Showing posts tagged right wing hypocrisy
ryking: 7. STALIN Before Fredrick Koch suddenly developed a pinko paranoia and helped start up the John Birch Society, he was making piles of cash laying the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure in the 1920s and early 1930s. He designed and built refineries, hosted Soviet engineers for training in Wichita, Kansas, and made an invaluable contribution to the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan. This is a touchy issue for the Koch family: without the Commie Reds providing his future seed capital, Koch Industries would not exist today — and neither would the Tea Parties. From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare”

ryking:

7. STALIN

Before Fredrick Koch suddenly developed a pinko paranoia and helped start up the John Birch Society, he was making piles of cash laying the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure in the 1920s and early 1930s. He designed and built refineries, hosted Soviet engineers for training in Wichita, Kansas, and made an invaluable contribution to the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan. This is a touchy issue for the Koch family: without the Commie Reds providing his future seed capital, Koch Industries would not exist today — and neither would the Tea Parties.

From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare”

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)
ryking: 6. EMINENT DOMAIN Although highly diversified, Koch Industries’ vast network of oil and gas pipelines remains the company’s core business and main source of revenue. The exact size of their pipeline network is not known, but some estimate that Koch Industries operates anywhere between 35,000 and 50,000 miles of pipelines between Texas and Canada—enough plumbing to wrap around the globe twice or zigzag between New York and Los Angeles 15 times. How did the Kochs manage to build up a pipeline network of this magnitude? By getting the government to use its tyrannical powers of eminent domain forcibly seize private property on Koch Industries’ behalf. As far as libertarians are concerned, eminent domain is a socialist tyranny straight out of the Leninist playbook, as it recognizes the government as the real owner of all land and vests it with the power to expropriate private property for alleged public good. At the most fundamental level, libertarians believe that eminent domain invalidates the notion of private property rights, threatening not just prosperity, but freedom. Charles Koch is clear on this. “Countries that clearly define and protect individual private property rights stimulate investment and grow,” he writes in his book The Science of Success. “Those that threaten and confiscate private property lose capital and decline.” But not all property rights are created equal. Koch Industries oil pipeline recently built in Minnesota shows that Charles Koch does not see an is anything wrong with the government confiscating private property, as long as he stands to make a profit. Completed in 2008, the 304-mile line now carries crude oil from the Canadian border to a Koch Industries refinery near the Twin Cities area via a two-foot-wide pipe. Company PR execs pitched the pipeline as a public benefit project, as it would increase Minnesota’s gasoline supply. But the 1,000-plus landowners who were forced to handover their private property so that Koch Industries could run its pipeline didn’t quite see it that way. “People’s rights were violated, and they never got their due process,” a farmer whose fields were going to be cut in two by the pipeline told a newspaper in 2007. “It’s wrong. People’s property is one of the most important things to their livelihood.” From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare” View high resolution

ryking:

6. EMINENT DOMAIN

Although highly diversified, Koch Industries’ vast network of oil and gas pipelines remains the company’s core business and main source of revenue. The exact size of their pipeline network is not known, but some estimate that Koch Industries operates anywhere between 35,000 and 50,000 miles of pipelines between Texas and Canada—enough plumbing to wrap around the globe twice or zigzag between New York and Los Angeles 15 times. How did the Kochs manage to build up a pipeline network of this magnitude? By getting the government to use its tyrannical powers of eminent domain forcibly seize private property on Koch Industries’ behalf.

As far as libertarians are concerned, eminent domain is a socialist tyranny straight out of the Leninist playbook, as it recognizes the government as the real owner of all land and vests it with the power to expropriate private property for alleged public good. At the most fundamental level, libertarians believe that eminent domain invalidates the notion of private property rights, threatening not just prosperity, but freedom. Charles Koch is clear on this. “Countries that clearly define and protect individual private property rights stimulate investment and grow,” he writes in his book The Science of Success. “Those that threaten and confiscate private property lose capital and decline.”

But not all property rights are created equal. Koch Industries oil pipeline recently built in Minnesota shows that Charles Koch does not see an is anything wrong with the government confiscating private property, as long as he stands to make a profit. Completed in 2008, the 304-mile line now carries crude oil from the Canadian border to a Koch Industries refinery near the Twin Cities area via a two-foot-wide pipe. Company PR execs pitched the pipeline as a public benefit project, as it would increase Minnesota’s gasoline supply. But the 1,000-plus landowners who were forced to handover their private property so that Koch Industries could run its pipeline didn’t quite see it that way. “People’s rights were violated, and they never got their due process,” a farmer whose fields were going to be cut in two by the pipeline told a newspaper in 2007. “It’s wrong. People’s property is one of the most important things to their livelihood.”

From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare”

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)
ryking: 5. ETHANOL Just two weeks ago, Koch Industries got into the ethanol business by buying two ethanol plants in Iowa. Other than defense, ethanol is possibly the most subsidized industry in America. Koch’s own Cato Institute has called ethanol a “boondoggle,” writing that “the dizzying array of federal, state and local subsidies, preferences and mandates for ethanol fuel are a sad reflection of how a mix of cynical politics and we-can-do-anything American naiveté can cloud minds and distort markets.” The institute has sharply criticized the billions of dollars in federal and state subsidies that are poured into the ethanol industry (between $5 billion and $6.8 billion in 2006 alone). Koch Industries has traded ethanol for years on the commodities market, but their entry into the production side of the business puts them in a position to profit off the subsidies in a more direct manner. From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare” View high resolution

ryking:

5. ETHANOL

Just two weeks ago, Koch Industries got into the ethanol business by buying two ethanol plants in Iowa. Other than defense, ethanol is possibly the most subsidized industry in America. Koch’s own Cato Institute has called ethanol a “boondoggle,” writing that “the dizzying array of federal, state and local subsidies, preferences and mandates for ethanol fuel are a sad reflection of how a mix of cynical politics and we-can-do-anything American naiveté can cloud minds and distort markets.” The institute has sharply criticized the billions of dollars in federal and state subsidies that are poured into the ethanol industry (between $5 billion and $6.8 billion in 2006 alone).

Koch Industries has traded ethanol for years on the commodities market, but their entry into the production side of the business puts them in a position to profit off the subsidies in a more direct manner.

From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare”

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)
ryking: 4. LOGGING In 2006, Koch Industries acquired pulp and paper giant Georgia-Pacific for a $21-billion cash payment, allowing the Koch brothers to tap into a whole new area of government largesse: the ability to log public forests for private gain and have taxpayers cover the operating costs. Not only can companies like Georgia-Pacific, which is the world’s leading manufacturer of paper products, exploit a publicly-shared resource without sharing the profits, but the U.S. Forestry Service subsidizes them to do it by forcing taxpayers to fund the construction of new logging roads that provide loggers with access to virgin growth—a nice welfare arrangement for the industry that costs taxpayers over $1 billion a year. “Private logging of America’s National Forests is a heavily subsidized form of corporate welfare,” wrote Scott Silver, founder and executive director of Wild Wilderness, a conservation watchdog, at the time of the Georgia-Pacific’s sale to Koch Industries. “Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public.” From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare” View high resolution

ryking:

4. LOGGING

In 2006, Koch Industries acquired pulp and paper giant Georgia-Pacific for a $21-billion cash payment, allowing the Koch brothers to tap into a whole new area of government largesse: the ability to log public forests for private gain and have taxpayers cover the operating costs. Not only can companies like Georgia-Pacific, which is the world’s leading manufacturer of paper products, exploit a publicly-shared resource without sharing the profits, but the U.S. Forestry Service subsidizes them to do it by forcing taxpayers to fund the construction of new logging roads that provide loggers with access to virgin growth—a nice welfare arrangement for the industry that costs taxpayers over $1 billion a year.

“Private logging of America’s National Forests is a heavily subsidized form of corporate welfare,” wrote Scott Silver, founder and executive director of Wild Wilderness, a conservation watchdog, at the time of the Georgia-Pacific’s sale to Koch Industries. “Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public.”

From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare”

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)
ryking: 3. RANCHING For the past fifty years, through its Matador Cattle Company subsidiary, Koch Industries has been quietly milking a New Deal program that allows ranchers to use federal land basically for free. Matador, one of the ten biggest domestic cattle ranching operations, has something in the neighborhood of 300,000 acres of grazing land for its cows—two-thirds of which belong to American taxpayers, who will never see a penny of profit. From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare” View high resolution

ryking:

3. RANCHING

For the past fifty years, through its Matador Cattle Company subsidiary, Koch Industries has been quietly milking a New Deal program that allows ranchers to use federal land basically for free. Matador, one of the ten biggest domestic cattle ranching operations, has something in the neighborhood of 300,000 acres of grazing land for its cows—two-thirds of which belong to American taxpayers, who will never see a penny of profit.

From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare”

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)
ryking: 2. VENEZUELAN FERTILIZER In 1998, Koch Industries entered into a lucrative partnership with two state-owned companies-one Venezuelan, the other Italian-to open a massive $1 billion nitrogen-based fertilizer plant in Venezuela called Fertinitro. A business venture with two state-run companies? How did Koch Industries find itself in this libertarian nightmare scenario? After all, Charles Koch’s own Cato Institute brain trust has been writing for decades that state-owned enterprises are less efficient and productive than private companies. Fertilizer production requires massive amounts of natural gas, and obtaining it can account for 50 percent of operating costs. Luckily for Koch, Fertinitro’s semi-state-owned status allowed it to tap into a guaranteed supply of natural gas subsidized by the state. Steven Bodzin, a former Bloomberg journalist, found that “just on the natural gas, never mind the electricity or water subsidies, Koch profits from a direct Venezuelan government subsidy of $1.23 for every thousand cubic feet of gas consumed at Fertinitro.” For Koch Industries, whose role in the partnership is to unload half of the 6 million tons of fertilizer produced by Fertinitro every year on the American market, that equals up to $123.6 million in subsidies every year. (Pictured: Hugo Chavez with his oil minister) From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare” View high resolution

ryking:

2. VENEZUELAN FERTILIZER

In 1998, Koch Industries entered into a lucrative partnership with two state-owned companies-one Venezuelan, the other Italian-to open a massive $1 billion nitrogen-based fertilizer plant in Venezuela called Fertinitro.

A business venture with two state-run companies? How did Koch Industries find itself in this libertarian nightmare scenario? After all, Charles Koch’s own Cato Institute brain trust has been writing for decades that state-owned enterprises are less efficient and productive than private companies.

Fertilizer production requires massive amounts of natural gas, and obtaining it can account for 50 percent of operating costs. Luckily for Koch, Fertinitro’s semi-state-owned status allowed it to tap into a guaranteed supply of natural gas subsidized by the state. Steven Bodzin, a former Bloomberg journalist, found that “just on the natural gas, never mind the electricity or water subsidies, Koch profits from a direct Venezuelan government subsidy of $1.23 for every thousand cubic feet of gas consumed at Fertinitro.” For Koch Industries, whose role in the partnership is to unload half of the 6 million tons of fertilizer produced by Fertinitro every year on the American market, that equals up to $123.6 million in subsidies every year.

(Pictured: Hugo Chavez with his oil minister)

From “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare”

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)

Christian Right Bigots Are Hiding the Truth -- Early Christians Condoned Gay Marriage

Many of the world’s religions — including Christianity — supported same-sex unions, a reality obscured by modern-day shrill, conservative commentary.

    “Through much of history, especially prior to the Fourteenth Century, many Christians did not share the view that marriage was a reward for being heterosexual, nor that a same-sex union was objectionable.

An icon from St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai illustrates this point. It shows two robed Christian saints getting married. Their pronubus (official witness, or “best man”) is none other than Jesus Christ.

It is a standard Roman portrayal of a wedding. The difference: the two saints are both male, Fourth Century Christian martyrs, Saint Serge and Saint Bacchus, close friends in the Roman army who were purportedly singled out for their secret adherence to Christianity before being tortured and killed.

Their unity, considered romantic by some historians and depicted through the image of marriage at St. Catherine’s monastery, was commemorated in many subsequent liturgies. The late Yale historian John Boswell found evidence for other Christian same-sex marriage ceremonies continuing even into the Eighteenth Century.

It is broadly and falsely assumed that the world’s religions uniformly condemn same-sex unions. That error is even repeated in the recent favorable decision on same-sex marriage by Chief Judge of Federal District Court in San Francisco, Vaughan R. Walker. 

It is true that all major religions exhibit some heterosexism, a bias in favor of heterosexuality over homosexuality. However, religions also have shown openness to same-sex unions, a reality that shrill conservative commentary, which dominates the public square on matters religious and sexual, has blocked from public view, even from the view of Judge Walker.

Many Buddhist authorities insist that privileging one sexual orientation over another is not the path of wisdom and insist that the successful management of sexual desire is the moral issue, not the orientation of that desire or the gender of your lover.

Jewish scholars show that compulsory hetero-normativity is not supported by basic Jewish values.

Pioneering scholars in Islam argue that in spite of the negative Qur’anic texts on homosexuality, a solid Muslim case, based on Islamic justice, can be made for same-sex unions. Observant Muslim lesbians, known as the Samadiyyah, are living out this expression of Muslim life and tolerance.

Some Native American religions portrayed “two-spirited,” persons, i.e. sexual minorities, in a very positive light.

Hindu scholars have shown that respect for diversity is at the heart of Hindu cultures.  Since early times, the Hindus saw that persons were not divided neatly into male and female and spoke of a “third sex” which opened space for and normalized gender and sexual variety and same-sex unions.

Lawmakers take note: because religions give this warranty and allow for this freedom of same-sex unions, laws that would legalize only the conservative religious view are in violation of religious freedom.

Religions are pluralistic on same-sex unions. It is not the function of law to curtail freedoms granted and authorized by mainstream religions.

Conservative Christians who insist that “traditional marriage” has always been “between a man and a woman” are wrong and historically uninformed. Thus, they are poor guides for lawmakers and judges.

There is strong support in world religions for the view that homosexuality is not the problem; heterosexism is.

The principles of justice and equality that pulsate through those flawed but powerful classics that we call the “world religions,” are moving toward seeing heterosexism, with its resistance to same-sex loving unions, as a prejudice in a class with sexism, racism, anti-Arabism and anti-Semitism.

Humanity needs its exuberant diversity but humans shrink from it.

As theologian William Sloane Coffin said: “Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with — and perhaps the most dangerous thing to live without.” “

Senator Vitter suggests Rachel Maddow only looked like a woman "a long time ago"

ryking:

Pretty bold talk from an infant like Vitter, who paid prostitutes to change his diapers.

That comment made me choke on my pop-tart!  ~whyinthehell

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)

Barack Obama has been golfing 10 times this year. John Boehner has been golfing 119 times this year. Guess which one right-wingers are screaming about?

(via ryking)

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)
“
Allowing openly gay men to be scoutmasters, [Rekers] testified, ‘would legitimize the value of homosexual behavior in the eyes of many of the Boy Scouts … There would be more homosexual conduct or behavior by the boys in such troops.’ And some of them could be setting off down the road toward a homosexual adulthood, he said. Whatever biological component there is to having homosexual urges, homosexual behavior is a ‘preference,’ not an ‘orientation,’ he said — in short, a matter of choice. It’s a choice Rekers clearly considers deeply wrong: As a Southern Baptist, he told the commission, he believes that God destroyed the city of Sodom for allowing homosexuality, as an example to mankind, and that active homosexuals face ‘eternal separation from God’ — in Southern Baptist parlance, the fires of hell.
American Talibaner and anti-gay activist George Rekers, recetly caught (in case you haven’t heard) employing a gay male prostitute. — Ryking (via ryking)
(Reblogged from diadoumenos)
“

Sen. Roy Ashburn, whose personal life became the subject of rumors in the wake of a DUI arrest last week, said today he is gay, but he defended his numerous votes against gay rights bills.

“I am gay… those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long. But I am gay,” the Bakersfield Republican told conservative radio talk show host Inga Barks in an on-air interview…

Gay-rights advocates seized on the news to point out Ashburn’s votes against gay rights legislation and his appearance several years ago at a rally in support of a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage.

Ashburn says he’s gay, defends vote record (via ryking)
(Reblogged from diadoumenos)

Palin's grandbaby is benefiting from government-run health care.

ryking:

anncoultersadamsapple:

I love this.

This bitch is worth a few million and could pay for her grandson’s health care easily. Typical Republican: Slam everything that every level of government does for society while benefiting from those very services. — Ryking

(Reblogged from diadoumenos)

Empathic Myopia

~Excerpt~
“Glenn Greenwald points out another example of the ongoing right wing incoherence and hypocrisy, this time over their rending of garments at the treatment of the American Christians detained in Haiti. This case is an unusually striking example of such incoherence and hypocrisy because it features suspects who are sympathetic to the right solely due to the fact that they are white Americans from the midwest who are affiliated with a conservative church.
Setting aside the glaring examples Glenn cites of innocent Muslims caught up in such situations tortured and shipped to Guantanamo for years on end without any due process at all who get absolutely no sympathy from these same people, imagine if these were black Jehovah’s Witnesses accused of kidnapping white children under similar circumstances right here in the United States. I don’t think you’d see any demands from these newly born international human rights advocates for the ACLU to intervene here either.”
(Reblogged from diadoumenos)