lack of conservative Christian criticism aimed at Oscar-nominated director Darren Aronofsky’s blockbuster film, Noah, a work suffused with environmental themes. “I expected to be irritated by the movie—but I found myself grieved,” wrote Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, characterizing the film’s environmentalism as leading to “a horrifying anti-humanism.”

“Noah” and the Nexus of Faith and Environmentalism.

April 23, 2014, 3:00 – 4:00 pm ET.

The Center for American Progress, 1333 H St., NW, 10th Fl. Washington, DC 20005.

RSVP here (space is extremely limited); a live web stream will be available here on the day of the event.

Yet there is a very strong case to be made that the film is not just provocative—it captures something very deep about the Noah story. Noah was the “first environmentalist,” according to Aronofsky, whose acclaimed previous films include The Wrestler and Black Swan. Aronfsky certainly has not been shy about the film’s green content. “There is a huge statement in the film, a strong message about the coming flood from global warming,” Aronofsky told The New Yorker.

Noah stirs the pot over faith and environmentalism, but the pot was already boiling: In the past decade, there has been a growing movement to highlight scripturally based moral imperatives for conserving the environment. That’s why the film furnishes a perfect moment to discuss how religious faith, today, serves as an increasingly crucial motivator of environmental action.

Aronofsky himself will be leading that discussion in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, April 23. The director will be on hand to talk about the environmental and religious themes in his new film—and their implications for modern issues like climate change—at an event cosponsored by the Climate Desk, the Center for American Progress, and the Sierra Club. Other panelists will include Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune; Danielle Baussan, managing director of Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress; and Jack Jenkins, a senior writer and researcher with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. The event will be moderated by Chris Mooney (me) of Climate Desk. See above for more details.

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SPECIAL EVENT: "Noah" Director Darren Aronofsky Discusses Faith and the Environment

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Brits may ban new onshore wind power

by XNYMelisajdeots Posted on April 8, 2014

That blows

Brits may ban new onshore wind power

By

Shutterstock

Britain’s conservative government is preparing to make an unusual pledge — a crackdown on clean energy.

Prime Minster David Cameron, leader of the bluntly named Conservative Party (aka the Tories), is overseeing the drafting of a “manifesto” ahead of next year’s national election. That manifesto might come dressed up in a stifling windbreaker. The Guardian explains:

The Guardian understands that Cameron has brokered a compromise between warring Tories by agreeing to include measures in the manifesto for next year’s general election that will in effect rule out the building of onshore windfarms from 2020. …

The Tories will be working out the details of the pledge, which could involve an absolute cap on the output from onshore turbines. Lesser measures, which would all come into force in 2020, would involve lower subsidies or introducing tighter planning restrictions.

The senior Conservative said it was important to act because onshore windfarms had become so unpopular.

But Cameron’s party understands that renewable energy in general is popular in the country, so the manifesto might offset the anti-onshore wind pledge with strong commitments to solar power and offshore wind farms.

“We are not going to allow the [opposition] to characterize us as anti-clean-energy just because we want to control the number of onshore windfarms,” one party source told the newspaper. “We are mindful that uncontrolled expansion of onshore wind is alienating people from the whole clean energy debate.”


Source
Conservatives to promise ban on new onshore windfarms, The Guardian

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Brits may ban new onshore wind power

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It’s About Time to Start Giving CPAC the Media Coverage it Deserves

by ShastaSnoddy Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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CPAC, that great annual gathering of conservative red meat and can-you-top-this condemnation of President Obama, came to an end Saturday (with a petulant, syntax-challenged stemwinder from Sarah Palin, natch). In passing, Lexington mentions something that’s long puzzled me:

It is traditional for journalists to be a bit sniffy about CPAC straw polls, and with reason….CPAC attracts a very specific slice of the conservative movement, and its straw polls have a woeful record of predicting actual presidential nominees. Half the voters in this year’s effort were aged between 18 and 25, and two-thirds were male. Many seemed keen on Mr Paul’s brand of libertarianism, with its government-shrinking, pot-legalising, tax-cutting, privacy-obsessed, pull-up-the-drawbridge isolationism.

….Yet those who dismiss CPAC as a youth club for Ayn Rand (and Star Wars) fans risk overlooking the importance of the speeches here. Though the speakers pander to the crowd, they know that their words are whizzing around blogs, Twitter, talk radio and cable news TV. As a result, the senators and governors with presidential ambitions often give voice to what they believe their voters want to hear.

My puzzlement has always been just the opposite: the national political press mostly doesn’t dismiss CPAC as an inconsequential libertarian love-fest. They love covering CPAC. But why? Every year, CPAC demonstrates its own irrelevance by overwhelmingly supporting Rand Paul or Ron Paul or some other eccentric conservative type in its final-day straw poll. It’s solid proof that the attendees at CPAC represent a small and only slightly influential wing of the conservative movement.

And yet, the mere fact that CPAC reliably delivers the crazy seems to guarantee them plenty of coverage. I confess that I don’t really get it. The average CPAC attendee wants to legalize drugs, cut the military, and rein in the NSA. The conservative movement writ large supports exactly the opposite: it wants to put the stoners in jail, give Vladimir Putin what for, and send the NSA a thank you card for protecting us from terrorists.

So why all the media love for CPAC? What’s the deal?

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It’s About Time to Start Giving CPAC the Media Coverage it Deserves

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This Map Is Not the Benghazi Smoking Gun Conservatives Think It Is

by SammieNeil Posted on February 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Department of the Navy

This map of the location of US Navy ships during the 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch, is the latest purported smoking gun in what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has called “the worst tragedy since 9/11.” The implication: The White House was in a position to intervene while the attack was ongoing but, for some reason, chose not to. “Map Shows Dozens of U.S. Military Ships Stationed In North Africa Waters During Benghazi Attack,” wrote Katie Pavlich at Town Hall, a headline that was picked up by the esteemed Fox Nation.

But that’s not quite right. Most of the “dozens” of ships were nowhere near Benghazi, and the list includes many vessels that wouldn’t do much good in a rescue situation. For instance, the Lewis and Clark is a cargo vessel, and it was somewhere off the coast of West Africa. The map features eight minesweepers and a tug boat in Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf, a very long way from Benghazi. The Laramie, an oiler, was off the coast of Yemen. Per the Navy, the nearest aircraft carrier was 128 hours away. Only a handful of ships were even in the same body of water as Benghazi, and given the small window in which the attack unfolded, mobilizing a destroyer from the Iranian coastline probably wasn’t going to fix the problem.

Still, with Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state at the time, mulling a presidential bid, expect even more Benghazi “smoking guns” in the years ahead.

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This Map Is Not the Benghazi Smoking Gun Conservatives Think It Is

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For Republicans, Immigration Reform Is Unavoidable

by KaraRaineiguo Posted on February 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Should Republicans support immigration reform this year? From a purely political perspective, there are good reasons not to:

It would anger the conservative base, which is dead set against any kind of comprehensive immigration reform that allows undocumented workers to stay in the country legally (i.e., a “path to citizenship” or a path to legal residence of some kind).
Even outside the tea party base, most Republicans oppose immigration reform.
It almost certainly wouldn’t help Republicans in this year’s midterm elections. It might even hurt them.

What about the other side? In my view, there’s really only one good reason for the Republican leadership to forge ahead despite all this:

In the long term, it would be good for the party. Opposition to immigration reform is a festering sore that prevents the GOP from appealing to the fast-growing Hispanic population, something that they’ll have to address eventually.

In the simplest sense, then, this is an issue of timing. At some point, Republicans will have to bite the bullet and do this. They just can’t keep losing the Hispanic vote 70-30 and expect to ever win the presidency again. It’s a simple question of brute numbers. The question is how long they can hold out.

My own guess is that now is just about as good as it’s going to get for Republicans. With a House majority, they have a fair amount of leverage to get the kind of bill they can live with. In fact, if they play their cards right, they might end up with a bill that fractures Democrats even more than Republicans. But what if they wait? Passing a bill is hopeless in 2015, with primary season for the presidential election so close. It’s possible that Republicans will be better off in 2017, but that’s a long shot. Democrats are certain to do well in that year’s Senate races, and are probably modest favorites to win the presidency again. Republicans would have less leverage than ever if that happens.

And even if the long shot pays off, what good would it do them? Immigration reform of the kind that would pass muster with the tea party base wouldn’t do the GOP any good. In fact, it would probably give Democrats an opening to get Hispanic voters even more riled up. What Republicans desperately need is a bill that (a) is liberal enough to satisfy the Hispanic community, but (b) can be blamed on Democrats and a few turncoat moderate Republicans in November.

I’m not optimistic about getting a decent bill passed this year, but what optimism I do have is based on this simple-minded analysis. If Republicans are smart, they’ll get this monkey off their backs now, when it won’t do them too much harm in the midterms but will give them time to start mending fences with Hispanics in time for 2016. Unfortunately, smart is in short supply these days.

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For Republicans, Immigration Reform Is Unavoidable

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