rebrand Morph
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neglected, oops see rename brand
MERRI OK
this refers to orgs and pgms? see pension plan for ppl
new cat 10/16, trigger by GMI
see also strategic fallback where co's defect and only trade assoc remain
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https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/advertisers-beware-elon-musk-and-linda-yaccarino-are-trying-lure-you-back-rebranding
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PLURALISM KOCH
Koch Network Uses National Philanthropic Trust to Conceal Transactions - **:{EXPOSEDbyCMD}:
Koch Network Uses National Philanthropic Trust to Conceal Transactions
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August 11th, 2022
The National Philanthropic Trust helped Charles Koch’s tightly controlled network of nonprofits shield close to $100 million in donations and grants from public view between 2019 and 2021.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) recently reported on the network’s 2019–20 finances, which ballooned to $2.2 billion in revenues in 2020, and the emergence of Chase Koch’s CCKC4 as a potentially major player on the U.S. political scene.
Despite receiving $1.2 billion in 2020, CCKC4 only disclosed making a single grant of $12.5 million to the National Philanthropic Trust (NPT). A massive donor-advised fund—independent from the Koch family—the NPT routes billions of dollars to thousands of charities, policy organizations, and nonprofits every year.
The NPT does not disclose its donors nor their designated recipients, an advantage it advertises to potential donors. While it does disclose the organizations it finances and some of its donors voluntarily disclose payments to the NPT, the information available makes it impossible to draw a line between specific donors and grantees.
This appears to be part of a recent trend. Corporate mega-donors use donor advised funds to anonymize funding to groups that influence policy making, including longtime climate change denial organizations with a history of support from the Koch family’s foundations.
CMD contacted a Koch Industries executive who serves as director of several of Charles Koch’s nonprofits for comment, but received no response.
“Having a 501(c)(4) make grants to a 501(c)(3) charity such as the Charles Koch Foundation or the National Philanthropic Trust is tax inefficient, as the 501(c)(4) is already exempt from tax and so does not need a charitable contribution deduction,” said Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. But “if the original, individual funder of the 501(c)(4) has already maxed out their charitable contribution deduction,” he added, “then it does not matter if they make a gift directly to a 501(c)(3) or have the 501(c)(4) do it instead.”
In recent years, the NPT also made major anonymous grants to two other organizations controlled by the Koch family.
One of those groups, Stand Together Trust, is central to Koch’s policy influence operation. Run by the Kochs and Koch Industries, it funds “social entrepreneurs” in education and a variety of public policy areas, and provides major financial support for Americans for Prosperity, Koch’s astroturf political advocacy group.
Annual grants from NPT to Stand Together Trust have soared from $1.05 million in 2019 to $9.75 million in 2020 and $20.15 million in 2021, according to a recent IRS filing obtained by CMD and previous filings compiled by ProPublica.
Another of Charles Koch’s organizations, the Stand Together Foundation, received more than $80 million from NPT between July 2019 and June 2021.
This philanthropic organization is focused on anti-poverty initiatives, but also serves to amplify Charles Koch’s free-market ideology. Virtually every grantee of the Foundation appears to be required to complete an “intensive six-month training designed to coach nonprofit leaders on business principles.” Called the Catalyst Program, it promulgates his trademarked business management philosophy, “Market-Based Management.”
Stand Together Foundation Key to Koch Rebranding Efforts
For the first eight decades of his life, Charles Koch was generally averse to charity. He preferred to send the vast majority of his “philanthropic” donations to political organizations that would advance his ideological and business interests, as Jane Mayer points out in her 2016 book Dark Money (pp. 147–148).
The Stand Together Foundation emerged publicly in 2015 as part of a public relations makeover in the wake of a decade of sustained public criticism of the Koch brothers’ business and political pursuits. Koch Industries was best known for its pollution, its support for climate change denial, its alleged theft of oil from the Osage Nation, and its pervasive political influence.
The rebrand appears to be working. In the past five years, Charles Koch and his staff have managed partnerships with musicians like and Guns ‘N’ Roses drummer
. Celebrity athletes have also participated. Koch’s “Prime 5” collaboration involved retired football player Deion Sanders, and the LeBron James Family Foundation received a $575,000 grant from Koch’s Stand Together Chamber of Commerce in 2020. Charles Koch touts his collaboration with former political foe Van Jones, who allegedly thinks of his primary contact at Koch 
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In sharp contrast, Koch’s historical political extremism—dating back to his work with the John Birch Society during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s—continues unabated.
The Bill of Rights Institute, an organization operating out of Koch’s compound in Arlington, Virginia, was involved in efforts to whitewash the history of slavery in the U.S. in its lesson plans. Koch cash flowed to members of a network of neo-Confederates and white supremacists as recently as 2017. Since then, he has continued to support groups that manufacture hysteria over critical race theory, despite his public statements disavowing the trend.
Most recently, the Atlantic Council ceased its $4.5 million collaboration with the Charles Koch Institute after new staff hired from the Koch-founded Cato Institute advocated against focusing on Russia’s violations of human rights. This followed Koch Industries’ controversial refusal to discontinue its business operations in Russia immediately after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February. By April, the company reversed its position following weeks of dogged investigations by journalist Judd Legum.
Still, many journalists seem less interested in scrutinizing Charles Koch’s controversial activities than they were during the Obama presidency. Whether or not his rebranding efforts have won over the media and the public, Charles Koch’s political operation and his influence continue to grow and spread as fast as his fortune.
*David Armiak contributed research to this report.
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kochtopus 8 22
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/08/30/charles-kochs-shape-shifting-influence-machine/
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naomi drilled interview 6/20: kids see intersectionality vs older/boomer do you have to make this hard? about capitalism? car work is low carbon; started in climate at latrina NO dis cap'l ism research, git that floods were out future; red bait mccarthy stick used to beat up system thinking (commies want to overthrow our way of life/cap'l SYSTEM vs update the operating sysyem; puncuated transition anoshabe woman cda?0 BP rebrand docs on drilled] @X?!
GND attacked on fox but not really defended opon cnn and msnbc: rt story = loss; // Keystone XL beg for 2 min, then followed by FF greenwash ad that was LONGER?! Brazil 10 yrs ago Anjelica Navarro we need a Marshall Plan for climate;
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diet food plan now just initials? WW?
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420 just bewildering; same time as trump meets with oil ceo record low prices for oil
in environmental news, construction on the Keystone XL pipeline is set to resume. Officials in Alberta, Canada, said they would hand over more than $1 billion to TC Energy — formerly known as TransCanada — so that construction can continue, even though it risks putting construction workers and residents on the pipeline’s path — many of them from indigenous communities — at heightened risk for contracting the coronavirus. South Dakota and several other states recently passed new laws criminalizing protests against pipelines.
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ew 220
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https://www.ecowatch.com/highly-hazardous-pesticides-investigation-2645202101.html
Poor people in developing countries are far more likely to suffer from exposure to pesticides classified as having high hazard to human health or the environment, according to new data that Unearthed analyzed.
The analysis shows that the world's top five pesticide makers are making billions, accounting for more than 36 percent of their income, from chemicals that are proven to hazards to humans and the environment and are contributing to the precipitous demise of bee populations, as Unearthed reported.
The researchers found that the sale of these highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs), disproportionately occurred in poorer nations, which often have fewer regulations than industrialized nations, according to The Guardian. In India, for example, sales of HHPs were nearly 60 percent, while in the UK it was just 11 percent.
The report from the investigative team at Unearthed focused on the practices of Bayer, BASF,Corteva (formerly Dow and DuPont), FMC and Syngenta, which are continuing to sell HHPs like neonicotinoids and glufosinate that have been banned in other parts of the world, according to the produce industry publication Fresh Produce Journal.
Unearthed dove into data collected by Phillips McDougall, the leading agribusiness analysts, from buyer surveys that concentrated on the best sellers in the top 43 pesticide buying countries, as The Guardian reported.
While regulations have stopped the sale of certain pesticides in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, it has hardly slowed down chemical companies, which sold $4.8 billion worth of products containing HHPs in 2018,as The Guardian reported. guk] Bayer called the analysis "misleading" but did not offer proof of that assessment.
Since the investigation focused on just 43 countries, it covered less than half of the companies' global sales. That suggests that the companies actually made billions more from pesticides that regulatory agencies have said pose hazards like acute poisoning or chronic illness in people, or high toxicity to bees and other wildlife, according to Unearthed.
The investigation found that pesticide manufacturers sold the majority of its highly hazardous pesticide in low- and middle-income countries like Brazil and India, where experts say the risks posed by using these chemicals are greatest, according to Unearthed. The biggest market for HHPs were for corn and soya crops.
About a quarter of sales were from products known to be human carcinogens or dangerous to reproductive health.Another 10 percent were toxic to bees. An additional 4 percent of chemicals sold are acutely toxic to humans. Every year, nearly 200,000 suicides are linked to pesticide poisoning, almost entirely in developing countries, according to The Guardian.
"This investigation shows that there is a huge disconnect between what those companies are saying in the international policy arena and what they are actually doing," Meriel Watts, a senior science and policy advisor to the Pesticide Action Network, said to Unearthed.
Baskut Tuncak, the United Nations' special rapporteur on toxic substances and human rights, told Unearthed, "There is nothing sustainable about the widespread use of highly hazardous pesticides for agriculture."
"Whether they poison workers, extinguish biodiversity, persist in the environment, or accumulate in a mother's breast milk, these are unsustainable, cannot be used safely, and should have been phased out of use long ago," Tuncak said....
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minor?
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/24/greenpeace-energy-transfer-oil-spills-pipeline-protesters-violence
Battles over new shale gas and oil pipelines involving Energy Transfer, formerly known as Energy Transfer Partners, have heated up in recent weeks — an escalation that carries a tilt, as one side stands accused of acts of violence.
Energy Transfer (ET) security contractors have been accused of physically assaulting pipeline opponents on multiple occasions, including incidents in which security allegedly pointed a gun at one pipeline opponent, struck another with the butt of a shotgun, and overturned two boats carrying a television film crew and pipeline opponents into a Louisiana swamp, according to a new report published by Greenpeace USA on October 18.
Pipeline opponents also ratcheted up their protests, as three women from communities impacted by ET projects interrupted an ET shareholder meeting and activists carrying signs locked themselves to gates outside the company CEO’s residence.
New Name, Same Risks?
Energy Transfer Partners, or ETP, is the company behind controversial oil and gas pipeline projects like the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), the Bayou Bridge pipeline, and Mariner East. Last week, ETP finished a business deal that left the company with a new corporate name and a new stock symbol. The new firm, Energy Transfer Equity,trades under the stock symbol ET.
The Greenpeace report, published the same day as that business deal, calls attention to ET’s continuing record of what the report called “concerning corporate behavior” — not only spills and accidents, but also efforts to silence or criminalize critics.
“Despite this new business model, Energy Transfer continues to display behavior that indicates a lack of significant changes with regards to the company’s approach to civilian opposition to its pipeline projects,” Greenpeace wrote.
What’s behind that opposition? Greenpeace describes Energy Transfer's record of spills and mishaps, writing “Energy Transfer and subsidiaries have reported 15 hazardous liquids incidents so far in 2018.”
“These 15 incidents led to the release of 1,282 barrels of hazardous liquids (of which 609 barrels were recovered),” the report adds, “and caused a reported $8.4 million in property damage.”
Energy Transfer and the Courts
The report also highlights ET’s use of the court system to jail critics like Ellen Gerhart, a Pennsylvania landowner sentenced this summer to two to six months incarceration after ET claimed she had violated a court order.
And it provides an update on aracketeering complaint filed by ET against Greenpeace and other pipeline opponents in August 2017, which described an alleged $300 million in damages done by the defendants and asked the court for three times that amount. ET’s complaint alleged that the DAPL protests involved “a network of putative not-for-profits and rogue eco-terrorist groups who employ patterns of criminal activity and campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims and other purported misconduct, inflicting billions of dollars in damage.”
In an August 2018 order, U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson ordered ET to revise its complaint. “Energy Transfer has failed to state plausible RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] claims against Greenpeace,” Judge Wilson wrote. “It has also failed to comply with basic rules of pleading.”
Noting that ET’s court filings offered lots of insinuation but few identifiable facts, Judge Wilson continued, “This Circuit consistently requires pro se parties [people who have no lawyer and represent themselves] to plead with more clarity, and less irrelevant hyperbole, than present here.”
In its October update, Greenpeace writes that ET used that amendment to expand its original complaint by naming five individuals as defendants, including “a recently hired Greenpeace USA employee.”
The Greenpeace report, titled “Still Too Far,” also calls attention to so-called “critical infrastructure” bills that are under consideration in Pennsylvania and Ohio and just went into effect in Louisiana, which would turn many criminal charges at pipeline protests into felonies carrying prison sentences of over a year. It notes that ET has ongoing pipeline construction projects in all three states (other states are also considering similar laws, which appear to be based on a model ALEC bill).
“From leaky pipelines and reckless actions against peaceful demonstrators to a clear disdain for the First Amendment, Energy Transfer hasn’t shown any signs of engaging in meaningful change,” said Greenpeace USA Global Finance Pipeline Lead Diana Best. “The company’s decision to continue with its controversial business as usual should raise an alarm for any remaining financial institutions with ties to the company.”
The report, which includes photographs taken by Julie Dermansky, comes shortly after the NN Group, an investment fund managing $275 billion, announced that it would withdraw investments in ET and a group of tar sands oil companies and pipeline builders, citing not only pollution and climate change worries, but also human rights concerns.
During an October 18 shareholder meeting, three prominent opponents to ET pipeline projects — Ellen Gerhart, a Pennsylvania landowner who lives along the route of Mariner East; Cherri Foytlin, an activist who bought land on the Bayou Bridge pipeline’s route in 2016; and Waniya Locke, a water protector from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation — interrupted discussions.
A Facebook live video of the event posted by Cherri Foytlin has over 42,000 views. Protesters also gathered outside the shareholder meeting in Dallas, Texas, and locked themselves to the gates of the Dallas home of Kelcy Warren, ET’s CEO
...
energy Transfer recently found itself facing allegations of endangering the safety of pipeline opponents after an ET security boat allegedly caused two other boats carrying a group of members of the press (including a Comedy Central film crew) and protesters with L’eau Est La Vie Camp to overturn into a Louisiana swamp through which the pipeline is being constructed.
DeSmog has previously reported on ET’s use of a private security firm called TigerSwan, which was denied a license to operate in Louisiana earlier this year over continuing lawsuits against the firm from its role on behalf of Energy Transfer in the battles over the Dakota Access pipeline. Greenpeace previously alleged that TigerSwan “deployed excessive force and military style counterterrorism tactics against Water Protectors while operating without a license in North Dakota.”
Energy Transfer rejected the allegations in the Greenpeace report. “Our priority is the safe construction and operation of our assets,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to DeSmog. “We value the local communities and environments in which we work, which is why our employees and contractors spend years designing and constructing these projects. To claim anything different is incorrect. “
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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-2020-campaign-effort-has-hired-officials-sketchy-data-firm-mueller
no lnx
Trump's 2020 Campaign Effort Has Hired Officials from the Sketchy Data Firm Mueller Is Investigating: Report
Cambridge Analytica was at the center of a massive scandal concerning the misuse of Facebook user data.
By Cody Fenwick / AlterNet June 15, 2018, 7:52 AM GMT
President Donald Trump's campaign is working with former employees of the disgraced data firm Cambridge Analytica, a company that collapsed after its scandalous misuse of Facebook data was revealed and is facing scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to the Associated Press.
At least four ex-employees of the firm now work for Data Propria, which performs campaign services similar to those Cambridge Analytica provided, the report says. The employment of workers who were involved with such a scandalous enterprise remains a focus of an investigation into malfeasance in the 2016 election and shows a brazen disregard on the Republican Party's part for even having the appearance of concerns about propriety and election security.
Though the leader of the new firm, Matt Oczkowski, denies working for the Trump campaign, AP reporters said that Oczkowski said he and Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale were "doing the president’s work for 2020" during an overheard conversation.
The AP also notes that Parscale is a part owner of Data Propia's parent company.
Cambridge Analytica folded in May because its reputation had been fatally damaged by the scandal. It would appear, however, that's its reputation has not been so tarnished that the president's team wouldn't want to work with people involved in its sketchy practices.
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