Image courtesy of the Heartland Institute.
Now that he survived his recall election, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is lending his support to an upcoming fundraiser for the Heartland Institute, a climate-denying think-tank.
On August 9, Heartland will celebrate its 28th anniversary with a $150-a-head dinner in Chicago (or you can just buy a whole table for $2,500). Heartland has grabbed plenty of headlines this year. In February, a bunch of internal Heartland documents were published detailing the group’s climate miseducation plans (along with one document that the group says was a fake). In May, the group put up controversial billboards comparing people who believe in climate change to the Unabomber. (Climate change isn’t the only issue Heartland brings its “free-market solutions” to address, but it’s the one the group has become most infamous for.)
The billboard incident has caused several funders to drop their support for the group, to the tune of $825,000 in lost donations. Enter Walker, who they described in an email to supporters as “the nation’s most influential and successful governor.” The email promises that the dinner “will be the biggest celebration of freedom in Chicago in 2012.”
