wendy gramm bak
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merri ok
*January 2002
TRUST NAMES WENDY LEE GRAMM
THE CLEAN AIR 'VILLAIN OF THE MONTH'
(Washington, D.C. January 10, 2002) - What does a sunset cocktail party in ritzy Naples, Florida, have to do with an oil company indicted for "environmental crimes" and a soon-to-be-announced Bush Administration plan to weaken enforcement of the Clean Air Act?
They all involve Wendy Lee Gramm, named today by the nonprofit Clean Air Trust as its "villain of the month" for January.
Gramm is director of the "regulatory studies program" at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. Mercatus is an increasingly influential, anti-regulatory "think tank" created by and subsidized by polluter money.
We are not singling out Wendy Gramm because of any connection she may have to the Enron scandal. ^1 (TheWashington Post reports that she may be subpoenaed by a Senate committee to determine her role, if any, in the company's epic collapse. In 1992, Wendy Gramm headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, when it exempted from regulation Enron trading in energy derivatives -- which later became Enron's most lucrative business. After leaving the government, Gramm was named to Enron's board. Enron has been among the financial backers of the Mercatus Center.)
The wife of Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), Wendy Gramm has a long track record of opposing regulations, including those involving health and environment. In the Reagan administration, she was executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget's regulatory review office, and director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Economics.
In this case, our attention was triggered by Gramm's role in a recent "hit list," compiled by OMB, of existing federal environmental regulations it believes should be changed or rescinded. OMB's regulatory czar, John Graham, conceded to USA Today that this review of existing federal rules is unprecedented.
Rules in the OMB bulls-eye include EPA's so-called "new source review," which is designed to keep polluters from increasing pollution when they make major changes to existing refineries, electric power plants and other factories. Major oil and power companies are pressing the Bush Administration to weaken current requirements, and an announcement is expected as soon as next week. There is no doubt that OMB is a major player in the upcoming clean air rollback. OMB noted that Gramm's Mercatus Center had instigated inclusion of new source review on the regulatory hit list.
Indeed, Gramm's Mercatus Center was responsible for no fewer than five of the eight EPA rules singled out by OMB for "high priority" treatment -- including standards for arsenic in drinking water.Altogether, OMB noted, Mercatus had called for a re-assessment of no fewer than 44 federal regulations -- including national public health standards for smog and soot, as well as standards for tailpipe pollution from cars and sport utility vehicles, low-sulfur gasoline, big diesel trucks and diesel fuel -- in other words, Gramm would like to pull the plug on virtually every effective air pollution cleanup measure adopted in recent years.
In effect, the OMB office is becoming a conduit for regulatory bashers such as Mercatus. And no wonder: Wendy Gramm actually ran the same OMB office during much of the Reagan administration. And Gramm's Mercatus Center and Graham's former employer -- the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis -- even had common financial backers. ^2
It's worth a moment to explore the connection between Wendy Gramm and one of those key financial backers: Koch Industries, Inc., the largest independent oil company in America. Charles G. Koch is chairman of the board and CEO of Koch Industries. If you've ever heard of Charles Koch, it's probably because he was sued by his brother, Bill, for allegedly stealing oil from federal lands (they settled the suit last year), or because the U.S. Justice Department indicted Koch Industries in 2000 for "environmental crimes" at a Corpus Christi, Texas, refinery. A Koch subsidiary agreed to a settlement in the case last year, admitting that -- to save a few bucks -- it disconnected pollution controls and vented cancer-causing benzene directly into the air from the refinery.
Listed by Forbes as one of the 100 wealthiest Americans, Charles Koch also is a major mover and shaker in reactionary political circles. He runs the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, which collectively doles out millions of dollars each year to reactionary groups including the previously mentioned Harvard center; the American Legislative Exchange Council (right-wing state legislators who receive their marching orders from industry); the Federalist Society (a reactionary legal fraternity that has placed numerous people at high levels in the Bush Administration, including DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham); and the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), a Montana-based group that underwrites propaganda junkets for reactionary federal judges. ^3
Which brings us back to Wendy Gramm and the Mercatus Center, which Charles Koch also chairs. Indeed, Koch helped launch the center with a $3 million contribution to George Mason University in 1997. The University proudly notes on its web site that Koch gave an additional $10 million multi-year grant "to support programs focused on market-based solutions to social and economic problems." In other words, Koch basically rents the university's name to give a patina of credibility to Wendy Gramm's anti-environmental agenda.
Although his contribution gives us a glimpse of the dark side of modern academia, Koch is by no means Wendy Gramm's only financial backer. The Mercatus Center's web site (www.mercatus.org) proudly displays vulgar pictures of a gathering of the "Founders Circle" -- annual contributors of $10,000 or more to the Mercatus Center -- at a "sunset cocktail party" last March in Naples, Florida.
If you missed last year's Mercatus gala, there's still time to sign up for the next one -- it's Feb. 15-17 at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, CA. Wendy Gramm may need the money -- especially since Enron has gone down the tubes.
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^1 Though we would recommend an excellent report on this topic published last month by Public Citizen. It can be found at http://www.citizen.org.
^2 One other thing in common: John Graham was our "Villain of the Month" for October 2001.
^3 The Koch tentacles twist throughout Washington policy circles. For example, in addition to John Graham and the various reactionary lawyers and judges, a former Koch Industries lobbyist, Elizabeth Stolpe, now is a key staff person with the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Her job includes air pollution issues, including new source review.
http://www.cleanairtrust.org/villain.0102.html
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frontline:
If Wendy Gramm has her way, she will replace Hillary Clinton in the White House next year. Like Mrs. Clinton, Wendy Gramm is the smart, ambitious wife of a smart, ambitious politician. Her husbandSenator Phil Gramm of Texas is a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination. Like Clinton, she too is a graduate of Wellesley College near Boston. Gramm also holds a PhD in economics from Northwestern University in Illinois and has had a successful career apart from her husband.
This phenomenon -- spouses with professional careers of their own paired with political candidates -- not only reflects the changing role of women but also creates new ethical dilemmas and ambiguities in election campaigns. Mrs. Gramm is the granddaughter of a laborer in the Hawaian sugar cane fields and the daughter of the first Korean-American officer of a U.S. sugar cane company. Mrs. Gramm declined to be interviewed by FRONTLINE.
She and Phil Gramm met in 1969 when the future senator was a professor of economics at Texas A&M University. He interviewed her for a job at the school. "As a single member of the faculty, I'd be very interested in having you come to Texas A&M," she quotes him as saying at the time. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Mrs. Gramm recalled herinitial response to his subsequent marriage proposal: "Yuck." Gramm persisted, and the couple wed in 1970 (it was Gramm's second marriage). They have two sons, Marshall and Jeff. In 1979, Phil Gramm, then a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Five years later in 1984, he switched his party affiliation to the GOP and won the Senate seat that he still occupies. The move to Washington began a succession of appointed federal jobs for Mrs. Gramm. She headed the economics bureau of the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Consumer Protection and served as administrator of information and deregulatory affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. In 1987 The New York Timesdescribed her as "one of the Reagan administration's most vigorous deregulators." President Reagan called her "my favorite economist," naming her chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the powerful regulatory agency which oversees the nation's commodities and futures exchanges.
Her dual roles as CFTC head and Senator's wife put her in a difficult position. There were times when Senator Gramm sought the support of some of the same agricultural and business interests that she was regulating. On trips to Texas during his 1989 Senatorial campaign she worked both on CFTC business and for her husband's reelection. After leaving the CFTC in early 1992, Wendy Gramm accepted lucrative directorships on the boards of several corporations she had regulated. Several of these corporations were also financial supporters of her husband's Presidential campaign. One of the boards on which Mrs. Gramm sits is Enron Corporation, a Texas natural gas company, which has given almost $35,000 to Phil Gramm over the years. She was named to the company's board, just five weeks after stepping down from the CFTC, which around the same time, exempted Enron and a group of other oil and gas companies from federal regulation on some of their commodities trading. The move was a big financial boon to Enron.
Enron pays Wendy Gramm $22,000 a year for her service on its board, plus $1,250 for every meeting she attends. The CEO of Enron, Kenneth Lay, is regional chair of the Gramm for President Campaign. When Senator Gramm kicked off his campaign last February with a record-setting fund raising dinner, Lay and his wife were present.
Another board Wendy Gramm sits on is that of Iowa Beef Processors (IBP), a large meat processing company. Based in Dakota City, Nebraska, IBP is a powerful corporation next door to a key election- year state, Iowa. Support for Senator Gramm at IBP came in handy last August at the Iowa straw poll in Ames. IBP sent a memo to its management level employees encouraging them to attend the straw poll, which is not restricted to Iowa residents, and informing them that $25 tickets and bus transportation would be provided by the Phil Gramm-for-President campaign. Gramm campaign buses picked up the IBP employees at eight separate locations in the states of Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois and transported them to the straw poll, where their votes helped Gramm tie front-runner Bob Dole and gave the Gramm campaign an important boost.
In a written statement to FRONTLINE, an IBP spokesman said, "Many of the campaigns provided tickets and bus transportation to the event, some bringing in people from as far away as Kansas. While the Gramm campaign paid the way for the IBP employees who attended, our people were not told to vote for Senator Gramm or any other candidate."
FRONTLINE learned that the request for IBP's help in the straw poll came from the late Alec Courtelis, the former finance chair of the Gramm-for-President campaign. (Courtelis, long a leading Republican fundraiser, died this winter) Courtelis also sat on IBP's board of directors and was responsible for bringing Wendy Gramm onto IBP's board.
While no one has accused Mrs. Gramm or anyone else of breaking any laws, the IBP case nonetheless shows how questions can arise when a candidate's spouse is appointed to a well-paying corporate directorship and when that company helps promote the husband's candidacy.
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dailykos.com/story/2012/5/25/1094765/-Wendy-Gramm-Resurfaces
Wendy Gramm has grown weary of a diet of Xylem fluids in her underground bunker. I haven't seen or heard of her since she and hubby Phil (who calls himself an economist) economically took down our nation with two of Phil's stealth bills:
Between 1995 and 2000, Gramm was the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. During that time he spearheaded efforts to pass banking deregulation laws, including the landmark Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which removed Depression-era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities...... Gramm was one of five co-sponsors of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. One provision of the bill is often referred to as the "Enron loophole" because some critics blame the provision for permitting the Enron scandal to occur.
I just want to remind you all thatGramm-Leach-Bliley Act took out Glass-Steagall which served to regulate banks and separate out gambling casino banks from your regular normal banks for savings accounts and stuff for regular folks.
Wendy Lee Gramm has also been a very busy woman, sorry but the woman has a lengthy scandal sheet:
In her role at the Mercatus Center, Gramm generally calls for deregulation of the energy industry. Previously, Gramm held several positions in the Reagan Administration, including heading the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 to 1993. After a lobbying campaign from Enron, the CFTC exempted it from regulation in trading of energy derivatives. Subsequently, Gramm resigned from the CFTC and took a seat on the Enron Board of Directors and served on its Audit Committee. While on the board of directors she received donations from Enron to support the Mercatus Center.
After the Enron scandal, Gramm and the other directors of the energy company were named in several investor lawsuits, many of which have been settled. In particular, Gramm and other Enron directors agreed to a $168 million dollar settlement in a suit led by theUniversity of California. As part of that settlement, the directors agreed to collectively pay $13 million to settle claims of insider trading. The remainder of the settlement was to be paid by insurance.
From 1985 to 1988, Gramm was head of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). In 2002, OIRA solicited public recommendations for regulatory reform. Mercatus made 44 recommendations.
Gramm also serves as chair of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and a director of the Independent Women's Forum, a conservative women's group. She has sat on the boards of Enron Corporation, Iowa Beef Processors, Invesco Funds, Longitude, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and State Farm Insurance Companies.
Evidently Wendy Lee Gramm now thinks it's safe to emerge from the underground bunker and loudly chirp on behalf of all thingsALEC! in a recent Wall Street Journal column:
Why the Left Wants to Blacklist ALEC:
For nearly four decades, the group has been an effective facilitator of good governance.
ByWENDY GRAMM and BROOKE ROLLINS
Let's put the bottom line up front: We at the Texas Public Policy Foundation are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, otherwise known as ALEC, and we're proud of it. Amid continuing reports of efforts by political critics to isolate and destroy the group because of its limited-government advocacy, it's appropriate to say a few words in the council's defense.
Normally, I wouldn't give a hoot about what Wendy Lee Gramm does, but the last time the woman was out and about I and hundreds of thousands of other American working people lost vast amounts of cash from their pension funds and 401Ks and other seemingly safe caches of cash for Americans who work for a living.
Your regular cicada innocently chomps on leaves and vegetative matter. Wendy Lee Gramm, however, goes right for your cash. Guard your wallets and bank accounts. Wendy Gramm is out and about.
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