Ted Cruz 's Climate Change Chicanery

Texas Senator Ted Cruz: Nothing to see here folks!

Well I'm sitting here making a late Sunday brunch while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on NPR with all the windows in my apartment wide open enjoying some amazing weekend weather.

Which wouldn't be all that unusual except for the fact that it's December 12th and it's partly sunny and 70 degrees outside here in central New Jersey.

The weather has been like this the past few days and local meteorologists are saying temperatures are somewhere between 20 to 23 degrees above normal for this time of year, so Republican Senator Ted Cruz picked a rather peculiar time to hold a Senate hearing to call into question the fact that human activity has influenced climate change.

The Tea Party poster boy and presidential candidate, who serves as the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, made headlines last Monday when he cherry-picked substantive climate change data to try and cast doubt on what the overwhelming majority of scientists agree on - that humans are changing the planets climate and contributing to global warming.

As Emily Atkin reported in an article on ThinkProgress.org, Cruz confused the Arctic with the Antarctic, quoted NASA climate research out of context and tried to poke holes in established scientific fact in an effort to prove that global warming is a myth.

The timing of Cruz's attack on science is part of a carefully planned Republican strategy to try and undermine the historic agreement on limiting climate change reached at the COP21 summit in Paris by almost 200 different countries including the world's biggest polluters, including the U.S., China and India.   

The deal calls for taking steps to keep global temperature rise to under 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, capping greenhouse gas emissions and providing $100 billion a year to small developing nations to help finance their efforts to transition their emerging economies to more climate-friendly energy sources like wind, solar and hydroelectric instead of relying on coal and oil.

Cruz's Senate hearings aren't surprising given that his largest campaign contributions by industry come from oil and gas companies and, or industries that represent them.

According to data compiled by OpenSecrets.org posted on the VoteSmart.org Website, the oil and gas industry has donated at least $952,380 to Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign.

It's rare to get almost 200 nations to agree on anything, and taking concrete steps to address climate change is in the long-term interests of humans, plants, animals, the oceans, rivers, lakes and the atmosphere - but the majority of Republican politicians in Congress view it exclusively from the one dimensional perspective of the financial interests of the oil, gas and coal industries.

While Republicans view entitlement programs like Social Security, unemployment insurance and Medicare that benefit average Americans with contempt, they're like zealots when it comes to protecting billions of dollars in lavish taxpayer-funded subsidies for America's oil and gas producers in the form of sketchy tax loopholes and other financial chicanery.

As an article on PoliticusUSA.com last June reported, a report by the International Monetary Fund showed that collectively, the world's countries provide a mind-boggling $5.3 trillion a year in taxpayer funds to subsidize fossil fuel companies that make huge profits even as they contribute to the pumping of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which are altering the climate.

So Cruz using a Senate hearing as a platform to try and debunk climate change science is more about money than it is ideology, even though his sketchy arguments against human influence on climate change are largely ideologically driven.

Smog blankets the city of Beijing, China

In the meantime the evidence of global warming is all around us.

My friend Jeff just got back from a 12-day business trip to China where he spent time in the city of Shanghai.

He told me the pollution levels were bad enough to create near-constant overcast skies which at times could make it difficult to see store fronts across the street from his hotel.

It wasn't uncommon for him to see people walking around the streets wearing filter masks or even gas masks. 

He said Shanghai isn't nearly as bad as Beijing though.

On the very same day that Ted Cruz was holding his Senate Subcommittee hearing last Monday to deny that humans are contributing to climate change, hazardous levels of smog blanketing the city of Beijing prompted the first-ever "red alert" for toxic levels of smog that are some 20 times the level considered safe for the city's 20 million residents.

As Edward Wong reported in The New York Times last week, the smog prompted the government to shut down schools, businesses, factories and even some highways because of the lack of visibility caused in large part by fumes from coal burning factories and the millions of drivers who clog Beijing's roads.

Maybe Ted Cruz needs to take a fact-finding trip to Beijing; he could hold his hearings from there if the smog isn't too thick.

Anyway look for Republicans in Congress to continue doing what they can to undermine the U.S. honoring the commitments they agreed to in Paris while questioning whether man is influencing global warming.

In the meantime it's going to be 70 degrees in central New Jersey tomorrow - but I'm certain the 40 billion tons of CO2 that humans pumped into the atmosphere in 2014 have nothing to do with that.









 

Coal Miner's Slaughter?

Listening to the chorus of Republican Congressional leaders outlining their legislative priorities for the new year last week was like witnessing the unrolling of the Koch brother's Christmas wish list.

If you read Tim Dickinson's exhaustive and scathing expose on Koch Industries and the alarming political agenda of Charles and David Koch in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, you know that list is long and scary.

Repealing the Affordable Health Care Act, curbing the enforcement authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and creating more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans rank pretty high on the to-do list of newly elected (or newly re-elected) members of the GOP - many of whom took campaign contributions from the afore-mentioned brothers Koch.

Some of them also ran on the Tea Party ticket; the infamous Koch-funded front which masquerades as a political party. 

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that the post-election GOP rhetoric is genuine, and Republicans really do want to work with the President and other Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation that will benefit the American people; why not act on coal mine safety?

Republicans are all but salivating over an upcoming Congressional vote on the Keystone Pipeline and the opportunity to make the US even more energy independent by relying on natural resources found in the land and waters of North America.

Lord knows Republican candidates ran enough political TV ads this past election cycle financed by the coal industry from groups like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

Many of us take it for granted that the lights come on when we walk in and flip the switch on.

But we also assume an industry that bill's itself as "America's Power" takes responsibility to both ensure the safety of it's workforce and comply with the federal regulations designed to protect those safety standards.    

According to an in-depth series of reports released last week that were jointly-produced by NPR and Mine Safety and Health News, that's not always the case.

The report details how some of the nation's largest coal producers routinely violate federal mine safety regulations, ignore recommendations to address flagrant violations that put workers at risk, then are allowed to simply keep on operating; even when they owe hefty fines and penalties.

Ex-Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship

The stunning report coincided with the news that former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship (pictured left) was indicted in federal court on four charges last week; including numerous and flagrant violations of US mine safety standards at the Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia where 29 miners lost their lives in an explosion back in 2010.

Blankenship resigned as CEO of Massey Energy in December of 2010 just three weeks after an article in Rolling Stone written by Jeff Goodell profiled the notorious coal executive. 

He was widely reviled as seen in this ABC News segment and interview that aired back in April, 2014, in which he tried to deflect blame for the Upper Big Branch explosion on the miners who died, rather than his own well-documented orders to his own mine managers to warn workers about upcoming inspections so that safety violations like the one that killed those 29 miners could be covered up.

But the Don Blankenships of this world can only operate when federal regulations are not enforced.

With control of both houses of Congress, Republican lawmakers could actually do something about the lax enforcement of coal mining regulations if they really wanted to.

They have the power to call hearings, subpoena witnesses and draft legislation that Democrats could support and the President could sign.

But it's not likely Charles and David Koch would like that very much.

Regulating the fossil fuel industry to keep workers safe is something they've spent millions lobbying against for years, because pesky regulations that might have kept the 29 miners in the Upper Big Branch mine safe get in the way of profit margins.

And as Tim Dickinson's recent article in Rolling Stone makes clear, the Kochs worship profit above human lives, the environment, the law and even the integrity Charles Koch is so fond of saying lies at the heart of the industrial behemoth he and his brother have created.

So even though House Speaker John Boehner is from Ohio and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky (both coal producing states) chances are slim that they will deviate from the agenda set by the Koch brothers and their privately-financed legislative factory the American Legislative Exchange Council.   

Republicans could do something about mine safety in the next two years, but they won't. Their policy wonks would find some reason to label such talk "pro-union" or "anti-business"; or "anti-freedom".

In the meantime people like Jack Blankenship (no relation to Don) will pay the price.

Injured miner Jack Blankenship [Photo courtesy - NPR.org]

According to the NPR investigation, Jack (pictured left) was working a mile underground in the Aracoma Alma coal mine in Logan County, West Virginia when a 300-pound slab of rock fell from the ceiling, struck him in the back and pinned him to the ground and left him permanently disabled and in constant pain.

The Aracoma Alma mine had been cited for 120 violations for falling rock over the previous two years before Jack's accident; Aracoma was owned by none other than Massey Energy.


According to the Rolling Stone expose on Koch Industries, Danielle Smalley was seventeen when she and her teenage friend Jason Stone smelled gas in her family's mobile home 50 miles from Dallas, Texas near a town called Lively.

Danielle Smalley, victim of Koch Industries

Danielle (pictured left) told her dad, then hopped into his 1964 Chevy pickup truck with Jason to go tell the authorities about the aroma of gas. 

When the truck stalled in the driveway near a creek bed that was filled with the vapor from liquid butane that had spilled from a ruptured, badly corroded pipeline owned by the Koch Pipeline Company, Danielle turned the key in the ignition and ignited a spark and the truck went up in a ball of flame killing her and her friend Jason.

That was August 24, 1996 - the day before she was supposed to go away to college.

She's not the only victim of Koch Industries relentless drive for profit either, there are many others.

She won't be the last either. Somewhere, in some small town or city there's a section of pipeline, or a valve, or damaged roof support in a mine somewhere - accidents waiting to kill innocent people.

Accidents that could have been prevented if companies like Massey Energy or Koch Industries simply complied with the law instead of pretending that they are somehow above it.

Sadly, their obsession with financial profit will blind them to the need to comply with the law.

If they don't agree with the law, they've pretty much already bought the Republican party; and with a GOP majority controlling both houses, they'll simply have ALEC draft up a new law to be presented on the floor of the House or Senate.

One that does away with pesky things like the sanctity of human life, respect for nature and the environment and a sense of moral responsibility.

Welcome to the Kochtopus - The Koch Brothers Meet Mainstream Media

Why has it taken so long for credible main stream media to begin taking a closer look at Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who have quietly and almost single-handedly bankrolled the far-right Tea Party movement?

Are these guys (David and Charles Koch pictured left) really dangerous to Democracy?

New Yorker magazine reporter Jane Mayer pens a piece in the latest issue - but why so long for the Koch brother's names to be linked to the ultra right conservative causes they espouse? The Koch's certainly aren't invisible, they're the 9th richest people in the nation. No surprise that they oppose bigger taxes.

If you've bought Brawny paper towels, Dixie Cups, a Georgia-Pacific lumber product or used Stainmaster to clean your carpets you've done business with Koch Industries - regarded by some as the biggest debunkers of climate change data in the world. Why? Perhaps because Koch Industries is one of the biggest owners of oil pipelines in the country.

Back on December 9, 2009 the Think Progress Website Progress Report detailed how the Koch (pronounced like 'Coke') brothers have funneled millions (over $45 million to dozens of conservative groups since 1997) to oppose almost every agenda item from the Obama White House from the Stimulus Package to the health care bill.

Don't get me wrong, Charles and David Koch can spend the proceeds from their wealth any way they want. But it strikes me as odd that the same media that shows video clips from Tea Party events with 'outraged Americans' carrying signs depicting the President as a Nazi or a spreader of Socialism - never even mention Charles and David Koch, the guys who foot the bill to send 40 busloads of people to Tea Party events.

The Koch brothers are rich even by American standards. Their staggering wealth finances a wide range of politically conservative organizations and think tanks; including Americans for Progress (which might as well be called Tea Party Central)and The Heritage Foundation.

From "Obama isn't really an American Citizen", to "Obama is a Muslim" and the Glen Beckian "Obama is a racist", the squeakier wheels in the right-wing media movement have presented a strange tapestry of fabricated nonsense for their angry minions to flaunt - but what if it's all just a bunch of BS generated by a couple of hardcore right-wing conservative guys who own one of the largest private companies in America?

Is that First Amendment expression or media manipulation?

Let's see if Katie Couric or Brian Williams have the journalistic balls to introduce the heartland of America to the Koch brothers and the actual scope of their one-sided agenda. Now THAT would be a real Eye on America.

More About the Kochtopus!