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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bAK&nbsp; 6 22&nbsp; no color&nbsp;</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">TABOR howie rich</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BRIEF OF THE<b>&nbsp;CATO INSTITUTE</b>&nbsp;AND</font></font></font></font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">MOUNTAIN STATES LEGAL FOUNDATION</b></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS&nbsp;</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Joseph A. Bingham</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">MOUNTAIN STATES</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">LEGAL FOUNDATION</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">2596 S. Lewis Way</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lakewood, CO 80237</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">(303) 292-2021</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">jbingham@mslegal.org</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">December 16, 2021</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Ilya Shapiro</span></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Counsel of Record</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>William Yeatman</b></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CATO INSTITUTE</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1000 Mass. Ave., NW</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Washington, DC 20001</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">(202) 842-0200</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ishapiro@cato.org</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Admitted to the D.C. Bar</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">under D.C. App. R. 46-A.</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Supervised by a D.C. Bar</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">member.</div></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">501c3</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sw:</font></b></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Mountain States Legal Foundation</b>&nbsp;(MSLF), a non-profit conservative legal foundation, was&nbsp;<b>founded in 1976&nbsp;</b>with initial funding of $250,000. from Joseph Coors.&nbsp;<b>James Watt,&nbsp;</b>former U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, served as MSLF's founding president;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<b>William Perry Pendley</b>&nbsp;</span>currently serves as president and chief legal officer of the group.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-polluters-must-help-foot-bill-costs-communities">https://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-polluters-must-help-foot-bill-costs-communities</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">month,&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/nyregion/new-york-city-fossil-fuel-divestment.html&source=gmail&ust=1518280221358000&usg=AFQjCNG6lx73bONvgFVOoiyxTXAqCMgHVg" href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/new-york-city-launches-landmark-lawsuit-against-fossil-fuel-industry-climate-change" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">New York City filed suit against ExxonMobil</a>&nbsp;and four other major oil and gas companies for climate change harms. New York follows several California cities and counties in seeking accountability from industry for its role in creating and profiting from the climate crisis. Other cities, such as&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/01/18/boulder-colorado-climate-lawsuit/&source=gmail&ust=1518280221358000&usg=AFQjCNFbWxBWb3wifyFDUf3NGTLKYQ8LHA" href="https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/01/18/boulder-colorado-climate-lawsuit/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Boulder, Colorado</a>, have announced their intention to file similar lawsuits.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.environmentalleader.com/2018/01/oil-giants-say-new-york-citys-suit-targeted-aimless/&source=gmail&ust=1518280221358000&usg=AFQjCNHrpuSPmR9twGUCx0lWQA_QLvGP_A" href="https://www.environmentalleader.com/2018/01/oil-giants-say-new-york-citys-suit-targeted-aimless/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The response from ExxonMobil</a>&nbsp;and its proxies has been predictably misleading. Exxon has cast the New York suit as a misguided effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through litigation. Make no mistake, emissions need to be cut dramatically, but that's not what this suit or others hope to achieve.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These suits are really about fairness and justice. Exxon has known since at least the&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.smokeandfumes.org/fumes/moments/5&source=gmail&ust=1518280221358000&usg=AFQjCNFuJONhyX8gcuX8zzaWvCyKEWpFXA" href="https://www.smokeandfumes.org/fumes/moments/5" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">1960s</a>&nbsp;that its product would wreak catastrophic and costly damage across the world. In 1984, an Exxon scientist&nbsp;<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://insideclimatenews.org/system/files_force/documents/Shaw%2520Climate%2520Presentation%2520%25281984%2529.pdf&source=gmail&ust=1518280221358000&usg=AFQjCNGWQWhOqCQ_h18BL85yTq6E-yQb2A" href="https://insideclimatenews.org/system/files_force/documents/Shaw%20Climate%20Presentation%20%281984%29.pdf" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">presented the company</a>&nbsp;with a stark choice: "We can either adapt our civilization to a warmer planet or avoid the problem by sharply curtailing the use of fossil fuels."</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We all know what choice Exxon and its fellow fossil fuel companies made. Worse than that, however, is that they made this choice for the rest of the world. They deceived the public about the risks of climate change, condemning cities like New York to "adapt .... to a warmer planet," while they reaped the profits.,,,

https://www.alternet.org/environment/new-york-city-launches-landmark-lawsuit-against-fossil-fuel-industry-climate-change"

linked to anthropogenic climate change.&nbsp;Causing more than 230 fatalities and $75 billion in damages, Sandy was the deadliest and most destructive hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season.&n

Now that cities and counties are facing mounting costs from climate change, these companies should have to help foot the bill. They have accrued trillions of dollars in profits, and now they want to leave the taxpayers of New York, and communities across America, holding the bag.</font></p></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many people played some role in creating the climate crisis, but that does not mean that fault is shared equally. Those companies that profited from their climate fraud should bear the largest responsibility.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon now publicly admits what it has known for at least 50 years—that carbon emissions "are having a warming effect." But even now, long past the point when the science has been undeniable, Exxon is still supporting climate denial.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">For example, at least as of 2016, Exxon was

https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/exxonmobil-talks-a-good-game-but-its-still-funding_us_5956673de4b0c85b96c66116&source=gmail&ust=1518280221358000&usg=AFQjCNHUlH6CltgQ3j2f2ldWZ4k-wFv-BA" href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/exxonmobil-talks-a-good-game-but-its-still-funding_us_5956673de4b0c85b96c66116" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">

still funding the Mountain States Legal Foundation—</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">a reactionary anti-environmentalist legal group. When Boulder announced its intention to sue, Mountain States responded by saying that such lawsuits “would have to prove that climate change is real.”</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The damage done by Exxon's decades of deceit will take years to correct, especially if Exxon continues to fund such lies. The damage from Exxon’s reckless endangerment of the planet will take even longer to address, and much of it is irreversible. Communities will need to deal with superstorms, heat waves, floods, droughts, sea level rise and any number of other impacts for the foreseeable future.<

New York City is simply the latest city to demand that Exxon and other fossil fuel companies pay their fair share to plan for and adapt to climate change, and it won't be the last. Communities across the country who are living with the impacts of climate change every day are right to zero in on the companies that profited.<

EarthRights International.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exxonmobil-talks-a-good-game-but-its-still-funding_b_5956673de4b0c85b96c66116">https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exxonmobil-talks-a-good-game-but-its-still-funding_b_5956673de4b0c85b96c66116</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">many lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ExxonMobil Talks A Good Game, But It’s Still Funding Climate Science Deniers</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Elliott Negin</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Senior Writer, Union of Concerned Scientists</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jun 30, 2017, 11:54 AM EDT | Updated Jul 1, 2017</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Darren Woods succeeded Rex Tillerson as ExxonMobil’s CEO last January, and so far he’s staying the course on climate.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AP PHOTO</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ExxonMobil executives repeatedly claim their company supports a federal carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement. The company’s checkbook ledger, however, tells a far different story.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Yesterday, the company released its annual list of its “public information and policy research” grantees, which shows that it spent $1.65 million in 2016 on a dozen think tanks, advocacy groups and associations that contest climate science and oppose both the Paris accord and a carbon tax—the very policies the company professes to endorse. Last year’s outlay boosted the total of the company’s expenditures on climate disinformation over the last two decades to $34.6 million.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chamber of Horrors</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Most of ExxonMobil’s spending on denier groups last year — 87 percent — went to four organizations: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council.</span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>ExxonMobil gave more than half of last year’s kitty — a cool $1 million — to the Chamber,</b> which provided President Trump with a key, but fraudulent, rationale for pulling out of the Paris agreement. Parroting a recent report funded by the Chamber and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) ― which received $1.78 million from ExxonMobil between 2000 and 2015 ― Trump claimed that over the next several decades the accord would cost the U.S. economy nearly $3 trillion and, by 2040, eliminate 6.5 million industrial sector jobs.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Associated Press (AP), Politifact and The Washington Post factchecked the speech and arrived at similar conclusions: The Chamber and ACCF cooked the books.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“The study makes worst-case assumptions that may inflate the cost of meeting U.S. targets under the Paris accord while largely ignoring the economic benefits to U.S. businesses from building and operating renewable energy projects,” AP reporters Michael Biescker and Paul Wiseman pointed out. “Academic studies have found that increased environmental regulation doesn’t actually have much impact on employment. Jobs lost at polluting companies tend to be offset by new jobs in green technology.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Chamber, which has a long history of denying climate science, made similar dire warnings about job losses in a 2014 report analyzing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. That report used flawed assumptions to magnify the carbon rule’s cost and exaggerate job losses and, like its recent report on the Paris agreement, didn’t factor in the carbon rule’s considerable benefits.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Market Will Take Care of It</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>The next biggest ExxonMobil grant last year — $235,000 — went to the American Enterprise Institute,</b> which had already received $4.1 million from the company between 1998 and 2015. AEI economist Benjamin Zycher addresses climate issues more than anyone else these days at the free-market think tank, and his views are diametrically opposed to ExxonMobil’s professed positions. He disputes the conclusions of mainstream climate science, insists that a carbon tax would be “ineffective,” and calls the Paris agreement an “absurdity.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Zycher’s colleague Mark Thiessen, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is also no fan of the international accord. In a June 2 essay, he cited numbers from the Chamber’s discredited report and maintained that “our emissions will arguably decline faster because of Trump’s withdrawal — because our free market economy will be stronger and more innovative without it.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Wind Energy Blows</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Manhattan Institute, which received $705,000 from ExxonMobil between 2006 and 2015, pulled in another $135,000 from the company last year. Staffers there aren’t too keen on the carbon tax or the Paris agreement, either. Senior Fellow Oren Cass, who previously worked at Mitt Romney’s old firm Bain & Company, calls the accord a “fraud” and argues that a carbon tax would be “bad for the country” and “bad for the economy.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Another senior fellow at the libertarian think tank, Robert Bryce, previously worked as a newspaper reporter and for the Institute for Energy Research, a former ExxonMobil grantee that is largely underwritten by the Koch brothers. A self-styled agnostic about climate change, Bryce regularly attacks renewable energy. He especially loves to bash wind, carping about the industry’s temporary federal tax breaks over the last 20 years and its threat to birds. Never mind that the oil and gas industry received an average of $4.86 billion a year (in 2010 dollars) in permanent federal subsidies between 1918 and 2009 (that continue to today) or that oil and gas industry fluid waste pits kill roughly three times more birds a year than wind turbines. Bryce never mentions either of those salient facts.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Not-So-Smart ALEC</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Between 2006 and 2015, ExxonMobil gave $600,000 to the American Legislative Council, a secretive lobby group that drafts sample corporate-friendly legislation for state lawmakers. Last year, the oil company gave ALEC another $76,500.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Does ALEC also oppose a carbon tax and the Paris accord? You bet.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 2013, ALEC drafted a sample resolution for state legislators to reject “all federal and state efforts to establish a carbon tax on fuels for electricity and transportation.” More recently, the director of ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force slammed the Paris agreement as a “bad deal” for America. “The Paris agreement is little more than an effort by the previous president to lend some international legitimacy to his destructive regulatory campaign against affordable domestic energy,” Kenneth Stein, a former legislative aide to Sen. Ted Cruz, wrote in May 25 essay on ALEC’s website. “As has been seen in any number of U.S. industries, regulation and rulemaking stifle progress and innovation — much more so when the regulations become part of an international treaty regime.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Why bother with a carbon tax or an international carbon-reduction agreement if, as ALEC erroneously maintains, scientists haven’t determined the role human activity plays in global warming? “Climate change is a historical phenomenon,” its website states, “and the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More than 100 corporations have quit ALEC for a number of reasons, notably its scientifically indefensible position on climate change. Those companies include a number of energy sector heavyweights, including American Electric Power, BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell. But not ExxonMobil.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Meet the New Boss...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The fact that ExxonMobil’s grantees contradict the company’s avowed positions on climate science and policy should come as no surprise. Its funding pattern in Congress is analogous. Over the years, the company has consistently rewarded legislators who reject mainstream climate science and vote against carbon tax resolutions by funding their reelection campaigns. Half of the nearly $1.45 million it spent on candidates in the 2016 election cycle, for example, went to 81 climate science deniers in the House and 24 in the Senate. And 18 of the 22 senators who sent a letter to President Trump urging him to abandon the Paris agreement collectively received $371,000 in campaign contributions from ExxonMobil between 2011 and 2016.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Rex Tillerson began playing this game soon after he became the company’s CEO in 2006. In January 2007, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report documenting that between 1998 and 2005, ExxonMobil had spent at least $16 million on a network of more than 40 anti-regulation groups to manufacture doubt about climate science. A week after its release, Tillerson acknowledged that his company had a PR problem. “We recognize that we need to soften our public image,” he said, according to a January 10 story in Greenwire, a trade publication. “It is something we are working on.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Ten years later, ExxonMobil’s PR offensive continues. Publicly, company officials repeatedly assure the news media and the general public they have seen the light. Climate change is indeed real and we need to address it. At the same time, however, ExxonMobil is still bankrolling climate disinformation groups and deniers in Congress to stymie government action.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In January, Darren Woods, who has been working for ExxonMobil since 1992, replaced Tillerson as CEO. So far, he’s the same as the old boss. His inaugural blog post, which champions natural gas as “powerful tool” to reduce carbon emissions and stresses the challenge of “managing the risks of climate change” while meeting growing worldwide energy demand, could have easily been written by Tillerson. And, like his predecessor, Woods dutifully reiterated ExxonMobil’s nominal support for a revenue-neutral carbon tax and the Paris agreement. But until the company stops funding climate science denier groups and the members of Congress standing in the way, it will remain a major obstacle to saving the planet from the worst consequences of climate change.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;The other climate science disinformation groups on ExxonMobil’s payroll last year include the Center for American and International Law ($28,500), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($25,000), Mercatus Center ($10,000),</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000),</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> National Black Chamber of Commerce ($35,000), National Taxpayers Union Foundation ($50,000), and Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000).</span></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">High Country News -- Printable -- December 10, 2007: Rebels with a Lo... http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.PrintableArticle?article_id=17399</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 of 11 12/8/2007 10:55 AM</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">www.hcn.org</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/west/rebelslostcause.pdf</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rebels with a Lost Cause</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">feature article - December 10,&nbsp;<b>2007&nbsp;</b>by Ray Ring</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A movement of property-rights lawyers emerged from the sagebrush in the 1970s to fight a wave</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of environmental regulations. They are still fighting in courtrooms across the West, but their</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">role remains ambiguous.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bill Jennings, a veteran fisheries activist in Stockton, Calif., remembers the Christmas season of 2004 as "a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nightmare." He adds: "It was absurd."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He's talking about how some of the West's most powerful farmers tried to throw off the yoke of environmental</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">law. Like countless similar battles, this one came down in a courtroom, in a case titled Tulare Lake Basin Water</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Storage District, et al., v. The United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For decades, the farmers had diverted rivers and dried up a huge lake to grow hundreds of thousands of acres of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">crops south of Stockton, resulting in catastrophic losses of fish and birds. Finally, during a 1990s drought,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wildlife agencies invoked the Endangered Species Act and withheld some irrigation water, trying to save</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">vanishing populations of chinook salmon and Delta smelt. That triggered the farmers' lawsuit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The farmers demanded payment for surrendering the water. They claimed that the government's environmental</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">action violated the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which holds that no property shall be taken without</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">compensation. They found a sympathetic listener in Judge John Paul Wiese, at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in Washington, D.C. In a surprising series of rulings, Judge Wiese ordered the government to pay the farmers as</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">much as $26 million. Many believed that if the feds filed an appeal, a higher court would overturn the rulings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But five days before Christmas, the George W. Bush administration settled the case and agreed to pay $16.7</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">million.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Tulare outcome hit like a thunderbolt. The farmers' lawyer,&nbsp;<b>Roger Marzulla</b>&nbsp;of the D.C.-based lawfirm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Marzulla & Marzulla, told Greenwire, "This is the first time (the government has) been required to pay for</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">anything" related to enforcing the Endangered Species Act.<b>&nbsp;The West's leading anti-green congressman at the</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>time, Calif. Rep. Richard Pombo, R, could barely control his glee. "This case should spell profound change for</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>conservation policy," he told the Washington Post. A California water official, in the Los Angeles Times, called it</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"a devastating setback for the environment."</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the logic of the Tulare rulings spread, enforcement of many environmental laws might cost the government</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">billions. And if the government preferred not to pay, the laws would be castrated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More striking, Marzulla & Marzulla stood among a battalion of lawfirms dedicated to challenging environmental&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">laws. The movement had its roots in the West and appeared to be making progress on many fronts, firing a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">barrage of lawsuits and claiming a run of important victories in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They'd rolled</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">back regulations covering not only endangered species, but also cattle grazing, commercial development and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">many other activities. They even seemed to be on the brink of redefining government employees as criminal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"racketeers."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I think this fight is going to get a lot meaner ..." predicted&nbsp;<b>Andrew Lloyd, a lawyer for Pacific Legal Foundation,</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">another firm leading the charge, in California's West County Times in January 2005. He and others envisioned</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more lawsuits and more big victories.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These days, the anti-regulation lawyers still portray themselves as wizards, shooting bolts of legal lightning at the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">government agencies and power-hungry environmentalists who oppress them and their clients. In press releases,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">news and opinion articles and speeches, they boast about carrying out a crucial role.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To get a better sense of their role, I explored the legal battlefields and visited some of the movement's key</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Western lawfirms. I found a group of people who believe strongly in freedom and individual rights.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But their record includes some recent big defeats, and their conviction arguably outweighs their influence. I</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">found that they may indeed be legal wizards, but more in the mode of a Wizard of Oz: They're full of sound and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fury out front, but if you pull back the curtain, they're not so formidable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION became a formidable force in the decade and a half that began in 1964.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During that time, Congress and state legislatures passed a torrent of new laws protecting wilderness and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">endangered species, requiring the study of environmental impacts, setting tough standards for clean water and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">air, and applying limits to grazing, mining, logging and driving on public lands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The regulations poked at some peoples' livelihoods and chafed against their beliefs, especially in the West, the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">region with the most public land. So they began to hire lawyers to fight back. The ragtag resistance grew into a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">movement with the 1973 founding of Pacific Legal Foundation, headquartered in Sacramento, Calif. It's a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nonprofit lawfirm, following the model of older, liberal nonprofit firms, such as those associated with the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Civil Liberties Union and environmental groups.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil and tobacco corporations, chamber of commerce groups, and rightwing billionaires such as Joseph Coors (a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Colorado beer baron), Richard Mellon Scaife (a Pittsburgh heir to the Mellon banking, oil and aluminum</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">empire), and John Simon Fluor (a California mining, nuclear and oil baron) poured millions of dollars into</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">launching Pacific Legal Foundation and similar nonprofit lawfirms across the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most famous is&nbsp;<b>Mountain States Legal Foundation</b>, founded in Denver in 1976. Mountain States has helped</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">launch two lawyers - James Watt in the early 1980s and Gale Norton in the early 2000s - to tenures as</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">secretaries of the Interior. Each used the cabinet post to push general deregulation and the commercial uses of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">federal lands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The movement has grown to include the D.C.-area Institute for Justice, which describes itself as "a merry band</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of litigators," run by William "Chip" Mellor, formerly of Mountain States Legal. Dozens of lawyers in private</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">practice also jumped into the fray. Roger Marzulla is among the most prominent, as is Karen Budd-Falen, a&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">specialist in ranchers' cases based in Cheyenne, Wyo. Both of them also had stints with Mountain States Legal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These lawyers share similar or identical goals, they're related to each other through overlapping resumes and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">backers, and they file briefs supporting each other's cases. Many of them got to know each other while working</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">for Ronald Reagan, when Reagan was California's governor in the 1970s, or when he was president during the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1980s. They're also tied in with the libertarian, property-rights think tanks, such as the Cato Institute.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those in the movement and those who study it call it by various names, including the Freedom-Based Public</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interest Law Movement, or just the property-rights lawyers. For Westerners, the most accurate term would be</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sagebrush Rebel lawyers: They're entwined with the angry rebellion that began in 1979, when many Western</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">legislatures claimed authority over federal land, and continues today in local flare-ups against the feds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lawyers, and their clients, have some legitimate complaints. Environ-mental laws, especially in their infancy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in the 1970s and 1980s, did tend toward bullying and unrealistic expectations. For instance, the Clean Water Act,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the Clean Air Act, and other laws vowed to catalog and choke off hundreds of thousands of pollution sources</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">within a few years. Anyone who didn't cooperate was subject to penalties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The game of politics is largely a struggle for control of the initiative," says Gregg Cawley, head of the political</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">science department at the University of Wyoming, in a book he wrote about the Sagebrush Rebellion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environmentalists had the initiative at the start as they set up their enforcement strategy. Then the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">anti-regulation forces rose up and took the lead.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We realized we needed to counter what the liberal, socialist (environmental) groups were doing," says James</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watt, who earned his law degree in his home state at the University of Wyoming. Watt served as the first boss of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mountain States Legal, running it until 1980, when Reagan picked him to be secretary of Interior.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Environmentalists - I'm not talking about the members of the groups, I'm talking about the leaders - were really</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">not concerned about the environment. They were concerned about the form of government we would have."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They wanted big government that was too intrusive on individuals' freedom, Watt says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Watt held the throne at Interior, he supported ranching, mining and logging. Though he resigned after</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">only 33 months atop Interior, he's a Sagebrush hero. Now retired and shuttling between homes in Arizona and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wyoming, Watt still talks a fiery game. The battle rages on, he says, because environmentalists and their allies in</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">government are still too "dictatorial ... (they) should work with the users, the locals who will benefit from using</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">these public lands."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Mountain States Legal scored another apparent political victory in 2001, when Gale Norton became George W.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bush's Interior secretary.</b>&nbsp;She'd worked for the lawfirm in the early 1980s, and though she was less abrasive than</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watt, her ideology echoed his during her tenure at Interior.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Norton and Watt left little lasting imprint on the ground - nothing on the scale of the bedrock environmental</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">laws, nothing even as noticeable as President Bill Clinton's environmental legacy, which includes the restoration</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of Western wolves and 23 new or expanded national monuments, orchestrated by Interior Secretary Bruce</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Babbitt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watt quit amid controversy over his frank manner of speaking, and Congress and environmentalist lawsuits</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">stalled many of his policies. "Watt was certainly noticeable as a symbol, he did personify the Sagebrush Rebellion</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and the takeover (of Interior) by Western resource industries, but surprisingly little happened" during his reign,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">says Charles Wilkinson, a University of Colorado law professor who served as a Clinton adviser and has authored</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">13 books about law and natural resource issues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Norton,&nbsp;</b>who left Interior in 2006 and is now with Shell Oil in Denver, has a one-dimensional legacy: oil and gas</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">drilling, which, thanks to the federal backing she provided, goes whole-hog in industry sweet spots around the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rocky Mountains. Still, "she was an unimportant secretary of Interior," Wilkinson says, "because the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">public-lands policy of this administration is being made by Vice President Dick Cheney, not the secretary's</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">office." Cheney, with his longtime roots in the oil industry, by many accounts wields more power than President</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Bush. "It didn't matter who was secretary of Interior."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">IN THE NATION'S COURTROOMS, the Sagebrush Rebel lawyers win and lose more cases than can fit in</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">any magazine story. The lawyers believe they're generally doing good work. But their impact is as unclear as it</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">was in the Department of Interior.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The mission of Mountain States Legal Foundation is summed up by the title of William Perry Pendley's latest</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">book: Warriors for the West: Fighting Bureaucrats, Radical Groups, and Liberal Judges on America's Frontier.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Pendley</b>&nbsp;has been the firm's president and chief lawyer for 18 years. His staff includes about a half-dozen other</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">lawyers, headquartered in a small office park in suburban Denver, across from an insurance agency, a dentist</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and Pilates Plus. An American flag on a tall pole marks the building's entrance, with a plaque that says "Old</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Glory."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inside the headquarters there are more plaques engraved with names: Rocky Mountain family oil companies</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(Yates, Kennedy, McMurry,&nbsp;<b>Anschutz,&nbsp;</b>Dugan), notable ranching operations (Page Land and Cattle Co.), loggers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and an aircraft-tour company. They're some of the donors who support Mountain States' work, most of which is</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">done on a pro bono basis - for free, or a relatively small cost to clients.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At his desk several weeks ago, Mountain States Legal's Pendley wore a blue Oxford shirt, gray slacks, and black</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cowboy boots. He had a short, brush haircut, pale blue eyes, chiseled face. He'd decorated his office with</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mementoes of his five years in the Marine Corps and several years in the Reagan administration, along with</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mining and cowboy knickknacks and samples of his kids' artwork. Born and raised in Cheyenne, son of a union</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">pipefitter, Pendley has college degrees in political science and economics, as well as a University of Wyoming law</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">degree. He's 62 years old and no longer works seven days a week; an evangelical Christian, he takes Sundays off.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Asked whether his religious beliefs come into his law practice, Pendley says yes: "Some of it is, 'What would the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lord do? How do you treat human beings?' " But his religion, he says, doesn't determine which cases he takes to</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">court. His book talks about "environmental elitists sitting in their glass towers in New York City and San</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Francisco, their ivory towers in prestigious colleges," and warns they're a "juggernaut" trying to destroy local</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cultures and economies in the West.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pendley is a kind of modern Western celebrity. He appears on TV and radio talk shows, rural libraries circulate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">his book, and he's a popular speaker at conventions of mining and ranching groups. When Mountain States Legal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">presses a lawsuit, it creates excitement in the press and affected communities, due in part to Pendley's&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">reputation as well as the Norton/Watt connection. The firm's biggest win, according to Pendley, was a 1995 U.S.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in highway contracts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Among its environmental cases, Mountain States won a $2 million settlement for a New Mexico landowner who</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">handled wastewater from oil and gas wells; the feds gave him permission to dump the wastewater in potholes on</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">federal land and then withdrew it, causing him to lose his business. The federal claims court ruled in 2001 that it</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">was an unfair taking, and eventually the government grudgingly paid him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But overall, in the dozens of environmental cases Pendley profiles in his book, Mountain States Legal has lost far</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more often than it's won.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The environmental cases tend to be especially difficult. They're almost always three-sided: The rebels sue the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">government and then environmentalist lawyers jump in, or environmentalists sue the government - demanding</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tough regulations - and the rebels jump in. They have to climb mountains of administrative records and find</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">their way through the fog of environmental laws, which often contain contradictory phrases meant to placate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">different interests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's very difficult to sue the government and win these kinds of cases" - whether the plaintiff is a rebel or an</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">environmentalist, says law professor Wilkinson. In an analysis of all lawsuits filed against the U.S. Forest Service</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">from 1989 to 2002, on the basis of the 1976 National Forest Management Act, the plaintiffs won only 28 percent</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">of the time, for instance. "The courts give heavy deference to the government agencies," Wilkinson says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In cases with wide implications, Mountain States Legal has tried to block Clinton's wolves and monuments,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">discourage the Colorado Division of Wildlife's lynx-reintroduction effort, overturn a ban on oil drilling in a</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">million acres of national forest along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, and kill a public-access law that says</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">anyone can walk stream banks on private property in Montana. Representing oil companies and off-road drivers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and ranchers and other property-rights advocates, Mountain States Legal lost all those court cases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I'm after more than win-loss statistics, though; I'm interested in the psychology. After losing one case, Pendley</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">vowed: "We'll keep tilting at this windmill until we find a way to go to court and win." When I ask him if he sees</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">himself as a Don Quixote figure, he says no. But he adds, "We take the impossible cases - the cases no one else</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">will take. If these were easy cases, private attorneys would be representing these people," because private</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">attorneys look for "slam dunks" and easy payoffs. He repeats the image: "We're really on a Mission Impossible</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">challenge," he says - an attitude that makes any victory noteworthy. Listening to himself, he laughs, and calls</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">himself "an eternal optimist."</font></div></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);">Teles’ cameo study of the Mountain States Legal Foundation illustrates the point.&nbsp; With reliable funding from Joseph Coors, a long-time patron of right-wing causes, effective leadership in the early years by James Watts who later became President Reagan’s Interior [*634] Secretary, and a shared sense of grievance arising from the “Sagebrush Rebellion” in the Western states over the control of federal lands, the Mountain States Legal Foundation had several built-in advantages.&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);">&nbsp;Nevertheless it faltered because its business allies expected returns on their “investments” and the foundation often filed amicus briefs in response to particular contributions or to encourage new ones.&nbsp; Matters came to a head when the foundation challenged on First Amendment grounds Denver’s grant of an exclusive cable television franchise to a local businessman, a grant widely supported by the Mile High City’s business community.&nbsp; As an insider explained to Teles, the foundation’s suit “gored very powerful interests there, well connected to the Republican Party . . . Joe Coors resigned from our board [saying] . . . ’I founded MSLF . . . to take on the Sierra Club, not to do this sort of thing’” (p.65).</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rfk2:&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">eastern anatum falcon gone after earth day 1970 (20 mil in street, #1 in us hist),</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">28 mjrs laws passed in 120 yrs 22; b2 is win of 30 yr stealth attack.&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;1976</b><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">coors</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Mtn states Legal fdn</b></span><b>&nbsp;to ctr eco law (one of colo biggest polluters) also philips</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">petrol, exoon, texaco, amoco , shell ford chevron; coors also heritage doc to news</font></b></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>dir, staffers, hate radio &nbsp;</b>23 &nbsp;heritage wants ot "strangle the envio movment...the</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">greatest single threat to the Am economy" hw etc "henny-pennyism" 24 &nbsp;#1 w/ top 5</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fdn: olin, scaife, coors, koch, bradley (40Mil saince 1985. &nbsp;exxon chev dupont etc</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">give 34m/yr</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1980 coors etc spearheaded Sagebrush Rebellion (corp and rw) turned ctt into pol</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">power 25 RR: I am a S rebel" &nbsp;Heritage shadow cabinet, 2k pp Mandate for Change</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">became blueprint (Coors in kitchen cab). &nbsp;Coors picked assoc Anne Gorsuch for epa;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hubby cattle baron to head BLM, tho had declared to shut it &nbsp;25</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watt dominion theology, "subdue" nature is duty; sold off pub;ic assets at fore</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">sale prices : GAO 26</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> &nbsp;<b style="">"I do not know how many generations we can count on till the</b></span></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b style="">Lord returns</b>"&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;greens are plot to delay energy development and "weaken Americ" , a</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"left-wing cult which seeks to bring down the type of gov't i believe in</b>" 26</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;MSLN under Watt; grazing limits,&nbsp;<b>oil offshore and in wilderness</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">and wildlif refuges &nbsp;p36 9 funders<b>&nbsp;Burlington N, exxon, Indep Petrol assoc</b>&nbsp;and rocky</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mtn &nbsp;oil and gas assoc 37.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Before working for the Reagan administration,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<b style="">Norton</b>&nbsp;was hired by&nbsp;</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">James Watt</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">at the arch-conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, which often represents loggers, miners, ranchers and water developers in fights against environmental safeguards. Watt was later ousted as President Reagan's Interior Secretary for his extremist agenda.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As reported by the 1/7/2001 issue of the Sacramento Bee, an environmental lawyer who worked with Norton said: "I think that she [Norton] adheres to the same philosophies as James Watt, but she is infinitely more diplomatic in her presentations..."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">501c3</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sw:</font></b></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Mountain States Legal Foundation</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;(MSLF), a non-profit conservative legal foundation, was founded in 1976 with initial funding of $250,000. from Joseph Coors.&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">James Watt,&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">former U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, served as MSLF's founding preside</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">nt;&nbsp;<b style="">William Perry Pendley</b>&nbsp;c</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">urrently serves as president and chief legal officer of the group.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MSLF files cases and amicus curiae briefs attacking environmental protections and designations on behalf of oil, mineral, development and timber interests. MSLF is active in the "wise use" and property rights movement. Over the past two decades, MSLF has served as a training ground for a number of attorneys most active in the anti-environmental movement. [1]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mountain States Legal Foundation 1999</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2596 South Lewis Way</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lakewood, Colorado 80227</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(303) 292-2021</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="line-height: 12.8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;ropsahl@mountainstateslegal.com. Attorneys for Plaintiffs. ~ nwf v gorsuch</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.mountainstateslegal.com/</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation"</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Categories: Front groups portal | Environmental fronts | Web fronts</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mountain_States_Legal_Foundation</font></a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><center style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mountain States Legal Foundation &nbsp; &nbsp;</font></h2></center><center style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(MSLF)</font></h3></center><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="summary"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is one of a half-dozen legal institutes set up by Coors and Scaife, with the support of large corporations engaged in anti-environmental activities. It was also one of the mainstays of the Wise-Use movement which was a post-Reaganite extension of the Sagebrush Revolution.</font></span></p><hr style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
PRELIMINARY MATERIAL ONLY
&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></p><ul style=""><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Founded by Joseph Coors, Originally run by subsequent Secretary of the Interior James Watt. The current [2000?] head is William Perry Pendleton.
</font></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Pendleton uses the Foundation to conduct test case litigation against federal programs, including a suit challenging the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park</b>.
</font></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also links to<b>&nbsp;Gale Norton</b>&nbsp;(according to Bill Berkowitz)
</font></li><li style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b style="">Ron Arnold</b>, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">anti-environmental leader and executive director of the&nbsp;</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, called MSLF "the litigating arm of the Wise Use Movement." Over the past two decades, MSLF has served as a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;training ground for a number of attorneys&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">most active in the anti-environmental movement., including Interior</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Secretary Gale Norton, <b>Clint Bolick, </b>William "Chip" Mellor and Karen Budd-Falen,<b> Anne Gorsuch-Burford</b>, and Roger and Nancie Marzulla</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, who started Defenders of Property Rights.</span></font></li></ul><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
Web site is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.mountainstateslegal.org/" class="side" target="blank">http://www.mountainstateslegal.org</a>
<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=54" target="blank">&nbsp;</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1973:&nbsp;California Chamber of Commerce created the Pacific Legal Foundation</b><b>&nbsp;</b>"to practice law on behalf of business interests [by the filing of] lawsuits to block environmental actions and thwart regulations." Coors used this as his model for the Mountain States Legal Foundation in 1976.
&nbsp; &nbsp; ["Shapers of the great debate on conservation." by Rache White Scheuering]&nbsp;<a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=vngGt6mA30AC&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=%2B%22Ronald+Reagan%22+%2B%22kitchen+cabinet%22+%2BSagebrush&source=bl&ots=I1YTEvBRi7&sig=r6UivuMTh-T1tdfh4EYX2bpvfyQ&hl=en&ei=R6jGStO4LIzq6gOZn6ynDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=%2B%22Ronald%20Reagan%22%20%2B%22kitchen%20cabinet%22%20%2BSagebrush&f=false" target="blank">http://books.google.com.au/books?id=vngGt6mA30AC&p (etc.)</a>
&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);">1976: Coors founded the Mountain States Legal Foundation in 1976 to bring lawsuits designed to enrich giant corporations, limit civil rights, and attack unions, homosexuals and minorities. He also founded the right-wing Heritage Foundation, to provide a philosophical underpinning for the anti-environmental movement.</span>

<b>&nbsp; &nbsp; Ronald Reagan's victory [in Nov 1980] gave the Heritage Foundation and the Mountain States Legal Foundation immeasurable clout.</b>
&nbsp;</b></font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1977:&nbsp;</b>One of the six regional litigation firms originally established with help of the [Coors funded] National Legal Center for the Public Interest "to oppose government regulation"
&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1977:&nbsp;</b>(mid-year) The first MSLF President was conservative lawyer and anti-environmentalist James Watt who Coors had met two years before.</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b style="">1977–80:&nbsp;</b><b style="">James Watt in charge of MSLF, wins the gratitude of western conservatives by initiating many lawsuits against high-profile environmental organizations — the EPA, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and Department of the Interior (which he later headed).</b></span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">

&nbsp; &nbsp; Most of these cases were funded by Coors with additional finance from large oil, mining, agribusiness and electric power industries in the West</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1983 May 23:&nbsp;</b>National Law Journal article on the growth in right-wing law foundations. It suggests that these are primarily anti-Ralph Nader and says about the MSLF:</font></p><blockquote class="Q" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And so, in court rooms across the country, firms like the Mountain States Legal Foundation and the Pacific Legal Foundation represent clients that they believe are seldom spoken for: businessmen, crime victims, private property holders.

&nbsp; &nbsp; They fight for<b>&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 242, 0);"><b>corporate free speech,</b></span>&nbsp;government deregulation and states rights. They publish monographs on judicial activism and sponsor seminars on alternatives to rules of strict product liability.

&nbsp; &nbsp; Funded bv such conservative concerns as the&nbsp;<b>Southern Pacific Co. and the Scaife Foundation</b>, as well as by sympathetic individuals, these groups are acutely aware that they are emulating their ideological adversaries in such "traditional" — or liberal — public interest firms as the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc.</font></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
&nbsp; &nbsp; It mentions the close connection these new legal institutions have with the Reagan Administration.</font></p><blockquote class="Q" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James Watt, secretary of the interior, was the first president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation in Denver and his successor, Roger Marzulla, was recently named as special litigation counsel to the Land and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice.

&nbsp; &nbsp; We've always focused on lssues of strung interest to the Western states,
&nbsp; &nbsp; said William H Mellor 3d, acting president of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, "Natual resources issues and the use of public land have always
&nbsp; &nbsp; been very important to us."</font></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/yji40c00" target="blank"><img src="/74aaf91f-433a-57b6-a486-95ab7e6fefd6.jpg"/></a><a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/yji40c00/pdf" target="blank"><img src="/4bfabec3-e279-5626-a462-f38b28c89d82.jpg"/></a>
&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1988 March:&nbsp;</b>The MSLF ws of the founders of the Wise-Use coalition [Organised by Alan Gottleib and Ron Arnold, together with the Moonies and Christian Voice]<a href="http://www.sciencecorruption.com/ATN177/%3Chttp://radicalreference.info/filestore2/download/669/anti_enviros.doc%3E" target="blank"><img src="/628530d9-4ff0-52c3-bd9b-f75300424eff.jpg"/></a>
&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1988:&nbsp;</b>The Wise Use movement combines a legal strategy with political organizing. The legal front was already covered by right-wing legal foundations like California's&nbsp;<b>Pacific Legal Foundation&nbsp;</b>, [James] Watt's&nbsp;<b>Mountain States Legal Foundation&nbsp;</b>and Jeannette Burrage's&nbsp;<b>Northwest Legal Foundation&nbsp;</b>.<a href="http://www.sweetliberty.org/mof.htm" target="blank"><img src="/af21a0ef-290b-5428-b530-cc1da47ac6f8.jpg"/></a>
&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1990:&nbsp;</b>Kraft [a subsidiary of Philip Morris] has provided "a moderate level of support." Other conservative policy organizations that have received considerable funding (i.e. $100,000 or more between 1995 and 2002) from the Castle Rock Foundation [Coors] include many of those that receive funding from the other large conservative foundations.

&nbsp; &nbsp; The foundation also provides financial assistance to the Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Pacific Legal Foundation, and the Landmark Legal Foundation, legal organizations that fight to safeguard individual liberties free enterprise and property rights from government regulation and control.</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1992 /E:&nbsp;</b>In the last years of her life (she died 1994)&nbsp;<b>Dixy Lee Ray&nbsp;</b>became Director of the Mountain States Legal Foundation — the litigation agency of the Wise Use movement. She was the movement's enthusiastic spokesperson in promoting extremist property rights and anti-environmental legal activism.</font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
&nbsp; &nbsp; [Shapers of the great debate on conservation: by Rache White Scheuering]&nbsp;<a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=vngGt6mA30AC&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=%2B%22Ronald+Reagan%22+%2B%22kitchen+cabinet%22+%2BSagebrush&source=bl&ots=I1YTEvBRi7&sig=r6UivuMTh-T1tdfh4EYX2bpvfyQ&hl=en&ei=R6jGStO4LIzq6gOZn6ynDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#v=onepage&q=%2B%22Ronald%20Reagan%22%20%2B%22kitchen%20cabinet%22%20%2BSagebrush&f=false" target="blank">http://books.google.com.au/books?id=vngGt6mA30AC&p (etc.)</a></font></p><p class="dater" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>1992 /E:&nbsp;</b>Roy Marsden of Philip Morris report on Public Interest Legal Foundations, explaining the benefits the company might derive from funding these organisations.

&nbsp; &nbsp; He says that the MSLF was founded by former Interior Sec James Watts [using Coors money] and suggest that the MSLF had an "overly close identification with its founder — a situation that has been a problem..." [Watt was dismissed by President Reagan] It has"never fully recovered from its association with [Watt]. This has managed to limit its influence"</font></p><blockquote class="Q" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Founded in 1977 as another of the six regional litigation firms originally established with help from National Legal Center for the Public Interest (NLCPI), the Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF) is "dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited government, and the free enterprise system". As such it has an agenda similar to those public interest legal foundations mentioned above, but a somewhat narrower scope, i.e., for the most part limited to environmental issues and property rights.

&nbsp; &nbsp; Based in Denver, Mountain States has never fully recovered from its association with its founder, former Interior Secretary James Watt. This has managed to limit its influence. Nevertheless, MSLF boasts about its 21% increase in contributions in 1990 (roughly evenly divided between corporations, foundations and individuals), perhaps coinciding with "a bold beginning in the efforts of MSLF to inform the American people of the threat to freedom posed by increasing governmental regulation."

&nbsp; &nbsp; As an independent corporation Kraft had provided a moderate level of support to Mountain States.

&nbsp; &nbsp; This would be another situation where support "renewal" might be warranted depending upon the nature and location of the issue at hand.</font></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.sciencecorruption.com/ATN177/00331.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">http://www.sciencecorruption.com/ATN177/00331.html</font></a></p>