Investigating Power
The most heated exchanges during Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week concerned his ever-shifting explanation of what he discussed—or didn’t discuss—with Russian officials while serving as Donald Trump’s “go-to person” on foreign policy during the 2016 presidential campaign.
A progressive watchdog group is accusing Georgia-Pacific’s owners, the Koch Brothers, of squeezing corporate welfare from the city of Talladega.
The Center for Media and Democracy in a recent web posting accused the Kochs – known for their support of libertarian and conservative causes – of receiving “a generous handout from taxpayers” in connection with an Alabama project.
Last November, a memo penned by Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research and then the leader of Trump’s Department of Energy transition team, suggested that the new administration’s energy plan would include a focus on “ending the use of the social cost of carbon in federal rulemakings.” The memo was obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy.
“During the Trump Administration the SCC will likely be reviewed and the latest science brought to bear,” the document continued. “If the SCC were subjected to the latest science, it would certainly be much lower than what the Obama administration has been using.”
According to The Guardian, EELI’s core mission is actually “discrediting climate science and dismantling environmental regulations” and is “a free-market think tank that wants the public to believe human-caused global warming is a scientific fraud” that uses tactics including “filing nuisance suits to disrupt important academic research.”
“When E&E Legal doesn’t get everything it asks for, it will typically file a lawsuit and take the scientist and university to court,” the Center for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch writes.
And preemption laws are becoming both more expansive and more punitive. “What we’ve seen is preemption on overdrive,” says Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. It’s not just about the minimum wage anymore; states have blocked cities from taking action on issues such as paid sick leave, anti-discrimination rules, fracking, and even the regulation of plastic bags and e-cigarettes.
“This is yet another choice to put an aggressive fossil fuel insider into a position of power at taxpayer expense. I have no doubt Wynn will put private interests — very special interests — over the public interest in protecting our public lands and forests,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and publisher of the website ALECExposed.org, the first website to publish hundreds of ALEC model bills back in 2011.
“Promoting Wynn, with his long ties to the Koch Industries-fueled ALEC pay-to-play operation and other groups like EEI that peddle the corporate agenda, just underscores how Trump has put the swamp creatures in charge instead of ‘draining the swamp.”
When the Wisconsin Senate and State Assembly submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs asked the Faegre group to write a response brief on behalf of the Center for Media and Democracy. Yeager led the team of 15 attorneys from eight Faegre offices in researching, drafting and redrafting the brief pro bono.
“This is yet another choice to put an aggressive fossil fuel insider into a position of power at taxpayer expense. I have no doubt Wynn will put private interests–very special interests–over the public interest in protecting our public lands and forests,” said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and publisher of the website ALECExposed.org, the first website to publish hundreds of ALEC model bills back in 2011.
“Promoting Wynn, with his long ties to the Koch Industries-fueled ALEC pay-to-play operation and other groups like EEI that peddle the corporate agenda, just underscores how Trump has put the swamp creatures in charge instead of ‘draining the swamp.”
The CEA was created in the late 2000s by Whatley, a founding partner of a Washington, D.C.-based Republican lobbying group, HBW Resources, that has close ties to the Alberta, Canada, tar sands industry, according to Sourcewatch, “Consumer Energy Alliance”: https//www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Consumer_Energy_Alliance. Whatley’s CEA is backed by big energy producers such as BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon, Shell, to name but a few.
What Resolute filed is known as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) lawsuit. They are, as PR Watch has previously documented, employed by corporations to shut people up and burden them with the cost of legal defenses.