Tag Archives: chicago

Tribune Company: Don’t Sell Newspapers to Koch Industries!

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Today, Greenpeace proudly ads its voice to a growing coalition of groups to urge Tribune Company, publisher of the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and several other major US newspapers, not to sell their print media to Koch Industries. SIGN OUR PETITION TO TRIBUNE COMPANY CEO PETER LIGUORI TO KEEP TRIBUNE’S NEWSPAPERS OUT OF KOCH’S HANDS.Koch bros climate denial tribune

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the US, oversee an estimated $115 billion in annual revenue. The Kochs are each worth $31 billion to $45 billion, and the brothers have a bad habit of funneling tens of millions of dollars to organizations that deny the reality or severity of global warming. They have a keen interest in influencing US politics and culture, hosting secretive gatherings of wealthy elites who collectively raise hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on state and national politics. This quiet circle of business leaders already has a concerning amount of influence in the US media and has prioritized increasing that influence.

Greenpeace’s opposition to the Koch bid for Tribune Co. newspapers is rooted in the billionaire Koch brothers’ proven track record of peddling misinformation on climate change science through media outlets they already have ties to, such as the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the National Review and the Washington Examiner. And when the Kochs can’t get favorable reporting, they fund organizations to gin up their own media that promote Koch priorities–busting unions, beating back environmental protection laws, smothering public education, watering down healthcare reform, and a variety of other initiatives that only the 1% stand to gain from.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION. And stay tuned for more updates from Greenpeace on our work to keep the Kochs’ corrupting influence out of Tribune Company newspapers.

Heritage Foundation crisis clogs Koch Brothers outreach to Hispanic voters

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Crossposted from PolluterWatch.

If you were the Koch brothers and you wanted to connect better with Latino and Hispanic voters, after you just dumped millions of your own cash into a presidential election that didn’t go in your favor, you’d probably be annoyed if one of your favorite front groups started undermining your voter outreach.

heritage-foundationThat’s exactly what’s happening with the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation. Heritage is having a public relations crisis after releasing a contentious report claiming that immigration reform would cost $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years, indebting taxpayers to support people who live in the U.S. illegally. The offensive kicker is that the Heritage report’s freshly-resigned co-author, Jason Richwine, previously published a dissertation claiming that Hispanic and Latino immigrants have lower IQs than White people.

Here’s a helpful meme for Mr. Richwine:

That's Racist!

As Heritage Foundation is one of the billionaire Koch brothers’ favorite groups to implement their political agenda–receiving more than $2.7 million from Koch-controlled foundations since 2005–this is a poor start for the Kochs’ new interest in reaching Hispanic and Latino voters in the U.S.

Amid the fiasco, Heritage pulled out of Buzzfeed’s forum on immigration sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute. See infighting over Heritage’s assumptions about how so-called “illegals” contribute to the U.S. economy from the Koch-funded Reason Foundation, of which David Koch is a trustee. Continue reading →

Koch Bros Tribune Co? Climate change denial in Koch-friendly media

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Brothers Charles and David Koch have spent decades and millions of dollars to influence the news we read in newspapers, see online and watch on TV. The Kochs regularly convene high security meetings with high society attendees, many of whom work in the media, influence it, or own it.

  

Now reporters across the country are eyeing the Koch’s first attempt to directly own media themselves. Last weekend’s New York Times confirmed Koch Industries’ bid for the Tribune Company as a way for the Kochs and their allies to “make sure our voice is heard.” Tribune’s newspapers reach tens of millions of U.S. citizens, an ideal captive audience for Charles Koch’s self-serving philosophy to promote “economic freedom,” and to end “crony capitalism,” an ironic choice of words for the one of country’s most infamous corporate political manipulators.

Tribune Co. owns eight newspapers and 23 TV stations across the country including the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune and Hoy, the country’s 2nd largest daily Spanish newspaper, a clear asset for conservative politicians still reeling from their underwhelming rapport with the U.S. Hispanic population in the 2012 election.

Reaching Hispanic and Latino voters will be a major topic at the Kochs’ secretive “billionaires caucus” next week, which was delayed three months so the Kochs could audit the results of their 2012 electioneering activities, bolstered by hundreds of millions of dollars raised at previous Koch meetings. Continue reading →

Tidings of Clean Energy Success and a Cleaner New Year

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Across the world, holidays of all traditions are celebrating light and hope. Against a backdrop of these holiday times that bring 2012 to a close and give birth to 2013, we naturally reflect on the year that has been and the coming year that can be. Many of you reading this article played a role in making 2012 a great one for clean energy, health and a livable climate. For that we are thankful and wish many happy returns and look forward to continued collaboration. First, let’s celebrate what we accomplished. Continue reading →

Heartland Institute’s Achy Breaky Climate Denial Machine

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No one would argue that Heartland Institute is in turmoil. The Guardian summed it up pretty well last night .

The historic Joe Bast backfiring blunder of a billboard campaign featuring Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, the non-apology that followed, corporate funders running for the exits, the collapse of the Heartland DC office, former friends and colleagues jumping Bast’s ship in his “hour of need”…

Desperate times indeed for climate denial central….

Continue reading →

Preventing a toxic legacy

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As Ted Craver and Edison International convene their Annual General Meeting today, community residents in Chicago consider the future use of the sites of Fisk and Crawford, the city’s two coal plants. Edison agreed to close the plants in response to overwhelming grassroots support months ago. Solutions for how to deal with potential contamination have been more elusive. Community activists are well represented in a process to discuss these solutions and things are moving forward. Representatives from LVEJO, PERRO and Pilsen Alliance have been taking solutions right to Mayor Emmanuel. While this is encouraging, Edison has been hesitant to assume clean-up responsibilities at the plants. If Edison is not held accountable, Chicago taxpayers could end picking up the clean-up tab. Calling on those who have suffered from decades of pollution to clean the plants up when it is Edison who has profited from their operation is simply unjust. Let’s turn Fisk & Crawford into bright spots, not blight spots in the Pilsen and Little Village communities. Join us in calling on Ted Craver and Edison International to avert a toxic legacy and clean up the Fisk and Crawford sites once and for all.

Edison International: It’s time to act like a clean energy leader

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Communities in Chicago scored a massive victory earlier this year, when Edison International agreed to shut down the Fisk and Crawford coal plants. That same day, the company announced it would cede control of the Homer City coal plant in Pennsylvania and declared the Waukegan coal plant north of Chicago worthless. Continue reading →

Heartland Institute Sting Operation Triggers Greenpeace Investigations

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PolluterWatch: Greenpeace Investigates Heartland Institute Leaked Documents – click to see investigation and ongoing updates. 

What an awkward entrance into 2012 for the climate denial machine!

Among the ongoing dubious deeds of the billionaire Koch brothers, the American Petroleum Institute’s Vote 4 Energy propaganda and the House of Representative’s love affair with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, an indicator that policymakers refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of global warming, we already had plenty of debunking to do.

Then the Heartland Institute fell on its face, inadvertently aiding in a leak of its own internal documents outlining their strategies and finances for 2012. We are currently investigating several areas those documents drew our attention to — see Greenpeace’s Heartland Institute Investigations and the Joseph Bast PolluterWatch profile.

Continue reading →

Edison, GenOn clean up acts; Duke, GE embrace a dirty past

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What has happened this week is nothing short of amazing and the story only keeps getting better. This week, power producers Edison International and GenOn announced the pending closure of almost 4,000MW of coal plants across Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In Chicago, more than decade of activism came to fruition as Edison International announced the closure of Fisk Generating Station by the end of this year and Crawford Generating Station by the end of 2014. The unparalleled speed of these closures largely stems from a broad-based coalition determined not to accept false solutions like natural gas as a next-worst alternative to coal power. Continue reading →

Coal Plants Shut Down: Community Activists Show their Strength

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Earlier this week, Edison International announced that they would shut down the Fisk and Crawford coal plants – a victory for the books! After ten years of gritty and determined grassroots work, communities in Chicago triumphed over the corporate polluter in their back yard. On the same day, citizens in Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania celebrated the announcement that Houston-based GenOn would shut an additional 7 plants, including the Portland Generating Station where Greenpeace worked with NJ and PA residents to demand clean air for their community. Continue reading →