There are some wrong ways to address the
outing of Armando. The first is to do nothing at all and hope that it doesn't happen to us. But that is out of the question -- at least two other users to my knowledge have recently recieved harassing phone calls for their posts at Kos. Meekly doing nothing at all rewards the bullies in question and invites them to do it again.
The other way would be to find out the personal and private info of the people in question who outed Armando. That would be wrong as well -- we would be breaking the law and they would only be too happy to turn us in to the fine people of Homeland Security.
The best way is to redirect our energies into exposing "objective" think tanks and "research organizations" for what they are -- phony organizations that pass off GOP propaganda as scientific research or objective news.
The goal here is to permanently discredit such right-wing organizations. When you hear someone cite data from such an organization, there is no need to troll-rate them -- there are more important targets to use your bullets on. Instead, all you have to do is say they are a propaganda outlet for the GOP.
Two nights ago, before we knew that Armando would be leaving us, I came across a perfect organization for target practice -- the National Center for Policy Analysis. I wrote about a "study" claiming that Al Gore's claims about global warming were not valid. The discussion turned into a full-blown expose detailing their connections and ties to big oil. Listed blow are the things we found:
1. The NCPA has taken $390,900 in funding from Exxon-Mobil since 1998.
National Center for Policy Analysis has received $390,900 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
1998
$65,900 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
Source: ExxonMobil 1998 grants list
2000
$30,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
general support
Source: ExxonMobil Foundation 2000 IRS 990
2001
$40,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Source: ExxonMobil 2001 Annual Report
2002
$30,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Source: ExxonMobil 2002 Annual Report
2003
$75,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Corporate Giving Report
2004
$75,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Source: Exxon Giving Report 2004
2005
$75,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Source: ExxonMobil 2005 DIMENSIONS Report (Corporate Giving)
2. Their people's ties to Republicans and Republican causes (same link as above):
This is simply a representative selection:
Pete DuPont: He is the policy chairman of the NCPA and was a big oil exec as well as a long-time Republican politician. He ran for President in 1988. He was also one of the early advocates of the privitization of Social Security.
James Thompson: He is also the chairman of the board of a large petroleum company.
Sandy Liddy Bourne: Worked for George Allen while he was governor of Virginia; has claimed that the Kyoto Protocol would mean the death of the Free Market System.
Christopher Horner: Writes articles for the Washington Times.
Marlo Lewis: Worked on the staff of the Republican Congress.
Thomas Gale Moore: Worked for the Reagan Administration; claims that global warming would be a good thing.
Fred Singer: He is the president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, which also gets big oil money. He also serves on the board of the Environmental Conservation Organization, an extremist group with ties to the UN Black Helicopter crowd, the John Birch Society, and other right-wing tinfoil groups. His role is important, as he serves as a go-between between the more "respectable" groups such as the NCPA, and the extremist groups such as the John Birchers.
3. The NCPA also supports Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling:
The House defeated a proposal yesterday to allow off-shore drilling in U.S. coastal waters. National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett responded to the news by suggesting the president should send Congress back to the drawing board.
"If I were president, I would veto any interior funding bill that does not put America on a path to greater energy security by ending the moratorium on off-shore oil and gas production and allow drilling in ANWR," said Burnett. "We have billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas going untapped, while Americans are suffering from the highest oil and gas prices in history."
4. The NCPA also opposes higher MPG standards, claiming that more people will get killed in auto accidents:
Worse, the steps needed to improve fuel economy have historically had tragic consequences. Improving fuel economy is primarily achieved by reducing the size and power of vehicles. Downsizing comes at a cost to safety. As consumer advocate Ralph Nader stated in 1989, "larger cars are safer."
Researchers at Harvard University and the Brookings Institution found that, on average, for every 100 pounds shaved off new cars to meet CAFE standards, between 440 and 780 additional people were killed in auto accidents - or a total of 2,200 to 3,900 lives lost per model year. And using data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Traffic Safety, USA Today calculated that size and weight reductions undertaken to meet current CAFE standards had resulted in more than 46,000 deaths.
5. In a bizarre "about us" piece, they claim to be all about "Classical Liberalism." This is Newspeak at its finest:
Rights Are Relational . Rights pertain to the moral responsibilities that people have to one another. In particular, they refer to a zone of sovereignty within which individuals are entitled to make choices without interference by others. In this way, rights serve as moral side-constraints on the actions of other people. In a world consisting of only one individual, or in which people never interacted, rights would not exist in the sense that there would be no one to claim a right against and no one who could interfere with the exercise of any individual's rights. Rights exist because people do interact in pursuit of their own interests. Rights are also relational in another sense: They limit the morally permissible actions government may take to interfere with the lives of individuals who are governed.
Rights Imply Obligations. Rights sanction morally allowable actions. In the process, they create obligations for other people to refrain from preventing those actions. To say that "Joe has the right to do X" implies all other people have an obligation not to interfere with Joe's doing X. For example, to say "Joe has a right to build a swing set in his backyard" implies that other people are obliged not to interfere with Joe's construction of the swing set.
Fundamental Rights Imply Negative Obligations. Joe's right to build a swing set obligates others to stay out of the way. It does not obligate others to help Joe -- by furnishing labor, materials, etc. So, Joes' right creates negative obligations for others, not positive ones. All fundamental rights imply negative obligations in this way.
7. Most of their people within the "inner circle" also work for similar right-wing organizations such as these:
Tech Central Station.
Reason Public Policy Institute.
National Environmental Policy Institute.
American Council on Science and Health.
Fraser Institute.
Reason Foundation.
Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Frontiers of Freedom Institute and Foundation.
Independent Institute.
George Marshall Institute.
Cooler Heads Coalition.
Hoover Institute.
Cato Institute.
World Climate Report.
Heritage Foundation.
Science and Environmental Policy Project.
Environmental Conservation Organization.
Federalist Society.
Yes, the same one that brough us Roberts and Alito.
Media Research Center.
They are important, because they are the think tank Rush Limbaugh uses for his "research."
International Republican Institute.
John McCain's outfit.
Most of these groups have recieved hundreds of thousands of dollars from Exxon-Mobil. This shows that for all their record profits, Exxon represents a decaying ideology that is bound to fail. They are fighting tooth and nail in a life and death struggle for self-survival even as they continue to be one of the worst polluters in the world.
For real up-to-date science on global warming, go to this site.
An overview of the science on climate change.