Local authorities in Washington released the names of 19 of the dead who have been identified, the youngest 4 months old and the oldest 71. More: Landslide Death Toll Hits 27, with 22 Missing ; ;Related ArticlesAs Landslide Debris Slows Search, Residents Resolve to HelpLandslide’s Debris Hampers a Search for RemainsDot Earth Blog: A Whale of an International Court Ruling Against Japan ;
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As IPCC report warns of climate impact on food security, researchers are looking at whether talking about food could break political deadlock on global warming. Reframing climate change as a food issue as the world’s leading scientists did this week could provide an opportunity to mobilise people, experts say. Academics and campaigners were already looking at food as a way to better connect with public on climate change when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its finding on declining crop yields. The report warned: “All aspects of food security are potentially affected by climate change.” It said negative impacts on yields would become more likely in the 2030s. The definitive report arrives at a time when researchers are actively looking at whether talking about climate change through the prism of food would help break through US political deadlock. Food offers an immediate and personal connection, Rachel Kyte, the World Bank vice-president for climate change, said in an interview before the IPCC report’s release. To keep reading, click here. Taken from: Frame Climate Change as a Food Issue, Experts Say ; ;Related ArticlesTo Fight Climate Change, the Entire World Will Have to Eat Less MeatDot Earth Blog: U.N. Climate Report Authors Answer 11 Basic QuestionsIf This Terrifying Report Doesn’t Wake You Up to the Realities of What We’re Doing to This Planet, What Will? ;
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Mother Jones
Keith Humphreys notes that economic growth over the past year has been similar in Britain and the United States even though the two countries adopted very different responses to the Great Recession:
But don’t expect the similar levels of growth in the two countries to shake many people’s faith in their economic views. Most of the “slim government” crowd will argue that Britain didn’t cut enough (or that the U.S. growth isn’t real) and that’s why the U.K. hasn’t left the U.S. in the dust. Most increased government spending supporters will see proof that the stimulus wasn’t big enough (or that the U.K. growth isn’t real) because if it had been U.S. growth would be dwarfing that of the sceptred isle.
Many people seem to have stable preferences about whether they want government bigger or smaller. They will point to current economic conditions as the reason for why their preferences should prevail, but their preferences do not change when those putatively justifying economic conditions fade away. Neither are most people fazed when the government spending policies they support (as well as those that they oppose) deliver different results than they expected. Motivated reason is such a force in this particular policy area that rather than arguing over what current economic conditions particularly require, debaters are probably better off cutting to the chase and arguing directly about the real issue: Disagreement about how big or small we want the government to be.
I don’t think this is fair. If you want to compare Britain and the US, you have to look at their entire growth trajectory since the start of the recession. The chart on the right is taken from OECD numbers, so it’s an apples-to-apples comparison. And really, there is no comparison. As of 2012 (the most recent figures available from the OECD) Britain’s GDP was still 3 percent below its 2007 level. By contrast, US GDP was 4 percent above its 2007 level.
We can argue all day long about what caused this divergence, but I think the raw data is fairly unequivocal. Whatever the reason, the US economy really did suffer less and recover more robustly than the British economy.
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Mother Jones
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What does it take to break the mold in a prestigious, white-male-dominated industry? I took that question on in a recent piece on how women chefs, who, despite impressive advances in recent years, get short shrift when it comes to big-name awards and invitations to high-minded culinary confabs. But restaurants’ diversity problem is bigger than just a gender imbalance. More then two centuries after the invention of the fine-dining restaurant in the wake of the French Revolution, chefly prestige remains largely—but not completely—the domain of not just males, but white males. What gives?
On a frigid evening in Harlem last week, I got the opportunity to put the question directly to four mold-breakers in a public conversation at Ginny’s Supper Club, the cozy, red-tinted, speakeasy-like saloon in the cellar of Red Rooster, Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s neo-soul-food establishment on Lennox just north of 125th Street. The evening started with wine and snacks, which included house-made charcuterie, cheese, and cornbread madeleines—the latter, I thought, a clever mashup of French and US traditions, a Proustian nod to our most memory-drenched and historically fraught region, the South. My own melancholic musings aside, the room buzzed and glowed in the hour or so leading up to the panel—a diverse crowd of 150 or so chatted and circulated, young, old, and in between, culinary students, chefs, writers, and food lovers of all stripes, from the neighborhood and other parts of Manhattan, from Brooklyn, and even, I hear, from Chicago.
Eventually, we took to the stage: to my right Marcus himself; then Gabrielle Hamilton, chef/proprietor of the highly influential East Village spot Prune; then Charlene Johnson-Hadley, a daughter of Brooklyn’s West Indian diaspora who worked her way up through Samuelsson’s Red Rooster kitchen and is now executive chef at his Lincoln Center outpost American Table Bar and Cafe; and finally Floyd Cardoz, chef at North End Grill in Battery Park City, who brought the cooking of his native India into the glamor of a buzzy Manhattan restaurant with the late and much-lamented Tabla.
Unfortunately, our conversation wasn’t recorded; but Eater delivered a “10 Best Quotes” piece; Serious Eats’ Jacqueline Raposo has a very thoughtful post on the event, also with several quotes; and the blogger Ronda Lee offered worthy commentary on the event.
My favorite parts of the discussion were:
Two New York icons: Samuelsson and Hamiton.
1) Marcus—wgo was born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden—talking about coming up as an ambitious young cook in France, where the message he got was “ce n’est pas possible,” i.e., it’s not possible for a black man to command his own kitchen. His outsider status served as a spur, he said: with the conventional path to chefdom blocked to him, he had to forge his own, which included moving to the melting pot of New York and grabbing the reins of the Swedish restaurant Aquavit.
2) Gabrielle talking about how she found herself in the restaurant world not out of a passion for cooking but rather out of the need to support herself at a very young age—and about how being a woman in kitchens when she came up in the 1980s meant having to forge an identity, a way to fit in, since there was no pre-existing identity to fall into. Here’s her money quote, which I’m cribbing from Eater because I didn’t take notes:
Yes, there were horrible white men in the kitchens and the hardest part of that is the contortions you’d put yourself through to figure out your place in that kitchen. Should I be a chain-smoking dirt-talking motherfucker who can crank it f*cking out? Or should I be kind of a dainty female with lipstick and be like ‘Can you help me with this stock pot because I just can’t?’ Frankly it’s a freaking second job on top of what you’re already doing. One of the hardest parts is trying to a viable self that you can live with and and go home and respect at the end of the day.
3) Charlene talking about how she was drawn to cooking as a child through her grandmother’s Jamaican-inflected kitchen, and how, while in college in the 1990s, she realized she wanted to make a career of cooking, which sent her to culinary school and her current path. It struck me that unlike Marcus and Gabrielle, who came up by in the 1980s, Charlene could envision for herself a conventional path to success: go to chef’s school, get a job. Here’s Charlene’s take on being a woman of color in the professional kitchen (quote from Raposo’s piece): “I just think you need to get past yourself and not think of yourself as ‘the different one.’ That shouldn’t be your focus. Your focus should be following your ambition, making sure you are doing what it is you want to do, and making yourself an asset to wherever you are.”
4) Floyd on aspiring to cook professionally while growing up middle class in India—and the culture shock it gave his parents, who hoped he would be a doctor. Until pretty recently, the professional kitchen was a place middle class people aspired to flee. Now, with the rise of the celebrity chef, it has emerged as a site of aspiration. Hamilton touched on that topic, too, when she mentioned that suddenly, “40-year-old white males” are applying to work in her kitchen. She went on (quote from Raposo):
Now we have the whole new problem of, “I used to be an architect” and “I have a trust fund” and “I have so much more money and power than you’re ever going to have in this world.” And you have to go up to that guy and say, “You know, your sauce is a little salty.”
As Ronda Lee put it in her blog post, “gender and race in the professional kitchen is a lot to cover in a two-hour discussion.” And our panel in Harlem last week barely scratched the surface. I learned again what I learned when writing my piece on gender: This is a fascinating and complex conversation, one that people working to make the restaurant world more inclusive are eager to have. There’s so much we didn’t get to—for example, what about the role of Mexican immigrants, who are the lifeblood of kitchen lines from Los Angeles to New York? We at Mother Jones plan to continue exploring it. Stay tuned.
Taken from:
You Don’t Have To Be a Foul-Mouthed White Guy To Be a World-Class Chef
At least Macchu Picchu is probably safe from sea level rise.
You know how we sometimes like movies in which famous world landmarks are dramatically destroyed? Climate change is about to bring those scenes to a museum near you, albeit with fewer meteors and more meteoric sea level rise.
According to a new report published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters, everything you love is going to disappear, assuming you are the kind of person who loves old art and history and stuff. The researchers looked at UNESCO World Heritage sites, which, like humans, tend to cluster near the coasts. They simulated flooding the world with an average of 6.6 meters of sea level rise over a couple of centuries. The result was a very soggy situation: About 140 of 720 sites surveyed would be underwater, or at least in the kiddie pool — and that’s without even accounting for storm surge. As one of the researchers encouragingly clarified, these are the low-ball estimates.
Among the soon-to-be-amphibious landmarks are Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, the Leaning Tower of Pisa (soon with extra leaning!), some old important-sounding German cities, downtown Bruges, and Naples (unless the volcano gets it first). If your tastes incline to the New World instead, you can focus your anxiety of impending loss on the Statue of Liberty and historic Havana. In any case, Atlantis is about to gain a whole bunch of cultural capital:
Ben Marzeion and Anders Levermann
The purple dots are in trouble even if the thermostat stays where it’s at; everything else up to yellow will drown with just 3 degrees C extra. Click to embiggen.
Though the study takes a slightly longer view than we in the climapocalyse business are used to fretting about — 2000 years — it’s not so long when you’re considering, say, Pompeii — also on the to-be-(re)submerged list. And in any case, the researchers assure us that serious problems will “definitely” arise sooner. From The Guardian:
“It’s relatively safe to say that we will see the first impacts at these sites in the 21st century,” lead author Prof. Ben Marzeion, of the University of Innsbruck in Austria, told the Guardian. “Typically when people talk about climate change it’s about the economic or environmental consequences, how much it’s going to cost. We wanted to take a look at the cultural implications.”
Venice is also on the list, because, duh. With high tides that turn San Marco into a swimming pool twice a day, the city is basically a poster child for the fragility of human accomplishments in the face of time and indifferent nature (shit just got real) as well as for how much rich people will pay to defy the forces of entropy.
While the residents of Kiribati probably wish someone would throw them a gala to save their low-lying island, or at least help them get off it, we’ll concede that artistic heritage is worth some protection. After all, if we’re not worried about staying in touch with past generations, why should we worry about leaving some nice things for the future generations? (Slip-’n-slide at the Doge’s Palace!)
But don’t panic! Luckily for everyone, I have some ideas about what we can do. So pour yourself a glass of Bordeaux to steady your nerves, maybe put on a nice aria — we’ll wait. OK, here goes:
Plan 1: Start spending a lot of money on expensive and questionably effective flood-control measures.
Plan 2: Just get it over with and convert all historical landmarks to water parks.
As far as the first goes, art lovers are on it. I don’t know of anyone working on the second, but changemakers, feel free to get in touch for my blueprints for the Leaning High Dive of Pisa. I guess it’s also worth mentioning the third plan, where we get serious about cutting carbon emissions and successfully restrict warming to a mere 2 degrees C, but even that doesn’t mean you won’t be wearing gaiters on your next stroll through the Accademia.
Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy
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Rising sea levels will drown your Western art history course
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On Friday, after a one-year delay, Bill Clinton’s presidential library posted thousands of pages of previously unreleased documents. It’s mostly inside baseball stuff, but there are some useful nuggets. For instance, a 1998 memo written by White House speechwriter Jeff Shesol recounts a proposal by then-Clinton-aide Rahm Emanuel (who went on to be President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and is now mayor of Chicago) for dealing with National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, in a speech heralding a new bulletproof vest law: “Shove it up his ass.”
William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library
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Mother Jones
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It’s back. The anti-Clinton craziness of the 1990s. It was inevitable that the right-wing nuttiness of those days would return once Hillary Clinton officially acknowledged her presidential ambitions, but the mere prospect of the former first lady turned senator turned secretary of state seeking the White House has led to a premature—or perhaps preemptive—revival of the old Clinton tales from two decades ago. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a possible 2016 presidential candidate, kicked off the anti-Clinton nostalgia with a series of scolding references to Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Next GOP chairman Reince Priebus tweeted, “Remember all the #Clinton scandals…That’s not what America needs again.” And the Republican party mounted a petition drive (to beef up its email list) that asserted “scandals and controversies follow the Clintons.” Then Fox News upped the ante by booking Kathleen Willey, who has hinted (in a convoluted manner) that the Clintons were involved in the deaths of her husband and Vince Foster, a Clinton White House aide who committed suicide during the first year of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Willey has also claimed that Bill Clinton groped her in the White House and suggested that the Clintons had her cats killed.
For those who lived through the conservative get-Clinton madness that culminated in Clinton’s impeachment (and acquittal), this may seem like a bad acid flashback. Or a truly cheesy sequel. During the Clinton years, there were plenty of reasons to be critical of the first couple: Bill’s calculating centrism, Hill’s byzantine health care proposal that set back the cause of health care reform, Clinton campaign finance abuses, his workplace affair with Monica Lewinsky, scandalous pardons, and more. But conservative forces went far beyond the boundaries of reality in their ceaseless efforts to destroy the Clintons. During the 1992 campaign, some right-wingers whispered that Bill Clinton was a Manchurian candidate who had been brainwashed by the Russians when he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford and took a student trip to Moscow. Others circulated fliers—this was before the internet hit big—claiming he had fathered the son of an African American prostitute. And there were claims that the Clintons were connected to a major drug-running operation that had been based in Arkansas and tied to a series of murders. Yes, murders. Dozens of murders.
As a draft-dodging, pot-smoking (sure, he inhaled), former long-hair McGovernik, Bill Clinton represented a side in the American political cultural civil war that had raged since the early 1960s, and many on the right could not accept that a citizen of that other America could become the leader of the land. Their disbelief and outrage led to insane outbursts of absurd accusations—and never-ending investigations (on and off Capitol Hill) that sought to uncover the darkest secrets of Bill and Hillary Clinton. This anti-Clinton crusade had two components: what might be called the official conspiracies that were probed by congressional gumshoes and independent counsels, and those that can be considered the outer-limits conspiracies. There was overlap (the Vince Foster suicide conspiracy, for example). But it all blurred into one long swirl that ended up discrediting much of the right and spurring an anti-anti-Clinton backlash that helped Bill Clinton become one of the most popular and successful former presidents and Hillary Clinton become a US senator.
So as once-dormant Clinton derangement syndrome reappears, it might be useful to sort out the swirl. Joe Conason, who cowrote with Arkansas journalist Gene Lyons The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, offers a short breakdown of the official Clinton conspiracies:
Whitewater: Kenneth Starr spent roughly millions of dollars trying to find evidence of chicanery in a land deal that lost money for the Clintons—and his probe ended up demonstrating their innocence, like several earlier investigations. Having whispered to gullible journalists that he was about to indict Hillary in December 1996, Starr instead abruptly resigned as independent counsel in February 1997, knowing he had no case against her…
Travelgate: Feverish coverage of Hillary Clinton’s firing of several White House employees who handled press travel arrangements neglected some salient facts—such as the suspicious absence of accounting records for millions of dollars expended by the White House Travel Office, the Travel Office director’s offer to plead guilty to embezzlement, and evidence that he had accepted lavish gifts from an air charter company. The First Lady and her staff didn’t handle the controversy skillfully, but she had plenty of reason to suspect chicanery. And again, exhaustive investigation found no intentional wrongdoing by her.
Filegate: Sensational accusations that Hillary Clinton had ordered up FBI background files to target political opponents soon became a Republican and media obsession, with respectable figures warning that Filegate would be the Clintons’ Watergate. “Where’s the outrage?” cried Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee. Starr investigated the matter and found no evidence of wrongdoing. Finally, in 2010, a Reagan-appointed federal judge mockingly dismissed a civil lawsuit based on the allegations, saying “there’s no there there.”
As for the out-there conspiracies, perhaps the best representation of this genre was a documentary called The Clinton Chronicles. The 83-minute-long movie that was released in 1994 alleged that Bill Clinton had an extensive “criminal background” when he was elected president and that this “information” had been kept from voters. (That is, he had been elected on false pretenses.) The Bill Clinton of this movie was a sort of kingpin who had engaged in a multitude of corrupt activities while attorney general and governor in Arkansas; this included involvement in drug-money laundering. Of course, all this corruption continued in the White House. The film—overflowing with demonstrably false accusations—climaxed with the contention that Foster was murdered and that the White House mounted a cover-up to keep this a secret (and to keep a purportedly hidden relationship between Foster and Hillary under wraps). And it wasn’t just Foster. The film noted that others with information about Clinton’s crimes had died mysteriously. A plane crash. A suicide. People were afraid to tell the truth about the Clintons. The film concluded with this warning: “If any additional harm comes to anyone connected with this film or their families, the people of America will hold Bill Clinton personally responsible.” An earlier version of the documentary, Circle of Power, had listed a number of suicides, accidental deaths, and unsolved murders and linked them to the Clintons.
What was most notable about both films was their No. 1 sponsor: Jerry Falwell, a television evangelist and head of the Moral Majority. In the 1990s, he was one of the most prominent leaders of the religious right. And on his weekly television show, he pitched these videos. A fellow who routinely hobnobbed with Republican presidents and politicians was explicitly endorsing the view that the current occupant of the White House was a maniacal and corrupt evildoer who had resorted to murder (on multiple occasions!) to obtain and preserve his power. And you could have proof of this, Falwell noted, for only $40 plus $3 for shipping.
Falwell was not alone. As Conason and Lyons noted in The Hunting of the President, other prominent conservatives were pushing the Clinton-as-killer meme (though no one called it a meme back then). The Council for National Policy, a secretive outfit that included the leadership of the conservative movement, ordered copies of the film for its members. GOP Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who while pursuing the Foster suicide theory had a watermelon shot in his backyard, invited the narrator of the film, an Arkansan named Larry Nichols, to meet with House Republicans. Nichols became a fixture on right-wing talk radio. William Dannemeyer, a former House GOPer who appears at the end of The Clinton Chronicles to raise money for further investigation, sent members of Congress a letter requesting they probe the mysterious deaths related to Clinton. The conservative editorialists at the Wall Street Journal half-defended the film. Criticizing the documentary for being loaded with unproven charges, they noted, “the Falwell tape and the controversy around it get at something important about the swirl of Arkansas rumors and the dilemma it presents a press that tries to be responsible.” In other words, Clinton was no murderer, but there was value to presenting the overarching, rumors-fueled case that he was sleazy schemer.
How does being accused of murdering political foes (and friends) to cover up criminal deeds (and untoward affairs) compare to being accused of being a foreign-born secret Muslim and covert socialist with plans to destroy America? Political consumers of today who are too young to have experienced the visceral and extreme Clinton hatred of the 1990s might find it tough to imagine the excesses of that era, but they would recognize parallels with the anti-Obama hate machine. Then and now, Republicans in power whipped up investigations (Benghazi!) to satisfy their their angry and resentful base voters and knowingly associated with (and validated) those hurling even more outlandish accusations about a commander-in-chief much detested on the right. To an extent, the Clinton smearers paved the way for the Obama bashers, and some conservative agitators have dutifully served in both camps. Joseph Farah, a leading birther, was a champion of Foster conspiracy theories. In 2007, Fox News host Sean Hannity hosted a special episode on the “mysterious death” of Foster, hinting that the Clintons might have pulled off “a massive cover-up.” Rush Limbaugh, too, has in the past suggested Hillary had Foster killed.
The number of false charges hurled in the 1990s at the Clintons could fill a book. (See Conason and Lyons’.) Like ordnance left over after a war, this ammunition remains ready to be used by conservatives who recoil at the thought of another Clinton in the White House. It doesn’t matter that these bombs are duds. As Fox News showed this week, the Clinton antagonists of years ago and of today will reach for whatever ammo they can find to recreate the impression there was a swirl of Clinton corruption and push a politically useful mantra: Don’t stop thinking about the past.
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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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In North Dakota, where an oil boom is leading to spills and explosions, the top oil regulator also serves as a cheerleader for the oil industry. And some Democrats think it’s time for the pom-poms to change hands.
The Forum News Service reports that state’s Senate and House minority leaders have asked the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which oversees industries including oil and gas, to separate the oil regulation and promotion responsibilities of the Department of Mineral Resources’s boss.
In a letter to the commission sent Tuesday, the Democrats pointed to recent accidents involving crude that was fracked from the state’s Bakken formation. The accidents included the spill of 20,000 barrels of oil from a pipeline into a wheat field, and the derailment and explosion two weeks ago of an oil-hauling train near the town of Casselton. The Casselton fire prompted warnings from the federal government that Bakken crude poses a “significant fire risk.” Here’s more from the Forum News Service:
“Recent, high-profile incidents across the state confirm the public is ill-served by a director who is charged with regulating the development he is duty-bound to promote,” write Sen. Mac Schneider, D-Grand Forks, and Rep. Kent Onstad, D-Parshall.
The Democrats cite a portion of the North Dakota Century Code that says it’s the state’s policy “to foster, to encourage, and to promote the development, production, and utilization of natural resources of oil and gas.” The Industrial Commission is charged with regulating oil and gas development and delegates much of that authority to the director of Mineral Resources.
Schneider and Onstad announced they will introduce legislation in the 2015 legislative session that would permanently separate responsibilities of regulation and promotion.
In the near term, the North Dakota Democrats ask the Industrial Commission to use its authority to “establish a firewall” between the promotion and regulation roles, Schneider said.
But it sounds like Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) is happy with things just the way they are. “I really feel that it’s clear that regulation is [the department director’s] essential job,” he told the paper, having not yet read the letter. “I think he does his job.”
Source
ND Democrats propose splitting regulation, promotion duties, Inforum
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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North Dakota’s top oil regulator is also its top oil promoter
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