Koch Brothers: From Stalin to Beck and Ellis

From Fresh Air:

Terry GROSS: You might not know their names, but brothers Charles and David Koch have quietly given more than $100 million to right-wing causes, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think-tanks and political groups.

Jane Mayer reports on the Koch brothers in the current edition of The New Yorker, in an article titled "Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who are Waging a War Against Obama."
She says the Koch brothers have become the primary underwriters of hard-line libertarian politics in America, and their views dovetail with their corporate interests. Charles, who is 74, and David, who is 70, own virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate whose annual revenues are estimated to be $100 billion.
The Kochs operate oil refineries in several states and control some 4,000 miles of pipelines. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet and Lycra and is ranked by Forbes as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill.

Jane MAYER: They have been working to fight the federal government really since the 1970s. And their father was doing it before they were. So they're trying to get rid of federal regulations, particularly on energy companies like their own. They particularly have been at war with environmental regulations, and they have a history of serious and even criminal pollution problems. And they're very anti-tax in almost every form.

Terry GROSS: They founded the Cato Institute, the first libertarian think-tank.

Ms. MAYER: Absolutely, the Cato Institute has become, you know, a very powerful player in the area of shaping political opinion in the country. I mean, it's quoted all the time as a kind of a nonpartisan and impartial libertarian think-tank. But it was founded by the Koch fortune, and it has been funded by it ever since.

GROSS: Although the Koch brothers are libertarians, and they think government should be stripped to its most minimal role, you say they've been great beneficiaries of government money. Their companies have gotten about $100 million in government contracts since 2000.

Ms. MAYER: That's right. They've got a you know, so there's a certain amount of hypocrisy in this libertarian notion, and in fact, there have been some more kind of purist libertarian thinkers who have attacked the Kochs for exactly this, for kind of disguising their corporate self-interest as a kind of a lofty libertarian philosophy.

They were also, I think, tremendous beneficiaries during the Bush years of the 2005 energy bill, which was a tremendous giveaway of subsidies and tax breaks to various energy companies.

You know, I think that David Koch has, you know, you don't want to take that away from him. But at the same time, I have to say one of the things that really shocked me in doing the reporting on this family was that at the same time that David Koch has been, you know, sort of portraying himself as such a champion of the fight against cancer and actually has given a tremendous amount of money to that fight, his company produces a chemical, formaldehyde, in many, many, many products, and they produce it in huge quantities, which the U.S. government has been trying to regulate as a known carcinogen in human beings.

And the Koch Industries, through its Georgia-Pacific subsidiary, produces tons of formaldehyde and puts it into tons of products, particularly things like plywood and laminates.

And the company has been fighting the regulation of formaldehyde, trying to hold off the EPA from keeping it from flowing freely into the marketplace. And, you know, I just don't know how they can reconcile these two roles.

GROSS: The Koch brothers have an interesting family political history. Their father was an oil man in the 1930s. He spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union. You say his company trained Bolshevik engineers and helped Stalin's regime set up 15 modern oil refineries but, eventually, Stalin brutally purged several of Koch's Soviet colleagues and then he became fiercely anti-communist, became an original member of the John Birch Society.

Do you think that his, like, fervent anti-communist beliefs had any effect on his sons' beliefs?

Ms. MAYER: Oh, absolutely. I mean, and they've talked about it themselves. At the dinner table they were told over and over again that strong centralized government were evil. And some ways - and I've interviewed an old family friend of theirs who basically suggests that they transferred their father's paranoia about communism to paranoia about the federal government in the United States and all regulations.

And, I mean there was a consistent thread even within the Birch Society there, too, which was that the Birch Society was founded mostly by largely businessmen who were opposed to labor unions and, you know, minimum wage laws, and specifically opposed to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and a larger federal government. So there's kind of a consistent line that moves from the father, whose name is Fred Koch, to these sons. And, I mean I just don't think you could make some of the details up, though.

Who would ever think that behind one of America's most spectacular private fortunes is a father who made his first millions working for Joseph Stalin setting up the Soviet oil refineries?

GROSS: So the Koch brothers were brought up by a father who was fervently anti-communist. They grew up with anti-government, anti-big-state beliefs. How much of their work now in funding libertarian causes and anti-regulation, how much of that do you think is just like personal political philosophy and how much of it is like, this will help my corporation make profits?

Ms. MAYER: Well, I think there is no separation between the two in their thinking. They believe that prosperity will result for themselves and others, I guess, if you get rid of all kinds of state regulations and just allow the marketplace to bloom, as they would put it. They see both things as being united, really.

One of the things that I found fascinating was that they're not just your sort of ordinary Republican captains of industry; they are really self-described radicals. And Charles Koch specifically calls himself a radical and says he has a radical agenda when he talked to Brian Doherty in this book Radicals for Capitalism. Their vision is really pretty far out.

It doesn't take long to follow the money from these guys to the TEA movement on the lunatic fringe.

UPDATE: h/t to TGrindAdams.

New York Magazine. Koch apparatchik. Koch Industries reply.

The Big Picture for the Mountain West

From Wildfire Today:

There may be discussions about its cause, but there is overwhelming evidence that climate change is having a profound effect on the forests of the world. We don’t have the luxury of debate–it is here.

There may also be profound changes in how we fight fire, where the fires occur, the length of the fire seasons, and the number of personnel and dollars needed to suppress fires. Some of these changes in fire management are already occurring.

Here are some excerpts from an excellent article in the Guardian:

"For many years, Diana Six, an entomologist at the University of Montana, planned her field season for the same two to three weeks in July. That’s when her quarry — tiny, black, mountain pine beetles — hatched from the tree they had just killed and swarmed to a new one to start their life cycle again.

Now, says Six, the field rules have changed. Instead of just two weeks, the beetles fly continually from May until October, attacking trees, burrowing in, and laying their eggs for half the year. And that’s not all. The beetles rarely attacked immature trees; now they do so all the time. What’s more, colder temperatures once kept the beetles away from high altitudes, yet now they swarm and kill trees on mountaintops. And in some high places where the beetles had a two-year life cycle because of cold temperatures, it’s decreased to one year.

Such shifts make it an exciting — and unsettling — time to be an entomologist. The growing swath of dead lodgepole and ponderosa pine forest is a grim omen, leaving Six — and many other scientists and residents in the West — concerned that as the climate continues to warm, these destructive changes will intensify.

Across western North America, from Mexico to Alaska, forest die-off is occurring on an extraordinary scale, unprecedented in at least the last century-and-a-half — and perhaps much longer. All told, the Rocky Mountains in Canada and the United States have seen nearly 70,000 square miles of forest — an area the size of Washington state — die since 2000. For the most part, this massive die-off is being caused by outbreaks of tree-killing insects, from the ips beetle in the Southwest that has killed pinyon pine, to the spruce beetle, fir beetle, and the major pest — the mountain pine beetle — that has hammered forests in the north.
These large-scale forest deaths from beetle infestations are likely a symptom of a bigger problem, according to scientists: warming temperatures and increased stress, due to a changing climate. Although western North America has been hardest hit by insect infestations, sizeable [sic] areas of forest in Australia, Russia, France, and other countries have experienced die-offs, most of which appears to have been caused by drought, high temperatures, or both.

One recent study collected reports of large-scale forest mortality from around the world. Often, forest death is patchy, and research is difficult because of the large areas involved. But the paper, recently published in Forest Ecology and Management, reported that in a 20,000-square-mile savanna in Australia, nearly a third of the trees were dead. In Russia, there was significant die-off within 9,400 square miles of forest. Much of Siberia has warmed by several degrees Fahrenheit in the past half-century, and hot, dry conditions have led to extreme wildfire seasons in eight of the last 10 years. Russian researchers also are concerned that warmer, dryer conditions will lead to increased outbreaks of the Siberian moth, which can destroy large swaths of Russia’s boreal forest.

While people in some places have the luxury to doubt whether climate change is real, it’s harder to be a doubter in the Rocky Mountains. Glaciers in Glacier National Park and elsewhere are shrinking, winters are warmer and shorter, and the intensity of forest fires is increasing. But the most obvious sign is the red and dead forests that carpet the hills and mountains. They have transformed life in many parts of the Rockies. It is interesting that normal amounts of precipitation combined with warmer temperatures can translate into drought:

The tiny mountain pine beetle, which is just a quarter of an inch long, has destroyed nearly 70,000 square miles of forest in the Rocky Mountains.

University of Montana ecologist Steve Running says warmer temperatures in the Rockies bring spring earlier and fall later, each by about a week, yet precipitation has remained about the same. That translates into a drought, and stressed trees are highly susceptible to beetle infestations. Wintertime minimum temperatures in the 1950s, meanwhile, ranged from 40 F to 50 F below zero. That’s risen to the 30-below range, and there are fewer days when minimums are reached. It’s not getting cold enough anymore to kill the beetles, which over-winter in their larval stage and survive the milder temperatures because they are filled with glycol, a natural anti-freeze.

In addition, the past suppression of fire and the fact that many Western trees are reaching the age at which beetles target them — 80 to 100 years — are also factors in the widespread loss of forests.

So the forests across the West are dying, in such large numbers that U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar called it the West’s Hurricane Katrina. In Colorado and southern Wyoming, the U.S. Forest Service has created an emergency management team to cut down dead trees around towns and along roads and power lines. Forest Service campgrounds and trails have been closed because of the hazard from dead trees, and communities surrounded by dead forests have drawn up emergency evacuation plans for residents.

Tree-killing bugs aren’t the only problem. In 2005 Colorado researchers noticed that aspens were suddenly dying in large numbers. That year they found 30,000 acres of dead aspen forest. The next year there were 150,000 acres, and in 2008 it had soared to 553,000. The die-off is called Sudden Aspen Death, or SAD. “It’s growing at an exponential rate,” said Wayne Shepperd, who researches aspen for the Forest Service. “It’s pretty sobering when you see a whole mountainside or whole drainage of aspen forest dead.”

Groves at low elevations and facing south are dying fastest, and scientists believe the cause is hotter temperatures and drier weather. It’s not only killing mature trees, but the root mass as well. An aspen grove is the offspring of a large single underground clonal mass, which sends up shoots. “The whole organism is disappearing and it has profound implications,” Shepperd said. “When the roots die, groves that are hundreds or thousands of years old aren’t going to be there anymore.” If the die-offs continue, the loss of the aspen trees would be a blow to goshawks, songbirds, and a number of other species that find food and refuge in the groves.

A lot of beetles can also turn vast tracks of forest from carbon sinks to carbon sources. Take British Columbia, which is ground zero for the mountain pine beetle infestation in North America. Some 53,000 square miles of mature pine forest is dead and the province is projected to lose 80 percent of its mature trees by 2013. The second largest known die-off there occurred in the 1980s and claimed just 2,300 square miles. Bill Wilson — the province’s director of Industry, Trade and Economics Research — said he has flown in a plane for hours over the province and seen nothing but dead forest the entire time. "

What gives researchers pause is that many of these large die-offs have occurred with minimal warming, in just a few years. In the West, for example, the average temperature has warmed on average 1.8 F over the past century. “This is before we put two to four degrees centigrade (3.6 F to 7.2 F) into the system,” said Allen, referring to forecasts for warming by the end of this century. Trees across the world are stressed already from fragmentation, air pollution, and other problems, he said. “I don’t know how much stress the forests of the world can take,” said Allen.

ip's anecdotal mycology surveys reveal precipitous declines in Pleurotus species associated with aspen and support the argument that antibiotics deposited in cattle dung are disrupting those systems. Stay tuned.

206 Harvey Dunn flashback

The house looks great, maybe even like a Hereford with braces.

A duplex, moved onto a newly-poured basement in 1973 by Paul Prussman, graces the south side of Harvey Dunn Street kitty-corner from Sexauer Park. Four brave new men were the first renters.

Fall semester 1974, the left door was blocked and the right door opened onto a landing and split to the second floor. Pink Floyd posters adorned the staircase leading to the second-floor kitchen where the grapes of acid spaghetti wrath were stored. First floor on the left in the living room exhibited empty RETURNABLE Buckhorn Beer cases holding book shelves when Buckhorn was $2.75 a case.

My room was on the right, first floor. Kim was in the first floor southwest room. Bobby was second floor northwest, Michael, second floor southwest. There was a room full of LPs and Michael's big fucking stereo with four turntables. On one summer night, the speaker that was in the upper left window came tumbling off that porch roof while a hundred party-goers exclaimed, "Wwooww!" Mike still has those speakers.

Mary Black Bonnet writing from Lakota perspective

From Life as a Human:

Mary Black Bonnet is an enrolled member of the Sicangu (Rosebud) Lakota Nation (incorrectly known to the greater world as the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.) She is married to one of the most evolved husbands and they are parents to the mind blowingly awesome Turtle. They all live on a 13 acre “ranchette” that boasts sandburs, wandering wildlife, and breathtaking 360 degree views.

The majority of her writing is nonfiction and ethno-historic essays, mostly dealing with issues faced by Lakota Women. She has published poetry, and nonfiction essays. Her work can be seen in Tribal College Journal, Frontiers: a Journal of Women’s studies, Genocide of the Mind, Eating Fire Tasting Blood, Sharing Our Stories: Native women surviving Violence, Birthed From Scorched Hearts, Oregon Literary Review and Potomac Review.

As an undergraduate at the University of South Dakota, she was awarded an NCUR grant that she used to tell the story of the White Swan People, and their forced removal by the government. This research was then published and presented repeatedly in South Dakota and at the NCUR conference at the University of Utah. She was an artist-in- residence at The Montana Artists Refuge, and was named One of South Dakota’s Ten Outstanding Young South Dakotans for her contributions to literature. She collaborated on a mixed media piece titled “Indian 3.0” which was presented at the University of Montana at Billings, and can now be viewed on You Tube.

She has been a visiting writer and writer- in- residence in various schools and universities and given numerous readings of her works. She enjoys working with Youth and Women and is working on doing writing and wellness workshops for them. She is a member of the Y writer’s voice and the Oak Lake Writer’s society.

When she isn’t being an Ina (mother) to the adorable Turtle, she can be found at her website.

Earthworm template for human evolution

From NPR's Talk of the Nation:

Historian Christopher Lloyd, who for his new book, What on Earth Evolved, took on the modest assignment of life, specifically the 100 most important species. And we'll give you two quick examples. Stony corals, tiny co-operative fish that constructed reefs that became islands, mountains and habitat for thousands of other creatures, they come in at number seven. And one spot ahead at number six is man.

Earthworm

Family: Lumbricidae

Species: Lumbricus terestris

Rank: 1
Earthworms are annelids, a phylum of creatures whose evolutionary past stretches back at least to the Cambrian Explosion c. 530 million years ago when the trilobites first developed sight and marine creatures evolved bones and shells. Burgessochaeta is an ancestral, twenty-segmented sea worm whose fossils were found by Charles Walcott in the Burgess Shale. Descendants of these marine creatures came ashore at the time of the first invertebrate invasions of the land, c. 450 million years ago, making their living in damp soils broken up by bacteria, fungi and the roots of colonizing plants. These earthworms have been ploughing up the earth, ventilating the soil and nourishing terrestrial ecosystems with their excrement ever since.

Five mass extinctions have occurred over the last 500 million years, some of which devastated up to 96 per cent of all species, but none of them ever touched these creatures. Slice a worm in half and it re-grows as if nothing happened. Divide one half and the same thing happens. One worm even survived forty such butcherings, all in the name of science.

The effects of worms on human history are as profound as they are unwritten. French scientist-cum-poet Andre Voisin was one of the few experts who properly highlighted the role of worms in the birth of ancient human civlizations. Were it not for their continuous regeneration of soils around damp river valleys such as the Nile, Indus and Euphrates, early agricultural societies in Egypt, India and Mesopotamia could never have succeeded in building humanity's first large-scale urban communities. Even the Egyptian pyramids, said Voisin, were built thanks to the nourishment of the soil by earthworms. It was only because of their hard-work that farmers could take time off from toiling the soil themselves to work as a labour force for their pharaoh's ambitious building projects.

Throughout human history earthworms have unintentionally but undeniably triggered the rise of civilizations. Wherever earthworms plough, people thrive. When worms perish, societies collapse. Infertile soils led to the demise of the people of ancient Sumeria. Rising levels of salt as a result of irrigating the land with sea water killed off the worms around the mouth of the Euphrates river and the soil turned sour. By 2000 BC their civilization was so weak from lack of food that they fell easy prey to Assyrian invaders from the north.

It might be easy to think that worms matter little today, replaced by artificial fertilizers and pesticides that guarantee soil fertility anywhere and everywhere they are spread. But no. Once again it was largely thanks to the earthworm that the unsustainable nature of using such methods was originally exposed.

But which worm species has had most impact? There are some 15,000 species of segmented worms in the annelid phylum, including leeches, and marine polychaetes — as well as earthworms. They range from the now rare but enormous purple-headed Giant Gippsland (Megascolides australis), a native Australian worm that grows up to three metres long, to the extremely common red wrigglers (Eisenia foetida), vermicultural alchemists that turn kitchen vegetable scraps into rich garden compost.

Lumbricus terrestris, the European earthworm, is now probably the most prolific and invasive species in the world. Its success is largely thanks to the spread of Europeans from c. 1600 onwards. Immigrant farmers inadvertently brought these earthworms, sometimes called 'night-crawlers', to the Americas in everything from the soil in their potted plants and their horses' hooves, to the treads of their boots and the wheels of their wagons. Today, there is hardly a region of North America where Europe's earthworms have not made a home for themselves. There they continue to plough, ventilate and fertilize the soil to the general benefit of life in and on the Earth.

Whatever they lack in glamour, colour or a sense of adventure (most worms move only about fifty metres in their four-year lifetime) they make up for in their constant ploughing, harrowing, fertilizing and recycling of that most precious of all the planet's assets — the living Earth itself.

Oh, and btw, humans are on the list because of anthropogenic climate change and for no other attribute.