Tag: Koch Brothers

The Atlas Network and the Building of Argentina’s Donald Trump

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Yves here. We’re featuring a post from openDemocracy on Argentina’s primary results that had far-right candidate Javier Milei beating the candidates of the two parties that have been in power for two decades. The post is telling, and not in a good way. Milei does advocate extreme views (not that he can go as far as he likes since even if he won a plurality again, he would still be leading a coalition government). And too many commentators forget that voters regularly move to the right in bad economic times, which Argentina is certainly suffering. It’s that the piece depicts him as a Trumpian outsider/madman, when Nick Corbishley’s post right after the primary results were in describes Milei’s considerable, if sometimes seamy, establishment connections…including to the Kochs:

How Javier Milei Upset Argentina’s Political Status Quo

Previously:

Is Argentina’s presidential frontrunner Javier Milei US’ “boy?” Rejects China+Mercosur, embraces $$

Orinoco Tribune Editor: There Was a Coup Against Pedro Castillo in Peru + Some Notes

[2017] Libertarian Atlas Network Pushes Latin America Right

The Phony War on American Culture

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Phony War on American Culture

Consider how gender is one focus of their culture war campaign. Transgender people hardly affect our personal lives, despite the Republican campaigns to make it a voting issue. In America, only 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children identify as transgender out of a population of 332 million. Only 36 transgender athletes compete in college sports that include over half a million participants. Yet the Republican legislature in Kansas recently banned transgender girls from female high school sports, despite having only three transgender girls out of 41,00 competing in the state. Indeed, they should be respected and accommodated in some way. Yet, GOP legislators are considering a flood of bills to restrict transgender behavior, flooding email boxes with requests for donations, blasting isolated events on Fox News, and making them campaign issues.

Is this why Biden isn’t refilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?!

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

[2017] Trump’s Budget Delivers Big Oil’s Wish: Reducing Strategic Petroleum Reserve

While most observers believe the budget will not pass through Congress in its current form, budgets depict an administration’s priorities and vision for the country. Some within the oil industry have lobbied for years to drain the SPR, created in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis.

…

Exxon, as well as the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), have long lobbied for a drawdown of SPR‘s supply, according to lobbying disclosure records reviewed by DeSmog. They supported two key bills, proposed but never passed by Congress: H.R. 4136 in 2012 and S. 1231 in 2015.

H.R. 4136, lobbied for by Exxon, API, and IPAA**, says that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve can only be tapped if more federally owned public lands and waters were leased to the oil and gas industry. S. 1231, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Modernization Act of 2015, called for a Department of Energy study of the SPR “to determine options available for [its] continued operation,” to be completed 180 days after the bill’s passage.

…

“[T]he SPR is unnecessary in the first place. Private inventories and reserves are abundant, and open markets will respond more efficiently to supply shocks than federally controlled government stockpiles,” wrote Loris, who began his career as an associate for the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. “Congress should authorize the Department of Energy to sell the entire inventory, using the revenues solely for deficit reduction.”

[2014] Robert Kennedy Jr.: We need laws to ‘punish global warming skeptics’

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of climate change’s loudest activists, said there should be a law that lets authorities punish skeptics and deniers – those who engage in “selling out the public trust,” he said, in an interview with Climate Depot during New York City’s recent People’s Climate March.

Robert Kennedy Jr.: We need laws to ‘punish global warming skeptics’

Related:

CHD Founder Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Files to Run for U.S. President

TikTok defenders emerge in Congress

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

TikTok defenders emerge in Congress

The other side: Reps. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Troy Nehls (R-Texas) are holding a competing “Moms Against TikTok” press conference at the Capitol on Thursday to press for a ban.

The speakers include a staffer for the conservative Heritage Foundation and Chaya Raichik, the operator of “Libs of TikTok.”

Source: Twitter

Related Notes:

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Orinoco Tribune Editor: There Was a Coup Against Pedro Castillo in Peru + Some Notes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Orinoco Tribune Editor: There Was a Coup Against Pedro Castillo in Peru

Rodríguez remarked that the appointment of Vice President Dina Boluarte as the de facto president is a measure adopted by the Peruvian Congress to disguise the coup d’état. “Naming Dina Boluarte as the de facto president is a halfway solution between Pedro Castillo and José William Zapata, the president of Congress, who is a right-wing military man accused of corruption and drug trafficking and what have you,” he opined. “So, I believe they chose Dina Boluarte to prevent greater tension or political instability in Peru… In fact, José William Zapata was the president of Peru for some minutes and then transferred power to Dina Boluarte. This was all that was behind the coup in Peru.”

Some notes, to self, on José Williams, Hernando de Soto, Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Omidyar Network, & Atlas Network:

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