Hatch, O Sen 7%

lcv score 7 of 100 --> 8

NO MERRI

bad format, see bak 

rino hunt by TP? //lugar? got thru ok, pal of ted K

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/orrin-hatch_n_1694381.html

see bak

 ===

The Far-Right Campaign to Destroy Our National Monuments

The attack on Bears Ears was just the first successful salvo of a robust offensive backed by dark money and powerful allies in Washington.

Jimmy Tobias

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Bears Ears dark money

A billboard outside Blanding, Utah, stating opposition to the Bears Ears Monument designation. ODD SPARSE RW AND BLUE HASHTAG FLAG

(Reuters / Andrew Cullen)

On December 4, Donald Trump swaggered onto a stage in Utah’s sprawling granite capitol building and declared before an adoring crowd of local politicians and conservative activists that he would radically shrink two national monuments in the state’s wild and arid southeastern region.

“I don’t think it is controversial, actually,” he told his audience, without irony. “I think it is so sensible.”

The audience laughed and clapped and cheered. Then the president sat down and signed an order that dismembered both the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument and the 1.8 million-acre Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument. Designated for protection by President Obama and President Clinton respectively, the two monuments were meant to preserve red-rock landscapes rich in intricate topography, ancient artifacts, and Native American sacred sites. They were meant to protect forever federal land owned by all Americans. But with a stroke of his pen Trump eradicated those protections, shrinking the monuments by a collective 2 million acres and raising the prospect that the terrain they occupied may someday be open to uranium mining, coal extraction, or oil and gas drilling.

As the ink on his presidential order dried, Trump mingled onstage with prominent county commissioners, Utah’s congressional delegation, and the governor. The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” blared over loud speakers in the background.

The Salt Lake Tribune, in a blistering editorial later that week, called the gleeful event “downright sickening.” It was, according to the Tribune, a “disgraceful display of hubris” that showed Utah “at its very worst.”

But the conservative operatives and politicians onstage were apparently too pleased to care about optics—and not without reason. Trump’s attack on the two national monuments, after all, wasn’t just a lucky break, a gift that fell from the sky. Rather, it was the result of a savvy, multiyear campaign by a network of far-right organizations with powerful friends in Washington and financial backing from dark-money funds tied to the billionaire Koch brothers and their political kin.

Led by organizations like Utah’s Sutherland Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, and an array of allies, this network has labored assiduously over the last few years to undermine the legitimacy of federal lands across the American West. It has done this, in part, by working to erode public support for key conservation laws and institutions, including the Antiquities Act of 1906. And it has had great success.

Trump’s trip to Utah, his decision to destroy the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante monuments, is a consequence of that deeper, long-game campaign to chip away at America’s conservation system.

The Antiquities Act is one of this country’s oldest conservation statutes. It empowers the executive branch to unilaterally protect “objects of historic or scientific interest” on public land by declaring them national monuments. Theodore Roosevelt signed it into law in 1906, and since then every president save Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush have used it to designate national monuments on federal lands across the country. The act was instrumental in establishing the progressive conservation paradigm that later gave birth to public-interest laws like the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. And in this era of intractable partisan polarization, the act has been one of the few reliable tools presidents can use to preserve portions of this nation’s vast public estate.

This is precisely what President Obama did when he established the Bears Ears National Monument on December 28, 2016, after months of deliberation and a campaign by a coalition of Native American nations. The monument preserved public access and prohibited most commercial activity on more than 1.3 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land in southeastern Utah.

“The protection of the Bears Ears cultural landscape is powerful medicine for healing—of the land, of plants and animals, and for all people,” wrote a coalition of tribal governments, including the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, and Zuni Nations, at the time of the designation. “The Bears Ears National Monument will also ensure continued access to tribal ceremonies, firewood and herb collection, hunting, grazing and outdoor recreation.”

But even as the tribes were celebrating their historic achievement, conservative groups in Utah and Washington were gearing up to roll back the designation, tapping into a long tradition of trying to rip monument protections from the public domain. From the beginning, the Antiquities Act—and the monuments it protects—has had powerful enemies: When Teddy Roosevelt used the law in 1908 to protect more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon, mining, cattle, and other commercial interests were enraged; the prospector turned US Senator Ralph Cameron fought the federal government for control over portions of the canyon for years, ultimately losing the battle when the Supreme Court ruled against him in 1920.

Trump's decision to destroy the Bears Ears and Grand Escalante monuments is a consequence of a deep, long-game campaign to chip away at America's conservation system.

In the century since, the struggle between commercial interests and conservationists has never really ceased. Our country’s 640 million acres of federal land are a titanic repository of natural wealth and scenic splendor—a grand, albeit imperfect, social-democratic experiment. Laws like the Antiquities Act constrain the ability of powerful interests to do as they please on these lands. By banning or limiting activities like mining, drilling, and grazing in order to promote conservation values, they enshrine the notion that the public interest takes precedence over private and even local concerns.

As a result, both the public lands and the conservation laws that protect them are constantly under attack. From the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s and ’80s to the militant occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge early last year to the many local lawmakers and activists today who seek to transfer federal lands to state and local control, the dedicated foes of the federal domain have always been with us. The attack on the Antiquities Act is just the latest iteration of this anti–public land legacy. This iteration, though, has had astonishing success—and powerful supporters.

The state of Utah, with its world-renowned canyons, is the ground zero of the anti–public land movement today. Since at least 2012, right-wing politicians and activists there have been leaders of the so-called land-transfer movement, an effort across the West to force the federal government to relinquish ownership over the public lands to state and local governments. And the state has also been the site of vigorous and ongoing anti-monument activity. So it’s not altogether surprising that it was in Utah that a well-connected far-right think tank called the Sutherland Institute largely led the charge against both the Bears Ears National Monument and the Antiquities Act itself.

From its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Sutherland launched a flagship website called rescindbearsears.org, filling it with a constant squall of anti-monument content. It produced an array of video clips that cultivated and amplified the voices of local residents opposed to the monument, including the local county commission and members of the Aneth Chapter of the Navajo Nation. It maintained a constant social-media presence, organized a petition drive, and sent staffers to Capitol Hill to rally against the proposed monument. Its operatives flooded news outlets with op-eds, publishing regularly in The Hill, The Salt Lake Tribune, and Deseret News, among other places.

“What would you think if you found out that one individual could take away your home, ruin your livelihood and destroy your culture—all in the name of securing his legacy and furthering his political agenda?” wrote Matthew Anderson, director of the Sutherland Institute’s Coalition for Self-Government in the West, of the Antiquities Act in a November 2016 Daily Caller op-ed. “Such a proposition seems impossible in the land of the free and the home of the brave. But an antiquated law makes this a reality for countless Americans every day.”

The Institute also worked in the Utah State Legislature. According to e-mails obtained by the Western Values Project, Sutherland’s Matthew Anderson actually wrote the draft language of a controversial resolution the Utah Legislature passed in February 2017 that called on President Trump to rescind the Bears Ears National Monument designation.

The Sutherland Institute’s campaign was a multifaceted and far-reaching attempt to shape the public narrative about Bears Ears, and the group had the influence to pull it off. The Institute’s president, Boyd Matheson is the former chief of staff to Utah’s junior US senator, Mike Lee, and an oft-mentioned prospect for high office himself. (In October, he met with Steve Bannon and Citizens United President David Bossie to discuss a potential challenge to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, but ultimately decided to pass on the chance.)

According to tax filings, the Institute has also received at least $1.3 million between 2010 and 2015 from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two dark-money funds that have taken millions of dollars from the billionaire fossil-fuel tycoons Charles and David Koch and their network of corporate magnates and conservative donors. Mother Jones has described the two entities as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement”—multimillion-dollar donor-advised funds that strive to conceal the identity of their benefactors.

The Sutherland Institute is also a member of the State Policy Network, or SPN, an association of state-based think tanks and advocacy groups that the Center for Media and Democracy describes as “the tip of the spear” of a “nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party.” SPN and its member groups have together received large cash contributions over the years from corporate interests and conservative billionaires, including the Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, the Bradley Foundation, and the Scaife Foundations.

Sutherland did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but, in a written statement last May, a spokesperson told me that the group “has not received any out-of-state funds for research or communications related to the Bears Ears issue.” According to tax filings, however, many of the donations the group typically receives from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund are earmarked for “general operations.”

By spring, it was clear that Sutherland’s message, and that of its allies, had been well received in Washington, DC. Their efforts were shepherded along by Utah’s congressional delegation, including Senator Orrin Hatch, who once described Obama’s Bears Ears designation as a “massive land grab,” and Representative Mike Lee, who has taken a pro-environment stance on just 9 percent of his congressional votes, according to the League of Conservation Voters. Representative Rob Bishop, the powerful chair of the House Natural Resources Committee and a longtime opponent of environmental laws and regulations, also played a crucial role in stoking animosity toward the Antiquities Act and Bears Ears in particular.

On April 26, Trump held a press conference at the Interior Department headquarters in Washington, DC, where he announced that his administration planned to “review” and possibly resize or rescind dozens of national monuments across the West, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. During the conference, Trump singled out Utah’s senior senator, Orrin Hatch, for praise.

“Believe me, he’s tough,” said Trump of Hatch, who is perhaps Utah’s most powerful political figure, a man that has taken more than $870,000 in career campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industries. “He would call me and call me and say, ‘You got to do this.’” And Trump did it.

Upon news of the White House’s national-monument review, staffers at the Sutherland Institute rejoiced. From a chic office building, the Institute’s Matthew Anderson celebrated the announcement in a video broadcast over the group’s website and social-media accounts.

“As the dust settles from President Trump’s executive order calling for review of national monuments, Western rural communities wake up to a brighter and more hopeful future,” he said. In May, when Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke traveled to the Bears Ears National Monument as part of his review, photos of the event showed Anderson by his side.

As the Sutherland Institute continued its anti-monument campaign over the summer and fall of 2017, it had a notable assortment of allies at the local, regional, and national level.

In Utah, a group called Strata Policy stands out. A research institution that takes a “liberty-minded” approach to the issues of “the environment, energy, and public lands,” the group has published a number of anti-monument op-eds and submitted a lengthy public comment to the Interior Department opposing Bears Ears. In November, it unveiled a slick, professionally produced 14-minute documentary that features local opponents of the monument and frames the Bears Ears designation as a tyrannical imposition.

As with Sutherland, Strata has close ties to what is often described as the Koch network. The group has received more than $500,000 in recent years from Donors Trust. It also received a $310,000 grant from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2015 for general operating support, and a $1.1 million grant in 2014. Strata’s co-founder and president, Randy Simmons, is a professor at Utah State University (USU), where he served as the Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy from 2008 to 2012, according to LinkedIn. Simmons also runs USU’s Koch-funded Institute of Political Economy. (After a number of requests for comment, Strata informed The Nation that its president was away on holiday.)

The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), in Bozeman, Montana, which describes itself as “the home of free market environmentalism,” has also been a stalwart voice against the Antiquities Act. Its many fellows have churned out a regular stream of anti-monument op-eds this year. In late September, a PERC adjunct fellow and Pacific Legal Foundation lawyer named Jonathan Wood published an opinion piece in The Washington Post arguing that Trump has a legal right to shrink Bears Ears and other monuments like it. And in May the House Committee on Natural Resources, which is chaired by the powerful Utah Republican Representative Rob Bishop, posted on its website an op-ed published in Montana newspapers in which PERC staffer Shawn Regan calls for the “modernization” (i.e., dismantling) of the Antiquities Act.

PERC, meanwhile, received more than $130,000 from Donors Trust between 2010 and 2015 alone. It also gets support from the Charles Koch Foundation, which gave it a $150,000 grant for general operating support in 2015. PERC’s executive director, Reed Watson, worked as an associate at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation between 2008 and 2009. One of the members of its board of directors, Kimberly Dennis, is also chairman of the board of Donors Trust and vice chairman of the board of Donors Capital Fund. And PERC counts among its many fellows Randy Simmons, the director of Strata Policy in Utah.

This close-knit network of anti-monument activists, however, is not confined to the western side of the 100th meridian. Powerful people with close Koch ties have also been agitating passionately against the Antiquities Act in Washington, DC.

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This Is How the Trump Administration Gives Big Oil the Keys to Public Lands

Adam Federman

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a network of state elected officials and private sector operatives that receives consistent funding from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, has long had its gun sight set on the Antiquities Act. In 2000, the group approved a model bill that legislators could use to denounce potential national monuments within their state’s borders. ALEC reapproved that bill in 2013. The model bill has a similar objective, if different language, as a resolution passed by the Utah legislature in 2016 that urged President Obama not to designate the Bears Ears National Monument and called on Congress to prevent future presidents from independently designating national monuments in the state. Meanwhile, the floor sponsor of the legislature’s February 2017 anti–Bear’s Ears resolution—the one that the Sutherland Institute helped draft—was a state senator named Wayne Niederhauser. Niederhauser is the second vice chair on ALEC’s board of directors. ALEC, meanwhile, received $500,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation in the years 2014 and 2015 alone.

The Heritage Foundation—that 100-pound gorilla of far-right policy-making—is also out to destroy the Antiquities Act. With its bank accounts flush with funding from a wide variety of corporate entities and wealthy individuals, it has enormous sway in Washington, DC. At least three of its former employees currently work at the highest levels of the Interior Department. According to her LinkedIn page, Elinor Renner, a special assistant to the Interior secretary, worked in a variety of roles at the Heritage Foundation from December 2012 until July 2017, when she took a job in the federal government. Lori Mashburn, who began serving as Interior’s White House liaison in May, has worked on and off for Heritage since 2011.

The foundation’s influence is indisputable. And it has used that influence to rail against Bears Ears as well as other national monuments. In 2015, for instance, it published a report called “The Antiquated Act,” in which it called on Congress to repeal the executive branch’s ability to independently designate national monuments. And in October of this year, it partnered with the Sutherland Institute to hold a summit in Washington called “National Monuments and The Communities They Impact.” The event featured speeches by Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Hannah Downey of PERC, and the Sutherland Institute’s Boyd Matheson and Matthew Anderson, who also formerly worked in Congressman Bishop’s office. The gathering’s central message was simple: Obama and others have abused the Antiquities Act’s intent and so it must be abolished in its current form.

When The Nation reached out to Heritage to inquire about its involvement in the campaign to shrink Bears Ears, as well as its connection to groups like the Sutherland Institute and ALEC, a Heritage spokesperson responded with a statement saying that the organization’s “experts have long-argued that antiquities designations strip economic opportunities away from local communities, with often little-to-no input from them. For far too long these designations have exceeded their statutory limitations and President Trump is right to shrink this abuse of power.”

Other Koch-backed groups that have militated against national monuments in recent months include Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Many of these organizations, from the Sutherland Institute and ALEC to Heritage and Cato, are also major proponents of transferring federal land to state and local government, thereby depriving millions of Americans of their stake in the public domain.

In June, almost every single one of the groups named above came together to send a letter to President Trump. They called on the White House to “reduce or rescind egregious national monuments where local support exists to do so.” The letter’s signatories included the Sutherland Institute, Strata Policy, ALEC, Heritage Action for America, Americans for Prosperity, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, numerous members of the State Policy Network, and the American Energy Alliance.

On August 24, 2017, after many months of lobbying and agitation, these groups finally got their way: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke completed his national monument review and recommended that the president shrink or otherwise alter a slew of national monuments across the country. Just three months later, during that gloating rally in December, Trump made his first move on those recommendations, shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent and shrinking Grand Escalante by nearly 50 percent. It was the largest cutback of land conservation protections in American history. And the president will likely modify or shrink a half dozen other sites in the months ahead, including the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southern Oregon.

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The billionaire-backed far right was not the only faction opposed to Bears Ears and the Antiquities Act, of course. As The Washington Post reported this month, a Canadian-owned uranium subsidiary called Energy Fuels Resources waged a lobbying effort to roll back the boundaries of the Bears Ears National Monument. The Post also published a map showing that some of the parcels cut out of Bears Ears and Grand-Escalante contain significant reserves of coal and uranium as well as moderate-to-high oil and gas development potential.

Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke has publicly denied that the monument review had anything to do with promoting the desires of corporate entities or conservative ideologues. Indeed, in a recent CNN op-ed he argues that the Trump administration’s anti-monument actions are about listening “to the voices of the people, not Washington D.C. special interests.”

The White House’s attack on national monuments, though, is deeply unpopular. In a 2017 poll of voters in seven Western states, Colorado College found that 80 percent of respondents favor keeping national-monument designations in place. The Trump administration’s Bears Ears decision, meanwhile, has been met with protest, including a recent rally on the steps of the Utah State Capitol in which thousands of people denounced the move. Dozens of groups, including the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition that advocated for the monument, have filed suit to block President Trump’s rollback of the designation. And over the summer, the country’s largest outdoor-industry trade show, a massive biannual affair that features products from companies like Patagonia, REI, and The North Face, decided to leave its home in Salt Lake City to protest the state government’s attack on federal land. Future trade shows, which generate tens of millions of dollars in local economic activity, will take place in Denver.

Even in the midst of this passionate public backlash, however, the conservative machine that destroyed two national monuments in Utah is clamoring for more. The Sutherland Institute and its allies have quickly expanded their aims and are supporting action in Congress to effectively gut the 111-year-old Antiquities law.

In early October, Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, who has taken more than $400,000 in career campaign cash from the fossil-fuel industries, introduced a bill that would enable future presidents to shrink national monuments. (The executive branch’s ability to roll back national monuments has never been tested in court, and so Trump’s move remains legally dubious.) Bishop’s bill would also sharply limit the amount of acreage the executive branch can protect under the act. The legislation is working its way through the House Committee on Natural Resources.

In her book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer says that billionaire donors like the Koch brothers and their allies in the fossil-fuel and other industries harbor an agenda that argues for “‘limited government,’ drastically lower corporate and personal taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry, particularly in the environmental arena. They said they were driven by principle, but their positions dovetailed seamlessly with their personal financial interests.”

With their lush forests, their grasslands, mountains, and mineral deposits, our public lands contain an astonishing accumulation of natural riches. It’s no wonder that the wealthy and the powerful covet control over these lands, or that they labor relentlessly to remove the legal obstacles that hamper their acquisitive aims.

Ultimately, though, the public domain does not belong to the 1 percent and its political representatives. Their beauty and biodiversity and general abundance represent a kind of collective wealth that earlier generations recognized and fought to conserve. The land belongs to all Americans—and laws like the Antiquities Act are meant to keep it that way.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/orrin-hatch-made-country-worse/

He may have been known as Borin’ Orrin, but his career and positions represented some of the worst tendencies in American history.

Born in Pittsburgh in 1934, Hatch grew up in a staunchly Mormon family, with elders going back generations. He went to Brigham Young University after working in the steel mills a bit. He was a smart, ambitious guy but not one with much money at this point.

He married young and already had a big family, fulfilling his Mormon heritage, so he finished at BYU, went back to the University of Pittsburgh for law school, and actually lived in a big chicken coop with his young family behind his parents’ house.

He was a history major at BYU and as a professional historian, I am ashamed of that fact. But he wouldn’t remain so for long. Once he graduated with his law degree, he got a job back out in Utah working for the oil and gas industry.

Goldwater-lite

Until he ran for the Senate in 1976, Hatch was not a politically important figure. He was just a lawyer. But he thought about it and talked to some Republicans in the state. They told him that anti-Washington sentiment was growing and, who knows, maybe he could take out the Democratic senator Frank Moss.

Hatch got the endorsement of the BYU president, Ernest Wilkinson, a man so rightwing that he refused to allow economics professors there to teach Keynesianism and who refused all federal funds so there would be no state control over his institution of higher indoctrination.

So that was a big endorsement in Utah.

He was a really terrible public speaker and it was a crowded primary. He didn’t have any money. He drove around campaigning in a big van with his six children in tow. But he did have that outsider rhetoric.

He made a recording where he borrowed heavily from Barry Goldwater’s anti-establishment language in 1964, calling his fellow Republicans sellouts and effectively being a precursor of Donald Trump’s ridiculous “drain the swamp” rhetoric in 2016.

He did this in part by endorsing Ronald Reagan for the 1976 election, tapping into the rising rightwing fury against civil rights and feminism among whites. Reagan was so happy, and Hatch’s team so busy bugging Reagan’s advisors for contacts, that Ronnie called up Hatch and endorsed him, which made all the difference in Utah. He won that primary.

Hatch continued this rhetoric in the general. Frank Moss was a pretty good senator. It’s worth remembering it’s not that long ago that the rural West could elect some really fine politicians. Moss fought the tobacco industry, nursing home exploitation and expanded the power of the Federal Trade Commission, all while opposing the Vietnam War.

Quite the senator for Utah!

Alas, those days are now long behind us. Hatch ran on his outsider credentials and laughably using term limits as his tool to do so. His theme: "What do you call a senator who's served in office for 18 years? You call him home.” Oh, the humor of Orrin Hatch. It worked. Sadly, Moss lost and Utah has not elected a decent statewide politician since.

Hatch the hatchet

His positions were typically revanchist culture war stuff. He promised an anti-pornography bill. He wanted to privatize Social Security. The vile Republican direct mail guru Richard Viguerie got behind Hatch and used his power to flood the Utah mail with propaganda in favor of the extremist.

When Hatch was elected, he was seen as kind of joke. As Rick Perlstein explores inReaganland, shortly after Hatch’s election, there was a dinner party among Long Island suburbanites that challenged guests to figure out what an “Orrin Hatch” was (sounds like the blandest possible mild New Mexico green chile to me), which led to some mildly amusing responses and the requisite Times article that effectively confirmed rural stereotypes about how urban people have contempt for them.

Hatch was just terrible. When Birch Bayh noted that anti-abortion activists only cared about life between conception and birth, Hatch actually said on the Senate floor that there was a “remarkable similarity between those who believe in abortion and those who are spending us into bankruptcy.”

What that similarity was, I have no idea, since it doesn’t make a lick of sense. But that word salad worked in Utah and among the growing powerful rightwing extremists making up the Republican Party, who thought Orrin might be interesting presidential material.

What made Hatch appealing to the New Right is that he was a hatchet man. They were sick of compromise. They wanted full-out aggression with no holds barred. That was Orrin Hatch.

Although still a first-term senator, when the AFL-CIO and Democrats pushed labor law reform in the early years of the Carter administration, it was the young Orrin Hatch chosen to be the pit bull against it. He called the business lobby when he arrived in Washington “a bunch of gutless wonders.” And he provided them the gut.

He was determined that workers would gain no rights in this nation. Worse, he succeeded in that goal, leading the way to gutting anything Democrats proposed on labor issues. What tool did he use?

Our old friend, the filibuster.

The filibuster’s history is mostly known for holding up bills that would move toward racial equality and there’s a good reason for that. But senators also used it, in the days before it became an everyday part of obstruction by the Republican Party, specifically against workers’ rights legislation.Hatch killed labor law reform. There were 59 votes for it. Such is the disaster of the world’s worst deliberative body.

Sorry, not sorry

Once he was elected, all that talk about term limits went away real fast. He was elected again and again, never seriously challenged by a Democrat. He defeated the mayor of Salt Lake City by 17 points in 1982 and then Frank Moss’ son Brian by 35 points in 1988.By this point, Utah was a full-on frothing rightwing cesspool. The state that once elected quite decent senators was now a place where Orrin Hatch could be seen as a relative moderate. He won reelection again in 1994, 2000, 2006 and 2012 without any real competition.

Hatch was a hired hack of the vitamin supplement industry. This might seem like a strange issue to be tied to. But the supplement industry is huge in Utah and Hatch had a lot of relatives involved.

So he did everything in his considerable power to protect this industry from any regulation at all, including revealing what is in them. When Hatch left the Senate, Michael Hiltzik’s farewell in the LA Times reminded us of how “his deadliest law will live on.”

This was the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. Effectively, this eliminated government supervision of the supplement industry, allowing hucksters and scammers to put whatever they wanted in these things. Specifically, it stopped the Food and Drug Administration from reviewing these supplements ahead of time.

The FDA could later pull a product if it was found to be poisonous but that would come only after such poison was proven. This was a massive perversion of the entire point of the FDA and also the near-prototype for how Republicans see the world and how they want to take America back to the Gilded Age.

As Hiltzik noted, this had hugely negative consequences in the real world, such as when a supplement sold in Hawaii sent 47 people to the hospital with liver problems, resulting in three liver transplants and one death. Finally, it was pulled off the market. That’s entirely on Orrin Hatch.

Of course, Hatch’s son worked as a supplement industry lobbyist and two of the largest three campaign donors for Hatch in 2010 were Herbalife and Xango LLC, a supplement marketing firm. And when John McCain introduced a bill to mandate reports of illnesses from supplements, Hatch backed him down.

So everytime you hear someone getting seriously ill or dying from supplements, you can thank Orrin Hatch.

Not as clean as you’d think

Almost every position taken by Hatch was horrible. He was the author of the vile Hatch Amendment, his idea for aconstitutional amendmentreading, “A right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution. The Congress and the several States shall have the concurrent power to restrict and prohibit abortions: Provided, That a law of a State which is more restrictive than a law of Congress shall govern.”

Hatch also was obsessed with a balanced budget, that hobgoblin of the little minds of our dumbest elites, and sponsored the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution on several occasions.

To his credit, Hatch did work closely with Ted Kennedy on a number of issues, the kind of bipartisanship that made Beltway reporters swoon.

That included working together on creating State Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997. And you know what, sure, he deserves credit for that. Good for him. It’s not a perfect program but at least he did something positive with his life.

It got to the point that National Review even called him a liberal. That was ridiculous, but still. That also increasingly disappeared as he got older, to the sadness of writers such as Michael Tomasky, who lamented the decline of bipartisanship this represented.

Hatch was also not as clean personally as he liked to claim.

He got caught up in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal in the early 1990s, which was a case where the bank was laundering drug money and got caught and then was shut down in 1991 for paying huge bribes to governments in the global south to get deposits in the bank. It was a classic Beltway insider job, headed by former LBJ advisor Clark Clifford, among others.

Hatch was friends with a lot of these people and had attempted to use his influence to get a $10 million loan for another friend. Hatch went off on the Senate floor against the treatment of this bank in a speech written for him by the attorney of the bank implicated in all of this.

As part of the loan for his friend, campaign contributions to Hatch were laundered. Moreover, the organization bought 1,200 CDs of Orrin Hatch singing (my God, what horror is this?) and that was another payoff for him. There was a Senate Ethics Commission investigation of this but of course Hatch got away scot-free. Gross.

Hatch’s questionable finances meant he never got what he wanted more than anything: a Supreme Court appointment. As a co-founder of the Federalist Society, as well as co-chair, he set himself up for this well. Supposedly, he was in the running to replace Lewis Powell, which was Robert Bork’s infamous nomination, but there was no way Hatch could get by the Emoluments Clause and so didn’t get the call. And hey, remember when that mattered among Republicans!

Fathering judicial extremism

In any case, Hatch could routinely be the worst during Supreme Court nominations. He was outraged that Bork didn’t get confirmed. Moreover, he was on the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas hearings, where he read from The Exorcist to “prove” that Anita Hill had stolen her (obviously false natch) sexual harassment allegations from that book.

In fact, few did more than Hatch to push the Republican Party toward extremism in the judiciary. He was a huge supporter of the nomination of Mr. Torture Memos himself, Jay Bybee, to the Ninth Circuit Court.

What is interesting, and a sign of how much politics have changed, is that Hatch, who was friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, personally lobbied Bill Clinton to choose her for the Supreme Court.

He was enough of an institutionalist to be wary of Republican decisions to nuke the filibuster on court nominees, but then was happy to go along with it and refused to support Merrick Garland in 2016.He had even once said that Garland would be a “consensus nominee” for the court. And then he stated that Garland did not deserve a nomination after Obama nominated him.

By this time, Hatch had pretty well determined not to run for another term. But that didn’t matter. He now fully believed in all of the Republican hard-right turn. After all, on most issues, he was quite responsible for that turn.

On gay rights, Hatch was as bad as one could possibly imagine, though he did moderate on this over time. In a 1977 speech at the University of Utah, Hatch stated, "I wouldn't want to see homosexuals teaching school anymore than I'd want to see members of the American Nazi Party teaching school.”

Of course, you could hear plenty of Democrats saying the same thing at the time. Hatch was a huge supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act. Later in his career, he did move enough on this issue to vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have barred employers from being able to fire workers based upon their sexual orientation.

So I guess it serves to show that you work hard enough and maybe you can move the worst politicians to be slightly less bad, especially after you lay the groundwork for your party to become a cesspool of coup leaders and fascists. A lesson there, of sorts.

Right-winger too left for right-wingers

In 2000, Hatch decided to run for president. I am not sure who was clamoring for an Orrin Hatch presidency. As it turns out, the answer was no one. After a robust 1 percent showing in Iowa, placing him behind such brilliant leaders as Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer, Hatch dropped out and supported George W. Bush.

Naturally enough, the idea of Americans having a right to decent health care was an outrage to Hatch. Like a lot of Republicans, he was a total hypocrite on the issue.

Back in 1993, when Bill Clinton threatened universal health care, Hatch was one of the cosponsors of the individual insurance mandate in order to fight Democrats. So, in 2009, when Obama brought that fight back, in what led to the Affordable Care Act that integrated his own proposal sixteen years ago, Hatch now opposed it. Why, it’s almost as if Republican proposals are not made in good faith and Democrats shouldn’t copy them!

He had a lot of respect for people who held his own previous positions as well, saying in 2018 that supporters of Obamacare "the stupidest, dumbass people I've ever met.” I’m not sure Jesus and Joseph Smith approved of that language, Orrin. He may be in Hell now paying for such talk.

By the end, Utah had moved so far to the extremist right that people wondered whether Hatch was vulnerable to a primary challenge.

This is pretty crazy when you think about it. There was never anyone more committed to rightwing values than Orrin Hatch.

But he wasn’t a full-on fascist when the Republican Party began to demand that in every candidate. Mike Lee had defeated Bob Bennett in 2010 and Jason Chaffetz was talking about running against Hatch. He didn’t but eight other candidates did. He had to go to a run-off primary, which is the rule in Utah if a candidate doesn’t win 60 percent of the vote. Hatch won that easily, but it was the first time he had to do that and it was a sign that Utah was getting ever scarier.

Now, Orrin Hatch was always a good Mormon. So he claimed to have family values. Do you think those family values got in the way of him supporting Donald Trump? Ha ha, of course not.

Sure, after Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape came out, Hatch stated it was “disgusting” but it wasn’t enough for him to rescind his support in the fact of having to watch Hillary Clinton become president. Anything but that!

Instead, he used Trump like all Republicans did once they found out he shared their values, such as destroying the planet. Hatch was one of the senators to sign a letter urging Trump to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which he then did.

Hatch finally decided to not run for reelection in 2018. I doubt he would have lost a primary challenge that year, not after embracing Donald Trump so closely. He had only been in the Senate for a mere 42 years, which at the time was the longest serving Republican in Senate history, though Chuck Grassley later passed him.

For all his work in making the nation worse, Donald Trump presented Hatch with the Presidential Medal of Freedom that year.

Orrin Hatch is now dead. The nation is worse for his life. But hey, at least he had the respect of Donald Trump. What more could he want?

chair jud comm... Before the Senate Judiciary Committee

As you know, the FBI divides the terrorist threat facing the United States into two broad categories, international and domestic. International terrorism involves violent acts that occur beyond our national boundaries and are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or similar acts of violence committed by individuals or groups under some form of foreign direction occurring within the jurisdiction of the United States.

Domestic terrorism involves acts of violence that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, committed by individuals or groups without any foreign direction, and appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

During the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the nature of the domestic terrorist threat. In the 1990s, right-wing extremism overtook left-wing terrorism as the most dangerous domestic terrorist threat to the United States. During the past several years, however, special interest extremism, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and related extremists, has emerged as a serious domestic terrorist threat. Special interest terrorism differs from traditional right-wing and left-wing terrorism in that extremist special interest groups seek to resolve specific issues, rather than effect widespread political change. Such extremists conduct acts of politically motivated violence to force segments of society, including the general public, to change attitudes about issues considered important to the extremists’ causes. Generally, extremist groups engage in much activity that is protected by constitutional guarantees of free speech and assembly. Law enforcement only becomes involved when the volatile talk of these groups transgresses into unlawful action. The FBI estimates that the ALF/ELF and related groups have committed more than 1,100 criminal acts in the United States since 1976, resulting in damages conservatively estimated at approximately $110 million.

The ALF, established in Great Britain in the mid-1970s, is a loosely organized extremist movement committed to ending the abuse and exploitation of animals. The American branch of the ALF began its operations in the late 1970s. Individuals become members of the ALF not by filing paperwork or paying dues, but simply by engaging in "direct action" against companies or individuals who, in their view, utilize animals for research or economic gain, or do some manner of business with those companies or individuals. "Direct action" generally occurs in the form of criminal activity designed to cause economic loss or to destroy the victims' company operations or property. The extremists’ efforts have broadened to include a multi-national campaign of harassment, intimidation and coercion against animal testing companies and any companies or individuals doing business with those targeted companies. Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is one such company. The “secondary” or “tertiary” targeting of companies which have business or financial relationships with the target company typically takes the form of fanatical harassment of employees and interference with normal business operations, under the threat of escalating tactics or even violence. The harassment is designed to inflict increasing economic damage until the company is forced to cancel its contracts or business relationship with the original target. Internationally, the best example of this trend involves Great Britain’s Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) organization, a more organized sub-group within the extremist animal rights movement. SHAC has targeted the animal testing company HLS and any companies with which HLS conducts business. While the SHAC organization attempts to portray itself as an information service or even a media outlet, it is closely aligned with the ALF and its pattern of criminal activities – many of which are taken against companies and individuals selected as targets by SHAC and posted on SHAC’s Internet website.

Investigation of SHAC-related criminal activity has revealed a pattern of vandalism, arsons, animal releases, harassing telephone calls, threats and attempts to disrupt business activities of not only HLS, but of all companies doing business with HLS. Among others, these companies include Bank of America, Marsh USA, Deloitte and Touche, and HLS investors, such as Stephens, Inc., which completely terminated their business relationships with HLS as a result of SHAC activities. Examples of SHAC activities include publishing on its website as a regular feature "Targets of the Week" for followers to target with harassing telephone calls and e-mails in order to discourage that company or individual from doing business with HLS.

In recent years, the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front have become the most active criminal extremist elements in the United States. Despite the destructive aspects of ALF and ELF's operations, their stated operational philosophy discourages acts that harm "any animal, human and nonhuman." In general, the animal rights and environmental extremist movements have adhered to this mandate. Beginning in 2002, however, this operational philosophy has been overshadowed by an escalation in violent rhetoric and tactics, particularly within the animal rights movement. Individuals within the movement have discussed actively targeting food producers, biomedical researchers, and even law enforcement with physical harm. But even more disturbing is the recent employment of improvised explosive devices against consumer product testing companies, accompanied by threats of more, larger bombings and even potential assassinations of researchers, corporate officers and employees.

The escalation in violent rhetoric is best demonstrated by language that was included in the communiqués claiming responsibility for the detonation of improvised explosive devices in 2003 at two separate northern California companies, which were targeted as a result of their business links to HLS. Following two pipe bomb blasts at the Chiron Life Sciences Center in Emeryville, California on August 28, 2003, an anonymous claim of responsibility was issued which included the statement: “This is the endgame for the animal killers and if you choose to stand with them you will be dealt with accordingly. There will be no quarter given, no half measures taken. You might be able to protect your buildings, but can you protect the homes of every employee?” Just four weeks later, following the explosion of another improvised explosive device wrapped in nails at the headquarters of Shaklee, Incorporated in Pleasanton, California on September 26, 2003, another sinister claim of responsibility was issued via anonymous communiqué by the previously unknown “Revolutionary Cells of the Animal Liberation Brigade....

ron arnold LI

Click here to view J.J. Brown’s profile

J.J. Brown

“Senator Orrin Hatch was behind two laws that strengthened the hand of law enforcement to 1) track ecoterrorists and 2) put them in jail. As an aide advising the senator on the issue, I can say that Ron Arnold's work directly inspired and informed the policy formulation behind those laws. It's no stretch to say that due to Ron's work, ecoterrorists are in jail today who would otherwise be free. No American has done more to expose theradical side of the "green" movement for the conspiracy it is. Ron's regular opinion columns continue to shed light on the forces that would take away our freedoms.”

===<... Farm Bill Conference ReportClimate Change, Clean Water 

2018254McNamee Confirmation (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)Climate Change, Clean Air 

2018232Nelson Confirmation (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary 

2018228Clark Confirmation (Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water, Judiciary 

2018223Kavanaugh Confirmation (Supreme Court)Judiciary 

2018222Kavanaugh Cloture Vote (Supreme Court)Judiciary 

2018174Grant Confirmation (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary 

2018160Oldham Confirmation (Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary 

2018134Anti-Environmental Rescission PackageOther 

201884Pompeo Confirmation (Secretary of State)Climate Change, Other 

201880Bridenstine Confirmation (NASA Administrator)Climate Change 

201877Exposing Waterways to Invasive SpeciesWildlife, Clean Water 

201871Wheeler Confirmation (EPA Deputy Administrator)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water 

201836Border Wall Funding & Anti-Immigrant PolicyOther 

2017323Anti-Environmental Tax Bill that Opens Drilling in the Arctic RefugeLands/Forests, Dirty Energy, Drilling 

2017268Wehrum Confirmation (Assistant Administrator, EPA)Climate Change, Clean Air, Other 

2017259Eid Confirmation (10th Circuit Court of Appeals)Other 

2017245Budget Resolution Paving the Way for Drilling in the Arctic RefugeLands/Forests, Dirty Energy, Drilling 

2017243Protecting the Arctic RefugeLands/Forests, Dirty Energy, Drilling 

2017242Undermining Federal Safeguards for Protected SpeciesWildlife 

2017166Bernhardt Confirmation (Deputy Secretary, Interior)Climate Change, Lands/Forests, Wildlife, Other 

2017125Extreme Assault on the Methane and Waste Prevention Rule (CRA)Climate Change, Dirty Energy, Lands/Forests 

2017111Gorsuch Confirmation (Supreme Court)Other 

201792Blocking Wildlife Protections in Alaska (CRA)Wildlife, Lands/Forests 

201782Blocking Local Input about Public Lands (CRA)Lands/Forests, Toxics/Public Right to Know 

201779Perry Confirmation (Energy Secretary)Climate Change, Clean Energy, Other 

201775Zinke Confirmation (Interior Secretary)Climate Change, Drilling, Lands/Forests, Wildlife, Other 

201771Pruitt Confirmation (EPA Administrator)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water, Other 

201768Mulvaney Confirmation (OMB Director)Other 

201759Sessions Confirmation (Attorney General)Other

22 sen inhofe letter ~ paris // trump

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-brothers-paris-agreement-2430226599.html

Paris Exit Was 'Victory Paid and Carried Out' by Republican Party for the Koch Brothers

nolink

The 22 Republican senators who sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week urging the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement received more than $10 million dollars in campaign funds from fossil fuel interests.

The two-page letter was signed by a number of Republican heavyweights from coal/gas/oil-rich states, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas.

The Guardian calculated that the 22 senators received a total of $10,694,284 from oil, gas and coal money in just five years. (See the breakdown below.

However, that sum does not even come close to the amount of undisclosed funds coming from the deep pockets of Charles and David Koch's coal, oil and gas conglomerate, Koch Industries, and other outside groups.

As the Guardian explains:

"Visible donations to Republicans from those industries exceeded donations to Democrats in the 2016 election cycle by a ratio of 15-to-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that does not include so-called dark money passed from oil interests such as Koch industries to general slush funds to re-elect Republicans such as the Senate leadership fund.

"At least $90m in untraceable money has been funneled to Republican candidates from oil, gas and coal interests in the past three election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics."

Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, shared recently his views on Trump's climate walkout.In an interview with Bloomberg Surveillance, Sachs referenced the senators' letter and specifically cast blame on the billionaire oil barons for pulling the strings of Republican party leaders such as McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who both supported exiting the Paris accord.

"This is the victory paid and carried out for 20 years by two people, David and Charles Koch," Sachs said. "They have bought and purchased the top of the Republican party. Trump is a tool in this."

Notably, most of the Republican signatories of the letter do not support the belief that human activity contributes to climate change.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Democratic Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts explained why he thinks his Republican colleagues do not believe in the science of climate change.

"This Conservative party in the United States is funded by the Koch brothers [and] it's funded by the coal industry," Markey said. "[They] insist that Scott Pruitt—the Attorney General of Oklahoma that actually sued the EPA 19 times on clean air, clean water, soot, mercury issues—becomes the head of the EPA in our country."

The 22 Republican signatories' funding from Big Oil, Gas and Coal in the past three election cycles (2012, 2014 and 2016):

James Inhofe, Oklahoma

Oil & gas: $465,950 + Coal: $63,600 = $529,550

John Barrasso, Wyoming

Oil & gas: $458,466 + Coal: $127,356 = $585,822

Mitch McConnell, Kentucky

Oil & gas: $1,180,384 + Coal: $361,700 = $1,542,084

John Cornyn, Texas

Oil & gas: $1,101,456 + Coal: $33,050 = $1,134,506

Roy Blunt, Missouri

Oil & gas: $353,864 + Coal: $96,000 = $449,864

Roger Wicker, Mississippi

Oil & gas: $198,816 + Coal: $25,376 = $224,192

Michael Enzi, Wyoming

Oil & gas: $211,083 + Coal: $63,300 = $274,383

Mike Crapo, Idaho

Oil & gas: $110,250 + Coal: $26,756 = $137,006

Jim Risch, Idaho

Oil & gas: $123,850 + Coal: $25,680 = $149,530

Thad Cochran, Mississippi

Oil & gas: $276,905 + Coal: $15,000 = $291,905

Mike Rounds, South Dakota

Oil & gas: $201,900 + Coal: none = $201,900

Rand Paul, Kentucky

Oil & gas: $170,215 + Coal: $82,571 = $252,786

John Boozman, Arkansas

Oil & gas: $147,930 + Coal: $2,000 = $149,930

Richard Shelby, Alabama

Oil & gas: $60,150 + $2,500 = $62,650

Luther Strange, Alabama (Appointed in 2017, running in 2017 special election)

Total: NA

Orrin Hatch, Utah

Oil & gas: $446,250 + Coal: $25,000 = $471,250

Mike Lee, Utah

Oil & gas: $231,520 + Coal: $21,895 = $253,415

Ted Cruz, Texas

Oil & gas: $2,465,910 + Coal: $103,900 = $2,569,810

David Perdue, Georgia

Oil & gas: $184,250 + Coal: $0 = $184,250

Thom Tillis, North Carolina

Oil & gas: $263,400 + Coal: $0 = $263,400

Tim Scott, South Carolina

Oil & gas: $490,076 + Coal: $58,200 = $548,276

Pat Roberts, Kansas

Oil & gas: $388,950 + Coal: $28,825 = $417,775

quincy klugman 2 tv show got hatch to cave on blocking orphan drug, RR signed bill npr widow of woody guthrie (incentive to dev rx)

==

colluded on brett k?

There’s some evidence in the public domain backing up Schmidt’s speculation. On Tuesday, we learned that Kavanaugh had met privately with Hatch, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, and told him the accusations could be a case of mistaken identity. Whelan amplified this defense on his Twitter feed. On Wednesday, Hatch’s spokesperson, Matt Whitlock, retweeted another Whelan tweet promoting a mistaken identity theory, telling people to “keep an eye on Ed’s tweets the next few days.” (After Whelan’s thread came out, Whitlock deleted the tweet and denied having any foreknowledge of what Whelan was planning.)

Then on Thursday evening, the Washington Post reported that the “mistaken identity” argument was a central plank of the planned Kavanaugh defense against the Ford allegations. It’s not clear in the story whether the plan was to simply say it was someone else, or to point the finger at a specific person as Whelan did:

Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident involving Ford happened, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, according to a person familiar with the discussions....vox

==

spooked right by flank scare?

heilemann noted that Sen. Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in his chamber, was recently indulging Trump by suggesting that the guilty plea of former national security adviser Michael Flynn might be illegitimate.

"The president thinks he's winning with this argument," Heilemann continued. "We may have gotten through this day and nothing cataclysmic may have happened — although it's still an ugly precedent and some ugly things happened with Emmet Flood showing up at that meeting, I think —but we are headed towards a bigger confrontation."

==

https://www.alternet.org/economy/3-noxious-myths-about-poor-republicans-are-using-slash-social-safety-net

Republicans continue to use long-debunked myths about the poor as they defend lower taxes for the richand deep cuts to the social safety netto pay for them. In so doing, they are essentially expressing scorn for working class and low-income Americans.

:{

}:

Sen. Chuck Grassley,for example, recently justified reducing the number of wealthy families exposed to the estate tax as a way to recognize “the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Similarly, Sen. Orrin Hatchraised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.

These statements, the likes of which I expect we’ll all hear more of in coming months, reinforce three harmful narratives about low-income Americans: People who receive benefits don’t work, they don’t deserve help and the money spent on the social safety net is a waste of money.

Based on my research and 20 years of experience as a clinical law professor representing low-income clients, I know that these statements are false and only serve to reinforce misconceptions about working class and poor Americans.

Food participants get an average of $125 a month, hardly enough to feed a family without earning money as well. 

Most welfare recipients are makers not takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are “takers” rather than “makers,” is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal – hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “We have a welfare system that’s trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.”

Not true. Welfare – officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families – has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

In addition to wage stagnation, most Americans are spending more than one-third of their income on housing, which is increasingly unaffordable. There are 11 million renter households paying more than half their income on housing. And there is no county in America where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom home. Still, only 1 in 4 eligible households receive any form of government housing assistance.

To be sure, there are recipients of public benefits who do not work. They are primarily children, the disabled and the elderly – in other words, people who cannot or should not work. These groups constitute the majority of public benefits recipients.

Society should support these people out of basic decency, but there are self-interested reasons as well. To begin with, all working adults have been children, will someday be old and, at any time, might face calamities that take them out of the workforce. The safety net exists to rescue people during these vulnerable periods. Indeed, most people who receive public benefits leave the programs within three years.

Moreover, many public benefits pay for themselves over time, as healthier and financially secure people are more productive and contribute to the overall economy. For example, every dollar in SNAP spending is estimated to generate more than $1.70 in economic activity.

Similarly, Medicaid benefits are associated with enhancing work opportunities. The earned income tax credit contributes to work rates, improves the health of recipient families and has long-term educational and earnings benefits for children.

The current federal minimum wage is hardly enough to feed a family. AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato

What the needy deserve

==

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/clarence-thomas-must-resign-sexual-harassment

~ anita hill

==

~ bears ears

http://www.ecowatch.com/national-monuments-oil-drilling-2401250520.html

==

jason smith missouri

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr1155

The Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act (H.R. 1155 / S. 1683) would would establish a new “regulatory review” commission funded at taxpayer expense, charged with the identifying duplicative, redundant or so-called “obsolete” regulations to repeal. It would do nothing to identify the numerous gaps, shortfalls and outdated regulatory standards that leave the public vulnerable to the next public health tragedy.

This commission would only consider the costs to affected industries while ignoring the benefits of oversight. The commission’s goal to achieve a 15 percent reduction in the cumulative cost of regulations would result in the repeal of critical health, safety and environmental safeguards — even when the benefits of these rules are significant, appreciated by the public and far outweigh the costs.

In addition, the bill would create a “cut-go” system that requires any agency issuing a new regulation to remove an existing regulation of equal or greater cost. If the science finds that a substance widely used in commerce is harmful to infants, regulators would have to find some other protection to cut before protecting young children. The bill would make it impossible for agencies to bypass “cut-go” procedures, no matter how urgent the circumstances might be.

==

At the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC)'s 2016 meeting in Denver, Colorado this week, a representative from a prominent oil and gas lobbying group advocated that auctions of federal lands should happen online “eBay”-style — a clear attempt to shut the public out of the bidding process for fossil fuel leases on public lands. 

Speaking on public lands issues in front of IOGCC's public lands committee, Kathleen Sgamma — Western Energy Alliance's (WEA) vice president of governmental affairs — compared environmental groups' Keep It In The Ground campaign actions at U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) bids to a “circus.” Sgamma said WEA was in contact with both BLM and Congressional members to push the auctions out of the public sphere and onto the internet.

DeSmog, which attended the IOGCC meeting, recorded the presentation and has published it online.

Sgamma opened her statement on the Keep It In The Ground “circus” by pointing to the fact that BLM has already compared the activism, in (beginning at 54:30) on March 23, 2016, with the right-wing militia that occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge's public lands plot in Oregon.  

Sgamma also revealed that WEA has a counter campaign that it will launch soon to oppose Keep It In The Ground. 

Here is a partial transcript of Sgamma's statement (beginning at about 19:55 in the audio):

So Western Energy Alliance is planning some counter-efforts with Keep It In The Ground which we'll be announcing probably later this month. We've also been working with BLM and Congress to say 'Let's just get rid of this circus, let's just have online auctions. eBay is out there, it can be done.' So BLM has also expressed concern for its employees as well. In fact, BLM Director [Neil] Kornze, in a hearing a couple months ago, was asked about all of these protests and even equated these protests with the militia who shut down and occupied the Malheur Wildlife Reserve in Oregon. So BLM is likewise concerned about the safety of its employees and it put in place security measures at last week's auction. But, what we're saying and what a lot of people are saying is, 'Let's just get rid of the circus. Let's do online auctions.' So hopefully BLM is compelled even more after Thursday to move in that direction.

The “Thursday” Sgamma referred to was an action that took place near Denver at a May 12 BLM auction occurring under the fold of “Break Free,” a rolling wave of anti-fossil fuel actions conducted worldwide between May 3 and May 15, 2016. It was after that meeting that Sgamma began calling the Keep It In The Ground campaign a “circus,” referring to it as such in a quote given to The Denver Post, and calling for its “end” by implementing online auctions.

WEA's over 400 oil and gas industry members include many of the same companies that funded IOGCC's meeting: XTO Energy (an ExxonMobil subsidiary), ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, Noble Energy, Marathon Oil, Anadarko and others. It was at a WEA meeting in 2014 that Rick Berman stated in a speech that the oil and gas industry is waging an “endless war” against environmental advocates, and that it has to “play dirty to win.”

IOGCC's members include appointees of governors of the U.S. oil and gas producing states, which generally means heads of state oil and gas regulatory agencies as official state representatives, and at-large members that include oil and gas industry lobbyists and executives. Of the 180 people who attended the IOGCC meeting, 63 were oil and gas industry employees. 

Keep It In The Ground is a campaign whose basis is that fossil fuels on public lands must be left in the ground due to the science-based climate change costs inherent in not doing so. IOGCC, which claims concern about “protecting health, safety and the environment” in its mission statement, has gone on the record to say it has no stance on climate change.

Concerted Push

It appears the WEA push for online lease sales began in February, when it wrote and published a letter to BLM to make its pitch.

“Might we suggest as an alternative that BLM take advantage of online auctions,” wrote Sgamma in the February 11 letter. “If protesters continue to disrupt lease sales, we strongly suggest BLM simply hold online auctions within the same quarter as the original sales. Online auctions also have added cost-savings benefits as venues and security personnel do not have to be enlisted to handle potentially unruly crowds.” 

BLM has stated on the record that, responding to the WEA push, it is now considering online auctions moving forward.

“There's been research done that shows the overall participation and bid amounts are enhanced through the internet process,” Kent Hoffman, deputy state director of BLM's Utah office, told Deseret News on May 6. “We've been desiring to move into the electronic world for years…It is more efficient for us and probably for industry, too, to participate in an online auction.”

BLM's Washington, DC headquarters will have the final say over whether online auctions are the future of bidding for oil, gas and coal leases on U.S. public lands.

Congress Hatch-ing Online Auctions

Meanwhile, Congress has started moving on the WEA-proposed online auctions of public lands, led by U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Hatch inserted an amendment into the proposed congressional comprehensive energy bill calling forthe BLM to study the possibility of online bids “so that the mere threat of protest does not derail oil and gas lease auctions that are critical to Utah’s economy.”

The amendment, Section 3108 of the legislation, passed in the Senate as part of the broader bill on April 20 and awaits a House vote. 

===

big out of state money from?  to?

---2012

when six-term GOP incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah faced the prospect of a mutiny from conservative activists, his allies within the pharmaceutical industry stepped in to help defend him.

New documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that the drug lobby’s main trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), gave $750,000 in 2011 to Freedom Path, a nonprofit group that spent big to help Hatch win another term.

Despite his solid conservative credentials, Hatch drew a primary challenge from former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist in the 2012 election. Hatch out-fundraised the challenger by an 11-1 margin, but Liljenquist was helped by super PAC FreedomWorks for America, which reported spending nearly $1 million on anti-Hatch ads.

Filings with the Federal Election Commission indicate that Freedom Path spent at least $517,000 on ads designed to help Hatch’s electoral prospects, though Freedom Path board member Scott Bensing said the group’s spending was closer to $1 million.

The drug lobby’s donation was revealed on PhRMA’s newly filed Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service, which covers the 2011 calendar year. Since the donation went to a nonprofit, it was not required to be reported to the Federal Election Commission.

PhRMA made contributions to several other politically linked nonprofits, including:

• $500,000 to “Montana Growth,” which appears to be a group that produced fliers and radio ads supporting a conservative candidate for the state Supreme Court;
• $264,500 to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a controversial organization made up of state lawmakers and corporate executives that creates “model legislation” for state legislatures;
• $250,000 to the liberal-aligned Citizens for Strength and Security;
• $200,000 to anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform;
• $40,000 to conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation; and
• $40,000 to the Utah Families Foundation, which Hatch helped start in the 1990s and still raises money for.

(Update: Nov. 30, 2012, 5:45 p.m.: Additional research has shown that "Montana Growth" was not the "Montana Growth Network," which was active in the state's Supreme Court race, but rather a Democratic-aligned nonprofit. See this article for more.)

Freedom Path is a “front group set up to protect Orrin Hatch,” said Russ Walker, FreedomWorks’ vice president of political and grassroots campaigns.

“Orrin Hatch has always worked hard for the drug lobby,” Walker said. “He has always been an advocate for their positions.”

A spokesperson for Hatch did not respond to requests for comment.

But Dave Hansen, Hatch's campaign manager, said by law the campaign couldn't coordinate with Freedom Path.

"We had no contact with them," he said. "And did not know what they were doing, when they did it or where they got their funds from."

According to Bensing, Freedom Path seeks a “more accountable federal budget, a balanced budget amendment and less intrusive government.”

He said his organization has received money from about “eight to 10” contributors, totaling roughly $1.5 million since its launch last year. He declined to identify any of these backers. The group reported raising $850,000 in 2011 from two donors, according to an IRS document obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Earlier this year, Liljenquist complained to The Salt Lake Tribuneabout the lack of information about Freedom Path.

“Organizations have just as much right as people to participate in politics, but there should be visibility on who is funding them and where that money is coming from," he said.

Federal rules only require Freedom Path, which is a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit, to disclose its donors if a contribution is earmarked for a specific advertisement. Freedom Path officials says the group has not solicited money for particular ads.

Like Freedom Path, FreedomWorks operates a nonprofit wing that does not reveal its donors. The non-disclosing nonprofit also accounted for about 15 percent of the $15 million raised by its super PAC arm.

Friend of PhRMA

Hatch received more campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry than any other member of Congress in the 2011-2012 election cycle, some $448,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The 78-year-old lawmaker sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and is the ranking GOP member on the powerful Senate Finance Committee.

As far back as 1984, he authored legislation with Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., that helped allow generic drugs to flourish but also gave brand-name pharmaceutical companies new powers to contest patent infringements by generics.

And he helped spearhead a successful effort to give pharmaceutical companies 12 years of exclusive rights to sell biologic drugs rather than the seven-year period favored by President Barack Obama during the health care reform debate.

Furthermore, his son, Scott Hatch, is a partner at a lobbying firm whose clients include PhRMA and drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline, though both Hatches have maintained that Scott does not lobby his father or his office.

PhRMA declined to respond to direct questions from the Center. Senior vice president Matthew Bennett said in a written statement that the group “often makes grants or charitable contributions to organizations that share PhRMA’s goals.”

PhRMA spent more than $14 million on lobbying in the first three quarters of this year and donated $185,500 to politicians via its PAC during the 2012 election cycle, including $6,000 to Hatch, federal records show.

In July, it also gave $50,000 to a joint fundraising committee that benefited three Democratic super PACs: Majority PAC, House Majority PAC and Priorities USA Action, which supported Obama’s re-election.

The new IRS filing further shows that PhRMA contributed $5,000 to the American Action Network, a conservative nonprofit headed by former Sen. Norm Coleman. That’s down significantly from the $4.5 million PhRMA donated to the group in 2010.

PhRMA officials declined to comment about whether the organization gave additional money to American Action Network in 2012.

Long-time ALEC member

PhRMA has provided financial support to the Republican-dominated American Legislative Exchange Council for years. Jeffrey Bond, a senior vice president at PhRMA, sits on ALEC’s “private enterprise board.”

The organization opposes policies that would allow U.S. consumers to buy prescription drugs from countries such as Canada at bargain prices and bring them back to the United States. It has also pushed model legislation aimed at countering proposals that advocate for government-mandated price controls on pharmaceuticals.

Meanwhile, in a seeming departure, the trade group appears to have given a large contribution to an organization active in Montana’s Supreme Court election.

Montana Growth, whose address is listed as a mailbox at a UPS store in Washington, D.C., on the IRS form, appears to be the “Montana Growth Network,” which sought to influence the state’s nonpartisan judicial race. State District Judge Laurie McKinnon defeated Missoula public defender Ed Sheehy for an open seat on the high court, after attorney Elizabeth Best was knocked out during a contentious primary.

McKinnon was endorsed by the Montana Chamber of Commerce and Montana Farm Bureau, while the Montana Growth Network attacked Sheehy for a case in which he argued that the death penalty was unconstitutional.

The $500,000 donation was far more than the candidates raised in a state where contribution limits are among the lowest in the nation.

McKinnon, who won with about 56 percent of the vote, raised about $87,000 while Sheehy raised roughly $67,000, according to the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Group’s origins questioned

In 2010, Hatch’s Republican colleague, Sen. Bob Bennett, was targeted by tea party-aligned activists and thwarted from winning a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. Hatch wanted to avoid a similar fate.

Bennett’s re-election was opposed by the anti-tax group Club for Growth as well as FreedomWorks, which is headed by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

Freedom Path’s first ad was released in July of 2011. It Hatch and tea party-backed freshman Sen. Mike Lee, who bested Bennett in 2010, as “leading the fight in Washington to get spending under control,” though Lee had declined to endorse Hatch before the June primary.

Another championed Hatch as “leading the conservative charge to repeal Obamacare.” And one trumpeted the balanced budget amendment introduced by Hatch and Lee.

The group also produced several advertisements attacking Liljenquist.

Ultimately, Hatch prevailed, capturing about two-thirds of the vote.

During the contested primary election, all that was known about Freedom Path was its leadership, which has ties to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and former Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.

In addition to Bensing, the group’s board members include GOP operative Mark Emerson.

Bensing is a lobbyist at the firm SB Strategic Consulting, whose clients include the Nevada Department of Transportation, Station Casinos in Las Vegas and Zuffa LLC, the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

He previously worked as Ensign’s chief of staff and as the executive director of the NRSC.

Emerson, meanwhile, previously worked for Hatch and served as Ensign’s chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives. He once was the executive director of the Utah Republican Party.

During the campaign, Freedom Path also hired the consulting firm November Inc., which is headed by Mike Slanker, a former NRSC operative and Ensign aide.

Sheila Krumholz, the executive director the Center for Responsive Politics, said PhRMA’s $750,000 contribution to Freedom Path allowed the drug lobby to claim some credit for Hatch's victory, “without being directly linked to the outside group's expenditure if he'd lost.”

Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California-Irvine law school, added that voters should have been informed of the donation because it would have helped them judge the “credibility of the ads.”

“Groups adopt anodyne names like ‘Freedom Path’ which reveal nothing to voters about who is really behind [their] political advertising,” he said. “Voters may have liked or not liked that Sen. Hatch's election was being supported by the pharmaceutical industry, but they should have known about it.”

More stories about

Orrin Hatch, Pharmaceutical Research, Manufacturers of America, Dan Liljenquist, Scott Bensing, Republican Party, Utah, United States Senate, pharmaceutical industry, Tea Party movement, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth,Pharmaceutical lobby, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Dick Armey

==

omg

When Michael S. Joyce died in February 24, his death received scant attention in the mainstream press. Although very few people in academic circles are familiar with his name, he was, nonetheless, one of the foundational pillars of the current ideological attacks on the academy. A tribute to him [8] by Peter Collier was published in FrontPage, Horowitz’s Web site. Joyce and his intellectual muse -- the late University of Chicago political philosopher Leo Strauss [9] -- would have been pleased by the level of anonymity that he maintained during his lifetime. Joyce's ability to maintain such anonymity despite the enormous influence that he wielded in shaping and developing the infrastructure of the neoconservative movement in this country is quite remarkable.

Although The Atlantic Monthly, as early as 1986, was describing Joyce as "one of the three individuals most responsible for the triumph of the conservative political movement," he nevertheless adhered rigorously to the secretive and profoundly antidemocratic principles advocated by the enigmatic Strauss. As characterized by Jeet Heer in The Boston Globe, [10] Strauss held that "the best regime is one in which the leaders govern moderately and prudently, curbing the passions of the mob while allowing a small philosophical elite to pursue the contemplative life of the mind. Such a philosophical elite may discover truths that are not fit for public consumption.... For Strauss the art of concealment and secrecy was among the greatest legacies of antiquity."

In 1979, Michael Joyce entered the world of large-scale philanthropy with assistance from his mentor Irving Kristol, when he assumed the reins of the John M. Olin Foundation from the retiring president, William Simon. At Olin, one of Joyce’s first projects was to organize support for the launching of the Federalist Society. [11] Joyce’s work in creating and fostering the development of the Federalist Society is instructive and foreshadows the role that he has played in current efforts by neoconservatives to restructure American higher education. The Federalist Society, with Joyce’s ongoing support, not only fostered the development of ultra-conservative legal scholars and politicians such as Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, Samuel Alito, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Kenneth Starr (all of whom are members) but organized them into a powerful force for reshaping American jurisprudence in support of a larger neoconservative agenda.

Also significant in this regard is a report by Jerome Shestack, [12] former president of the American Bar Association, that the Federalist Society is being increasingly being used as a platform from which to launch ideological attacks on the mainstream legal community. Through the device of the Federalist Society publication, ABA Watch, the society has launched a vicious attack on the ABA. In a special edition of the Watch, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch(R-Utah), co-chair of the society, announced that he would no longer invite the ABA to participate on a pro forma basis in the Senate judicial confirmation process. Employing rhetoric eerily parallel to that being used in the current attacks on the academy, Justice Clarence Thomas openly denounced the ABA, declaring “I am doubtful that the ABA can ever reform itself.”

==

Here are the bricks they FW aim to put in their wall:

– A not-yet-determined Republican primary challenger to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) ($237,065 in independent expenditures to date). Hatch has veered sharply to the right since the 2010 defeat of Sen. Bob Bennett (R) by conservative activists and earned a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union for 2010. But FreedomWorks wants Hatch out of the senate too, given his past support for crazy things like the Departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development.

--

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah

"I’m skeptical on climate change." I see too many things that contradict what Al Gore is saying.… I suspect we have some problems that are caused by pollution. But it’s crazy for us to unilaterally disarm ourselves when we’re in competition with the rest of the world. We all had 'soshes' in grade school and junior high — the popular people who seemed to write something that was totally false. We shouldn’t let the soshes govern us.”

 ==

Sen. Orrin Hatch

UT

"There is also some disagreement among scientists as to whether global warming – regardless of its cause – would result in a net benefit or detriment to life on earth. Scientific studies demonstrate overwhelmingly that humans tend to fare better during warming spells than periods of cooling."[source]

==

redford wilderness debate doc: Hatch? spoke to ATV/TP

=== Orrin Grant Hatch is the Senior Senator for the state of Utah. He is a

• 1.1 Iraq War
• 1.2 Next Attorney General?
• 1.3 Environmental record
• 1.4 DC voting rights
• 2 Bio
• 2.1 Background
• 2.2 Senate Career
  • 2.2.1 Legislation and issues
  • 2.2.2 Flag burning amendment
    • 2.2.2.1 109th Congress: 2005-2006

• • 2.2.3 2006 elections

• 3 Money in politics
• 4 Committees and affiliations
• 4.1 Committees
• 4.2 Boards and other affiliations

• 5 More background data
• 6 Contact
• 7 Articles and resources
• 7.1 References
• 7.2 Resources
• 7.3 Local blogs and discussion sites
• 7.4 Articles
• 7.5 SourceWatch resources

...

Tobacco - According to U.S. Department of Justice Post-Trial Findings of Factin U.S.A. vs. Philip Morris et al, on October 2,1997, Philip Morris Companies sent a letter to Congress in response to a request from a number of senators, for the Philip Morris position on smoking and health issues. On Page 301 of a lengthy deposition given on July 14, 2000 by Ellen Merlo, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs at Philip Morris, the so-called "Hatch Statement" or "Hatch Agreement" (actually titled "Philip Morris' Statement of Position") was an agreement between Philip Morris and the United States Senate that PM would limit its discussion of health issues surrounding nicotine addiction and whether tobacco causes disease. According to DOJ, however, "In this statement, Philip Morris once again disputed addiction and claimed that cigarettes were addictive only under definitional changes that can be used to 'describe many different kinds of behavior.' Philip Morris also stated that it nonetheless agreed to cease all public debate on the issue."(Post-Trial Findings of Fact, PDF Page 1053)

...

Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Swallowing Anything: The Hype Behind Alternative Remedies, PR Watch, Third Quarter, 1997: "Parry & Romani is headed by Thomas Parry, who, like Keven McGuiness, is a former aide to Orrin Hatch. 'The two have a mutually beneficial relationship,' reports Washingtonian magazine. 'Hatch refers Utah companies to Parry, Parry raises money for Hatch, Parry lobbies Hatch, the clients often gain.' ... The company's other principal, Romano Romani, served on the staff of Arizona Congressman Dennis DeConcini until DeConcini's embarrassment in the Charles Keating savings-and-loan scandal prompted him to decline seeking reelection. Now their roles are reversed, with DeConcini working as a lobbyist on the payroll of Parry & Romani. ... The company also conveniently employs Scott Hatch, Orrin's son, who lobbies on behalf of clients such as the National Medical Device Coalition, the Non-Prescription Drug Manufacturers Association, and Herbalife International, a multilevel sales company whose controversial products include diet aids laced with diuretics, laxatives and caffeine. Herbalife products have drawn dozens of citations for safety and regulatory violations in both the United States and Canada."

rww

Hatch Joins Phony "Stop the War on the Poor" Effort

SUBMITTED BY Anonymous on Wednesday, 7/30/2008 3:46 pm

For the past few weeks, we’ve been reporting on the “Stop the War on the Poor” campaign, an effort to label “extreme environmentalists” who oppose increased domestic oil drilling as enemies of the poor.  The campaign counts among its leaders a group called Americans for American Energy, which describes itself as “a non-profit, grassroots-based organization dedicated to educating the public about the importance of greater energy independence for America and promoting public policies that support that goal.” 

As we wrote last week, Americans for American Energy was created by Pac/West Communications, a firm with considerable Republican ties, and shares a location with the consulting firm of Jim Sims, communications director for Vice President Cheney’s energy task force.  In 2007, fresh off helping to defeat attempts “to ban bear baiting in Alaska and impose new taxes on cruise ships,” Pac/West received a $3 million grant from the state of Alaska to “educate” the American public about ANWR drilling, that was later stopped by Gov. Sarah Palin because the PAC/West-Americans for American Energy efforts were “not part of an open and transparent process.”  But that was not the end for Americans for American Energy. 

Although its profile has risen along with the “Stop the War on the Poor” campaign, Americans for American Energy has been engaging in suspicious activities in western states for the last several years.  In Colorado, it released a report claiming $1.2 billion in first-year profits for natural gas drilling on the Roan Plateau, an estimate that critics, such as the Wilderness Society, claimed were based on “junk science”

Credible economic studies need to stand up to independent review, list data sources and methods, and at the very least include the names of economists who authored the report. Unbelievably, this industry-backed study does none of this.

In Wyoming, its leaders falsely claimed that Gov. Dave Freudenthal was a supporter of their “powerful new oil and gas campaign,” leading the governor to write a letter disavowing the group.  In Utah, they launched an email attack on Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) that compared him to Hugo Chavez and Osama Bin Laden:

Last week, over 160,000 Utah residents received an e-mail letter indirectly comparing a New York congressman to some of the most infamous men in the world.

Along with mug shots of Osama bin Laden, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared a photo of Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.).

Hinchey's crime? Sponsoring the Red Rock Wilderness Act, a bill that would set aside 9.4 million acres of public land in Utah as wilderness.

The letter was attributed to Utah state GOP Reps. Aaron Tilton and Mike Noel, but it was the brainchild of Americans for American Energy, a Colorado-based industry group that has accepted money from, among others, the state of Alaska.

The Red Rock Wilderness Act will "WEAKEN America," the letter states. "How? Because it will hamstring our ability to produce American energy right here in Utah. That leads America to become more dependent on energy from hostile foreign nations -- some of whom fund terrorist organizations that are right now targeting our American men and women in uniform."

An online version of the letter and corresponding Web site go further, for instance with a picture of bin Laden, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. "These terror leaders also want America to continue its foreign oil dependence," reads the caption underneath the graphic.

Now, Americans for American Energy has turned from accusing its opponents of being in league with terrorists to accusing them of fighting a “war on the poor,” and this message seems to have resonated with Republicans on Capitol Hill.  A number of rank and file Congressional Republicans showed up on-message at the kick-off press conference, including Rep. Bill Sali of Idaho, co-sponsor of a bill suspiciously entitled the “Americans for American Energy Act,” which “would open ANWR and the OCS to increase production of American crude oil and give the right incentives to boost conservation, improved efficiency and bring alternative energy online sooner.”

But they’ve gained a much higher-profile ally in Senator Orrin Hatch, who mentioned the campaign, quoted one of its leaders, Bishop Harry Jackson, and plugged its website, all on the Senate floor:

Unfortunately for the Democrat party, the poor are beginning to wake up that the liberals they have always looked to are behind the War on the Poor. By War on the Poor, I refer to the movement by the anti-oil extremists to close off every good domestic oil resource, which is a direct cause of the high energy prices Americans face.

Democrats in Congress have been forced to choose between the very well funded extreme anti-oil interests and the poor, because on energy prices there is no compromise between the two. The Democrats have begun to recognize the position they are in, and are trying to have it both ways with today’s vote.

Earlier this month, a group of protesters came to Capitol Hill calling on Congress to Stop the War on the Poor by groups and congressmen who are closing off America's energy resources.

Included in the group were pastors and civil rights leaders calling on this body to unlock America's oil resources for the benefit of Americans, and especially for the benefit of lower income Americans.

One of the Participants was Bishop Harry Jackson. I would like to quote some of his remarks for the record. These are his words:

"I am a registered Democrat, but this has nothing to do with partisan politics. Unless the public understands that there are specific people and organizations that are fueling this war against the poor, nothing will change and the poor will continue to suffer. We will unmask those behind this war regardless of their political party or ideology. Party labels and partisan ideologies are meaningless when it comes to protecting the lives of America's most vulnerable citizens,"

By the way, Mr. President, you can see more about the stop the war on the poor movement on the web at www.stopwaronpoor.org.

Ironically, Niger Innis, co-chair of the Stop the War on the Poor effort, says that U. S. politicians are "being cowered by a very powerful, well-funded environmental extremist lobby that has a great deal of influence over them, and a great deal of influence over policy” and that their primary mission is "’outing’ the extremist groups and the politicians it says are doing their bidding.”

Bold words for a man heading an effort that is itself a phony Astroturf campaign on behalf of energy interests. 

FILED UNDER

ORGANIZATIONS:Americans for American Energy

PEOPLE:Sarah Palin

TOPICS:Civil Rights, Congress, Politics, republicans, Science, senate, Utah, vote, Women

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