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The story’s italicized tagline identified Simmons this way: “Randy Simmons is professor of political economy at Utah State University.”After Wemple's inquiries, Newsweek updated the tagline to include the author's connections to Koch.The Erik Wemple Blog yesterday asked Simmons whether his Newsweek blast at wind power should have contained more information about his ties to some key players in the U.S. energy sector. For instance, between 2008 and 2013, Simmons served as the Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy from 2008 to 2013, in what he terms a “fixed-term professorship.” And Simmons currently supervises a program known at Utah State University as the “Koch Scholars” program, which runs on an annual grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. It’s a “reading group” that meets on Tuesday evenings. “The Koch Foundation grant buys the books, and food and provides a scholarship for each of the 15 students chosen that semester,” writes Simmons in an e-mail to the Erik Wemple Blog.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Idaho Gov. Butch Otter signs budget suicide order:
The crazy spreads. If an executive order from Republican Gov. Butch Otter forbidding state agencies in Idaho from accepting federal funds to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passes constitutional muster, the state would have to opt out of Medicaid in 2014. More than 220,000 of Idaho's citizens depend on Medicaid. Unless the governor and GOP-dominated Legislature choose to drop these folks off where the grizzly bears roam, they will have to come up with the money to treat them.That amounts to around $1 billion a year, 40 percent of the state's entire annual budget. One way to pay for it? Cut public school funding by 85 percent. Given their hatred for public education, maybe that approach would suit Idaho's elected Republicans just fine.
Saying he opposes "the overreaching nature of the PPACA and its infringements on Idahoans and the authority of the States under the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution," the governor stated in his order that "no executive branch department, agency, institution or employee of the state shall establish or amend any program or promulgate any rule to implement any provisions of the PPACA" without his consent. The Tenth Amendment is a favorite of right-wingers eager to nullify federal initiatives and take back the state sovereignty they believe has been dwindling ever since the presidency of...uh...Abraham Lincoln.
Judge with no bachelor's degree, who has never passed the bar, sends poor teens to adult jail for skipping school http://t.co/... via—@Molly_HC
On today's Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin notes Obama's FL, Rick Scott's anti-Obamacare "tantrum," and Scott Walker squanders his big chance. Ted Cruz as college debate dick. Will [X] make Jewish-Americans vote Republican? Still no. Joan McCarter brings us up to speed on the trafficking bill/Lynch nomination deal, the Patriot Act, TPP, Ron Johnson's idea of delaying Obamacare-swiping until after his next election, more on the Scott's tantrum, and Trey Gowdy's decision to drop a Benghazi report in the middle of the 2016 election. Stephen Wolf notes 42% of political money comes from the top 0.01%. NRA evading federal campaign laws?
