¶ Considering 1/29/18 Durango Herald report on Americans for Prosperity - Jonathan Romeo

On Monday Jonathan Romeo authored another Durango Herald article that looked at Americans for Prosperity’s campaign against the land-use code that La Plata County’s duly elected County Commissioners are drafting.  I’ve taken selected quotes from the article and annotated them with observations gleaned from my past few days researching Americans for Prosperity.

Americans for Prosperity launches campaign over La Plata County’s land-use code

Koch brothers-backed group says it will fight proposed rules

By Jonathan Romeo County & environment reporter

Monday, Jan. 29, 2018 | Durango Herald

https://durangoherald.com/articles/206085-americans-for-prosperity-launches-campaign-over-la-plata-countys-landuse-code

“This plan is harmful in many ways to farmers and ranchers and grossly infringes on individuals’ property rights.” 

{What about all the ways it’s helpful in dealing with serious growing pains?  We can’t simply ignore this reality.}

Americans for Prosperity was founded in 2004 as a political arm of the billionaire Koch brothers, who owns the second largest privately held company in the U.S. …

{Here we touch on the fundamental problem with AFP, it was created to serve Koch’s interests.}

In the last eight years, Americans for Prosperity has turned to homing in on smaller communities in an effort to oust progressive elected officials and undercut the left’s command in grass-roots organizing.… 

{Thus smother all opposition to Koch’s radical agenda for our government.}

Koch Wins, Climate Agreement Broken. Jane Mayer - 2017

This is the last one of Jane Mayer's interesting reports. Here I follow her story with excerpts from the New York Times article by Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton which traces the factors leading to the GOP's complete rejection and denial of climate science.  Here we find that Koch's Americans for Prosperity turn out to play an important role in driving that self-destructive, self-delusional travesty.

In the Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Koch Brothers’ Campaign Becomes Overt

By Jane Mayer  June 5, 2017

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/in-the-withdrawal-from-the-paris-climate-agreement-the-koch-brothers-campaign-becomes-overt

If there was any lingering doubt that a tiny clique of fossil-fuel barons has captured America’s energy and environmental policies, it was dispelled last week, when the Trump Administration withdrew from the Paris climate accord.

Surveys showed that a majority of Americans in literally every state wanted to remain within the agreement, and news reports established that the heads of many of the country’s most successful and iconic Fortune 100 companies, from Disney to General Electric, did, too. Voters and big business were arrayed against leaving the climate agreement. Yet despite the majority’s sentiment, a tiny—and until recently, almost faceless—minority somehow prevailed.