Extending the Nightmare: Americans For Prosperity Holds Extremist ‘Defending The Dream’ Summit
Extending the Nightmare: Americans For Prosperity Holds Extremist ‘Defending The Dream’ Summit
Americans For Prosperity (AFP), a nationwide front group founded and funded by the right-wing polluter Koch Industries, is holding its national summit, “Defending the Dream,” this weekend in Washington, D.C. On display from Friday through Sunday will be the extremist free-market, anti-science, right-wing ideology responsible for the dramatic decline in our nation’s economic and environmental health during the Bush era.
Americans for Prosperity is notorious for its fake grassroots efforts, funneling millions of dollars of oil and coal industry cash across the nation to spread their message of global warming denial. Just in the past month, near-identical op-eds appeared in Georgia and Arizona papers from the respective AFP state directors defending carbon dioxide — “the life-giving gas that makes trees grow tall and flowers bloom.”
The featured speakers at the “Tribute to Ronald Reagan Dinner” and Saturday’s general session include the following rogues’ gallery of conservative ideologues:
George Will and Fred Barnes, who this July called Americans suffering in the Bush economy “the crybabies of the Western world” and “whining all the way through it.”
Dinesh D’Souza, who said in 2007 that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was “indirectly” responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who this Tuesday declared, “I think I was right” about his statement in 2003 that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Edwin Meese III, who as Reagan’s Attorney General mentored John Roberts and Samuel Alito in his agenda of “striking down abortion rights, access to justice, and voluntary school desegregation.”
Grover Norquist, the anti-tax zealot who palled around with Jack Abramoff and claimed this March that “more people will die” because Bush raised fuel economy standards.
John Stossel, who claimed this July, during record gas prices and big oil profits, “I think these oil companies are heroes.”
David Koch, the Koch Industries billionaire who is the “richest man in New York State” and was the 1980 Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate, sits on the board of directors of AFP, Cato Institute, and the Reason Foundation. In July he gave the Lincoln Center $100 million to rename the New York State Theater after himself.
The dream these radical extremists from the American Petroleum Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Business and Media Institute, the Wall Street Journal, and other members of the Exxon-Bush machine are defending has been a nightmare for the United States. It’s time to wake up.
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This is the level of dialogue we have in the energy industry. If you go to the legislatures in New England, the utilties find predictable opposition from “288 grass roots organizations” all conveneiently located in the same building and served by the same front office as their local Ralph Nader “Public Interest Research Group.” So the utilities go to their labor unions and round up 500 letters from “disinterested public citizens.” Any outsiders who look at the industry know our opinions just aren’t relevant.
Why dig yourself into a hole by demonizing the other guys? Ordinary public citizens will wonder if you’ve caught the some contagious brain imbalance from Rush Limbaugh.
Exxon just wants to make money, and they’re pretty good at figuring out how to do this whether you’re nice to them or not. Show them how to be your friend, so they’ll stop funding fools. That means you need to stop writing with a voice tone that repels any interest in friendship.
You could, for example: (1) Give oil companies the incentive to market green fuels or electricity or whatever at their service stations. Marketing is always looking for more revenue, top management is always looking to diversity, and the Peak Oil guys will tell you the petroleum division won’t lose money no matter what we do. (2) Keep the banks out of the oil speculation business to prevent the recurrence of $4 gasoline by limiting their energy speculation to owning oil companies. Whether they buy Big Company stock ot invest in small drillers that will later sell out to the majors at market bottoms, you can tell the oil boys you did this on purpose as a favor to them. (3) Give oil companies incentives to earn foreign exchange in ways that create jobs in the US. Why shouldn’t our country have oil engineers service the world’s wells over the internet? They get paid nice taxable incomes, too. (Jealous? Go back to school.)
You’re a bright guy, you can think of lots of ways to Win Friends and Influence people. Why let you political opponents monopolize the votes and contributions of the oil industry? More importantly, why teach the oil industry to drag its feet, when they have the money and the inclination to seek knew markets anyhow? They’re Americans, too. Put ‘em to work.
November 19th, 2008 at 7:59 am