The president of an industry-funded front group with an environmental-friendly sounding name was charged Wednesday with tax evasion and obstruction of justice as part of the continuing federal criminal investigation into lobbying practices in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal. Italia Federici, president of the “Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA)”, “plans to plead guilty to charges of obstructing Senate proceedings and tax evasion.”

If there is anything that should have been a tip-off as to the true bona fides of this supposed environmental group it would have been that text of this article from the Washington Post in 2001.

On a June evening in 1998, in the big ballroom of the J.W. Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue, Gale A. Norton hosted the national kickoff for an organization she founded that is now called, after several name changes, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy.
The guest of honor was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.). The keynote address was delivered by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.). The sponsors for the gala that night included the National Coal Council, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the National Mining Association, the Chlorine Chemical Council and the political consulting firm of Karl Rove, one of Bush’s closest advisers.

True to form, the Bush administration and special interests aligned with it have been masters at creating “initiatives” and “non-profit” organizations that certainly sound to be environmental or consumer conscious but, in fact, have been supported morally and/or financially by major corporate interests. The implementation of President Bush’s “Clear Skies Initiative” actually would have resulted in the weakening of the Clean Air Act. Mr. Bush’s “Healthy Forest Initiative” was anything but healthy but rather an effort give free reign to the timber industry across National Forests under the guise of “fuel reduction. And Mr. Bush’s recently announced new “climate initiative” appears to me to have been suspiciously timed to successfully preempt and delay the implementation of a more proactive proposal to manage greenhouse emissions that had been put forth by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G8 Summit this week.

Many industry-funded front-groups like the CREA exist today. Sourcewatch calls them “the quintessential tool of deceptive propaganda.” The idea of such groups was the brain-child of Edward Bernays who is generally regarded as the “father of public relations.” On its website, Sourcewatch lists a number of other front-groups with environmental-friendly or consumer-friendly sounding names which, in fact, work primarily to block any honest-to-goodness attempts to protect the environment, preserve human health, or support the best interests of consumers and the public.

Well, if you read the reports that Exxon Mobil was softening its stance on climate change, you can forget those false pronouncements right now.

Exxon Mobil has launched the latest salvo in its multi-million dollar, decades long disinformation campaign on climate change.

Exxon Mobil backed front groups, American Enterprise Institute and Pacific Research Institute have released a new “report” and film called “An Inconvenient Fiction“.

Before you read the report or watch the film, you should make yourself aware of the following.

These American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) are known “conservative think tanks” with strong industry ties to big oil and big tobacco. These groups have worked for decades to produce “white papers” and “reports” that provide alternate realties to valid scientific and economic findings.

The report’s authors are Stephen F. Hayward a “Scholar” at AEI and Amy L. Kaleita a “Public Policy Fellow” Environmental Studies at PRI.

AEI, PRI, and their fellow industry front groups have worked hard to convince Americans that, among other things, nicotine is not addictive and that cigarettes can cause no harm.

In my opinion, what the organizations have accomplished over the decades in their disinformation campaigns is nothing less than criminal.

The Union of Concerned Scientists report “Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air” documents how Exxon Mobil has funneled over $16 Million during the last decade to such groups to provide disinformation on climate science.

According tho the UCS report, American Enterprise Institute has received at least $1,625,000 of funding from Exxon Mobil’s disinformation campaign and Lee R. Raymond, retired chair and CEO of ExxonMobil, is vice chairman of AEI’s Board of Trustees.

Also according to the UCS report, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy has received at least $355,000 from ExxonMobil’s disinformation campaign. PRI’s largest donation from Exxon Mobil since 1998 is $100,000 in 2004 (up from $45,000 for ach of the two previous years). Exxon Mobil allocated half of this grant for “climate change and environmental quality research.”

AEI also had no problem this February in sending letters to scientists offering them up to $10,000 to critique findings from the recently released report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climtae Change.

Remember the famous quote that was attributed to “Deep Throat” in the film “All the Presidents Men.”

“Follow the money.”

A book soon to be released will provide more information on this long-term campaign to deceive and confuse the American public is Chris Mooney’s: Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.

GOP should catch up with constituents

sununu

In response to my Letter to the Editor of the Nashua Telegraph, John Sununu writes his own letter to the newspaper and accuses me of fabrication.

My response is below.

================================

Sununu: Letter had erroneous information

The Nashua Telegraph: Published: Saturday, Mar. 24, 2007

I write to correct a series of false statements in a letter to the editor from Mr. Stephen Nodvin that appeared in The Telegraph on March 22 regarding climate change. As Congress examines this issue, your readers deserve the most accurate, objective information available.

The letter states, falsely, that prior to my election to the U.S. Senate, I headed an organization funded by Ex­xon Mobil, Chevron, Eli Lilly and Philip Morris, and that I ran a disinformation Web site regarding global warming funded by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. Both points are patently untrue.

Before being elected to the Senate in 2002, the residents of New Hampshire’s First Congressional District elected me to
three consecutive terms in the U. S. House of Representatives. Prior to 1996, I held the position of chief financial officer and director of operations for the Manchester, N.H.-based Teletrol Systems Inc., a manufacturer of information systems and networks.

The letter’s author and his colleagues did meet with my staff in Washington. However, at no time did they discuss global warming with my chief of staff, to whom Mr. Nodvin inaccurately attributes a quote in his letter.

Last year, I wrote legislation adding wilderness protection to 35,000 acres in the White Mountain National Forest. I have voted against the administration’s unfair new source pollution policy and supported tougher standards for mercury emissions from power plants. In 2005, I received recognition from Taxpayers for Common Sense, a bipartisan coalition, for my work on environmental issues.

I understand that no one will agree with my vote on every issue. But it is inexcusable for critics to resort to fabrication to score partisan, political points. The voters of New Hampshire deserve better.

U.S. Sen. John Sununu
R-New Hampshire

My response is below:

In a letter published in the Nashua Telegraph on March 24, 2007, Senator John Sununu accused me of "fabrication to score partisan, political points."  His statements were in response to my Letter to the Editor, published on March 22 in which I questioned the Senator’s motivation for being the first Republican Senator to call for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Every citizen has the right to question the motivations of her or his elected officials in Washington, whether they be congresspersons, senators, or the president.  That is one of the things that makes America such a great country.  However, I think it is another thing when a Senator accuses one of his constituents of purposely spreading partisan-based falsehoods.  I would like to take this opportunity to respond.

In his letter Mr. Sununu said that my "letter states, falsely, that prior to my election to the U.S. Senate, I headed an organization funded by Ex­xon Mobil, Chevron, Eli Lilly and Philip Morris, and that I ran a disinformation Web site regarding global warming funded by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. Both points are patently untrue."   

My training as a scientist compels me to not make any statements without having a basis either by direct observation or reference source. I my letter to the editor I sourced several published articles and the book Washington Babylon (page 13) which stated "John Sununu" headed Consumer Alert, the industry funded front group that had fought against improved automobile safety standards and had helped the establish and maintain the disinformation web-site: http://www.globalwarming.org .  I have now spoken with Ken Silverstein, one of the authors of the book Washington Babylon, who has informed me that the "John Sununu" referred to was actually the Senator’s father and former Chief of Staff in the first George Bush Whitehouse. 

I apologize to Senator Sununu for the incorrect attribution.  Both the father and the son go by the same first and last names and one of the sources that I used incorrectly attributed the association with Consumer Alert to the younger Sununu.

However, my observation that the Senator is a long-time climate change denier remains unchanged.  In a letter the senator sent to me on January 26, 2005, the Senator stated "scientists have been unable to agree that there is a direct increase between … temperature increase (during the second half of the 20^th century) and human activity."  This statement is, and was at the time, untrue or misleading at best.  While there are a handful of vociferous dissenters with scientific credentials, the overwhelming majority of scientists worldwide have reached the conclusion that human activity has been the primary cause of global warming during the past 40-50 years.  

In the Senator’s letter to the paper he states: "The letter’s author and his colleagues did meet with my staff in Washington. However, at no time did they discuss global warming with my chief of staff, to whom Mr. Nodvin inaccurately attributes a quote in his letter".  Mr. Sununu’s statement implies that we did not discuss global warming with his staff during our meeting.  The Senator’s statement is misleading because we did indeed discuss that issue. In my letter I did err in stating that I and two other scientists from New Hampshire met with Mr. Sununu’s "chief of staff."   I should have used the title "Legislative Assistant."

The staff person that we met with in the Senator’s office in Washington at 3:30 pm on September 20, 2005 to explicitly discuss global warming was Peter Phipps, the Senator’s Legislative Assistant for Environment, Energy, Elections, Telecom, and Agriculture.  It was Mr. Phipps who told the three New Hampshire scientists sitting in front of him that day that there was no scientific consensus on the cause of global warming.  It was astounding to us to hear such a statement from our Senator’s Legislative Assistant for Environment when we had explicitly traveled to Washington to inform our representatives that exactly the opposite was true.

The Senator’s implication that my questioning of his motives and actions were "partisan" and "political" follows a popular refrain among elected officials to cry "partisanship" when a citizen questions her or his representative’s actions.  My visit to the Hill on September 20, 2005 included meetings with staff members of all four of New Hampshire’s representatives in the House and the Senate.  It was only in Senator Sununu’s office that we scientists received a lecture on what scientists believe about global warming.  In fact, during our visit to Senator Gregg’s office, I was particularly impressed with the depth and awareness of Mr. Gregg’s Legislative Assistant for the Environment, with whom we spoke, about the problem of global warming. 

There were some unintentional errors in my letter to the Telegraph.  However, in his letter to the paper, Mr. Sununu never addressed the main issue of my concern which was why Mr. Sununu is now calling for the resignation of the Attorney General when he had formerly provided strong support for Gonzalez and his policies. 

The Senator’s current stance on the Attorney General contradicts the support Mr. Sununu provided to Mr. Gonzales in a letter the Senator sent to me on February 28, 2005.  In that letter, Senator Sununu not only supported Mr. Gonzales appointment to the post of Attorney General but, to my amazement, the Senator also defended Mr. Gonzalez’s and President Bush’s justifications of their circumvention of Geneva Convention protections.

Stephen C. Nodvin, Ph.D.

sununu

If you have not heard of Lyndon Larouche, you will soon.

Lyndon Larouche is:

• a convicted criminal who spent 6 years in prison for conspiracy and mail fraud
• a political extremist
• a conspiracy theorist
• a cult leader
• someone who has been accused to be an anti-Semite

Even the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation has said that Larouche “leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history.”

But, above all, Larouche is an opportunist.

His tactics are well known:

1. Find high profile targets to attack
2. Develop a series of conspiracy theories that paint the targets as a cabal of Judas and the anti-Christ
3. Recruit young impressionable people to become “followers” of your “movement”

The most recent high profile targets that Larouche has chosen for his newest crusade are Al Gore and climate science.

Larouche’s cult-like minions have begun showing up at public forums on global warming and have been vacuuming e-mail addresses off the web to spam people with their new “expert” knowledge of all things science.

If you want to see some of the vitriol Larouche and his minions can spew, read Larouche’s attack on Gore called:

Blood and Gore.

Greetings to contacts of the LaRouche Youth Movement in Boston!

Our organization is mobilized to destroy the reputation of mALthusian GORE, the buffoon most avidly promoting a neofeudal form of oligarchy and population reduction converging on genocide under the banner of ‘man-made Global Warming’. This, when the Democratic party must be MOVING in coordination with LaRouche to reorganize an utterly bankrupt world monetary-financial system and rebuild the physical economy. Al Gore’s popularity stunt is the latest plot by the Anglo-Dutch financial establishment to foster hysteria in the population and lure the global economy into a planet-wide Dark Age. We must ruin big, fat, loser Al Gore by exposing his vile past and blatant lies in order to establish Lyndon LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…

Do Your Part!? Master this material and become a beacon of truth. Pass this e-mail on to your close contacts. This information is your survival kit for the present political period.

Recent Findings by 21st Century Science and Technology refute the scientific method of Al Gore’s IPCC.
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/press_releases_files/2007/0223_inconvenient_gore.shtml
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/press_releases_files/2007/0223_inconvenient_gore.shtml

The Great Global Warming Swindle: an excellent British documentary with leading scientists debunking the global warming fraud.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

LaRouche’s March 7 Webcast: “Implications of the Gore Hoax for International Policy”
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/audio_video_files/2007/070307_webcast.shtml

An Article by an EIR Intelligence Team on Gore’s Connections to the British
http://www.larouchepac.com/pages/otherartic_files/2007/0312_blood_gore.shtml

A Thorough Annihilation of the Global Warming Fraud by a leading glaciologist
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf

The email talks about: “LaRouche’s undisputed leadership in the Democratic Party. Civilization is on the line…”

If that sounds just a bit egomaniacal to you, you are beginning to get the point of where these people are coming from.

This film is a fraud and a sham. It uses every trick in the book to deceive its viewers and it has been debunked:

• Desmoblog debunking the film
• A PowerPoint dissecting the falsehoods in the film
• A full page video version of the above PowerPoint Presentation
• Google video of the PowerPoint
• A dissection by Monbiot
• Another Monbiot analysis
• A Rebuttal (pdf) to the film put together by Colin Chase
• British Antarctic Survey response to the film
• An analysis of the errors in the film by The Independent

Most of the people who appear in the film are NOT respected climate scientists but long-time climate deniers: many of who have received significant funding from companies like ExxonMobil and Philip Morris. The arguments used are the same warmed-over arguments that have been thoroughly and carefully considered by the majority of climate scientists… and rejected.

According to George Monbiot, “this is not the first time that the director, Martin Durkin, produced a film full of fraud attempting to make the same points. In 1997, Durkin, produced very similar film series called “Against Nature”, which also maintained that global warming was a scam dreamt up by environmentalists. It was riddled with hilarious scientific howlers. More damagingly, the only way in which Durkin could sustain his thesis was to deceive the people he interviewed and to edit their answers to change their meaning. Following complaints by his interviewees, the Independent Television Commission found that “the views of the four complainants, as made clear to the interviewer, had been distorted by selective editing” and that they had been “misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.” Channel 4 was obliged to broadcast one of the most humiliating primetime apologies it has ever made. Are institutional memories really so short?”

• The article is NOT a peer-reviewed scientific article. It is mocked up pretty professionally to to look like one to get unsuspecting people to think it is one.
• If you look at the “article”, you will see n the bottom left hand corner the word “Science.” This is an obvious attempt to confuse the unsuspecting readier into thinking that this was printed in the journal Science
  which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I am a member of AAAS and I can assure you that the journal Science would never publish this.
  • Here is a link to the real journal Science:
    http://www.sciencemag.org/
  • And here is a link to a statement on climate change approved and
    released by the board of AAAS.
    
    http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2007/0218am_statement.shtml
• EIR (Executive Intelligence Review) is NOT a scientific journal but nothing more than a publication and press service produced by the Larouche organizaion.
• The article lists as its author Zbigniew Jaworowski: a known long-term climate-change denier. His arguments are not new, have been considered and dismissed by the scientific community.
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Jaworowski
  
  http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Zbigniew_Jaworowski

• Prepare slick-looking polemical presentations including films and documents that “appear” to have an air of credibility.
• Incorporate many half-truths - people who are “already in your court” are ready and willing to believe: just give them something that sounds that it could be truthful (Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”)
• Provide false dichotomies: most people are easily fooled by the use of the false dichotomy
• Use selective or even distorted data
• Use Ad hominen attacks. Forget reality: attack the messenger. Attack those money-grubbing climate scientists and that liberal Al Gore. People will believe you more if you get them first angry at the other side. (If you are going use this technique, you might as well lie when smearing the messenger: people who buy this approach are already NOT thinking about the content of your arguments).
• Appeal to authority: Make sure to find at least a few people with advanced degrees to support your arguments. It won’t matter to the “true believers” in your audience or those easily persuaded that your “experts” represent only a tiny fraction of the population of scientist and experts who might be working in this field. Your audience won’t know that hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and thousands of other scientists disagree with “your experts.”
• Finally, quote out of context. Al Gore NEVER said that he “invented the Internet”. Doesn’t matter. That did not stop people from taking his words out of context and from endlessly repeating that and other misquotes to paint Gore in a bad light when he was running for President in 2000.

Is Senator Sununu Running scared?

Published in The Nashua Telegraph: Thursday, Mar. 22, 2007

Sununu has some serious problems. He has received a “D” rating by a veterans group on his congressional voting record on issues that affect U.S. troops, Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, and military families.

Sununu is a long-time climate change denier. He boasts about having an engineering degree from MIT. Yet, two years ago I sat in Mr. Sununu’s office on Capitol Hill as his chief of staff told me and two other New Hampshire scientists to our faces that there was “no scientific consensus on climate change.”

The reason that we traveled to Washington from New Hampshire was to make sure that our congressional leaders were, in fact, aware that there was and is indeed scientific consensus on recent climate change and its causes.

Before being elected to the Senate, Sununu was in charge of an organization that was funded by organizations such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Eli Lilly and Phillip Morris, and ran a disinformation Web site on global warming funded by Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris. (Funny how after the November 2006 election, Exxon Mobil stopped funding such groups and Sununu’s site, globalwarming.org, was removed from the Internet but has since been reactivated.)

What is worse, in March 2005, I received a letter from Sen. Sununu in which he condoned the use of torture in his support for Alberto Gonzales being appointed as Attorney General of the United States: blog.nodvin.net/wp-content/Sununu2.jpg .

So now Sununu is calling for the ouster of Gonzales as attorney general when two years ago he wrote me a letter supporting Mr. Gonzales’ appointment to the same position and defending Gonzales’ horrific stands on torture and the Geneva Convention? What has changed? My only guess is that the results of the 2004 and 2006 elections have got John Sununu running scared.

Stephen Nodvin, Nashua, New Hampshire
sununu

After years of inaction, the U.S. Congress has finally taken a step forward on the global warming issue: they formed a committee! Politicians love to form committees rather than take action. And to make sure this committee cannot take actions, it is explicitly forbidden in the legislation “to have have any legislative jurisdiction and nor any authority to take legislative action on any bill or resolution”. But, hey, at least the legislation does give the committee authority to “to investigate, study, make findings, and develop recommendations on policies, strategies, technologies and other innovations, intended to reduce the dependence of the United States on foreign sources of energy and achieve substantial and permanent reductions in emissions and other activities that contribute to climate change and global warming.”

The name of the committee being formed is the “Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.” The legislation allows that 6 of the 15 committeemembers “be appointed on the recommendation of the Minority Leader”. Not missing a beat, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) made sure to pack the Republican side with long-term climate-change deniers:

Congressman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, Ranking Member
Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona
Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon
Congressman John Sullivan of Oklahoma
Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee
Congresswoman Candice Miller of Michigan

“Selecting a panel that is comprised almost exclusively of people that still question the basic science behind global warming is not a good indicator that this committee is going to be able to move forward,” said Ben Dunham, a staff attorney at U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Hello?! Sensenbrenner made sure to highlight the potential lack of progress by attempting to redefine the committees role in an announcement on his website:

“Recent fluctuations in the Earth’s climates and temperatures have led to numerous sensational headlines describing an eminent doomsday scenario. It will be this panel’s responsibility to examine the big questions as to why, and to what extent are humans contributing to these periods of fluctuation, and how can we take steps to eliminate that impact”.

Of course it is not the panel’s responsibility to examine these questions as described in the legislation nor are these questions an ongoing matter of debate in the scientific community.

Recently, what appears to be a corporate-funded, industry front group, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, has severely criticized Al Gore for his energy use. The “Report” from the group appears to have been well timed to have been released just after the film “An Inconvenient Truth” won two Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards.

It is easy to criticize. Certainly Al Gore is the biggest target both for people who don’t like him to begin with (remember the state of Tennessee voted against its own native son in the 2000 presidential elections) and for the naysayers and cynics determined to not take any action to stabilize the climate.

This is not to condone or condemn. Certainly it would be ideal if Mr. Gore’s houses, operations, and activities were “off the grid” and fossil fuels played no role in his activities. (Solar panels are now being installed at Gore’s home).
But let’s put things in perspective. In 2005, Americans used almost 100 Quadrillion British Thermal Units of energy.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0105.html

Here is a diagram of the historical energy use in the United States:

Energy Consumption by Source, 1635-2000 (Quadrillion Btu)

Note that most renewables (solar, wind, etc.) are such a small part of total consumption, they don’t even make it onto the chart!

The magnitude of fossil fuel energy use today is so huge that it is entirely possible for any one individual, company, or organization to become carbon neutral through offsets. One can think of this as paying a premium for one’s energy use to ensure that all of the energy one uses is replaced in the system by renewable sources of energy.

Some ski resorts in the northeast are becoming “carbon neutral” by ensuring that every bit of energy that they use to make artificial snow is “generated” by windmills. Do these ski resorts have windmills on-site? NO! But they pay a premium to ensure that every bit of energy that they consume locally is replaced on the national grid by energy generated by windmills thousands of miles away from their locations.
Here is an article:
http://www.boston.com/business/gl…..to_the_trail_of_environmentalism/
And her is a diagram showing how this works:
http://www.boston.com/business/gl…../articles/2007/01/26/making_snow/

The article in the Tennessean:
http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pb…..le?AID=/20070227/NEWS01/702270382
did describe Al’s offsets briefly “$432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources”. It also stated : “The home’s average monthly electric bill last year was just under $1,200″ and “In addition to the electric bill, the natural gas bill for Gore’s home and guesthouse ran $1,080 per month last year.”. Using those numbers that is about $2280 per month in energy bills.

If, as the article says, Mr. Gore is paying $432 a month for energy offsets, that is equivalent to an 19% “carbon tax” that Al and Tipper are paying to be “carbon neutral.”

Should Mr. Gore’s energy tax be larger than 19%. Perhaps. But remember this number does not take into account other direct monetary contributions made by Mr. Gore towards energy offsets and conservation (including sales from his books and the film) nor does it take into account the offsets and new energy efficiencies now being put into place by individuals, corporations, and governments who have be inspired to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Of course the report by the Tennessee Center for Policy Research criticizing Mr. Gore never mentions the offsets.
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=367

So just who is the “Tennessee Center for Policy Research” and this new Gore critic Drew Johnson, president of this center?

From its tax filings, it is pretty hard to figure out just what this center is about:
http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/9…..amp;yr=200512&rt=990&t9=A

Apparently it is a relatively new group with its first 990 filling being for 2005. The form shows and annual funding of about $100K. But it is pretty weird in that no officers are listed. No employees are listed since the total paid in wages is $48K and the form only requires that employees earning more than $50K be identified (a coincidence?).

Well, we can find more information on the “Center’s” web page:
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=89

“Prior to founding TCPR, he served as a policy analyst at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation where he authored “The Return of Fuzzy Math and Risky Schemes: How Presidential Hopefuls Would Deepen Deficits,” a major influence for the increased focus on government spending in the 2004 presidential election.In 2002, while at the American Enterprise Institute, Johnson’s research on the link between increased campaign finance regulation and rates of incumbent reelection served as the empirical backbone in the Supreme Court Case “McConnell v. FEC.” As a research analyst for the Modern Red Schoolhouse Institute in Nashville, he examined state educational standards, education reform and pedagogical use of technology.
A former Institute for Humane Studies Koch Fellow, Johnson recently completed his third term on the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth. He also sits on the Board of Directors of the Marketplace.MD Foundation. A native of Johnson City, Tennessee, Johnson holds a bachelors degree from Belmont University and a Master of Public Policy degree from Pepperdine University.”

Anybody see any red flags?

* The “National Taxpayers Union” has received funding from Philip Morris and the Tobacco Institute:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index……tional_Taxpayers_Union_Foundation
* The American Enterprise Institute is a know highly conservative think tank, receives funding from extreme conservative foundations such as the Scaife Foundations, and has received significant funding from Philip Morris and ExxonMobil.
AEI has on its staff conservative luminaries including Robert H. Bork, Lynne Cheney, Newt Gingrich, and Richard Perle.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index……tle=American_Enterprise_Institute
* The Institute for Humane Studies: “acts as a libertarian talent scout, identifying, developing, and supporting the brightest young libertarians it can find who are intent on a leveraged scholarly, or intellectual, career path… The Institute receives funding from a number of large libertarian and right-wing foundations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Koch Family Foundations, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Carthage Foundation.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index……itle=Institute_for_Humane_Studies
* The Koch Family Foundation “consist of the David H. Koch Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation… Funding for the foundations comes from the conglomerate Koch Industries, the ‘nation’s largest privately held energy company, with annual revenues of more than $25 billion. … Koch Industries is now the second largest family-owned business in the U.S., with annual sales of over $20 billion.’
‘The company is owned by two of the richest men in America,’ David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch (described as ‘reclusive billionaires’), who have a combined personal fortune estimated at more than $3 billion and who have emerged as major Republican contributors in recent years. … Both David and Charles Koch are ranked among the 50 richest people in the country by ‘Forbes’.
The foundations are financed via the oil and gas fortunes of Fred G. Koch, a founding member of the John Birch Society. David is a libertarian who ‘provides a significant amount of funding for the Cato Institute’s $4 million annual budget.’”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations

So we don’t know who exactly is funding the “Tennessee Center for Policy Research” or its President Drew Johnson. But Johnson sure does have significant ties to conservative groups and energy corporations. Is Johnson’s “Center” just another industry funded front-group?

All I can say is:
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone

After years of first denying global warming was occurring, then admitting it was occurring but that it was “natural” (and that humans could not have anything possibly to do with warming on a global scale, now one of the lead deniers, Patrick Michaels (ExxonMobil funded), now says that scientists of course knew that green house gases would eventually result in a warming Earth but that we just better “Live with it” because there is nothing humans can do about it!

RawStory is reporting: “New Christian broadcasting TV special featuring Ann Coulter links Darwin to Hitler.”

“Author and Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy connects the dots between Charles Darwin and Adolf Hitler in Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, a groundbreaking inquiry into Darwin’s chilling social impact,” announces a press release issued by Florida’s Coral Ridge Ministries.

According to the promotional materials for this “documentary”:

“In this groundbreaking documentary D. James Kennedy looks into Darwin’s chilling social impact — and the mounting evidence that Darwin had it wrong on the origin of life”.

Well “here they go again”. Since the anti-evolutionists have been unsuccessful in either disproving the theory of evolution or using pseudo-scientific ideas to bump it out of public school textbooks, they are now trying to find a way to make Evolution to be “Evil.”

Think about it. Since Einstein discovered the relationship between energy and matter, does that make him responsible for the deaths of the people in Hiroshima? That would be the logic used by the anti-evolutionists in their new screed “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy”.

As a professor of natural sciences, I often give a lecture on Eugenics to my college classes, subtitled: “How common misconceptions regarding evolution, genetics, and heredity led scientists astray”.

It is true that two American scientists, Charles Davenport, Ph.D. Biology, Harvard and Harry Laughlin, D.Sc. Cytology, Princeton created the American Eugenics Movement in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s which, did indeed, influence the Nazi movement.

But Davenport and Laughlin completely misinterpreted Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. These scientists gone wrong did huge damage. However, their eugenics ideas were not based upon science but upon their their pre-conceived biases and prejudices. These guys twisted Darwin’s findings to rationalize their pre-existing racist and xenophobic beliefs. (Sound familiar as to how today’s conservatives twist science to match their policies and beliefs?)

For more on the Eugenics movement in America see: http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/

For more on conservatives >30 year effort to replace the scientific-method with policy based on ideology read Chris Mooney’s book: The Republican War on Science.

The “talking-heads” on TV and radio are sure to be agog about this latest proclamation from the anti-evolutions. Since most Americans have little understanding of the real mechanisms of evolution, this latest stunt will likely get much traction.