Mike Crapo
Americans for Prosperity, founded and heavily financed by the
thieving, polluting, climate change-denying, tea party-backing David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch,
have posted a voting scorecard for the first half of the 112th Congress. Five Republican senators and 39 Republican congresspersons got perfect 100 percent scores. Every single one of them a Republican. The senators are
Tom Coburn of Oklahoma,
Mike Crapo of Idaho,
Orrin Hatch of Utah,
Marco Rubio of Florida and
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Also on the Koch honor roll, but with mere A grades of 90-99 percent, are 8 senators and 45 representatives. Every single one of them a Republican. One senator (Kent Conrad of North Dakota) and 128 representatives got scores of zero. All of them are Democrats.
Tom Coburn
AFP chose to grade congressmembers based on their votes on repealing President Obama’s new healthcare law, blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, supporting the demolition document known as the Paul Ryan budget, ending ethanol subsidies and several Congressional Review Act resolutions as well as the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills.
The 0.0001%er Koch Brothers believe in lower corporate and individual taxes, less regulation of industry, especially with environmental regulations, and minimal support for social services. They have also secretly funded, to the tune of $48 million, groups that reject scientific consensus about climate change.
Marco Rubio
The Koch Brothers' scorecard also took into account signing their No Climate Tax Pledge, which says any climate-change legislation must be revenue neutral. While not a direct assault on efforts to do something about the growing amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere, it's another strand of wire they are using to strangle any government efforts at mitigating the effects of climate change. David Koch
told Jane Mayer in 2010 that he
Ron Johnson
doubted climate change is being caused by human activity. But, like other deniers, including the Mercatus Center that the Koches gave $9 million to, he added that if climate change does happen, it would be a good thing because "The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because far greater land area will be available to produce food."
And then, of course, climate change means being able to finally get at all that heretofore impossible to drill Arctic Ocean oil.
Orrin Hatch
Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the tea party since it began, including what amounted to training sessions and providing talking points, and, of course, money. Many tea party-backed Republicans won congressional seats in the upset victory that gave the GOP a majority of the House in the 2010 elections.
The efforts of the brothers Koch means that AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka was not exaggerating when he said in a speech Thursday at the Investor Summit on Climate Risk & Energy Solutions:
“The truth is that in many places—and not just places where coal is mined—there is fear that the 'green economy' will turn into another version of the radical inequality that now haunts our society—another economy that works for the 1 percent and not for the 99 percent." [...]
“So a year ago, as the climate bill failed in Congress, as the jobs crisis deepened and as workers’ pension funds continued to suffer from microscopic fixed-income yields, the American labor movement decided we couldn’t wait—we had to act to help advance profitable, risk-weighted investments that would create jobs and address climate change.” [...]
That’s why investors need, for our own economic reasons, government policies to make sure that critical investments get made—investments in building retrofits, in high-speed rail and the smart grid, in carbon capture and sequestration. That’s what comprehensive climate legislation is about—and that’s why we as nation must return to the work of passing a climate bill. [...]
Indeed so. But to get there, the American electorate has to start flunking all the Koch Brothers' top students.
h/t to Brad Johnson
