What's Really Behind the Koch Attacks on Democrats

 

Hint:  it's not about healthcare

David Koch (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

For the next eight months, America will be awash in campaign ads funded by Americans for Prosperity, the political action committee backed by Charles and David Koch. With a combined net worth of $80 billion, the Koch brothers have already funneled more than $30 million into congressional races. As of February, AFP had spent more money on ads attacking North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan than Democratic groups had spent on all Senate races in the country combined.

The pushback from Democrats thus far has consisted mostly of efforts to debunk the lies spread by the Koch TV spots on Obamacare—pointing out, for example, that the Michigan woman who claimed it has made her leukemia treatments “unaffordable” will in fact save at least $1,200 a year under her new plan. The Kochs’ election strategy is a sort of bait-and-switch, since their stake in public policy is, in fact, only tangentially related to healthcare. Anti-Obamacare messaging is part of a larger campaign against government regulation that threatens the Kochs’ bottom line—most critically, in response to climate change. “We have a broader cautionary tale,” Tim Phillips, the president of AFP, told The New York Times. “The president’s out there touting billions of dollars on climate change. We want Americans to think about what they promised with the last social welfare boondoggle and look at what the actual result is.”

The Kochs’ investments in fossil fuel include petrochemical complexes and thousands of miles of pipeline and refineries in Alaska, Minnesota, and Texas, an empire that emits over 24 million tons of carbon pollution every year, about as much as 5 million cars. Thanks to a recent investigation by the International Forum on Globalization, we now have confirmation of what was long suspected: the Kochs are one of the biggest investors in Alberta’s tar sands, with a Koch subsidiary holding leases on 1.1 million acres of land in the region, giving them a major stake in the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline—despite their insistence otherwise.

To protect their interests, the Kochs have long sought to discredit science and government. In Congress, more than a third of the House and a quarter of the Senate have signed a Koch-backed “no climate tax” pledge, promising to vote against any spending to fight climate change unless it’s offset by an equal amount of tax cuts. When Republicans took over the House in 2010, seventy-six of the eighty-five freshmen had signed the pledge; fifty-seven had received campaign contributions from Koch-affiliated groups. Since then, the House has voted to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions and has repeatedly cut its budget. If the GOP retakes the Senate this year, the party will be even more indebted to the Kochs.

Environmental groups plan to provide cover for candidates under fire who favor “clean energy and clean air policies.” But many Koch-targeted Democratic senators—including Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Warner of Virginia—support the Keystone XL pipeline and some have opposed the EPA’s attempts to regulate carbon pollution. President Obama talks seriously about climate change, and his EPA has made some good moves, but he’s also hailed the domestic oil and gas boom as if “energy independence” could justify climate destruction. The answer to our planet’s predicament, at least for now, is not going to come from the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, it is crucial for the climate movement to expose the efforts of the Kochs and the other fossil fuel giants to hijack the democratic process for their own dirty ends.

3 Ways Public Transportation Makes Life Better for Pretty Much Everyone

Mark Fuhrmann, New Start Program Director of Metro Transit, speaks with President Barack Obama and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

According to the American Public Transportation Association, Americans are using public transportation more today than at any other time since 1956. Public transit provided 10.7 billion individual rides last year, a 1.1 percent increase over 2012 and the latest uptick for an industry that has seen a 37.2 percent increase in ridership since 1995. This is something to crow about.

More than most places—the grocery store, shopping center, basketball arena—public transit has long provided an arena for social change in the United States. Last year, on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx reflected,

“I can’t help but think of the historic connection between transportation and the civil rights movement. Literally or figuratively, transportation has played a role throughout the history of our nation’s progress toward civil rights. And it still does.

“When escaped slaves sought their freedom, they traveled on the Underground Railroad.
“In the mid-1950s, a young woman who sat down and refused to get up—she did it on a transit bus. And the boycott of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus system resulted in changes that spread across the South.

“The Civil Rights Movement was about all Americans having access to the same opportunities. And our transportation system connects people to those opportunities.”

Remarkable words from a cabinet member who recognizes that his purview extends far beyond roads, rails, and runways. Secretary Foxx gets that how we move—the mode of transportation we choose, the route we take, and the fellow travelers we encounter along the way—carries far-reaching implications, especially for our economy, environment, and foreign policy. Here are three:

Public transportation helps combat climate change. A private auto produces 0.96 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger-mile, while public transit (averaged out among bus, heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, and van pools) yields 0.45 pounds per passenger-mile. The EPA estimates that public transport saves America 37 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year—this is equivalent to the emissions resulting from the electricity generated from 4.9 million households, or every household in Washington, D.C., New York City, Atlanta, Denver, and Los Angeles combined. And public transportation saves the U.S. 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline every year, more than triple the amount of gas we refine from oil imported from Kuwait.

Public transportation creates jobs and promotes economic growth. Every $1 billion invested in the U.S. transportation infrastructure supports and creates some 47,500 jobs. That billion-dollar investment also leads to a net gain in GDP of $3.5 billion. Businesses located near public transportation services see improved productivity through better employee reliability and less absenteeism and turnover. Since public transport allows more people more access to more jobs, employers have larger, more diverse labor pools from which to draw workers, which leads to yet another improvement in community efficiency and prosperity.

Public transportation is healthier. Long, traffic-choked commutes are linked to obesity and chronic pain, to divorce and depression. Interestingly, adopting a public-transportation habit also spurs other healthy lifestyle choices, such as increased exercise and improved diet.

Yet somehow, despite its proven promises of a cleaner environment, a more robust economy, a healthier populace, etc., support for public transportation remains anything but a no-brainer. Last December, Congress declined to renew the public-transit tax credit, which had allowed Americans to set aside $245, pre-tax, for use on public transit. This year, the credit dropped to just $130—while the tax credit that commuters can set aside to pay for parking actually increased.

Last month, President Obama proposed a $302 billion Four-Year Transportation Reauthorization Bill, which earmarks $72 billion for public transportation. Also included is a $2.6 billion allocation for bus rapid transit systems in rapidly growing regions across the country, as well as an additional $400 million to be used to “enhance the size, diversity, and skills of our nation’s construction workforce, while providing support for local hiring efforts and encouraging States to use their On-the-Job training funds more effectively.”

We need to continue to fund and promote public transportation. As Secretary Foxx pointed out in his March on Washington reflection, “[U]nfortunately, transportation also has a history of dividing us. In many places, railroads have served to identify people who were living on ‘the wrong side of the tracks.’ And rarely in the last century did an urban interstate highway plow through a neighborhood that wasn’t characterized as poor.”

We can use public transportation to mitigate inequality, to improve the environment, to develop technologically and economically; it puts more of us on the right side of the tracks. Let’s keep this trend going.

Courtland Milloy

Local Columnist

His eyesight is still good, but his insights are even better.

 “It saddens me to say it, but this is the worst city government I’ve ever witnessed,” Southeast Washington resident Benjamin E. Thomas Jr. says. 

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By Courtland Milloy, Published: March 25

 

At age 91, Benjamin E. Thomas Jr. has been watching the antics of the people running the District longer than some current officeholders have been alive. He served 15 years as a member of an Advisory Neighborhood Commission, waged a 10-year fight to get a traffic light in his Southeast Washington neighborhood and is said to be the oldest neighborhood watch block captain in the city.

Asked recently about the state of the District heading into next Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral and D.C. Council primaries, he spoke with the frankness of a senior citizen who has seen it all.

“It saddens me to say it, but this is the worst city government I’ve ever witnessed,” Thomas said.

He wasn’t just talking about the two-year federal investigation of D.C. government corruption, which has netted 20 convictions, sent three council members to jail and left a cloud of suspicion over Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s reelection bid. 

There’s another scandal, perhaps even worse than the one dominating recent headlines: a city flush with cash catering to its most privileged residents while treating the most vulnerable — children and elderly alike — with contempt.

“When we won home rule and the right to elect our own leaders back in the 1970s, the goal was to build a city where everybody was treated with dignity and respect,” Thomas said. “I don’t know when all that began to change, but nowadays it looks like we are building a city for buildings. People getting pushed out to make room for buildings. Buildings going up, but nobody from the city getting jobs. All these buildings and they’re putting homeless people in recreation centers.”

You’d think that a recently launched effort by Gray (D), called the “Age-Friendly City” campaign, would have tempered Thomas’s harsh judgment. The plan calls for making the District safer and more socially inclusive for seniors by 2017. 

Volunteers started last week canvassing streets, block by block, and compiling reports on what improvements need to be made. Gray joined one of the groups Saturday for a brief walk in the Deanwood neighborhood, where the most obvious hazards were said to be cracked sidewalks.Thomas was not impressed. He and his neighbors have been complaining about crime, abandoned cars, illegal dumping and other age-unfriendly acts for years.

The same day that Gray made his cursory neighborhood tour, Thomas showed me around the nearby Benning Ridge neighborhood, where he has lived since 1958.

“That’s one of the recreation centers where they house the homeless,” he pointed out. “Can you imagine herding human beings into a place like that? Making everybody sleep on mats? It’s shameful.”

A few blocks away, he pointed at a house and said, “That’s where a woman was watching television upstairs and did not hear the burglars downstairs.” The woman, a senior citizen who lives alone, plays bridge with his wife.  D.C. police eventually showed up but the burglars were long gone. The fear, on the other hand, lingers.

Making matters worse, there is a huge, dying tree leaning toward the woman’s house. One just like it had fallen and severely damaged the house next door to hers. “She has been trying for three years to get the city to cut it down,” Thomas said.

As we drove on, Thomas pointed to where the air-conditioning compressor had been stolen from outside a house. All that remained was a concrete foundation and severed hoses protruding from a wall. The resident was an elderly man who lived alone. He had gone without heat during much of the winter.

“The third one stolen in this neighborhood that I know of,” Thomas said.

The tires from a neighbors’ car had been stolen. “They came out to go to church and no wheels,” Thomas said. “That’s why I try to park under the streetlight.”

On a street that runs alongside Fort Dupont Park, Thomas showed me the charred ground where an abandoned car had been set on fire. There have also been two fatal shootings in the neighborhood.

“We used to be able to leave our doors unlocked at night,” said Thomas, who worked as a Pullman porter and retired after 30 years with the Coast Guard. “We never dreamed that we would end up being scared to live in our house.”

Nowadays, almost everyone locks themselves in at night. Many of Thomas’s neighbors rely on security bars on windows and doors, making their homes look like prisons.

It is unlikely that the city’s “age-friendly” canvassing will pick up on such despair, let along result in senior citizens living out their golden years in peace. 

On Tuesday, Gray sweetened his appeal for the senior vote by signing into law a property tax relief bill just for them. The measure had been sponsored by council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who is also seeking reelection.

No doubt the new law would make it less expensive for some seniors to stay in the city. But who wants to stay in a house where dead trees are threatening to kill you? Where burglars don’t just steal your belongings but whatever peace of mind you have left?

“You can tell when an election is coming up,” Thomas said. “First come the promises, then come the buses to take us to the polls.”

After that, he’ll be surprised if a politician even mentions “age-friendly city” again. Or that he’ll be alive to see it if one of them actually kept his or her word.

BLOGGER'S NOTE:

OK, so I am not crazy.  Thank you Mr. Thomas. I am so sorry that the city where you and your neighbors have lived and paid taxes for so long seems totally deaf to your complaints.  I guess if you lived in Ward 1 ...

18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently

Posted: 03/04/2014 8:48 am EST Updated: 03/05/2014 8:59 am EST

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Creativity works in mysterious and often paradoxical ways. Creative thinking is a stable, defining characteristic in some personalities, but it may also change based on situation and context. Inspiration and ideas often arise seemingly out of nowhere and then fail to show up when we most need them, and creative thinking requires complex cognition yet is completely distinct from the thinking process.

Neuroscience paints a complicated picture of creativity. As scientists now understand it, creativity is far more complex than the right-left brain distinction would have us think (the theory being that left brain = rational and analytical, right brain = creative and emotional). In fact, creativity is thought to involve a number of cognitive processes, neural pathways and emotions, and we still don't have the full picture of how the imaginative mind works. 

And psychologically speaking, creative personality types are difficult to pin down, largely because they're complex, paradoxical and tend to avoid habit or routine. And it's not just a stereotype of the "tortured artist" -- artists really may be more complicated people. Research has suggested that creativity involves the coming together of a multitude of traits, behaviors and social influences in a single person.

"It's actually hard for creative people to know themselves because the creative self is more complex than the non-creative self," Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at New York University who has spent years researching creativity, told The Huffington Post. "The things that stand out the most are the paradoxes of the creative self ... Imaginative people have messier minds."

While there's no "typical" creative type, there are some tell-tale characteristics and behaviors of highly creative people. Here are 18 things they do differently. 

They daydream.

Creative types know, despite what their third-grade teachers may have said, that daydreaming is anything but a waste of time. 

Although daydreaming may seem mindless, a 2012 study suggested it could actually involve a highly engaged brain state -- daydreaming can lead to sudden connections and insights because it's related to our ability to recall information in the face of distractions. Neuroscientists have also found that daydreaming involves the same brain processes associated with imagination and creativity. 

They observe everything.

The world is a creative person's oyster -- they see possibilities everywhere and are constantly taking in information that becomes fodder for creative expression. As Henry James is widely quoted, a writer is someone on whom "nothing is lost."

The writer Joan Didion kept a notebook with her at all times, and said that she wrote down observations about people and events as, ultimately, a way to better understand the complexities and contradictions of her own mind: 

"However dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable 'I,'" Didion wrote in her essay On Keeping A Notebook. "We are talking about something private, about bits of the mind’s string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its marker." 

They work the hours that work for them.

Many great artists have said that they do their best work either very early in the morning or late at night. Vladimir Nabokov started writing immediately after he woke up at 6 or 7 a.m., and Frank Lloyd Wright made a practice of waking up at 3 or 4 a.m. and working for several hours before heading back to bed. No matter when it is, individuals with high creative output will often figure out what time it is that their minds start firing up, and structure their days accordingly. 

They take time for solitude.

"In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone," wrote the American existential psychologist Rollo May.

Artists and creatives are often stereotyped as being loners, and while this may not actually be the case, solitude can be the key to producing their best work. For Kaufman, this links back to daydreaming -- we need to give ourselves the time alone to simply allow our minds to wander.

"You need to get in touch with that inner monologue to be able to express it," he says. "It's hard to find that inner creative voice if you're ... not getting in touch with yourself and reflecting on yourself." 

They turn life's obstacles around.

Many of the most iconic stories and songs of all time have been inspired by gut-wrenching pain and heartbreak -- and the silver lining of these challenges is that they may have been the catalyst to create great art. An emerging field of psychology called post-traumatic growth is suggesting that many people are able to use their hardships and early-life trauma for substantial creative growth. 

Specifically, researchers have found that trauma can help people to grow in the areas of interpersonal relationships, spirituality, appreciation of life, personal strength, and -- most importantly for creativity -- seeing new possibilities in life. 

"A lot of people are able to use that as the fuel they need to come up with a different perspective on reality," says Kaufman. "What's happened is that their view of the world as a safe place, or as a certain type of place, has been shattered at some point in their life, causing them to go on the periphery and see things in a new, fresh light, and that's very conducive to creativity." 

They seek out new experiences.

Creative people love to expose themselves to new experiences, sensations and states of mind -- and this openness is a significant predictor of creative output. 

"Openness to experience is consistently the strongest predictor of creative achievement," says Kaufman. "This consists of lots of different facets, but they're all related to each other: Intellectual curiosity, thrill seeking, openness to your emotions, openness to fantasy. The thing that brings them all together is a drive for cognitive and behavioral exploration of the world, your inner world and your outer world." 

They "fail up."

Resilience is practically a prerequisite for creative success, says Kaufman. Doing creative work is often described as a process of failing repeatedly until you find something that sticks, and creatives -- at least the successful ones -- learn not to take failure so personally. 

"Creatives fail and the really good ones fail often," Forbes contributor Steven Kotler wrote in a piece on Einstein's creative genius.

They ask the big questions.

Creative people are insatiably curious -- they generally opt to live the examined life, and even as they get older, maintain a sense of curiosity about life. Whether through intense conversation or solitary mind-wandering, creatives look at the world around them and want to know why, and how, it is the way it is.

They people-watch.

Observant by nature and curious about the lives of others, creative types often love to people-watch -- and they may generate some of their best ideas from it. 

"[Marcel] Proust spent almost his whole life people-watching, and he wrote down his observations, and it eventually came out in his books," says Kaufman. "For a lot of writers, people-watching is very important ... They're keen observers of human nature."

They take risks.

Part of doing creative work is taking risks, and many creative types thrive off of taking risks in various aspects of their lives. 

"There is a deep and meaningful connection between risk taking and creativity and it's one that's often overlooked," contributor Steven Kotler wrote in Forbes. "Creativity is the act of making something from nothing. It requires making public those bets first placed by imagination. This is not a job for the timid. Time wasted, reputation tarnished, money not well spent -- these are all by-products of creativity gone awry."

They view all of life as an opportunity for self-expression.

Nietzsche believed that one's life and the world should be viewed as a work of art. Creative types may be more likely to see the world this way, and to constantly seek opportunities for self-expression in everyday life.

"Creative expression is self-expression," says Kaufman. "Creativity is nothing more than an individual expression of your needs, desires and uniqueness." 

They follow their true passions. 

Creative people tend to be intrinsically motivated -- meaning that they're motivated to act from some internal desire, rather than a desire for external reward or recognition. Psychologists have shown that creative people are energized by challenging activities, a sign of intrinsic motivation, and the research suggests that simply thinking of intrinsic reasons to perform an activity may be enough to boost creativity.

"Eminent creators choose and become passionately involved in challenging, risky problems that provide a powerful sense of power from the ability to use their talents," write M.A. Collins and T.M. Amabile in The Handbook of Creativity. 

They get out of their own heads.

Kaufman argues that another purpose of daydreaming is to help us to get out of our own limited perspective and explore other ways of thinking, which can be an important asset to creative work.

"Daydreaming has evolved to allow us to let go of the present," says Kaufman. "The same brain network associated with daydreaming is the brain network associated with theory of mind -- I like calling it the 'imagination brain network' -- it allows you to imagine your future self, but it also allows you to imagine what someone else is thinking." 

Research has also suggested that inducing "psychological distance" -- that is, taking another person's perspective or thinking about a question as if it was unreal or unfamiliar -- can boost creative thinking. 

They lose track of the time.

Creative types may find that when they're writing, dancing, painting or expressing themselves in another way, they get "in the zone," or what's known as a flow state, which can help them to create at their highest level. Flow is a mental state when an individual transcends conscious thought to reach a heightened state of effortless concentration and calmness. When someone is in this state, they're practically immune to any internal or external pressures and distractions that could hinder their performance. 

You get into the flow state when you're performing an activity you enjoy that you're good at, but that also challenges you -- as any good creative project does. 

"[Creative people] have found the thing they love, but they've also built up the skill in it to be able to get into the flow state," says Kaufman. "The flow state requires a match between your skill set and the task or activity you're engaging in." 

 They surround themselves with beauty.

Creatives tend to have excellent taste, and as a result, they enjoy being surrounded by beauty.

A study recently published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts showed that musicians -- including orchestra musicians, music teachers, and soloists -- exhibit a high sensitivity and responsiveness to artistic beauty. 

They connect the dots. 

If there's one thing that distinguishes highly creative people from others, it's the ability to see possibilities where other don't -- or, in other words, vision. Many great artists and writers have said that creativity is simply the ability to connect the dots that others might never think to connect.

In the words of Steve Jobs:

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things."

They constantly shake things up.

Diversity of experience, more than anything else, is critical to creativity, says Kaufman. Creatives like to shake things up, experience new things, and avoid anything that makes life more monotonous or mundane. 

"Creative people have more diversity of experiences, and habit is the killer of diversity of experience," says Kaufman.

They make time for mindfulness.

Creative types understand the value of a clear and focused mind -- because their work depends on it. Many artists, entrepreneurs, writers and other creative workers, such as David Lynch, have turned to meditation as a tool for tapping into their most creative state of mind. 

And science backs up the idea that mindfulness really can boost your brain power in a number of ways. A 2012 Dutch study suggested that certain meditation techniques can promote creative thinking. And mindfulness practices have been linked with improved memory and focus, better emotional well-being, reduced stress and anxiety, and improved mental clarity -- all of which can lead to better creative thought.

Too much animal-based proteins could lead to early death, study says

U.S. and Italian researchers tracked thousands of adults during nearly two decades and found that those who ate a diet high in animal proteins during middle age were four times more likely to die of cancer than contemporaries with low-protein diets — a risk factor, if accurate, comparable to smoking. They also were several times more likely to die of diabetes, researchers said.

“The great majority of Americans could reduce their protein intake,” said one of the study’s co-authors, Valter Longo, a University of Southern California gerontology professor and director of the school’s Longevity Institute. “The best change would be to lower the daily intake of all proteins, but especially animal-derived proteins.”

That advice comes with a caveat. Even as researchers warned of the health risks of high-protein diets in middle age, they said eating more protein actually could be a smart move for people older than 65. “At older ages, it may be important to avoid a low-protein diet to allow the maintenance of healthy weight and protection from frailty,” another co-author, USC gerontology professor Eileen Crimmins, said in a release detailing the findings. 

Exactly how much protein belongs in the average diet has been a topic of perpetual debate, one complicated by popular diets such as Atkins and Paleo, which rely heavily on animal-based proteins to help people shed weight. While such diets might well succeed in that short-term goal, Longo said they could be leading to worse health down the road. 

Part of the confusion, he argues, is that researchers too often have treated adulthood as a single period of life, rather than closely examining the many ways in which our bodies change as we grow older. In studying data about protein intake during many years, he says the picture becomes clearer: What’s good for you at one age might be harmful at another.

Marion Nestle, a nutrition expert and public-health professor at New York University, said the findings raise as many questions as they answer. She said they don’t amount to a convincing argument that too much protein consumption in middle age is directly linked to health problems later in life, while more protein in old age is protective. 

In short, she said, lifestyle choices beyond protein consumption could have played a role in the longevity of the people surveyed for the study and helped to determine whether they ended with cancer, diabetes or other afflictions. 

“I’m also puzzled by the idea that there is a significant difference between the effects of protein from animal and vegetable sources,” Nestle said. “Protein is not, and never has been, an issue in American diets, and the data presented in this study do not convince me to think otherwise.” 

In the study, researchers defined a “high-protein” diet as one in which at least 20 percent of calories came from protein; a “low-protein” diet was defined as less than 10 percent. They found that even moderate amounts of protein consumption among middle-aged people had detrimental effects over time, a result that held true across ethnic, educational and health backgrounds. 

The authors also tested the relationship between protein intake and cancer progression in mice, saying that during a two-month experiment there was lower cancer incidence and significantly smaller average tumor size among mice on a low-protein diet.

Longo said many middle-aged Americans, along with an increasing number of people around the world, are eating twice and sometimes three times as much protein as they need, with too much of that coming from animals rather than plant-based foods such as nuts, seeds and legumes.

He said adults in middle age would be better off adhering to the recommendation of several top health agencies to consume about 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight each day. Translation: For a 150-pound person, that means about the equivalent of the protein in an 8- or 9-ounce piece of meat or several cups of dry beans. 

As an example of an ideal approach to protein consumption, Longo pointed to the inhabitants of the small, southern Italian town of Molochio, home to one of the highest rates of centenarians in the world. Their secret: For much of their lives, many villagers maintained a low-protein, plant-based diet. In their older years, many ended up moving in with their children and eating higher-protein diets more common today. 

“There is no harm,” Longo said, “in eating the way our grandparents used to eat.”