Fallout continues from the revelations about mainstream corporations funding for the toxic propaganda factory that is the Heartland Institute “think” tank.
Just as advertisers are fleeing Rush’s racist misogyny, could there be a stampede from Heartland’s anti-science lies?
Looks like the petition from Forecast the Facts calling on GM to stop giving money to the Heartland Institute, a major player in climate change denialism, is having an effect. GM hasn’t promised to end its funding of the Institute’s School Reform News publication, which is dedicated to covering news about things like charter schools and vouchers, but GM CEO Dan Akerson recently told the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco that he is a believer in global warming and that he is committed to “taking another look at” the money that GM gives to Heartland.
The GM-Heartland connection came to light when internal Heartland documents were leaked by the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick. From them, we learned that the General Motors Foundation (GM’s charitable arm) made a $15,000 donation in 2011. In San Francisco, Forecast the Facts spurred the Commonwealth Club to ask Akerson about the connection through Facebook and in-person activism.
In response, Daniel Souweine, the director of Forecast the Facts issued a statement that said:
We are encouraged that CEO Dan Akerson has committed to review GM’s funding of the Heartland Institute. We hope that review leads to the result that more than 10,000 GM owners have been asking for: a public commitment by GM to stop funding Heartland immediately.
It’s not surprising that Government Motors is “rethinking” their support for sound research by institutions like Heartland, because of the obvious conflict with the Obama Administration’s agenda of subordinating science to politics.
“Sound research” by Heartland???!!! You mean the reverberations of the denialist echo chamber?
“Subordinating science to politics”? Obama’s Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu
holds degrees in Math and Physics, had done advanced work with polymers and enzymes and holds a Nobel Prize.
George W Bush appointed Spencer Abraham, a lawyer who founded a right-wing legal society and then, Samuel Bodman, who, although holding a doctorate in Chem Eng, doesn’t appear to have done much research and has spent 40 years in VC and financials.
Dave, where is your sense of the absurd? Here we have a company that had its butt saved by massive government subsidy — and in turn, they are now found to have been subsidizing, for heaven knows how long, an establishment that, right on its web page, professes to believe in free-market solutions to society’s problems…
If they really, honestly subscribed to the Heartland philosophy, shouldn’t they have said ‘no thank you’ and gone honestly bankrupt like good companies do when the market doesn’t like them any more?
There once was a think tank named Heartland
Whose ethics were stable as quicksand
For the Father of Lies
AKA Lord of the Flies
Spawned its leader Bast-turd in a shitcan
ok.
I’ll let it stand because it made me laugh.
does that make me as bad as Rush Limbaugh?
Since when has Rush had any sense of humor? No comparison. Frankly, this is much better entertainment and real education. Better for the spirit.