sorkin west wing

son andrew ross interviwed exxon ceo vp?

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Why ‘The West Wing’ went from a bipartisan hit to a polarized streaming comfort watch - Alternet.org

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819 art'l yesterday ceo ~ profit max, vs ceo$ max, //?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/financial-journalist-explains-why-shareholder-democracy-and-milton-friedman-economics-have-failed-miserably/}:

no lnx

Financial journalist explains why ‘shareholder democracy’ and Milton Friedman economics have failed miserably

Written by Alex Henderson August 20, 2019

“Shareholder democracy” is an economic theory that was aggressively promoted by the late Milton Friedman, the conservative University of Chicago economist who served as an adviser to President Ronald Reagan as well as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.According to “shareholder democracy,” a corporation’s #1 responsibility is to its shareholders — not the good of society at large — and “shareholder democracy” as preached by Friedman influenced everything from Reaganomics to neoliberalism to the Libertarian Party. But Andrew Ross Sorkin (author of the 2009 book “Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves”) explains in a New York Times article that in 2019, more and more Americans are rethinking “shareholder democracy” and coming to view it as detrimental to the greater good.

“For nearly a half-century,” Sorkin explains, “Corporate America has prioritized, almost maniacally, profits for its shareholders. That single-minded devotion overran nearly every other constituent, pushing aside the interests of customers, employees and communities

Friedman, Sorkin notes, scoffed at the concept of corporate responsibility, asserting in 1970, “What does it mean to say that ‘business’ has responsibilities? Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.”

But in 2019, according to Sorkin, one is seeing a resurgence of what used to be called “managerialism” — essentially, a belief that corporations need to be concerned about employees, communities and society’s greater good and not simply shareholders. There were hints of managerialism, Sorkin says, in aBusiness Roundtable statement released on Monday — when leaders of major companies ranging from Apple and Amazon to JPMorgan Chase issued a joint statement noting that employees and communities should matter to companies along with shareholders.

Sorkin attributes this statement in part to “public outrage” and a growing populism.

“Americans mistrust companies to such an extent that the very idea of capitalism is now being debated on the political stage,” Sorkin asserts. “Populism has been embraced on both ends of the political spectrum, whether in the trade protectionism of President Trump or the social-net supremacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders.”

Indeed, Sanders’ popularity shows a shift in the United States’ political landscape. The self-described “democratic socialist” has achieved much greater prominence in U.S. politics than he had in the 1990s or 2000s, and recent polls on the 2020 Democratic presidential primary have found him battling for the #2 position with the decidedly liberal/progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Reflecting on the effects of “shareholder democracy,” Sorkin explains that in the past, “Shareholders and, in turn, a new class of investors known as corporate raiders convinced executives to slash any and all fat from their budgets or risk being taken over or voted out. Layoffs increased, research and development budgets were cut, and pension programs were traded for 401(k)s. There was a rush of mergers driven by ‘cost savings’ that grabbed headlines while profits soared and dividends increased.”

The debate on “corporate democracy” versus “managerialism,” Sorkin stresses, will rage on — and not everyone in the business world agrees with the Business Roundtable statement issued on Monday.

“For whatever progress may have been made Monday, it is hardly clear the debate is over,” Sorkin explains. “In fact, the fight for corporate identity is just beginning.”

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hol reptr 2024?

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Aaron Sorkin thinks he could still make The West Wing today, but there is one political factor he thinks would be very different than when the series ran 25 years ago: today’s Republican Party.

At an event in support of the upcoming book What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service in Los Angeles on Saturday, Sorkin acknowledged that he is sometimes asked if the show would work in the present day.

“Honestly, I think it would for roughly the same reason it worked when it did, which is that, first of all, it was a good show, just good stories well told by a great group of people,” he explained to the crowd at the Skirball Cultural Center. “But by and large, in popular culture, our leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts, right? It’s either a House of Cards or Veep. The idea behind The West Wing was what if they were as competent and as dedicated as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, the cops on the cop shows, the lawyers on a legal drama, that kind of thing. And the result was something that was idealistic and it was aspirational.”

He continued that he thought audiences would respond the same way today, but “what would be different would be this, and I don’t want to get a rumble started over anything. This is simply what would be different. I’m afraid to say that right now — and maybe things will be different a year from now or two years from now, but right now — it would be implausible that the opposition party, that the Republican Party, was reasonable. People would watch that and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country that they live in. On the show, while the Republicans were the opposition, they were reasonable, the Republicans that they dealt with.”

The series, which starred Martin Sheen as Democratic President Jed Bartlet, ran from 1999 to 2006 and was created by Sorkin. He also wrote the foreword for What’s Next, which was written by cast members Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack. The author duo was joined at the event by Sorkin and actors Richard Schiff, Dulé Hill and Janel Moloney, with Hrishikesh Hirway and Josh Malina as moderators. Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford also made brief appearances via video.

“It’s very interesting to read the oral history and to read other people’s takes on what was happening. It really brought back memories and it just makes you want to keep going,” Sorkin said of the book. “A big part of the motivation in writing a new script every nine days for this was being able to put something on the table that these actors would like; they were the first audience for the show.”

He added, “I continue to be motivated by that. I want to write something else that they want to do,” as Malina teased that he already had audiences primed for a West Wing reboot on his social media channels. Sorkin replied, “Still need to have an idea.”

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Aaron Sorkin thinks he could still make The West Wing today, but there is one political factor he thinks would be very different than when the series ran 25 years ago: today’s Republican Party.

At an event in support of the upcoming book What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service in Los Angeles on Saturday, Sorkin acknowledged that he is sometimes asked if the show would work in the present day.

“Honestly, I think it would for roughly the same reason it worked when it did, which is that, first of all, it was a good show, just good stories well told by a great group of people,” he explained to the crowd at the Skirball Cultural Center. “But by and large, in popular culture, our leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts, right? It’s either a House of CardsorVeep. The idea behind The West Wingwas what if they were as competent and as dedicated as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, the cops on the cop shows, the lawyers on a legal drama, that kind of thing. And the result was something that was idealistic and it was aspirational.”

He continued that he thought audiences would respond the same way today, but “what would be different would be this, and I don’t want to get a rumble started over anything. This is simply what would be different. I’m afraid to say that right now — and maybe things will be different a year from now or two years from now, but right now — it would be implausible that the opposition party, that the Republican Party, was reasonable. People would watch that and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country that they live in. On the show, while the Republicans were the opposition, they were reasonable, the Republicans that they dealt with.”

The series, which starred Martin Sheen as Democratic President Jed Bartlet, ran from 1999 to 2006 and was created by Sorkin. He also wrote the foreword for What’s Next, which was written by cast members Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack. The author duo was joined at the event by Sorkin and actors Richard Schiff, Dulé Hill and Janel Moloney, with Hrishikesh Hirway and Josh Malina as moderators. Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford also made brief appearances via video.

“It’s very interesting to read the oral history and to read other people’s takes on what was happening. It really brought back memories and it just makes you want to keep going,” Sorkin said of the book. “A big part of the motivation in writing a new script every nine days for this was being able to put something on the table that these actors would like; they were the first audience for the show.”

He added, “I continue to be motivated by that. I want to write something else that they want to do,” as Malina teased that he already had audiences primed for a West Wing reboot on his social media channels. Sorkin replied, “Still need to have an idea.”Aaron Sorkin thinks he could still make The West Wing today, but there is one political factor he thinks would be very different than when the series ran 25 years ago: today’s Republican Party.

At an event in support of the upcoming book What’s Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service in Los Angeles on Saturday, Sorkin acknowledged that he is sometimes asked if the show would work in the present day.

“Honestly, I think it would for roughly the same reason it worked when it did, which is that, first of all, it was a good show, just good stories well told by a great group of people,” he explained to the crowd at the Skirball Cultural Center. “But by and large, in popular culture, our leaders are portrayed either as Machiavellian or as dolts, right? It’s either a House of CardsorVeep. The idea behind The West Wingwas what if they were as competent and as dedicated as the doctors and nurses on hospital shows, the cops on the cop shows, the lawyers on a legal drama, that kind of thing. And the result was something that was idealistic and it was aspirational.”

He continued that he thought audiences would respond the same way today, but “what would be different would be this, and I don’t want to get a rumble started over anything. This is simply what would be different. I’m afraid to say that right now — and maybe things will be different a year from now or two years from now, but right now — it would be implausible that the opposition party, that the Republican Party, was reasonable. People would watch that and it would be unfamiliar to them as the country that they live in. On the show, while the Republicans were the opposition, they were reasonable, the Republicans that they dealt with.”

The series, which starred Martin Sheen as Democratic President Jed Bartlet, ran from 1999 to 2006 and was created by Sorkin. He also wrote the foreword for What’s Next, which was written by cast members Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack. The author duo was joined at the event by Sorkin and actors Richard Schiff, Dulé Hill and Janel Moloney, with Hrishikesh Hirway and Josh Malina as moderators. Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford also made brief appearances via video.

“It’s very interesting to read the oral history and to read other people’s takes on what was happening. It really brought back memories and it just makes you want to keep going,” Sorkin said of the book. “A big part of the motivation in writing a new script every nine days for this was being able to put something on the table that these actors would like; they were the first audience for the show.”

He added, “I continue to be motivated by that. I want to write something else that they want to do,” as Malina teased that he already had audiences primed for a West Wing reboot on his social media channels. Sorkin replied, “Still need to have an idea.”

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jul 2012

:{:{Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO show The Newsroom is dishing out and receivinga lot of criticism. The Newsroom is Sorkin’s latest attempt to cleanse the demons from our national character through fast-talking characters fighting for their principles. This time, however, rather than just obliquely commenting on the political fights of the day through thinly veiled metaphors, Sorkin’s characters deal with political events of the recent past. In the pilot episode, Jeff Daniels’s character, a mundane and middle-of-the-road newscaster, lets loose his spleen upon an innocent college student who asks him why America is the greatest country on Earth.}:

Daniels on America’s fallen status but fondly remembers its great past. In the wake of his outburst, he’s rebranded as a no-nonsense truth-speaker who will confront the powers that be — a supposed return to the glory days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. In the latter half of the pilot, the newsroom accepts the challenge of “speaking truth to power” and exposes the alleged corporate malfeasance that led to the BP oil spill.}:

:{Most recently:{, The Newsroom has taken on the Tea Party, attacking the Koch brothers by name, as well as the Cato Institute, the Institute for Justice (IJ), and Heritage. In this, the characters discuss Cato’s and IJ’s amicus briefs on behalf of Citizens United.}: Jeff Daniels’s character then misstates the holding of Citizens United — the case did not hold that corporations can donate directly to political candidates — and another character badly misquotes from the Institute for Justice’s brief. According to her, the Institute for Justice argued that “finance laws prohibiting unlimited corporate contributions trump the First Amendment.”

This poorly written line not only misstates IJ’s brief, it actually seems like IJ is supporting limits on campaign spending. Actual quote from the brief: “The problem lies in allowing the logic of campaign-finance laws to trump the First Amendment.” Like all of his projects, Sorkin’s characters are prone to flowery orations. Unfortunately, this time the Sorkin’s words, including the sloppy mischaracterization of IJ’s argument, were shamefully taken nearly verbatim from a ThinkProgress blog post written by the extremely partisan Lee Fang (compare the characters’ words with Fang’s words here).}:

That fact merely underscores the folly in Sorkin’s obvious goals for The Newsroom. If he wants to lambaste the mainstream media for no longer providing hard-hitting coverage that “speaks truth to power” and to lament the fallen nature of modern, partisan journalism, then I would suggest to Mr. Sorkin that, in the future, he should not outsource his thinking and language to one politically committed blog. At the very least, he should ensure that his characters do not misstate the central holding of the case they are attacking. If he wants to portray smart, honest, hard-working people turning journalism back into an antacid for our partisan-induced ulcers, then he should make more of an effort to be a non-partisan researcher.

Sorkin is coming from a long tradition in American political thought which holds that a well-functioning republic requires virtuous citizens. Those citizens must be informed and high-minded, not prone to meaningless squabbles or the pursuit of naked self-interest. As John Adams, perhaps the foremost proponent of virtue among the Founding Fathers, said, “Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”

Sorkin is also within a more recent tradition in American politics: A utopian pining for the days when D.C. was not deeply divided along partisan lines. There was once a time when Washington got things done, so the story goes. There was a time when parties didn’t thwart the proposals of an opposition president merely because he was on the other side. There was a time when representatives, opinion-leaders, and ordinary people from both sides reached across the aisle and went to the same social functions, the same movies, and watched the same news. Those days are gone, but perhaps, The Newsroom tells us, the right combination of good-hearted elites could rescue our national narrative from the warring factions and give it purpose and direction.

It’s all a little smug, as many have pointed out. Perhaps D.C. politics has become more divided. Perhaps we are becoming a red vs. blue country. What is never mentioned in these increasingly common lamentations, however, is the simple question, “What else would you expect?” Over the past 50 years, politics has crept into nearly every area of our lives, affecting our most personal and consequential decisions. Our political parties no longer fight over simple regulations of interstate commerce and tariffs, we fight, on a national level, over the nature of American health care and how we will educate our children. How could these fights not be schismatic, vicious, and underhanded?

Football teams didn’t exist before the game, and fans didn’t exist before the teams. The teams fight over zero-sum gains and there can only be one Super Bowl champion. Thus, the players and the fans react accordingly. If the stakes were even higher, however, if Ohio State and Michigan had more to lose than simple bragging rights, then the players and fans would certainly ramp up their partisan loyalties, their vicious name-calling, and their parking lot brawls. Put simply, increased partisanship is a direct result the increased the scope and importance of politics in our daily lives.

None of this should be surprising, yet the collective head-scratching over where our politics went awry continues. Sorkin’s plea for elites to create a national narrative that brings us together is no more coherent than his plea that a brilliant, charming, Nobel-laureate, polyglot president can best fix our national crises. America doesn’t need better elites, we need fewer of them.

Trevor Burrus

Former Research Fellow, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute

Trevor Burrus was a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, legal history, and the interface between science and public policy.

His academic work has appeared in journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty, the New York University Annual Survey of American Law, the Syracuse Law Review, and many others. His popular writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, Forbes, the Huffington Post, the New York Daily News, and others.

Burrus lectures regularly on behalf of the Federalist Society, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Foundation for Economic Education, and other organizations, and he frequently appears on major media outlets. He is also the host of Free Thoughts, a weekly podcast that covers topics in libertarian theory, history, and philosophy.

He is the editor of A Conspiracy against Obamacare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and Deep Commitments: The Past, Present, and Future of Religious Liberty (Cato, 2017). Burrus holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a JD from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. He also contributed a chapter to Libertarianism.org’s *Visions of Liberty

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ref lnx vid

57,444 views Jul 22, 2012

From Season 1 Episode 5 of the Newsroom. Interview of David Koch conducted by Lee Fang (@LHFang) and Scott Keyes (@SMKeyes) of ThinkProgress. Newsroom segment based on the following piece:http://thinkprogress.org/politics/201...David Koch was interviewed on January 5, 2011. He was leaving the capitol building in Washington DC after having visited Congressman John Boehner -- who had been sworn in as Speaker of the House earlier that day. Koch helped finance tens of millions of dollars in attack ads, bus tours, pro-GOP Tea Party groups, and other electioneering efforts during the midterm election.

05

the answer is yes the Cook Brothers had

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money in citizens united a number of

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coke funded groups submitted amicus

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briefs to the court including the KO

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Institute which the CES funded they

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submitted a brief calling for unfettered

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corporate speech so did The Institute

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for justice also funded by the CES their

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brief said that Finance laws prohibiting

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unlimited corporate contributions Trump

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the First Amendment and after the Court

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ruled in their favor these groups spent

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a lot of money to oppose efforts to

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provide transparency here's an interview

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with David K and his lawyer Coke's asked

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about Citizens United and he seems to

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pretend he's never heard of it Koke is

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in the foreground in the gray Herring

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bone

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coat what do you think Citi United has

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it helped your influence in citizens

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united what do you think of citizens

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united has it helped your influence CZ

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United one more time

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what do you think of citizens united has

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it helped your influence citizens

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united Justice is Thomas and Scalia have

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both been frequent guests of the coax

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and between 2003 and 2007 Virginia

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Thomas wife of Justice Thomas was paid

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$686,000 on his Supreme Court Financial

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disclosure forum is it very unusual that

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skier and Thomas didn't recuse

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themselves from the case if they had

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citizens united would have lost 4 to

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three all right the citizens united

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decision allowed corporations to donate

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unlimited amounts of money to any

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political candidate without anyone

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knowing where the money was coming from

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but it also did the same thing for the

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unions and they knew

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that so wouldn't The Next Step be to get

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rid of the unions if you're rigging the

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game yes excuse me

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Exclusive: David Koch Refuses To Answer Questions About Citizens United, Secret Right-Wing Meetings | ThinkProgress

lee fang

Exclusive: David Koch Refuses To Answer Questions About *Citizens United*, Secret Right-Wing Meetings

By Lee Fang on Jan 10, 2011 at 4:20 pm

*This is Part 3 of a three-part installment of ThinkProgress’ interview with David Koch. Watch Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Last week, ThinkProgress conducted an impromptu interview with David Koch — one of the richest men in America, co-owner of the conglomerate Koch Industries, and a top financier of right-wing front groups — after we found him leaving the swearing-in ceremony for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). In the first part of the interview, Koch said that he “admire[s]” the Tea Party movement, and that “the rank and file are just normal people like us.” In the second part, Koch denied the existence of climate change and shrugged when asked if carbon pollution causes global warming. Koch Industries, which owns a coal shipping company, several of the country’s largest oil refineries and pipeline networks, and several fertilizer plants and factories, is a major contributor to climate change and funds much of the climate change-denying propaganda machine.

Throughout the interview, Tim Phillips — an “astroturf” lobbyist who is now president of Koch’s Americans for Prosperity front group — tried to push ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes away and yelled into the camera Keyes was holding. Phillips also continually yelled and tried to physically block us, even though Koch himself never objected to speaking with us. Regardless of Phillips’ interference, we asked Koch about the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the landmark case that eliminated one hundred years of campaign finance law by allowing unlimited corporate money in elections. The subject appeared to cause discomfort with Koch, who looked down once he realized what we were talking about. He later walked away when asked about his secret election planning meeting held last June with other corporate and right-wing leaders to plan the 2010 election:

FANG: What do you think of Citizens United? Has it helped your influence?

KOCH: Citizens United?

FANG: The Supreme Court decision.

KOCH: Oh.. Hm…[...]

FANG: I know you had a meeting last summer with Glenn Beck and several other conservatives. Could you tell the public what you discussed at that meeting?

Watch it:

:{:{Koch has long sought to expand his influence and the influence of other right-wing plutocrats by funding groups that have chipped away at campaign finance laws and disclosure laws for decades. When the Supreme Court took up the Citizens United case, Koch-funded front groups filed a series of amicus briefs arguing that unlimited corporate money in politics is protected by the First Amendment. }:

For example, the Cato Institute, founded and financed by the Koch brothers, submitted a brief that called for “unfettered” corporate “speech” and the Institute for Justice, founded and financed by David’s brother Charles, submitted a brief claiming that campaign finance laws prohibiting unlimited corporate money “trump the First Amendment.” Koch-funded groups later lobbied aggressively to oppose efforts to provide transparency for the new tidal wave of corporate spending.}:

As ThinkProgress has covered extensively, the Citizens United case opened the floodgates for corporate money. Corporations funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into nonprofit groups to anonymously run attack ads against Democrats last fall. Koch’s own Americans for Prosperity group ran $40 million dollars in direct attacks, but also hired over 80 operatives to orchestrate pro-Republican Tea Parties across the country.

:{:{The Koch-elected Republican Congress and Koch-orchestrated Tea Party is well documented, but Koch’s relationship with the Supreme Court is more mysterious. As ThinkProgress reported, the Koch brothers have convened secret meetings for years with corporate leaders and right-wing partisans. }:

We obtained a memo detailing the last meeting, in June of 2010, which was attended by executives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Glenn Beck, and a large group of businessmen (including major hedge fund managers, the CEO of Bechtel, oil billionaire Phil Anschutz, and others). The memo also indicated that Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia have been featured at Koch meetings in the past. Scalia and Thomas, who maintains a close working relationship with Koch-funded front groups, of course supported the Citizens United decision.}:

In the first interview we published with Koch, he was excited about doing more political work. “We’re going to do more too in the next couple of years,” he boasted about Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity has led the way in whipping up paranoid right-wing Tea Parties and purchasing partisan attack ads on television. If the post-Citizens United midterm elections were any indication of the future, Koch’s influence will only grow.

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pt2

Exclusive: Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Denies Climate Change, Shrugs Off His Carbon Pollution | ThinkProgress

exclusive: Tea Party Billionaire David Koch Denies Climate Change, Shrugs Off His Carbon Pollution

By Lee Fang on Jan 7, 2011

*This is Part 2 of a three-part installment of ThinkProgress’ interview with David Koch. Watch Part 1 here.

This week, ThinkProgress conducted an impromptu interview with David Koch — one of the richest men in America, co-owner of the conglomerate Koch Industries, and a top financier of right-wing front groups — after we found him leaving the swearing-in ceremony for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). In the first part of the interview, Koch said that he “admire[s]” the Tea Party movement, and that “the rank and file are just normal people like us.” As ThinkProgress has detailed, Koch operatives orchestrated the first anti-Obama Tea Party protests, channeled Tea Party groups into increasing the Koch’s personal wealth, and organized Tea Parties for Republican campaigns and lobbying drives.

When we tried to speak to Koch — who never said he did not want to talk to us — his employee Tim Phillips, president of Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, tried to push ThinkProgress’ Scott Keyes away and yelled into the camera Keyes was holding. Phillips is a prolific “astroturf” lobbyist who has worked for Jack Abramoff’s forced-abortion sweatshop clients, Enron, and had a hand in an anti-Semitic campaign against Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) first bid for Congress. Despite Phillips’ distractions, Koch answered several of our questions about climate science and global warming.

Asked why Koch’s Americans for Prosperity focuses so much on denying climate change, Koch said it was because “regulating CO2 excessively … really damage[s] the economy.” Koch however was hesitant to answer if he himself believes in climate change. He eventually denied anthropogenic global warming by giving a standard climate denier response: “Climate does fluctuate. It goes from hot to cold. We have ice ages.” However, he simply shrugged when asked if carbon pollution — like the carbon pollution Koch Industries heavily contributes to — affects climate change:

FANG: Why does Americans for Prosperity focus so much on the science of climate change? I’m just curious why they spread so much information that denies the existence of climate, of global warming?

KOCH: Well… I think it’s uh, regulating CO2 excessively is going to put — uh really damage the economy.

FANG: Do you believe in climate change yourself? [...] Do you believe in climate change yourself, Mr. Koch?

KOCH: Climate does fluctuate. It goes from hot to cold. We have ice ages.

FANG: But do you believe carbon pollution affects climate change? [Koch shrugs]

Watch it:

It is doubtful that Koch, who was educated at MIT, seriously believes that climate simply “fluctuate[s]” from “hot to cold” (although the exhibit Koch funded at the Smithsonian perpetuates this lie). Rather, Koch understands that his entire business model depends on denying the greatest threat facing the planet.

:{:{Koch Industries — the largest private corporation in America — thrives on emitting carbon pollution and other forms of pollution for free. Much of Koch Industries’ $120 billion-a-year revenues are derived from burning fossil fuels: oil refineries and pipelines, chemical plants, fertilizer plants, manufacturing factories, and the shipping of coal. Moreover, Koch Industries owns Georgia Pacific, one of the largest timber companies, so Koch also contributes to global warming by decreasing the world’s carbon sink capacity. }:

The National Academy of Sciences, the US Global Change Research Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have all come to the same conclusion: “that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use and the loss of carbon-sink capacity in heavily timbered forests are increasing temperatures and making oceans more acidic.” Corporate documents revealed by ThinkProgress show that Koch Industries explicitly targeted laws to reduce carbon emissions as a threat to Koch’s bottom line.}:

To boost their profits, Koch is the largest funder of climate change denying organizations and media outlets in the world. For example, Koch bankrolls denier groups like the CATO Institute, Fraser Institute, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, the Manhattan Institute, the Marshall Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the State Policy Network, and dozens of others. Not only have Koch fronts instructed Tea Party groups to kill national legislation to address climate change, but Koch groups have been instrumental in pushing climate change-believers out of the Republican Party. As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has detailed, the vast majority of new Republicans in Congress are “climate zombies.” Koch Industries is so fervently anti-climate science that it recently filed a lawsuit claiming that a belief in global warming damages its reputation.

Koch’s active role in Republican politics and multifaceted propaganda campaigns are almost always tied to Koch Industries’ business interests. Koch’s assistance to then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) resulted in special legislation to exempt Koch from prosecution regarding an oil spill, and Koch’s efforts to elect President Bush were rewarded with a virtual pardon of charges related to Koch’s release of carcinogenic chemicals in Texas. Koch groups also worked to derail international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, and Koch-funded groups helped spread the myth that hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit somehow disputed the scientific consensus on climate change.

Of course, Koch’s current war on climate science is not new. As we first reported, Koch’s current campaign to distort the public’s understanding of global warming is a continuation of its campaign in 1990 to spread skepticism about acid rain. However, Koch’s hidden role in the climate denying machine is beginning to unravel.

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Exclusive: Polluter Billionaire David Koch Says Tea Party ‘Rank And File Are Just Normal People Like Us’

Part 1 of a three-part installment of ThinkProgress’ interview with David Koch.*

Yesterday, David Koch — one of the richest men in America, co-owner of the conglomerate Koch Industries, and a top financier of right-wing front groups — attended the swearing-in ceremony for Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and also hosted a party for the new Republican majority he helped bankroll.

Perhaps no one has been more aggressive in exposing Koch’s activities than ThinkProgress. We first reported in April 2009 that Americans for Prosperity, the front group founded and chaired by Koch since 1984, helped orchestrate many of the first Tea Party rallies and anti-Obama protests. ThinkProgess also unearthed a memo detailing how Koch convened a meeting of executives from Wall Street and the oil industry — along with hate talker Glenn Beck and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — to plan how to win the November elections for Republicans in 2010.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress came face-to-face with David Koch, so we seized the opportunity to conduct an impromptu interview. We ran into him outside of the Capitol, where he was chatting with one of the freshmen lawmakers he helped elect, Rep. Frank Guinta (R-NH), as well as Tim Phillips, a longtime “astroturf” lobbyist and former Jack Abramoff associate now hired by Koch to lead his Americans for Prosperity front group. Koch told ThinkProgress that he expects the new Republican Congress to “cut the hell out of spending, balance the budget, reduce regulations, and support business.” Asked about the Tea Party movement, Koch cautioned that there are some extremists (indeed, Koch-funded Tea Party events have featured signs comparing health reform to the Holocaust). However, Koch said he “admire[s]” the Tea Party movement, saying that “the rank and file are just normal people like us”:

TP: Hi sir, I’m Lee Fang. I’m with the blog ThinkProgress. I’m just asking what you’re expecting from the new Congress under Speaker Boehner?

KOCH: Well, cut the hell out of spending, balance the budget, reduce regulations, and uh, support business.

PHILLIPS: Hey David, Lee here is a good blogger on the left, we’re glad to have him–

TP: Just a quick interview. Are you proud of what Americans for Prosperity has achieved this year?

KOCH: You bet I am, man oh’ man. We’re going to do more too in the next couple of years, you know.

TP: What are you planning on doing. What are your goals?

KOCH: I just told you what we hope the Congress will do and AFP is going to support that.

[...]

TP: I’m curious to know, Mr. Koch, are you proud of what the Tea Party movement and what they’ve achieved in the past years–

KOCH: Yeah. There are some extremists there, but the rank and file are just normal people like us. And I admire them. It’s probably the best grassroots uprising since 1776 in my opinion.

Watch it:

It’s interesting that Koch, who inherited his wealth from his father’s oil company and is now worth $21.5 billion dollars, considers himself just another “normal” Tea Party member. Despite the myth that the Tea Party represents some kind of “spontaneous” uprising of middle class voters, many of the drivers of the movement come from America’s wealthy elite. Millionaire Steve Forbes and corporate lobbyist Dick Armey own the other significant Tea Party organizing group, FreedomWorks. Cliff Asness, a wealthy hedge fund manager who attended several Republican planning meetings and Koch’s secret meeting last June, considers himself a card-carrying member of the Tea Party movement.

Despite the Tea Party veneer, Koch and other wealthy businessmen have a self-interested reason to invest in anti-government movements and Republican politicians. Koch funneled large amounts of donations into electing George Bush in 2000 (even sending Koch-linked lobbyists to help disrupt the Florida recount). At the time, Koch Industries faced 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, known to cause leukemia, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. When Bush took office, his Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges and settled the case for a small amount of money. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Koch front groups largely dictated Bush’s environmental regulatory policy and Koch lobbyists gained appointments to key environmental regulatory position in the administration.

Although Bush is gone, Koch still flexes his muscle over major policy issues in the Obama era. Americans for Prosperity, leveraging its large budget and over 80 campaign operatives, coordinated Tea Party protests to kill clean energy reform (Koch Industries is a major oil company and is still one of the worst polluters in America), pass tax cuts for the rich, and to slow down financial reform (Koch Industries is also very active in the unregulated derivatives market). Koch’s vast network of front groups are also credited with successfully distorting the public’s understanding of climate change.

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By Emily Nussbaum

June 18, 2012

Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy a crusading anchor in “The Newsroom.”

“I’m affable!” Will McAvoy yells in the pilot of “The Newsroom,” Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series. McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) is an irascible anchor whose brand is likability, and it’s a good line, delivered well. It is also a rare moment of self-mockery—and one of the last sequences I was on board for in the series. In “The Newsroom,” clever people take turns admiring one another. They sing arias of facts. They aim to remake television news: “This is a new show, and there are new rules,” a maverick executive producer announces, several times, in several ways. Their outrage is so inflamed that it amounts to a form of moral eczema—only it makes the viewer itch.

This is not to say that “The Newsroom” doesn’t score points now and then, if you share its politics. It starts effectively enough, with an homage to “Network” ’s galvanizing “I’m mad as hell” rant, as McAvoy, a blandly uncontroversial cable big shot whom everyone tauntingly calls Leno, is trapped on a journalism-school panel. When the moderator needles him into answering a question about why America is the greatest country on earth, he goes volcanic, ticking off the ways in which America is no such thing, then closing with a statement of hope, about the way things used to be. This speech goes viral, and his boss (Sam Waterston) and his producer, MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), who’s also his ex-girlfriend, encourage him to create a purer news program, purged of any obsession with ratings and buzz.

Much of McAvoy’s diatribe is bona-fide baloney—false nostalgia for an America that never existed—but it is exciting to watch. And if you enjoyed “The West Wing,” Sorkin’s helpful counterprogramming to the Bush Administration, your ears will prick up. The pilot of “The Newsroom” is full of yelling and self-righteousness, but it’s got energy, just like “The West Wing,” Sorkin’s “Sports Night,” and his hit movie “The Social Network.” The second episode is more obviously stuffed with piety and syrup, although there’s one amusing segment, when McAvoy mocks some right-wing idiots. After that, “The Newsroom” gets so bad so quickly that I found my jaw dropping. The third episode is lousy (and devolves into lectures that are chopped into montages). The fourth episode is the worst. There are six to go.

Sorkin is often presented as one of the auteurs of modern television, an innovator and an original voice. But he’s more logically placed in a school of showrunners who favor patterspeak, point-counterpoint, and dialogue-driven tributes to the era of screwball romance. Some of this banter is intelligent; just as often, however, it’s artificial intelligence, predicated on the notion that more words equals smarter. Besides Sorkin, these creators include Shonda Rhimes (whose Washington melodrama, “Scandal,” employs cast members from “The West Wing”); Amy Sherman-Palladino, of “The Gilmore Girls” (and the appealing new “Bunheads”); and David E. Kelley, who created “Ally McBeal” and “Boston Legal.” Sorkin is supposed to be on a different level from his peers: longer words, worldlier topics. And many viewers clearly buy into this idea: years after Sorkin’s terrible, fascinating “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” was cancelled, I still occasionally run into someone who insists that Americans were just too stupid to get it.

As Dan Rather might put it, that dog won’t hunt. Sorkin’s shows are the type that people who never watch TV are always claiming are better than anything else on TV. The shows’ air of defiant intellectual superiority is rarely backed up by what’s inside—all those Wagnerian rants, fingers poked in chests, palms slammed on desks, and so on. In fact, “The Newsroom” treats the audience as though we were extremely stupid. Characters describe events we’ve just witnessed. When a cast member gets a shtick (like an obsession with Bigfoot), he delivers it over and over. In episode four, there’s a flashback to episode three. In a recent interview, Sorkin spoke patronizingly of cop shows, but his Socratic flirtations are frequently just as formulaic, right down to the magical “Ask twice!” technique.

There’s no denying that Sorkin’s shows can be addictive: I couldn’t stop watching “Studio 60,” which was about the making of a “Saturday Night Live”-style sketch show, no matter how hard I tried. That thing was alive! It was lit up with payback, as well as with portraits of Sorkin’s exes so glowing that they were radioactive. The show’s deliriously preening heroes were so memorable that they inspired a set of fictional Twitter feeds, in which the characters live on, making remarks like “Deciding if the satire I’m about to write should be scathing or whip-smart.”

“The Newsroom” sounded more promising, journalism being a natural habitat for blowhards. But so far the series lacks the squirmy vigor of “Studio 60,” particularly since Sorkin saps the drama with an odd structural choice. Rather than invent fictional crises, he’s set the show in “the recent past,” so that the plot is literally old news: the BP oil spill, the Tea Party, the Arizona immigration law. That sounds like an innovative concept, but it turns the characters into back-seat drivers, telling us how the news should have been delivered. (Instead of “Broadcast News,” it’s like a sanctimonious “Zelig.”) Naturally, McAvoy slices through crises by “speaking truth to stupid,” in McHale’s words. But he also seizes credit for “breaking stories”—like the political shenanigans of the Koch brothers—that were broken by actual journalists, all of them working in print or online. In the fourth episode, the show injects a real-life tragedy into the mix, pouring a pop ballad over the montage, just the way “E.R.” used to do whenever a busload of massacred toddlers came crashing through the door.

There are plenty of terrific actors on this show, but they can’t do much with roles that amount to familiar Sorkinian archetypes. There is the Great Man, who is theoretically flawed, but really a primal truth-teller whom everyone should follow (or date). There are brilliant, accomplished women who are also irrational, high-strung lunatics—the dames and muses who pop their eyes and throw jealous fits when not urging the Great Man on. There are attractively suited young men, from cynical sharpies to idealistic sharpies, who glare and bond and say things like “This right here is always the swan song of the obsolete when they’re staring the future paradigm in the face.”

The show features three people of color. The most prominent is an Indian staffer named Neal Sampat, played by Dev Patel. The dialogue makes fun of McAvoy for calling him Punjab and referring to him as “the Indian stereotype of an I.T. guy,” but the show treats Neal with precisely that type of condescension. Neal is a WikiLeaks fan who writes the show’s blog, but he’s a cheerful cipher, a nerd who speaks nerd talk. There are also two African-American producers, who are introduced to the audience when McAvoy—who is publicly memorizing the names of his staff, having been accused of not remembering them—says, “Gary. Kendra. Gary’s a smart black guy who is not afraid to criticize Obama. Kendra got double 800s on her S.A.T.s, makes Gary crazy. I studied.”

Nobody reacts, and I suspect we’re supposed to find his behavior charmingly blunt or un-P.C. But, again, neither Gary nor Kendra is at all developed, or given any role in the show’s wince-worthy set of love triangles. It gave me flashbacks to one of the worst plots on “Studio 60,” in which the comic played by D. L. Hughley—the “smart black guy” who was always reading the newspaper—went to a comedy club to anoint the one true young black comic among the hacks and mediocrities. Sorkin’s shows overflow with liberal verities about diversity, but they reproduce a universe in which the Great Man is the natural object of worship, as martyred by gossips as any Philip Roth protagonist.

Despite a few bad bets, HBO is on a truly interesting run right now. It has built a solid Sunday lineup, with “Game of Thrones,” the excellent “Girls,” and “Veep,” a political sitcom that just ended its funny, prickly, but also rather dead-hearted début season. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays the title role, is a skilled comedienne, and the cast knows how to sling the writer Armando Iannucci’s nasty zingers. And yet the series was so cynical that it somehow felt naïve. When Louis-Dreyfus’s character got pregnant, she promptly miscarried, and then had no meaningful reaction to either condition. This was disappointing, but I still have hope for the second season, when many sitcoms find their feet, as did NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” the one excellent political series on TV.

“The Newsroom” is the inverse of “Veep”: it’s so naïve it’s cynical. Sorkin’s fantasy is of a cabal of proud, disdainful brainiacs, a “media élite” who swallow accusations of arrogance and shoot them back as lava. But if the storytelling were more confident, it could take a breath and deliver drama, not just talking points. Instead, the deck stays stacked. Whenever McAvoy delivers a speech or slices up a right-winger, the ensemble beams at him, their eyes glowing as if they were cultists. The series turns Will McAvoy into the equivalent of the character Karen Cartwright, on “Smash,” the performer who the show keeps insisting is God’s gift to Broadway. Can you blame me for rooting for McAvoy’s enemies, all those flyover morons, venal bean-counters, sorority girls, and gun-toting bimbos? Like a political party, a TV show is nothing without a loyal opposition. ♦

Published in the print edition of the June 25, 2012, issue.

Emily Nussbaum, a staff writer, won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2016. She is the author of “I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through The TV Revolution” and “Cue The Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV.”

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Aaron Sorkin, known for his political dramas such as The West Wing and The Newsroom, has engaged with the topic of Citizens United in his work.

In The Newsroom, a fictional cable news program, characters discuss the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling, which determined that laws restricting the political spending of corporations and unions were unconstitutional limitations on free speech.

In particular, the show features discussions about amicus briefs filed by groups like the Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice in support of Citizens United. However, some viewers and critics argue that the show misrepresents or distorts certain facts surrounding the case and its implications, including the precise holding of the ruling and arguments made in legal briefs. For example, a Cato Institute article suggests that a character in The Newsroom misstated the Citizens United holding, implying the case allowed direct corporate donations to candidates, when it actually concerned independent expenditures.

[### Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom: One-Sided Politics Will Not ...

Cato Institute

https://www.cato.org › commentary › aaron-sorkins-new...](https://www.cato.org/commentary/aaron-sorkins-newsroom-one-sided-politics-will-not-save-us-politics)

Jul 26, 2012 — According to her, the Institute for Justice argued that “finance laws prohibiting unlimited corporate contributions trump the First Amendment.” ...

[### Citizens United

The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com › tag › citizens-united](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/citizens-united)

The measure is the culmination of years of anxiety and anger among Democrats about the impact that voter suppression, gerrymandering, and post Citizens-United ...

[### Aaron Sorkin Says If He Made 'The West Wing' Today ...

Reddit · r/thewestwing

280+ comments · 1 year ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/thewestwing/comments/1epbwfg/aaron_sorkin_says_if_he_made_the_west_wing_today/)

3.3K votes, 289 comments. You can directly trace the trajectory of the modern Republican party to Newt Gingrich's Contract With America and ...

[### Citizens United Explained

Brennan Center for Justice

https://www.brennancenter.org › research-reports › citiz...](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citizens-united-explained)

Dec 12, 2019 — Federal Election Commission is a controversial decision that reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and ...

Missing: sorkin ‎| Show results with: sorkin

[### Money Unlimited: Chief Justice John Roberts and Citizens ...

The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com › magazine › 2012/05/21](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/05/21/money-unlimited)

May 14, 2012 — When Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was first argued before the Supreme Court, on March 24, 2009, it seemed like a case of ...

[### The Incompatibility of Artificial Intelligence and Citizens ...

The Ohio State University

https://kb.osu.edu › bitstreams › download](https://kb.osu.edu/bitstreams/e5d3bf20-f1fa-40c2-a4d5-29de07c4b9d5/download)

PDF

by MR Siebecker · 2022 · Cited by 12 — In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court granted corporations essentially the same political speech rights as human beings. But does.

[### Freedom of Speech, Aaron Sorkin, Elie Wiesel

jstor

https://www.jstor.org › stable](https://www.jstor.org/stable/23017939)

by D Margolin · 2011 · Cited by 3 — Aaron Sorkin had the freedom to do what he did, by which I mean, to use the name of a liv ing person and the names of his friends; to quote.

[### Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Oyez

https://www.oyez.org › cases](https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205)

A case in which the Court held that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in elections cannot be limited under the First Amendment.

Missing: sorkin ‎| Show results with: sorkin

[### Remarks by the Vice President in a Moderated Conversation ...

The American Presidency Project

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu › documents › remarks...](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-vice-president-moderated-conversation-with-andrew-ross-sorkin-the-new-york)

Remarks by the Vice President in a Moderated Conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times 12th Annual Dealbook Summit in New York City.

[### Aaron Sorkin

National Endowment for the Humanities (.gov)

https://www.neh.gov › award › aaron-sorkin](https://www.neh.gov/award/aaron-sorkin)

Some writers specialize in intimate domestic dramas or autobiographical self-portraits, but playwright, screenwriter, and television scenarist Aaron Sorkin ...

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