Public Health and Welfare Destroyed for Private Gain
Bad News
Perhaps worse than the professorial Ivory Towered is a Luxury Towered Businessman way out of his element.
A super rich man prone to Government bailed-out bankruptcies holding public office is ravaging (bankrupting) the public sector on the advice of private-sector financed destroyers of public health and public service — U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly takes advice from the climate-denying PR Heartland or Heartland PR.
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R v Public Health: Climate Denier takes millions from Public Health and
Environment Destroyer
Founded in 1984, a group calling itself “The Heartland Institute” at least since the 1990s has been feeding at the trough of entities profiting from the destruction of public health.
The Institute, or rather PR firm, has partnered with big tobacco Philip
Morris in lobbying against (cigarette) smoking bans and in promoting denials of
secondhand-smoke health risks.
In and since the 2000s, the group has publicly rejected the scientific consensus on
climate change and led denials of climate change.
Money Plays in Dollar Signs
Though the firm “no longer discloses its funding sources,” reports have
documented major funders of Heartland including Big Tobacco companies Philip
Morris (Altria and Reynolds American) and Big Pharma (GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer
and Eli Lilly).
Its donations “from Exxon and Philip Morris” reveal direct linkages
between “‘anti-global warming skeptics’” and oil industry funders; and between
“‘opponents of the scientific evidence showing that passive smoking can damage
people’s health’” and tobacco industry funders.
The PR group is reportedly a champion of (big-box-bad-employer) Wal-mart
from whose foundation, Walton Family Foundation, the group in 2006 reportedly received
some “$300,000.”
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ayer of Piper Calls Tune
Contents of a 2012 discovery of 100+ Heartland (PR) global warming documents
detailing “payments” HI received to push papers and “support climate change
deniers,” from, e.g.,
- “… founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change Craig Idso ($11,600 per month),
- physicist Fred Singer ($5,000 plus expenses per month),
- geologist Robert M. Carter ($1,667 per month); and
- $90,000 to blogger and former meteorologist Anthony Watts.”
- The firm’s “audited financial statements” (years 2014, 2015) reportedly show that a “a single unidentified donor” contributed 27 percent and 19 percent of revenues, respectively.”
- The firm’s 2018 conference site: “the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.”
- The firm’s estimated revenue reported (2020 data update): $5,350,800
Ideological Master: Neoliberalism
HealthcareHI PR advocates “free-market reforms in healthcare” and “opposes federal control over the healthcare industry.”
EducationHI PR promotes privatized schooling and the insinuation of “market reforms into the public K–12 education system”
As an antagonist of “federal, state, and local budgets and tax codes,” HI PR promotes the disestablishment of public service
Documents discovered also reveal the PR group’s plans to infiltrate U.S.
public schools with their brand of curricular to promote “climate skepticism.”
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ews 2020: The Heartland “has claimed … a ‘major role’ in (U.S.
President Donald) Trump’s decision to withdraw the world’s largest historical
greenhouse gas emitter (the United States of America) from the Paris climate
accord.”
Following on this misguided action, the Trump government “rolled back the
2015 Clean Power Plan that set strict emissions limits.”
In his seriously flawed judgment, inept stewardship in the public sphere,
and bizarre eruptions, the U.S. president describes climate change as “‘a
relentless war on American energy’”; and in his usual preference for one simpleton
to another four-letters (e.g., “hoax” and “fake”), he reduces climate change is
“a Chinese hoax.”
Sources
DW News Environment “In denial: The spin machine upending the climate
consensus:
Climate law rollbacks in the US and Australia have origins in
libertarian think tanks that trade in climate denial. Investigative journalists
have exposed how one is now trying to strip climate protections in Germany.”
March 9, 2020 Stuart Braun https://www.dw.com/en/trump-climate-change-denial-emissions-environment-germany-fake-heartland-seibt/a-52688933
Wikipedia “The Heartland Institute” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heartland_Institute
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