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WTF Happened to Golden Rice?

by MikaylaU07 Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Like the hover boards of the Back to the Future franchise, golden rice is an old idea that looms just beyond the grasp of reality.

5 Surprising GM Foods

“This Rice Could Save a Million Kids a Year,” announced a Time Magazine cover back in 2000. Orange in color, the rice is genetically modified to contain a jolt of beta-carotene, the stuff that gives carrots their hue and that our bodies transform into vitamin A. Diets deficient in that key micronutrient are the leading cause of blindness of children in the global south, where rice tends to be a staple grain. A decade and a half since the Time article, golden rice has yet to be planted commercially—but it continues generating bumper crops of hype. “Is Golden Rice the Future of Food?” the great hipster-foodie journal Lucky Peach wondered last fall, adding that “it might save millions from malnutrition.”

If golden rice is such a panacea, why does it flourish only in headlines, far from the farm fields where it’s intended to grow? The short answer is that the plant breeders have yet to concoct varieties of it that work as well in the field as existing rice strains. This is made all the more challenging in the face of debates over genetically modified crops and eternal disputes about how they should be regulated.

After seed developers first create a genetically modified strain with the desired trait—in this case, rice with beta carotene—they then start crossing it into varieties that have been shown to perform well in the field. The task is tricky: When you tweak one thing in a genome, such as giving rice the ability to generate beta-carotene, you risk changing other things, like its speed of growth. The University of Washington anthropologist and long-time golden rice observer Glenn Stone describes this process as “bringing a superfood down to earth,” and it gets little attention in most media accounts.

The most serious effort to commercialize golden rice is centered at the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the globe’s most prestigious incubator of high-yielding rice varieties. Launched with grants from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations in 1960, IRRI spearheaded the Asian part of what became known as the Green Revolution—the effort to bring US-style industrial agriculture to the developing world. (My review of Nick Cullather’s excellent Green Revolution history The Hungry World is here.)

Today, IRRI coordinates the Golden Rice Network and has been working to develop a viable strain since 2006. And so far, it’s having trouble. On its website, IRRI reports that in the field latest trials, golden rice varieties “showed that beta carotene was produced at consistently high levels in the grain, and that grain quality was comparable to the conventional variety.” However, the website continues, “yields of candidate lines were not consistent across locations and seasons.” Translation: The golden rice varieties exhibited what’s known in agronomy circles as a “yield drag”—they didn’t produce as much rice as the non-GM varieties they’d need to compete with in farm fields. So the IRRI researchers are going back to the drawing board.

Via email, I asked IRRI how that effort is going. “So far, both agronomic and laboratory data look very promising,” a spokeswoman replied. But she declined to give a time frame for when IRRI thinks it will have a variety that’s ready for prime time. Washington University’s Stone says he visited IRRI’s campus in the Philippines in the summer of 2015 and heard from researchers that such a breakthrough is “at least several more years” off. The IRRI spokeswoman also declined to comment on Stone’s time-frame report.

That’s not a very inspiring assessment, given that researchers first successfully inserted the beta-carotene trait in the rice genome in 2000, and that the technology has been lavished with research support ever since—including from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative), USAID, the Syngenta Foundation, and others, according to the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board.

Of course, among people who think biotechnology has a crucial role to play in solving developing-world malnutrition, IRRI’s agronomic struggles are compounded by anti-GMO zealotry as well as what it sees as over-regulation of GMOs in the global south. David Zilberman, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Berkeley, points out that most developing-world nations, including the Philippines, have adopted the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which stipulates a precautionary approach to introducing new GMO products, including restrictions on how trials are conducted. The Cartagena regime stands in sharp contrast to the much more laissez-faire one that holds sway in the United States, Zilberman says.

If the developing world embraced US-style regulation and treated vitamin A deficiency as a medical emergency solvable by golden rice, “it would have become available in 2000” Zilberman says. Based on that premise, he and German agricultural economist Justus Wesseler co-authored a 2014 paper claiming that golden rice has “been available since early 2000” and opposition to it has resulted in “about 1.4 million life years lost over the past decade in India” alone. Such claims abound in pro-GM circles. At a speech at the University of Texas last year, the Nobel laureate British biochemist Sir Richard Roberts accused gold rice opponents of have having committed a “crime against humanity.”

To be sure, opposition to golden rice has occasionally gone overboard. In 2013, activists destroyed one of of IRRI’s golden rice field trials in the Philippines, for example. “Anti-GMO activism has set back our work, in that we not only concentrate with our research, but we have to also spend time and resources to counter their propaganda,” the IRRI spokesperson told me. But the group makes clear that regulation and activism are only two of the challenges facing golden rice—getting it to perform well remains a major task.

Even if and when IRRI does come up with a high-yielding golden rice variety that passes regulatory muster, it remains unclear whether it can actually make a dent in vitamin A deficiency. As the Washington University’s Stone notes, vitamin A deficiency often affects people whose diets are also deficient in other vital nutrients. Vitamin A is fat soluble, meaning that it can’t be taken up by the body unless it’s accompanied by sufficient dietary fat, which isn’t delivered in significant quantities by rice, golden or otherwise.

According to Stone, only one feeding study (PDF) has ever showed a powerful uptake of vitamin A by subjects eating golden rice. The paper was much-cited by golden rice proponents, but Stone says it had a major flaw: The subjects were “well-nourished individuals” who already took in sufficient fat in their diets. The study “demonstrated only that Golden Rice worked in children who did not need it,” he writes. (The study has since been retracted on claims that the author failed to obtain proper consent from the parents of the participants).

Meanwhile, as IRRI scrambles to perfect golden rice, the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency is declining in the Philippines—according to IRRI itself— from 40 percent of children aged 6 months to 5 years in 2003, to 15.2 percent in 2008. “The exact reasons for these improvements have not been determined, but they may be the results of proven approaches to preventing vitamin A deficiency, such as vitamin A supplementation, dietary diversification, food fortification and promotion of optimal breastfeeding,” the group noted. That drop is part of a long-term trend that involves all of Southeast Asia. According to a 2015 Lancet study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, vitamin A deficiency plagued 39 percent of children in the region in 1991, but only 6 percent in 2013—without the help of golden rice.

But VAD, as the deficiency’s known, remains a huge scourge on the Indian sub-continent and in Africa, the study found, affecting more than 40 percent of children in both regions. Whether golden rice will ever help mitigate that ongoing tragedy won’t likely be known for some time. But the technology’s hardly the slam-dunk panacea its advocates insist it is.

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WTF Happened to Golden Rice?

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News Flash: Bill Clinton Has a Pretty High Speaking Fee

by y32nmet Posted on May 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over in the New York Times today, Deborah Sontag has a 2,000-word piece about a charity called the Happy Hearts Fund. There seem to be two big takeaways: (a) celebrities use their fame to promote their charities, and (b) Bill Clinton usually won’t appear at your event for free. His speaking fee is a donation to the Clinton Foundation. In this particular case, Happy Hearts donated $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, and in return Clinton appeared at their event to receive a lifetime achievement award.

I’m racking my brain here. I know I’m partisan about this and would just as soon not attribute dark motives to Clinton. But even putting that aside, what’s the story here? Celebrities use their fame to promote their pet causes? Bill Clinton commands a high speaking fee? Is there something that’s even unsavory about this, let alone scandalous? Is there something that’s out of the ordinary or not already common knowledge? If the story featured, say, George W. Bush instead of Clinton, would I be more outraged? What am I missing?

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News Flash: Bill Clinton Has a Pretty High Speaking Fee

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With A Man Who Compared All Muslims to Nazis

by EfrenGDFDgoxeo Posted on March 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who announced his candidacy for President on Monday via Twitter, is expected to speak at the Young America’s Foundation’s “New England Freedom Conference” in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.

Also on the lineup is Robert Spencer, the co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and director of the Jihad Watch blog. He is notorious for his attacks on Islam. “It’s absurd” to think that “Islam is a religion of peace that’s been hijacked by … extremists,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. He has compared all Muslims to Nazis and demanded that Muslims take a loyalty test before being appointed to public office in America. He has told reporters that Islam is here to take over America, and that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. His book opens with the rallying cry of the Crusades, “God wills it,” and he calls for a second crusade against Islam.

The conference, to be hosted at the Radisson in southeast New Hampshire, bills itself as a conservative gathering on “why big government policies are a problem” and “ways to effectively push back against leftist, big government threats to your freedoms.” It’s hosted by The Young America’s Foundation, which has previously been linked to extremists. Young Americans for Freedom, which merged with The Young America’s Foundation in 2011, hosted an event in 2007 in which Nick Griffin— who was the chairman of the British National Party, a white supremacist group, and a Holocaust denier—spoke. Two board members of Young America’s Foundation, Ron Robinson and James B. Taylor, also ran a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to a white nationalist organization, the Charles Martel Society.

The Council on American Islamic Relations criticized Cruz for agreeing to speak at a conference that is providing a platform to Spencer. “If Senator Cruz believes that he can campaign for president while sharing center stage with a professional hate monger like Robert Spencer, I seriously doubt his ability to win the U.S. minority vote or unite the country as president,” said CAIR Government Affairs Manager Robert McCaw.

“Senator Cruz has been invited to speak to Young America’s Foundation,” says Rick Tyler, a spokesperson for Cruz’s campaign. “He intends to keep that commitment.”

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With A Man Who Compared All Muslims to Nazis

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With a Man Who Compared Muslims to Nazis

by IXYEmeryebk Posted on March 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who announced his candidacy for President on Monday via Twitter, is expected to speak at the Young America’s Foundation’s “New England Freedom Conference” in Nashua, New Hampshire on Friday.

Also on the lineup is Robert Spencer, the co-founder of Stop Islamization of America and director of the Jihad Watch blog. He is notorious for his attacks on Islam. “It’s absurd” to think that “Islam is a religion of peace that’s been hijacked by … extremists,” he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. He has compared Muslims to Nazis and demanded that Muslims take a loyalty test before being appointed to public office in America. He has told reporters that Islam is here to take over America, and that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim. His book opens with the rallying cry of the Crusades, “God wills it!” and he calls for a second crusade against Islam.

The conference, to be hosted at the Radisson in southeast New Hampshire, bills itself as a conservative gathering on “why big government policies are a big problem” and “ways to effectively push back against leftist, big government threats to your freedoms.” It’s hosted by the Young America’s Foundation, which has previously been linked to extremists. Young Americans for Freedom, which merged with the Young America’s Foundation in 2011, hosted an event in 2007 in which Nick Griffin— who was the chairman of the British National Party, a white supremacist group, and a Holocaust denier—spoke. Two board members of Young America’s Foundation, Ron Robinson and James B. Taylor, also ran a political action committee that donated thousands of dollars to a white nationalist organization, the Charles Martel Society.

The Council on American Islamic Relations criticized Cruz for agreeing to speak at a conference that is providing a platform to Spencer. “If Senator Cruz believes that he can campaign for president while sharing center stage with a professional hate monger like Robert Spencer, I seriously doubt his ability to win the US minority vote or unite the country as president,” said CAIR Government Affairs Manager Robert McCaw.

“Senator Cruz has been invited to speak to Young America’s Foundation,” says Rick Tyler, a spokesperson for Cruz’s campaign. “He intends to keep that commitment.”

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Ted Cruz Expected to Headline Event With a Man Who Compared Muslims to Nazis

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The Ultimate Guide to Womanhood, According to the Female Jihadis of ISIS

by UCNMatthia Posted on February 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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ISIS’s men aren’t the only ones publishing magazines and manifestos anymore. Last month, the al-Khansa Brigade—the entirely female ISIS militia that spreads pro-ISIS propaganda and recruits Middle Eastern women for ISIS service—reportedly published a semiofficial Arabic guide for women on living life under ISIS rule. On Thursday, the Quilliam Foundation, a London-based counterterrorism think tank, published a translated version of the guide.

The guide was published by the al-Khansa Brigade’s media arm and portrays the “ideal model for Muslim women,” according to its author, who describes it as “semiofficial” because ISIS leadership didn’t specifically approve it or endorse it. The guide is necessary, the author writes, because the role of the Muslim woman has become so confused by others “that both she and we have forgotten it…and (the reason for) our existence in this world.”

The 10 chapters are divided into three sections, combining quotations from the Koran and the Prophet Muhammed’s teachings, also known as hadiths, with the author’s experiences. The first part lists the failings of Western society in feminism, education, and science and the positive alternative offered in Islam. The second is an eyewitness account of life in ISIS’s strongholds, both the Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, and the third attempts to link life within the boundaries of the so-called Islamic State to life beyond, in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

The Quilliam Foundation‘s translator notes that the existence of the third chapter section, as well as the fact that the guide was never translated into English or another Western language by ISIS, suggest that Arab women are the primary audience—that it wasn’t meant for broader distribution. “There has been a huge amount of speculation about what the role of the women who join Islamic State—often dubbed jihadist brides—is,” wrote Quilliam Foundation director Haras Rafiq in a press release. “This translation…allows us to look past the propaganda bandied about on social media by Western supporters of IS, enabling us to get into the mind-set of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women who willingly join its ranks.”

For example, the author describes how women should conduct their daily lives in terms of study and community service. A woman’s one “true purpose,” she writes, is to serve a man, which is true “even in ‘liberal’ states and for today’s ‘free’ societies.” According to the author, a girl may be married between the ages of 9 and 17. Once she is a wife, she must remain at home, her face and body nearly always covered.

There are some exceptions. Women who join jihad are chosen for that life, but how is not described. Others who study religion, practice medicine, or teach are able to leave their homes and go into the world, but only for three days a week.

The author’s description of life in the war zones of Mosul and Raqqa is in radical contrast to other reports from the devastated areas. She traveled there, she wrote, to “check on the happy situation that Muslim women face” under Sharia law. She writes that “a sense of security” has swept over the land, with people living peacefully despite the ongoing battle with the US-led coalition; hospitals, shops, and schools, she adds, are much improved since the so-called Caliphate began.

The treatise concludes with a message to all enemies: “Throw the sputum of your culture, your civilization, and your thinking into the sea. God fights you and you are not of us and we are not of you.”

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The Ultimate Guide to Womanhood, According to the Female Jihadis of ISIS

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Chart: As Top Tax Rates Dropped, Top Incomes Soared

by Reyes83Syj Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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We’re still posting a new chart on the current state of income inequality every day over the next week. Yesterday’s looked at how the top 1 percent of Americans have captured half of all income.

Today, let’s talk taxes. In the past few years, we’ve heard a lot about overtaxed “job creators” and freeloading “takers.” But consider this: As the income rates for the wealthiest have plunged, their incomes have shot up.

Source: Tax rates: The Tax Foundation; top incomes: Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty (Excel)

Illustrations and infographic design by Mattias Macklerâ&#128;&#139;

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Chart: As Top Tax Rates Dropped, Top Incomes Soared

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15 MB of Fame: Never-Before-Seen Digital Art by Andy Warhol

by ErnestinaWrenn Posted on April 24, 2014

Mother Jones

Making art with a computer ain’t easy. Just ask Andy Warhol. The American icon mastered numerous art forms and shaped our culture with his work. But a newly-discovered collection of files from 41 floppy disks—yes, floppy disks—shows that he struggled with early digital design tools. Today, members of Carnegie Mellon University’s Computer Club and STUDIO for Creative Inquiry in Pittsburgh released a previously unseen set of images Warhol created in the 1980s using a Commodore Amiga 1000. (That used to be a type of computer, kids.)

The work was discovered after artist Cory Arcangel found a fuzzy You Tube video from 1985. In it Warhol sits next to Blondie singer Debbie Harry and uses the Amiga to paint her digital portrait. Jonathan Gaugler of the Carnegie Museum of Art says Arcangel was “relatively sure” the disks containing Warhol’s digital prints would be housed in the Warhol Museum. Sure enough, they were. But, Gaugler says, “It’s risky. Because reading them in a drive, there is a chance of wiping it just by trying.”

So the museum’s curator, Tina Kukielski, connected Arcangel with the Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Club, which wrote original code to safely read the data without damaging it. The process was captured in the upcoming documentary film series The Invisible Photograph, premiering May 10 at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall.

Here are some of Warhol’s digital works, and stills from documentary showing how they were retrieved. Enjoy—while listening to Blondie if you can:

“Andy 2” Andy Warhol, 1985, ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visuals Arts, Inc., courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum

Campbell’s Andy Warhol, 1985, ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visuals Arts, Inc., courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum

“Venus”, 1985, ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visuals Arts, Inc., courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum Andy Warhol

Amber Morgan of the Andy Warhol Museum and Cory Arcangel in The Invisible Photograph, Part II – Trapped: Andy Warhol’s Amiga Experiments © Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Commodore Amiga computer equipment used by Andy Warhol between 1985-86 Courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum

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15 MB of Fame: Never-Before-Seen Digital Art by Andy Warhol

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Dirty Money: From Rockefeller to Koch

by Myrna Posted on March 11, 2014

Catholic University’s decision to accept $1 million from the Charles Koch Foundation to support the study of “principled entrepreneurship” is like a modern-day reenactment of 1905′s “tainted money affair.” Catholic University of America. NCinDC/flickr Last November, the Catholic University of America announced a pledge of $1 million from the Charles Koch Foundation to support the study of “principled entrepreneurship” at the university’s new business school. As the billionaire funder of various libertarian causes and much of the Tea Party movement, Koch (along with his brother David) is not exactly a stranger to controversy. But his foundation has made gifts to many educational institutions in the past—its website lists 270 colleges and universities it supports, including more than two dozen Catholic schools—with only the occasional stir of opposition. And so he might have assumed that his gift would be met with a press release and that mild mix of gratitude and entitlement with which the public now greets most seven-figure gifts to educational and cultural institutions. After all: Who doesn’t like principled entrepreneurship? Yet, this time, the gift to Catholic (CUA) caused more than a stir. In fact, from a significant swath of the broader Catholic community it provoked something close to outrage. As things stand today, the outcry hasn’t managed to scuttle the donation. But it has the chance to do something even more important: to renew a vital and century-long debate about the terms of philanthropy itself. There are two reasons why Koch’s gift did not slide tranquilly into Catholic’s coffers. One is that CUA holds a unique status among American institutions of Catholic higher education; both because of CUA’s national profile and because U.S. bishops founded it and sit on its board, American Catholics tend to be especially defensive about its reputation. The other is that Koch’s gift coincided with a moment of mounting confidence among Catholic progressives, who have found an ally in Pope Francis. In fact, just a little more than a week after CUA announced Koch’s donation, the Pope issued his first major public pronouncement, denouncing the “deified market,” the folly of supply-side economics, and the “new tyranny” of unfettered capitalism. Here, it seemed, was a call for principled entrepreneurship that placed Koch’s libertarianism directly in its sights. Read the rest at The Atlantic. Continue reading: Dirty Money: From Rockefeller to Koch Related ArticlesDemocrat Senators to Stage All-Night Session of Climate Change SpeechesWhat the Ukraine Crisis Means for the Energy IndustryPublic Transit Usage Is at Its Highest Level in More than Fifty Years

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Dirty Money: From Rockefeller to Koch

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The Koch Brothers Left a Confidential Document at Their Last Donor Conference—Read It Here

by mklabs1234 Posted on February 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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There’s one main rule at the conservative donor conclaves held twice a year by Charles and David Koch at luxury resorts: What happens there stays there.

The billionaire industrialists and their political operatives strive to ensure the anonymity of the wealthy conservatives who fund their sprawling political operation—which funneled more than $400 million into the 2012 elections—and to keep their plans private. Attendees of these summits are warned that the seminars, where the Kochs and their allies hatch strategies for electing Republicans and advancing conservative initiatives on the state and national levels, are strictly confidential; they are cautioned to keep a close eye on their meeting notes and materials. But last week, following the Kochs’ first donor gathering of 2014, one attendee left behind a sensitive document at the Renaissance Esmeralda resort outside of Palm Springs, California, where the Kochs and their comrades had spent three days focused on winning the 2014 midterm elections and more. The document lists VIP donors—including John Schnatter, the founder of the Papa John’s pizza chain—who were scheduled for one-on-one meetings with representatives of the political, corporate, and philanthropic wings of Kochworld. The one-page document, provided to Mother Jones by a hotel guest who discovered it, offers a fascinating glimpse into the Kochs’ political machine and shows how closely intertwined it is with Koch Industries, their $115 billion conglomerate.

The more than 40 donors courted by the Kochs include hedge fund and private-equity billionaires, real estate tycoons, and executives of top corporations, including Jockey International and TRT Holdings, owner of Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym. A number of them have never been identified as members of the Koch donor network, including Schnatter, one of the more prominent names on the list. An outspoken opponent of the Affordable Care Act, he is a longtime Republican donor who hosted a fundraiser for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The document notes that the pizza mogul was scheduled to meet with Ryan Stowers, the director of higher education at the Charles G. Koch Foundation. (Schnatter did not respond to requests for comment.)

Another top conservative contributor on the list is TRT Holdings’ cofounder Robert Rowling, whose net worth is estimated at $4.9 billion. During the 2012 election, Rowling directed $3.5 million to American Crossroads, the super-PAC spearheaded by Karl Rove, and he cut a $100,000 check to the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future. According to the document, Rowling was scheduled to sit down with Charles Koch at the “Koch residence”—presumably a reference to the Wichita businessman’s vacation home at the Vintage Club, a short drive from the resort where the donor conference was held. Top Koch operatives were expected to participate in this session, including Kevin Gentry, the Koch brothers’ fundraising guru; Daniel Garza, the director of the Libre Initiative, a Koch-funded organization dedicated to Latino outreach; and Marc Short, who runs Freedom Partners, the centerpiece of the Kochs’ political network, which distributes donor funds to a large web of conservative nonprofit groups. (Rowling did not respond to requests for comment.)

Other heavy hitters slated for meetings with the Koch brothers or their representatives included Carl Berg, a Silicon Valley real estate tycoon worth $1.1 billion; Ken Griffin, who founded the hedge fund Citadel and clocks in at No. 103 on the Forbes 400 (net worth, $4.4 billion); John W. Childs, a top private-equity investor; and Fred Klipsch, the chairman of the headphone and speaker company Klipsch Group.

The meeting list illustrates the interwoven nature of the Koch brothers’ corporate, political, and philanthropic activities. The donor meetings featured various senior Koch Industries executives, including the company’s chief financial officer, Steve Feilmeier. He was scheduled to join Charles Koch for a sit down with Berg. Charles Koch’s 36-year-old son, Chase, the president of Koch Fertilizer, was also scheduled to take part in a meeting with a donor named George Gibbs. (Koch Industries spokesman Rob Tappan would not comment on the conference document, only confirming that company employees attend the donor summits. Freedom Partners spokesman James Davis said he was “uncertain” about the document and did not respond to further questions.)

At least half of the one-on-one sessions involved representatives of Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers and their top political adviser and strategist, Richard Fink, a Koch Industries executive vice president and board member. The AFP officials called to duty for these discussions included AFP’s president Tim Phillips, chief operating officer Luke Hilgemann, vice president for state operations Teresa Oelke, and vice president for development Chris Fink (Richard Fink’s son). The state directors for AFP’s Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida chapters were also slated for tête-à-têtes during the Koch summit. (AFP spokesman Levi Russell declined to comment on the meeting document.)

In the past, Koch Industries has distanced itself from AFP and its political activities. The company has said the group is just one of “hundreds of organizations” that receive funding from the Kochs and that it operates “independently” of Koch Industries. But the document suggests a close collaboration between officials of Koch Industries, AFP, and Freedom Partners, whose staff and board are stacked with numerous current and former Koch Industries employees. Michael Lanzara and Jeff Noble, who transitioned over to Freedom Partners from Koch Companies Public Sector—the company’s legal, lobbying, and public affairs branch—were scheduled to meet with donors alongside AFP staffers. The Koch brothers and Richard Fink were also listed as taking part in some of these sessions. (Fink, a man of many hats within the Koch firmament, is also an AFP board member; David Koch chairs the board of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.)

Heading into the midterm elections, AFP has emerged as one of the right’s most active and well-financed political outfits. In recent months, it has spent more than $20 million on ads clobbering congressional Democrats for supporting Obamacare. And the group is merely one piece of the Kochs’ massive political operation, which in size, scope, and fundraising prowess has come to resemble a political party in its own right. During the 2012 election cycle, in fact, the Koch network managed to raise as much as the Republican National Committee itself.

After the brothers and their allies failed to win the Senate or unseat Obama in 2012, David Koch told Forbes that this setback would do little to deter them: “We’re going to fight the battle as long as we breathe.” At the Palm Springs conference, as the left-behind-list of VIP meetings shows, the Kochs are lining up serious financial firepower for the political fights of 2014 and beyond.

Read the meeting list, along with a guide to the participants in them, below.

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Koch Donor Conference Meetings (PDF)

Koch Donor Conference Meetings (Text)

DONORS

Carl Berg: Ranking No. 308 on the Forbes 400, Berg is a Silicon Valley real estate titan with an estimated fortune of $1.1 billion.

Ronnie Cameron: He runs agribusiness giant Mountaire Corporation. During a meeting of the Kochs’ donor network in 2011, Charles Koch recognized Cameron (and other donors) for donating at least $1 million to their cause.

Charles Chandler: Based in the Kochs’ hometown of Wichita, Kansas, Chandler is the CEO of Intrust Bank.

John Childs: He runs the Boston-based private equity firm J.W. Childs & Associates.

Jamie Coulter: Haling from Wichita, Coulter is the former CEO of the Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon restaurant chain.

Bob and Steve Fettig: The Fettigs run the metal fabrication company Tankcraft, based in Darien, Wisconsin. Steve is the company’s CFO; Bob is CEO.

Richard and Leslie Gilliam: Richard founded Virginia-based coal mining company Cumberland Resources Corporation, which he sold to Massey Energy for nearly a billion dollars in 2010.

Ken Griffin: A major conservative donor, the Chicago-based businessman founded the hedge fund Citadel and is worth an estimated $4.4 billion.

John Griffin: He’s the founder of Blue Ridge Capital, a New York hedge fund.

Dick Haworth: He’s the chairman emeritus of Holland, Michigan-based office furniture company Haworth.

Richard “Ric” Kayne: He’s the founder and chairman of Los Angeles-based investment firm Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors.

Dan Kirby: He’s president of Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Kirby Financial.

Fred Klipsch: He’s the chairman of Klipsch Group, a speaker and headphone manufacturer.

Frank Kozel: He’s the principal of Pittsburgh-based Keystone Energy Oil & Gas Inc.

Francis “Franc” Lee: He’s the president and CEO of Flowood, Mississippi-based lender First Tower, LLC.

Robert “Bob” Luddy: He’s president of CativeAire Systems Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Hugh Maclellan: He’s the executive chairman of Chattanooga, Tennessee’s Maclellan Foundation, which make grants to Christian causes.

Cecil O’Brate: He’s the CEO of Garden City, Kansas-based Palmer Manufacturing & Tank.

Verl Purdy: He’s the chairman and CEO of Charlotte, North Carolina-based AGDATA Inc.

Tom Rastin: He’s a director and vice chairman of the Mount Vernon, Ohio-based Ariel Foundation, started by his wife, Karen Buchwald Wright, the CEO of Ariel Corporation. Rastin is the company’s vice president of engineering, sales, and marketing.

George Records: A member of the Hoover Institution’s board of overseers, Records is the retired chairman of Oklahoma City’s Midland Group.

Robert Rowling: Ranking No. 93 on the Forbes 400 with an estimated fortune of $4.9 billion, Rowling is the cofounder of TRT Holdings, which owns Gold’s Gym and Omni Hotels.

John Schnatter: He’s the founder and CEO of Papa John’s International.

Tina and Craig Snider: They are the children of Ed Snider, a founding contributor of the Ayn Rand Institute and chairman of Comcast Spectacor, a sports and entertainment company that owns the Philadelphia Flyers.

Dian Stai: Based in Texas, Stai cofounded Owen Healthcare Inc. with her late husband. She’s a top conservative donor who gave $125,000 to the pro-Mitt Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future during the 2012 election cycle.

Jim Stephenson: He’s the president and CEO of Georgia-based Yancey Bros. Co., “which provides Caterpillar, AGCO, and Blue Bird Bus Co. products and services throughout the state of Georgia.” Stephenson is also an Americans for Prosperity board member.

Jim Von Ehr: He’s the CEO and founder of Richardson, Texas-based Zyvex Labs.

Debra Waller: Since 2001, she’s been the chairman and CEO of Jockey International Inc.

Lew Ward: He’s the founder of Oklahoma-based Ward Petroleum Corporation.

Dick Weiss: He’s the Core Equity senior portfolio manager at Wells Capital Management.

Karen Wright: She’s the founder and CEO of the Ariel Foundation, a private philanthropy group based in Mount Vernon, Ohio. She’s also CEO of the Ariel Corporation, a natural gas compression company.

*Mother Jones was unable to confirm the identities of some donors on the list, including Steve Clark, Paul Foster, George Gibbs, George Jenkins, Jerry Hayden, Kent McCarthy, Andrew Miller, Ted Saunders, Tom Smith, Jaime Snider, and Dean Williams.

“PLAYERS”

Charles Koch: He’s the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries.

David Koch: He’s Koch Industries’ executive vice president and a board member.

Michael Lanzara: A former director for special projects at Koch Companies Public Sector, Lanzara now works for Freedom Partners.

Steve Feilmeier: He’s chief financial officer and executive vice president of Koch Industries.

Kevin Gentry: A vice president at Koch Companies Public Sector, Gentry is the Koch brothers’ top fundraiser. He also serves on the board of Freedom Partners.

Jeff Noble: A former senior development associate at Koch Companies Public Sector, Noble currently works for Freedom Partners.

Tim Phillips: He’s the president of Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers and Richard Fink.

Chris Fink: He’s Americans for Prosperity’s vice president of development and the son of Richard Fink.

Teresa Oelke: She’s Americans for Prosperity’s vice president for state operations.

David Fladeboe: He’s the state director for Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin.

Brett Hinkey: A former senior development associate at Koch Companies Public Sector, Hinkey now works for Freedom Partners.

Daniel Garza: He’s the executive director of the Libre Initiative, a Koch-funded nonprofit focused on Hispanic outreach.

Chase Koch: He’s Charles’ son and the president of Koch Fertilizer.

Richard Fink: He’s the chairman and CEO of Koch Companies Public Sector and a board member of Koch Industries. A founder of the Mercatus Center and Americans for Prosperity, Fink is the Koch’ top strategist and political adviser.

Ryan Stowers: He’s the director for higher education at the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

Brian Hooks: He’s the executive director and chief operating officer of the Mercatus Center.

Marc Short: Short heads Freedom Partners, the centerpiece of the Koch brothers’ political operation. Short is a former chief of staff of the House Republican Conference.

Scott Hagerstrom: He’s the state director of Americans for Prosperity-Michigan.

Jennifer Stefano: She’s the state director for Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania.

Tommy Von der Heydt: He’s a former regional development officer for Americans for Prosperity.

Corey Lewandowski: He’s the East Coast regional director for Americans for Prosperity.

Slade O’Brien: He’s state director of Americans for Prosperity-Florida.

John Hardin: He’s a program manager at the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

Michael Palmer: He is the president of i360, which bills itself as the “leading data and technology resource for the pro-free-market political and advocacy community.” Palmer’s firm has worked closely with the Kochs’ voter microtargeting operation, Themis.

Derek Johnson: He’s a program officer for higher education at the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

Nathan Nascimento: He’s an employee of Freedom Partners.

James Davis: He’s the vice president of strategic communications at Freedom Partners.

Luke Hilgemann: He’s Americans for Prosperity’s chief operating officer.

Read this article – 

The Koch Brothers Left a Confidential Document at Their Last Donor Conference—Read It Here

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Ken Ham: "There’s Been Climate Change" Since Noah’s Flood

by KelleyCooley Posted on February 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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When Bill Nye the Science Guy took the stage Tuesday night at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., his task was to refute the idea that Biblical creationism is a scientifically valid idea—one that should be taught in schools.

But as we’ve seen again and again, science denial is rarely limited in scope. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Nye’s opponent, museum head Ken Ham, doesn’t just reject evolution; he’s also spreading some rather unscientific ideas about global warming. Appearing on CNN after the debate, Ham informed viewers that “there’s been climate change ever since the flood of Noah’s day.” Ham added that while the climate had warmed “a bit in the past,” it’s now “cooling again.” (Not true.) You can watch Ham and Nye debate climate science in the clip above.

This has been something of a theme for Ham, who says in a series of online videos that this supposed “cooling trend” is “no surprise to creation scientists.” According to Ham: “Western governments have invested so much in the carbon dioxide theory that they probably won’t change their minds any time soon. But scripture tells us what really happened: We live on a young Earth that has undergone radical climate changes from the global flood.”

Watch:

Link:  

Ken Ham: "There’s Been Climate Change" Since Noah’s Flood

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