CEI 3

7/20

24 tags 4 22

see CEI 2 on massive retaliation AG Walker, Lynch etc

see hornersee horner 4 cei report SAAG BS ~ climate lawsuits

CA CAFE WAIVER EV

ebell

rolodex instaquote

see marlo lewis DAREN FUCKING BAKST

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Exxon busted for funding denial 2006 (by? b/c of ebell dumb move?  Royal Society?]thus cut off money to CEI 2007? shareholders demand/promise  in 2007 supposed to start 2008?

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eg retaliation

how was US doj involved?

Senators Demand DOJ Cease Investigation Into Opponents of President Obama’s Energy Policies

may 26, 2016

202-228-7561 WASHINGTON – U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), and David Vitter (R-La.) today sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, demanding that the Department of Justice (DOJ) end its use of law enforcement resources against political opponents of President Obama’s energy agenda. 

“These actions provide disturbing confirmation that government officials at all levels are threatening to wield the sword of law enforcement to silence debate on climate change,” the letter reads. “As you well know, initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity’s opinions on climate change is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct.”

The letter goes on to demand that Attorney General Lynch confirm that all investigations into any private individual’s views on climate change end within 14 days and promise not to initiate any future such investigations.

“Freedom of thought and inquiry is at the very heart of liberty,” Sen. Cruz said. “Sadly, the Obama administration and its allies in state attorney general offices across the country are threatening to use the power of government to intimidate and ultimately silence companies and researchers who do not agree with the government’s opinions about the allegedly harmful effects of climate change and what should be done about it. This is an abuse of power and a direct assault on the First Amendment. The Obama Justice Department should immediately cease any further consideration of such action and should instead do everything in its power to protect the freedom of thought of all Americans.”

“Threatening prosecution of those who dare to challenge the most outlandish scaremongering by climate activists strikes at the very heart of the Free Speech protections on which this nation was founded,” Sen. Lee said. “Issuing subpoenas to harass researchers and academics with whom they have communicated, as some state attorneys general offices have done, shows a basic disregard for Americans’ Freedom of Association. The public expects us to prevent such abuses, not perpetrate them. It is our responsibility to contain the inevitable chilling effects by calling for an end to any consideration by the Department of Justice of such harassment at once.”

“I have serious concerns any time that the Department of Justice uses its power to repress constitutionally protected speech and open dialogue on any public policy issue,” Sen. Perdue said. “Given the unprecedented politicization of the Obama Justice Department, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight responsibilities have become more important than ever before. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated investigations by the Department of Justice.”

“Unnecessary government intrusion of private citizens’ lives is an unfortunate characteristic of the reign of the Obama Administration,” Sen. Vitter said. “It is contemptible for the Justice Department to target and threaten individual American citizens and private or non-profit organizations in pursuit of its far-left environmental agenda.”

Read the letter in its entirety here.

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EVIL BUT

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[### President Trump's Justice Department & Transportation ...

Department of Justice (.gov)

https://www.justice.gov › opa › president-trumps-justice...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/president-trumps-justice-department-transportation-department-sue-stop-californias-illegal)

Mar 12, 2026 — President Trump's Justice Department & Transportation Department Sue to Stop California's Illegal EV Mandate ... (CAFE) standards.Read more

[### California Mileage Mandate Lawsuit

Department of Justice (.gov)

https://www.justice.gov › opa › media › inline](https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1430886/dl?inline)

PDF

Mar 12, 2026 — The CAFE program was intended to provide a “single standard” for motor-vehicle fuel economy. S. Rep. No. 93-526 at. 59 (1973). “Fuel economy” is ...Read more

[### DOJ files suit to end California's unlawful climate and auto ...

Competitive Enterprise Institute

https://cei.org › Blog Posts](https://cei.org/blog/doj-files-suit-to-end-californias-unlawful-climate-and-auto-power-grab/)

Apr 2, 2026 — Defendant's claim that “EPCA preemption is not among the factors governing” a CAA § 209(b) waiver proceeding is false. CARB seeks waivers so ...Read more

The Trump administration’s rollback of Obama and Biden administration climate policies keeps rolling along. The latest initiative is a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on behalf of the Department of Transportation (DOT) to overturn the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) tailpipe carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission standards and zero emission vehicle (ZEV) sales mandates.

You might ask, “didn’t Congress and President Trump, in June 2025, use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to rescind CARB’s ZEV mandates?” Yes, the worst of the worst is gone, but much regulatory mischief is still on the books.

The June 2025 CRA resolution of disapproval nullified the December 2024 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waiver approving the ZEV mandates in CARB’s Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) program. However, the resolution did not expressly disapprove EPA’s March 2022 waiver for CARB’s ACC I program. ACC I has its own ZEV mandates as well as tailpipe CO₂ standards for combustion engine vehicles.

DOJ’s suit asks California’s Eastern District Court to invalidate those policies as “preempted, unlawful, and unenforceable” under Section 32919(a) of the Energy Policy Conservation Act (EPCA) and Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution.

Although DOJ is suing in a district court, the case could eventually reach the Supreme Court. A DOJ victory would be a devastating blow to CARB’s ambition to act as the nation’s de facto industrial policy czar for climate and cars.

Regulatory background

Section 209(a) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) prohibits states from adopting or enforcing vehicle emission standards. However, under § 209(b), the EPA “shall” waive preemption for California, unless the Administrator finds the state “does not need such … standards to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions.” Under CAA § 177, other states may adopt vehicle emission standards identical to those for which California has received a 209(b) preemption waiver.

In January 2013, the Obama EPA granted a 209(b) waiver for California’s ACC I program. In September 2019, the Trump administration National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and EPA adopted the Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient Vehicles Rule Part One (SAFE I). NHTSA, in its portion of SAFE I, determined that EPCA § 32919(a) preempts state policies regulating or prohibiting tailpipe CO₂ emissions because they are directly or substantially “related to” fuel economy standards. The EPA, in its portion of SAFE I, determined that those EPCA-preempted policies are not needed to meet California’s compelling and extraordinary conditions because in-state vehicular CO₂ emissions have no relevance to the state’s air quality challenges. Accordingly, SAFE I rescinded the 2013 ACC I waiver.

In December 2021, the Biden administration NHTSA withdrew its portion of SAFE I, but without attempting to rebut the rule’s EPCA preemption analysis. NHTSA acknowledged EPCA § 32919(a) preempts state laws or regulations “related to” fuel economy standards but declined to opine on which state policies those might be. Instead, NHTSA determined it had no authority to prescribe regulations clarifying or enforcing EPCA preemption. That cleared the path for the Obama EPA to reinstate the ACC I waiver in March 2022.

ACC II vs ACC I

ACC II expressly requires in-state sales of electric vehicles (EVs) to increase from 35 percent of the new car market in 2026 to 100 percent in 2035. In other words, ACC II effectively bans in-state sales of gas- and diesel-powered cars by 2035.

Source: California Air Resources Board(CARB, May 2025). Battery electric and fuel cell vehicles are ZEVs. Plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) are near-ZEVs. “EV” is my shorthand for all vehicles powered solely or chiefly by electricity.

ACC I is less harmful than ACC II to vehicle affordability, consumer choice, and auto-industry competitiveness. Nonetheless, ACC I imposes significant costs on legacy automakers and pressures them to restrict production of many top-selling models.

In model year 2025 and subsequently, ACC I requires 22 percent of new passenger cars sold in California to be EVs.

Source: Cornell University Law School Legal Information Institute, ACC I minimum ZEV sales as a percent of passenger cars and light-duty trucks.

Notably, ACC I’s 22 percent ZEV sales target continues in perpetuity after 2025, and other states may opt into the ACC I program under CAA § 177.

CARB data indicate that as of May 2022, 16 states plus California had adopted or planned to adopt the ACC I ZEV mandates. At the time, those states accounted for an estimated 35.9 percent of new light-duty vehicle sales. Similarly, 17 states plus California adopted or were planning to adopt the ACC I tailpipe CO₂ standards. Those states accounted for an estimated 40.1 percent of new light duty vehicle sales.

Through their collective market power, ACC I states potentially reduce vehicle affordability and choice nationwide, not just within their own borders.

With all the focus these days on ZEV mandates, it is easy to miss the aggressiveness of the ACC I tailpipe CO₂ standards. Those standards tighten from 195 grams of carbon dioxide per mile (g CO_2/mi) in 2017 to 131 g CO₂/mi in 2025 and later, a 33 percent increase in stringency.

Source: DOJ Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, March 12, 2026, ACC I tailpipe CO2 standards.

For perspective, consider the emissions profile of Toyota’s best-performing model year 2026 Prius hybrid.

Source: www.fueleconomy.gov

Keep in mind tailpipe CO₂ standards are fleet-average requirements, and Toyota also manufactures hybrids and non-hybrids with significantly higher emission profiles. For example, the Corolla Crown AWD hybrid is rated at 214 g CO_2/mi, while the non-hybrid Corolla (1-mode TM) is rated at 248 g CO_2/mi.

Thus, even if Toyota wiped out its entire product line except for its top-performing Prius, the fleet average (155 g CO_2/mi) would still fall short of ACC I tailpipe standards for model years 2022-2025. By model year 2025, the hypothetical all-Prius fleet would fall short by 18 percent.

To comply, Toyota would have to do one or more of the following: restrict sales of combustion engine vehicles, boost sales of EVs, or buy compliance credits from EV companies like Tesla. ACC I both expressly and implicitly rigs auto markets in favor of EVs over combustion engine vehicles.

DOJ’s EPCA preemption lawsuit

In regulatory comments, I have urged NHTSA to propose and adopt a new rule interpreting and enforcing EPCA preemption. I now believe DOJ has a better plan.

Instead of promulgating a new SAFE I rule only to see it overturned by another administration that refuses to debate the rule’s preemption analysis on the merits, the Trump administration is suing CARB for violating EPCA § 32919(a). That ensures the statute’s meaning and application are front and center and ultimately subject to review by the Supreme Court. What’s more, instead of debating whether Congress authorized NHTSA to interpret and enforce EPCA preemption, the Trump administration is leaving enforcement to the branch of government with a clear duty to “say what the law is.”

Key points in DOJ’s brilliant brief may be summarized as follows.

1. EPCA 32919(a) prohibits states from adopting or enforcing laws or regulations “related to” fuel economy standards. California’s tailpipe CO₂ standards are physically and mathematically related to fuel economy standards. An automobile’s CO₂ emissions per mile are directly proportional to its fuel consumption per mile. If an agency regulates tailpipe CO₂ emissions, it also regulates fuel economy, and vice versa.
2. Congress understood that relationship when it enacted the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program. That is why EPCA § 503(d)(1) directs automotive fuel economy to be tested by measuring tailpipe carbon emissions. Carbon dioxide accounts for about 99.9 percent of such emissions by weight in vehicles with catalytic converters.
3. California’s ZEV mandates are substantially “related to” fuel economy standards. As ZEV mandates tighten, EV market share increases, boosting fleet average fuel economy. Conversely, if fuel economy requirements tighten beyond a certain point, compliance requires manufacturers to average in sales of zero and near-zero emission vehicles.
4. EPCA 32902(h) effectively prohibits NHTSA from forcing automakers to use vehicle electrification as a compliance option. No Clean Air Act provision similarly prohibits the EPA or CARB from compelling vehicle electrification, but that is because Congress never authorized those agencies to regulate fuel economy in the first place.
5. Because state policies regulating or prohibiting tailpipe CO₂ emissions are directly or substantially “related to” fuel economy standards, they are expressly preempted.
6. EPCA also impliedly preempts California’s tailpipe CO₂ standards because they interfere with NHTSA’s determination of CAFE standards. EPCA requires NHTSA to weigh and balance four factors when determining CAFE standards: technological feasibility, economic practicability, the effect of other federal vehicle standards on fuel economy, and the nation’s need to conserve energy. Only by sheer improbable accident would CARB strike the same balance as NHTSA. Indeed, CARB is not bound by EPCA’s four factors and gives considerable weight to climate ambition — a factor nowhere mentioned or implied in EPCA.
7. Similarly, EPCA impliedly preempts California’s ZEV program because it conflicts with the CAFE program’s basic structure. The ZEV program is technology-prescriptive, compelling automakers to sell vehicles powered by batteries or fuel cells. CAFE is technology-neutral, allowing automakers to choose the types of fuel-saving strategies to deploy for the types of vehicles they choose to sell.
8. Preemption statutes derive their authority from the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. “It is basic to this constitutional command that all conflicting state provisions be without effect” (Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U.S. 725, 746 (1981)). Preemption occurs ab initio— the moment a conflicting state policy is enacted or adopted, not when a court later declares it so (Cabazon Band of Mission Indians v. City of Indio, 694 F.2d 634 (9th Cir. 1982)).
9. Thus, the Obama and Biden administration Clean Air Act preemption waivers did not legalize ACC I. EPCA preemption is non-waivable, and it voided ACC I’s ZEV mandates and tailpipe CO₂ standards years before the EPA agreed to review them.
10. Defendant’s claim that “EPCA preemption is not among the factors governing” a CAA § 209(b) waiver proceeding is false. CARB seeks waivers so that California and other states may include CARB vehicle emission standards in their National Ambient Air Quality state implementation plans (SIPs). CAA § 110(a)(2)(E) requires each SIP to provide “necessary assurances” that no “portion” of the plan is “prohibited under any provision of federal or state law.” CAA § 110(k)(1)(A) requires the EPA to review plan submissions for compliance with “the provisions of this chapter.” The EPA may not lawfully fail (much less lawfully refuse) to consider whether ACC I is prohibited by EPCA.

I will monitor this case and post updates as it develops.

SAME DAY

Either ignore climate change lunacy or high energy prices will make you wish you had

• By: Ben Lieberman
• 06/11/2026

Congressional Republicans spent four years opposing the Biden administration’s energy policies, asserting that they raised prices from the gas pump to our utility bills. Now…

Energy and Environment

News Release

SEC seeks end to costly climate-related mandates

• Kent Lassman, Marlo Lewis, Jr., Ondray T. Harris, Richard Morrison
• 05/29/2026

The Securities and Exchange Commission today proposed rescinding the costly, Biden-era rules mandating that companies provide climate-related information in registration statements and annual reports. The SEC cited a return to the agency’s core…

Energy and Environment

Blog

Enemy of affordability: The radical climate agenda

• By: Daren Bakst
• 05/21/2026

For decades, some lawmakers and other proponents of radical climate policies have given little consideration to the adverse effects on consumers and the poor. Often,…

Climate

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https://www.businessinsider.com/google-donates-to-climate-change-denying-organizations-2019-10

Google has been funding organizations which deny climate change and actively lobby against climate legislation, the Guardian reports.

• Google has been funding organizations which deny climate change and actively lobby against climate legislation, the Guardian reports.
• Google donates to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization that was reportedly key to President Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord.
• A spokesperson told Business Insider that just because Google donates to these groups, it does not mean the company endorses their "entire agenda."

no lnx

Google has been funding think tanks and lobbying organizations which actively fight against climate change legislation, The Guardian reports.

Google has been a vocal champion of climate change initiatives, and last month following a series of protest walkouts CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company's "biggest renewable energy purchase ever." Google has been trying to offset its carbon footprint by purchasing more renewable energy than it consumes as a company, not solely to power its own data centres and offices but also to boost clean energy development.

Despite making noises about becoming more environmentally friendly, Google has been quietly funding organizations which say climate change isn't real.

As highlighted by The Guardian, Google's list of beneficiaries for "substantial contributions" include numerous organizations which have been active in denying climate change exists and lobbying against legislation to combat it.

One organization funded by Google describes the 'climate delusion'

One of these organizations is the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has referred to climate change as "climate delusion."

The CEI's director Myron Ebell was also reported as being instrumental in Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord in 2017.

For its part the CEI appears to generate positive press coverage for Google. Last month a senior fellow at the CEI published an op-ed in the Atlantic arguing against the antitrust probe launched by 50 state attorneys general into Google.

Another organization named on the list is the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation. Google's involvement with the Heritage Foundation came under heavy fire earlier this year when it announced the appointment of Kay Coles James, the foundation's president, to its AI ethics council which collapsed after a week.

Kay Coles James Donald Trump

Kay Coles James sits next to Donald Trump during a meeting of conservative leaders in January. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The decision sparked a fierce employee backlash because of James' history of anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and climate change-denying rhetoric. Over a thousand employees signed a petition to have James ousted, and the following week Google disbanded the council entirely.

"We're hardly alone among companies that contribute to organizations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy," a Google spokesperson told the Guardian. The company declined to tell The Guardian how much it had donated to these groups.

When contacted by Business Insider, a Google spokesman said:

"We sponsor organisations from across the political spectrum that advocate for strong technology policies. We've been extremely clear that Google's sponsorship doesn't mean that we endorse that organization's entire agenda — we may disagree strongly on some issues. Our position on climate change is similarly clear. Since 2007, we have operated as a carbon neutral company and for the second year in a row, we reached 100% renewable energy for our global operations."

Do you work at Google? Contact this reporter via email at ihamilton@businessinsider.com or iahamilton@protonmail.com. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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west va v epa

7 22 intercept

...Today’s Supreme Court decision marks perhaps the biggest payoff yet for Koch’s decades of plotting against environmental regulations — and the most devastating loss for everyone else. Three of the extremist judges who joined the decision — Gorsuch, Barrett, and Kavanaugh — wound up on the Supreme Court in large part because of Koch’s activism and contributions.

Americans for Prosperity, an astroturf political group founded by Charles Koch and his brother David, conducted extraordinary campaigns to put all three judges on the highest bench. To support Kavanaugh’s nomination, the group reached out to more than 1.2 million Americans through mail, phone calls, and knocking on doors, according to a flyer released by the organization. The group also pushed hard for Barrett, whose father worked for Shell and the American Petroleum Institute, a powerful trade group for the oil and gas industry. And it campaigned for Gorsuch, whose mother presided — disastrously — over the EPA under President Ronald Reagan. Charles Koch is also closely connected to Leonard Leo, co-chair of the Federalist Society, a conservative organization Koch has supported directly and through his family foundation.

The case itself can also be tied directly to Koch. The challengers are27 Republican attorneys general, who were supported by the Koch-funded Republican Attorneys General Association. At least four Koch-funded entities have filed amicus briefs in the case: the Cato Institute, which was co-founded by Charles Koch; the Competitive Enterprise Institute; the New Civil Liberties Alliance; and Americans for Prosperity. Another foundation that filed an amicus brief, the Landmark Legal Foundation, denied receiving Koch funding, though Jane Mayer reports in her book “Dark Money” that Koch helped subsidize it....

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One Year Later AGs United for Clean Power has Fallen Apart

• NEWS RELEASE
• Sam Kazman • 03/29/2017
• CEI LITIGATION

CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman commented on the one year anniversary of “AGs United for Clean Power,” a coalition of Attorneys General lead by New York AG Eric Schneiderman.

“It was one year ago today that NY AG Eric Schneiderman unveiled his coalition of Attorneys General United for Clean Power. While pretending that this was a law enforcement investigation, Schneiderman made clear that he was pushing a policy agenda—‘to defend the climate change progress made under President Obama and to push the next president for even more aggressive action.’

“Since then, Schneiderman’s coalition has fallen apart: most of its members have left, the subpoenas served on us and Exxon by Virgin Islands AG Claude Walker were quickly withdrawn, and the climate science debate that this gang tried to shut down is more energetic than ever. Ironically, nowhere is that better demonstrated than by yesterday’s environmental executive order from the president.”

See more about CEI’s legal victory against Attorney General Schneiderman here.

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https://www.desmog.com/2008/03/04/cei-letter-outlines-tv-ad-attack-campaign/

kevin g

Below is a fundraising letter one of our loyal readers sent along, penned by Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

It’s quite the vitriolic and desperate pitch for money – something the CEI is no doubt in need of after their fall from grace with oil giant ExxonMobil. This vast government, media, science conspiracy theory stuck in Smith’s head isn’t going to save any shred of credibility he and his organization might have left.

And it won’t endear him with media, who he describes in the letter as being “remarkably gullible.”

The letter also outlines the CEI‘s plans to run a national TV campaign to expose the “… hypocrisy and distortions of global warming mania.”

Wow, a national TV campaign by CEI!? Hopefully it goes as well as their last one.

[[https://www.desmog.com/2006/08/08/kimmel-spoof-makes-ceis-laughable-ads-hilarious/

This clip was posted on a while ago. It is piece done by late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in response to the notorious “C02, we call it life ads” produced by the oil money laden Competitive Enterprise Institute. These ads were so laughable to begin with, I didn’t think anyone could make them funnier, but Jimmy sure does. While it is enjoyable to poke fun at such blatant PR spin, there is the very serious fact that these ads were played heavily in 10 states across the US and probably did exactly what they intended to do; that is confuse the public even more on the issue of climate change.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Jimmy+Kimmel+climate+scientist

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http://web.archive.org/web/20060809071438/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMTKa-zoxOQ

orig req login? https://drupal.desmogblog.com/industry-memo-claims-controversial-ad-campaign-financed-by-gm-and-ford

]]

Here’s the intro:

… about Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”?

… about how we’re supposedly killing the planet?

… about how we Americans must drastically cut back our standard of living to avert an alleged catastrophe?

Here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, we’re the leading group in the country telling the “real” truth about global warming.

And the hard-left environmentalists don’t like it one bit. That’s because their agenda is not based on science but on ideology – an ideology that opposes human technology and progress.

An ideology that is anti-growth, anti-capitalist, and anti-American.

Unfortunately, the global warming movement has become incredibly powerful. It has convinced many Americans that global warming is a catastrophe in the making.

More dangerously, they have recruited powerful allies in a remarkably gullible news media, which have dropped all pretense of balance and instead are committed advocates for the global warming agenda.

Have you noticed, for example, how every heat wave results in more media hysteria, while record cold waves are brushed aside as irrelevant?

And remember the dire predictions that the record 2005 hurricane season was a trend that would continue because it was fueled by global warming?  Remember how it was followed by an embarrassed media in 2006, when not a single hurricane hit the U.S.?

But the radical environmentalists won’t be deterred.

On the contrary, aided by Hollywood elites, pop culture icons and political opportunists like Al Gore, the global warming movement is on the brink of turning its agenda of fear into actual public policy that will do enormous harm to our prosperity and to our freedom.

That’s why I need your help today.

As President and Founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market public policy group established in 1984. Mr. Smith is also a frequent guest on national television including such shows as CNN‘s “Crossfire,” PBS‘s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” and “Now with Bill Moyers,” ABC‘s “20/20” and “This Week,” NPR‘s “Talk of the Nation” and “The Diane Rehm Show,” and “The G. Gordon Liddy Show,” among many others.

A prolific writer, Mr. Smith’s works have been published in leading newspapers and magazines such as the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Economic Affairs, and the Washington Times.

Letter from Smith:

My name is Fred Smith. I am founder and president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

My colleagues and I are doing everything we can to fight the reckless politics of the global warming movement. And to speak out about the dangers that their radical agenda poses to you, to me and to every single American.

For years now, pro-free market, pro-limited government individuals and organizations have warned of the growing threat posed by unfounded global warming hysteria.

But, as I’m sure you agree, they’ve been unable to actually stop the radical green political juggernaut we see today. That juggernaut that is now a dominant force in American politics thanks to the results of last year’s elections.

That is, until now.

At the Competitive Enterprise Institute we’re ready to do more than just TALK about the hypocrisy and distortions of global warming mania; we’re ready to DO SOMETHING about it.

That’s why we are launching a national TV ad campaign to expose Al Gore and the global warming alarmists. We have produced two hard-hitting 60-second television ads that we have already aired on a limited basis.

TV ads can be expensive, but it’s the best way to reach millions of Americans.

And remember, these ads are only the first step in a massive new public education campaign to stand up to the wild hysteria of the global warming fanatics

These ads are important because they represent a truly new strategy in combating the junk science, scare tactics and blatant propaganda of today’s radical green movement.

That strategy is to take our case directly to the people. These first two ads remind people of how biased the media are in presenting the alleged science behind global warming alarmism, and of how reducing CO2 emissions can’t be achieved without a massive loss of individual freedom and drastic reductions in the living standards of ordinary Americans;

These ads – and the new ones we hope to produce and air soon with your help –are not aimed at scholars and “policy wonks,” but at ordinary Americans.

You Can Help Us Show These Ads by Going Here Now

Let me tell you a bit about CEI.  We are not a traditional “think tank.” Our work does not stop with groundbreaking research. We realize it is not enough to simply identify the flaws in the arguments of those who think massive government is the solution to every problem.  Instead, we have to actively reach out – not just to other scholars and to policy makers – but to the public and the media to ensure that our ideas are heard.

This approach has made us one of the nation’s most effective and powerful forces for economic freedom, and against global warming alarmism.

We’ve been called “the best environmental think tank in the country” by The Wall Street Journal.

The Weather Channel named CEI as one of the ten most influential participants in the global warming debate in 2006. No other non-profit group made the list. Not one of the big environmental groups, with annual budgets twenty or fifty times CEI’s, was named to the list. Not the Sierra Club. Not Greenpeace. Not the Natural Resources Defense Council.  Only CEI.

Two liberal U.S. Senators were so upset with our efforts that they wrote a letter which threatened one of our corporate supporters unless they cut off our funding. These two senators even mentioned CEI by name in this outrageous attempt to stifle free speech.

That just tells me we are effective.

CEI has done a tremendous amount of research on global warming alarmism. I invite you to explore our website (www.cei.org) and review the many papers we have published that challenge the so-called “proven” science behind global warming.

But research alone isn’t enough to win this fight.

That’s why we need your help today – Go Here Now

The truth is most of the papers we publish – while enormously influential in policy circles – will never be seen by the general public. And thanks to a biased news media, they will go largely unreported.

This means that we have to go beyond the usual arenas of academic debates, and reach out directly to the public.

The messages contained in our hard-hitting TV ads are the first step in our plan to do this.

IF we can raise the funds we need from concerned Americans like you, we can take those messages to a far wider audience.

I admit that this will be one tough fight.  Our adversaries have been masterful at manipulating public opinion.

Because of films like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Hollywood thriller, “The Day After Tomorrow,” and countless unquestioning TV news reports and newspaper articles, more than 8 out of 10 Americans now believe that human-induced global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions threatens our planet.

Thanks especially to Al Gore and his movie, which has been called one of the “slickest science propaganda films of all time,” ordinary people are now haunted by visions of droughts, floods, disease, famine, mass extinctions, ferocious storms and catastrophic rises in sea level.

But in reality Gore’s movie is more science fiction than science.  Most of his claims are not even backed by the scientists that he claims support him.  (I urge you to read our point-by-point rebuttal of Al Gore; just look for Al Gore’s Science Fiction at www.cei.org.)

In fact, a growing body of evidence demonstrates how little basis there is for claims that we face a global warming catastrophe:

Yes, there has been a slight warming trend (about 1 degree Fahrenheit) in the 20th century.  This was to be expected, since the Earth was still recovering, after all, from a multi-century cold spell known as the Little Ice Age.

But it’s highly uncertain that CO2 had much to do with that slight warming.  From 1940 to 1975, the global temperature fell even as CO2 emissions rose. Since 2001, global temperatures have only gone up a statistically insignificant .03 degrees Celsius.

And as for whether mankind played a role in that slight warming, two new scholarly books have just been published throwing new doubt on this claim.

[]

In “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years,” scientists Fred Singer and Dennis Avery present evidence of 600 global warming and cooling periods in the last million years.

In “The Chilling Stars,” Professor Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder discuss how cosmic rays amplify small changes in the sun’s brightness, creating 1- to 2-degree increases in temperatures on earth.

Global warming alarmists would have you believe that, until now, the Earth has always had a stable climate.  But in fact, over the millennia, the earth has warmed and cooled repeatedly.  The reasons for this are unclear, but they were certainly unrelated to human activity.  Yet Al Gore and the other alarmists want us to ignore this.

We won’t. Help us expose Al Gore – Go Here Now

In fact, the green lobby pretends that there is an absolute “scientific consensus” on a coming climate disaster, and they want to shut down the debate altogether.  In Mr. Gore’s words, “the debate in the scientific community is over.”

Those scientists and analysts who disagree are under increasing professional and personal attack.

For example, Heidi Cullen, an “expert” for the Weather Channel, declared that meteorologists who disagree with her about global warming should not be certified to report the weather on television.

More outrageously, liberal newspaper columnist Ellen Goodman wrote, “We’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.”

But if global warming alarmists are so certain of their position, then why do they react so harshly when anyone challenges their views?

I believe the answer is that they’re not all that certain at all.  They know full well that many of their claims can’t withstand critical review.

And they know that once their pretense of a consensus starts falling apart, their radical political agenda will collapse as well!

In short, we can win this debate.

And, in fact, we must win it.

Too much is at stake for our children’s future, our nation’s prosperity, our way of life, our freedom, to do anything less than our utmost on this issue.

We need to take the battle of global warming hysteria to the next level.

And I must ask for your most generous financial support to make this happen.

We need to run our new series of hard hitting ads, not in just a few cities, but in every media market in the United States. And we need to air them often enough and continuously enough to change public opinion.

Our initial budget for this massive undertaking is $6.5 million dollars. This budget allows us to create and air a series of ads challenging the false claims of the global warming crowd with indisputable scientific evidence.

I am convinced these ads will get results.

Our goals with this campaign are clearly ambitious. Nothing on this scale has ever been tried before. $6.5 million is a lot of money.

But it is really a very small amount when you consider the potential danger our economy faces from ill-advised, politically-motivated global warming legislation. Some have estimated that the cost to enact panic legislation to curb carbon emissions will be in the TRILLIONS of dollars.

If the alarmists get their way you could end up paying twice as much as you do now for gasoline or electricity.  Great Britain is considering limiting the number of personal plane trips that a “regular” person can take to one a year.

I believe we can succeed in turning this debate around. But we are absolutely dependant on the generous financial support of Americans like you.

You can make a difference today – Go Here Now

Will you become a Friend of the Competitive Enterprise Institute by sending a tax-deductible donation of $1,000 or more today?

Your $1,000 donation can pay to run as many as 20 – or perhaps more – of our ads on television stations and cable channels around the country.

While I hope you will consider a gift at that level, please know your donation today of $100, $250 or $500 is also most welcome and urgently needed.

Rest assured, at whatever donation level you feel comfortable, your tax-deductible contribution will be much appreciated and put to immediate good use in our campaign against global warming alarmism … and for affordable energy and economic freedom around the world.

I have enclosed a donor information page detailing the benefits of giving to CEI at a number of levels.

Remember, no one does what we do. No other public policy group is duplicating the work we are doing to counter the global warming fanatics. And if we don’t succeed now in changing public opinion, we will lose this debate and America will be changed forever.

For 20 years CEI has been at the forefront of the struggle for liberty. And despite modest resources, we’ve succeeded time and time again! But we cannot succeed alone.

Time is short. Ill advised, global warming legislation is being introduced and debated right now. We have very little time to get the truth out about global warming.

Please make your most generous possible contribution

to CEI without delay – Go Here Now.

Sincerely,

Fred L. Smith, Jr.

President and Founder

P.S. Please, do not put this letter aside thinking one person can’t make a difference. Your $100, $250, $500 or hopefully $1,000 or more, tax-deductible contribution to CEI today can truly have an impact on public opinion. As a thoughtful and concerned American, your personal commitment to our crusade to tell the truth about global warming is important to our success.

Take a minute to help us fight back – Go Here

---

YIKES CRIKEY ITS CRC:

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/heritage-foundation

...

lassman?

PRESIDENT

Kay C. James became president of the Heritage Foundation in 2018. She had been a trustee on the Heritage board of directors since 2005. [125] In March 2021, she announced her intention to step down upon the appointment of a successor. [126]

Four American presidents have appointed her to numerous executive branch management and advisory positions. She was a senior advisor for the transition team of President Donald Trump, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for President George W. Bush, the associate director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy in the George H.W. Bush administration, assistant secretary for public affairs at the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George H.W. Bush administration, sat on the board of the National Commission on Children during the Reagan administration. [127]

Outside of her work for presidents, James has frequently held professional, advisory, and volunteer positions relating to education and poverty mitigation. She was raised by a single mother, spent her early childhood living in the housing projects of Richmond, Virginia, and became one of the first children to desegregate Virginia’s then-all-white schools. [128]

She has held positions on the Fairfax County, Virginia School Board; the Virginia Commonwealth University board of visitors; and the Virginia State Board of Education. James is a former secretary of health and human resources for the state of Virginia, and the founder of the Gloucester Institute, a mentoring organization for college-age African Americans. [129]

James has held corporate board positions at PNC Financial Services Group, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Phycor, Magellan Health Services, and Amerigroup Corporation. She is also a former senior vice president of the Family Research Council, and a former director of public affairs at the National Right to Life Committee. [130]

She received an undergraduate degree from Hampton University, one of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities. [131]

BOARD

As of 2021, Heritage was governed by a 21-member board, which included the president, Kay C. James. Some additional members of the 2021 board are listed below:[132]

Barb Van Andel-Gaby is the board chair. As of 2021, she was also the co-trustee (along with Richard Gaby) of the eponymous Richard & Barbara Gaby Foundation and a board member of Alticor (the parent company of Amway). She is a former vice-president of the Amway Hotel Corporation, and the daughter of the late Jay Van Andel, co-founder of Amway. She became a Heritage board member in 1996. [133] [134] [135]

Michael W. Gleba is the board vice-chair. As of 2021, Gleba was the CEO/chairman of the Sarah Scaife Foundation and had held board or advisory positions with several additional center-right policy organizations. He joined the Heritage board in 2016. [136]

Trustee Edwin Feulner was the founder of the Heritage Foundation and its president from 1977 until 2013. He reprised this role as interim president in 2017, prior to the hiring of James. [137]

Thomas Saunders III is another trustee and the former board chair. Saunders was the chair of the Heritage board for a decade, until 2018. He is an investment fund manager and the founder of two firms in this field. [138]

Edwin Meese III is another trustee. Meese served as U.S. Attorney General during the Reagan administration and a close political advisor, employee, and friend of the former president for all of Ronald Reagan’s political career.  Meese took on the first of his formal roles with Heritage in 1988, the final year of the Reagan presidency. He became the founding chair of its Center for Legal and Judicial Studies in 2001 and held the post until what he referred to as “semi-retirement” in 2013. He became a Heritage board member in 2017. [139]

Trustee Steve Forbes is a former Republican presidential candidate, journalist, business executive, and frequent cable television news commentator. He is the president and CEO of Forbes, Inc., the publisher of Forbesmagazine and parent of other eponymously named media properties. He joined the Heritage board in 2001. [140]

William Middendorf II is a former Secretary of the Navy, has held three different posts as a foreign ambassador for the United States, and advises federal politicians on foreign affairs, trade and defense policy. He became a Heritage trustee in 1989. [141]

Rebekah Mercer is a private business owner, the director of the Mercer Family Foundation, and a board member for several additional center-right organizations. She is the daughter of computer scientist and hedge fund manager Robert Mercer. [142]

Abby Spencer Moffat is the CEO of the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation and a board member for other policy organizations. [143]

Staff

As of March 2021, the staffing page of the Heritage website listed at least 250 individuals. Notable staff included:[144]

Tommy Binion was listed as vice president for government relations. [145]

Robert Bluey was listed as vice president for communications and the executive editor for the Daily Signal, Heritage’s daily news outlet. [146]

James Carafano was listed on the Heritage website as the “vice president of Heritage’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and the E. W. Richardson Fellow.” [147]

Ken:{Cuccinelli was the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration and is a former attorney general of Virginia. He joined Heritage in 2021 as a visiting fellow for national security and foreign policy issues. [148]}:

Becky Norton Dunlop was the vice president for external relations at Heritage from 1998 until 2016, and a member of the Trump administration transition team. As of 2021 the Heritage website described her as “special projects” and traveling as “an ambassador” for Heritage as the “Heritage Foundation’s Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow.” [149]

Mike Gonzalez was listed on the Heritage website as the “senior fellow in Heritage’s Allison Center for Foreign Policy and the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum fellow.” [150]

Kim Holmes was listed as executive vice president of the Heritage Foundation and is a former assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs during the George W. Bush administration. [151]Holmes announced his resignation alongside Heritage president Kay C. James in March 2021. [152]

John Malcolm was listed as a senior legal fellow and director of Heritage’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. [153]

Mike:{Pence began his role as a visiting fellow at Heritage in 2021, after four years as the vice president of the United States. He is also a former governor of Indiana and former U.S. Representative. [154]}:

Jack Spencer was listed as the vice president for Heritage’s Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity. [155]

Hans A. von Spakovsky was listed as a senior legal fellow and the manager of Heritage’s election law reform initiative. [156]

Genevieve Wood was listed as a senior advisor and spokesperson. [157]

Bridgett Wagner was listed as the vice president for policy promotion. [158]

....

Finances

In its 2019 annual report Heritage claimed to have more than 500,000 individual donors to either the Heritage Foundation or Heritage Action. [159] Additional information regarding its financing is available from federal tax forms submitted by the Heritage Foundation and many of its foundation donors.

2018 FINANCES

For tax year 2018 the Heritage Foundation reported more than $81 million in revenue. For tax years 2012 through 2018, cumulative total revenue was approximately $633 million, for an average of $90.4 million per year. Heritage reported $79.9 million in total expenses for 2018, with salaries ($37.9 million) the largest line item. Heritage reported $250.6 million in net assets at the end of 2018, for liquidity equivalent to 300 percent of expenses at the 2018 level. [160] [161]

Contributions and grants accounted for $75.6 million of Heritage’s $81 million total revenue for 2018. Investment income ($4.4 million) was the second-largest source of 2018 revenue. [162]

PRIVATE FOUNDATION SUPPORT

According to the recordkeeping service Foundation Search, approximately $5.4 million of the $75.6 million in contributions and grants in 2018 were provided by 292 private foundation sources, with 280 of these donors providing grants of less than $100,000. [163] [164]

More than $1.5 million of the $5.4 million in private foundation donations for Heritage in 2018 was provided by three donor-advised fund providers: the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, the Schwab Charitable Fund, and the Chicago Community Trust. [165]

A donor-advised fund manages charitable accounts through which donors can distribute gifts to charities of their choice while receiving immediate tax benefits. Many of the largest, such as those noted above, exist to serve the clients of large investment firms or residents of a metropolitan area, rather than a particular charitable cause or ideological agenda.

Outside of the large donor-advised funds, the three largest of Heritage’s institutional foundation donors in 2018 were as follows:[166]

• Lillian S. Wells Foundation ($1 million). In 2018 this foundation also gave six figure donations to two other right-of-center organizations: the James Madison Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. [167]
• Charles G.**Koch Charitable Foundation ($200,000). In 2018 this foundation also gave donations in excess of $100,000 to libertarian and right of center organizations such as the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the Daily Caller News Foundation; and to centrist-left organizations such as the Vera Institute of Justice, the Brookings Institution and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. More than half of Koch’s 2018 grants (at least $64 million) were given to programs affiliated with approximately 100 public and private universities. [168]

• Henry E. Haller Jr. Foundation ($200,000). In 2018 this foundation also gave five figure donations to other right-of-center organizations, such as the Federalist Society and the Media Research Center. [169]

For donation years 1998 through 2018, Foundation Search reports Heritage receiving a cumulative total of more than 4,300 separate foundation grants totaling in excess of $274 million, for an average of $13 million per year.

The ten largest foundation contributors during the 21-year period were as follows: the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund ($16.8 million over 21 years), the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($13.7 million), the DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative ($13.3 million), the Herrick Foundation ($12.6 million), the National Christian Charitable Foundation ($11.4 million), the Howard Charitable Foundation ($10.4 million), the Noble Research Institute ($9.2 million), the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation ($9 million), the Lillian S. Wells Foundation ($8 million), and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation ($7.9 million). [170]

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/10/25/exxon-faces-consequences-climate-denial

ExxonMobil, the $78 billion fossil fuel giant, has been lying to its shareholders about the threats of climate change, according to New York Attorney General, Barbara Underwood, following a multi-year investigation.

The New York state lawsuit, filed Wednesday, accuses Exxon of a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” to mislead investors on “the company’s management of the risks posed to its business by climate change regulation,” according to The New York Times. Citing messaging to the public that was inconsistent with internal practices, Underwood brought the lawsuit under the Martin Act, which empowers her to investigate and prosecute securities fraud.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported on Exxon’s illegal and unethical efforts to undermine climate science and hide the global impact of its operations for years.

In 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause complained to the IRS that Exxon was running an illegal scheme to use the American Legislative Exchange Commission (ALEC) to promote its climate denial policies and legislative agenda “in gross violation of ALEC’s 501(c)(3) charitable status.”

The Industry Plan to Sow Doubt over Climate Science

Evidence presented in the joint CMD/Common Cause IRS filing showed that Exxon had pumped more that $1.7 million into ALEC between 1998 and 2014 to finance lobbying activities that cast doubt on climate science and promoted public policies benefiting the corporation.

The Exxon/ALEC scheme arose from a 1998 “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” authored by the American Petroleum Institute (API). The stated mission of the API plan was to “inform the American public that science does not support the precipitous actions Kyoto [International Climate Treaty] would dictate, thereby providing a climate for theright policy decisions to be made.” [emphasis added]

Exxon was listed as a source of funding for the plan, while ALEC was listed as a “potential fund allocator.” Public records show that Exxon’s funding of ALEC subsequently increased.

Exxon’s more recent efforts to rehabilitate its public image around climate change led the oil giant to split with ALEC in July 2018, reportedly over ALEC’s opposition to the EPA’s findings on greenhouse gases.

Collusion Between Republican AGs and Industry Lobbyists

In 2016, CMD exposed secret, closed-door meetings between state attorneys general and fossil fuel interests to coordinate push-back against New York’s investigation of Exxon. [ ~LA JOLLA SUMMIT?]

CMD published an audio recording of a meeting where representatives of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) — organizations historically funded in part by Exxon — discussed strategies with Republican attorneys general.

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) facilitated the private sessions, a premium service that the pay-to-play organization provides to corporations that pay RAGA up to $125,000 per year.

“These documents reveal a serious conflict of interest: RAGA is facilitating secret meetings between the profit-motivated fossil fuel industry and attorneys general to engineer pushback on investigations of ExxonMobil — and then raising money from oil and gas companies to keep those same Republican attorneys general in office,” saidNick Surgey, CMD’s Research Directorat the time.

History of Misinformation Campaigns

Numerous investigations have shown that Exxon was fully aware of the risks of climate change from burning fossil fuels as early as the 1970s, despite funding multiple groups like ALEC that denied climate science and humans’ contribution to climate change.

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https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/heritage-foundation/#sheldon-whitehouse-enemies-list

:{:{}:

}:

Sheldon Whitehouse Enemies List

During July 2016, Heritage was one of 32 free-market policy organizations that were denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by 19 Democratic senators. Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the campaign was aimed at passage of a Congressional resolution that would have called on the non-profit groups to cooperate with “active or future investigations” of their climate-policy positions that might be launched against them by federal or state law enforcement officials. Whitehouse accused Heritage and the other organizations of work that was creating a “filthy thing in our democracy.” [192] [193]

Whitehouse’s proposed resolution was adding onto the work he had begun in a May 2015 opinion piece in the Washington Post, wherein he advocated for a federal lawsuit against the energy industry using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Originally designed for and used in criminal cases to prosecute the mafia, RICO has a civil-lawsuit component that has since been applied to corporate targets such as cigarette manufacturers. Whitehouse admitted in the opinion piece that he did not “have enough information” to know whether “racketeering activity” had occurred with the energy industry but speculated the civil discovery in a RICO lawsuit might uncover the evidence he was seeking. In March 2016, then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced she had referred Whitehouse’s RICO concern to the FBI. [194] [195]

During the early summer of2016, the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands sent a subpoena to the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI),demanding private internal research records, communications, and donor information. Two weeks later, Whitehouse and the 18 Democratic senators launched their program demanding that Heritage and other free-market organizations fully cooperate with investigations of this type. [196]

The CEI president responded, saying Whitehouse had become the “new Sen. Joe McCarthy,” and that it “is unhealthy for democracy and abusive when members of Congress create an enemies list based on policy positions.” [197] And a joint letter sent to all of the Democratic Senators from Heritage and 22 free-market think tanks stated: “Your threat is clear: There is a heavy and inconvenient cost to disagreeing with you. Calls for debate will be met with political retribution. That’s called tyranny. And, we reject it.

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As of July 2016, the executive director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute was Gregory Conko.[13]

According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute's website, the following individuals were members of the organization's board of directors, as of July 2016:[14]

• W. Thomas Haynes, Chairman
• Lawson Bader, Past president
• James R. Curley
• Michael W. Gleba
• Michael S. Greve
• Jean-Claude Gruffat
• Kerry Halferty Hardy
• Fred L. Smith, Jr., Founder
• James R. Von Ehr
• Bill Dunn, Member emeritus

-

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9/20

https://cei.org/cei-board-directors

kristina Crane

Crane is Operations Manager for theAtlas Network. She began her career at the Cato Institute as assistant to the president and was responsible for coordinating the Institute’s move from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. She also managed the design and build for Cato's current building. Crane previously spent five years as a manager for the Unisys Corporation, supervising tradeshows, corporate and customer meetings, advertising and publications. She holds a degree in education from the University of Alabama and studied business administration at the University of West Florida.

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Bill Dunn Dunn served on CEI’s Board of Directors for 15 years and currently holds the position of member emeritus. He is the founder andchairman of DUNN Capital Management, Inc., in Stuart, Florida, and a pioneer in the application of computer technology to portfolio management. Founded in 1974, DUNN Capital Management is one of the most prominent and successful managers of futures-based portfolios today. In addition to running his asset management business, Dunn is actively involved in overseeing the research and development of new quantitative-trading models.

Prior to founding his own company, Dunn was employed by several contract research organizations in Washington, where he conducted operations research and systems analysis for the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Department of Defense. He held research and faculty positions with the University of California and Pomona College in 1965 and 1966. Dunn received a B.S. in Engineering Physics from the University of Kansas, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Theoretical Physics from Northwestern University.

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Michael W. GlebaGleba is Chairman and CEO of the Sarah Scaife Foundation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Prior to joining the foundation, he practiced corporate law, first with Kirkpatrick & Lockhart LLP in Pittsburgh and then with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP in Pittsburgh and Jakarta, Indonesia. Gleba received his J.D. cum laude and M.B.A. with high honors from Duquesne University and his B.S. in Industrial Management with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University.

Gleba is Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Heritage Foundation (Washington, DC); a member of the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; a member of the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies (Washington, DC); a member of the Board of Trustees of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Wilmington, DE); a member of the Board of Directors of the American Foreign Policy Council (Washington, DC); and a member of the Council of Advisors of Saint Vincent College’s Alex G. McKenna School of Business, Economics, and Government (Latrobe, PA).

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Michael S. GreveGreve is a professor at George Mason University School of Law and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Prior to his position at George Mason University, Professor Greve was the John G. Searle Scholar at AEI. He has taught at a number of universities, including Cornell and Johns Hopkins, and has been a visiting professor at Boston College since 2004. Greve was a co-founder of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm, which he directed from 1989 to 2000. He has written widely on constitutional and administrative law, federalism, environmental policy, and civil rights. His publications include numerous law review articles and books, including most recently, The Upside-Down Constitution (Harvard University Press, 2012). Greve holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Government from Cornell University, and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Hamburg. He is a frequent contributor to the Liberty Law Blog.

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Jean-Claude GruffatGruffat is Managing Director of Weild & Co. in New York. Previously, he was a Managing Director with Galileo Global Advisors and Citigroup, both also in New York. Gruffat is a Governor of the American Hospital of Paris, a Director of the American Hospital of Paris Foundation, and a Founder of Institut des Libertes. He was recently nominated for a second three year term effective May 2017 to the Board of Trustees of United Way Worldwide headquartered in Alexandria, VA.

Gruffat is a member of the Economic Club of New York, the Union League Club, the Hong Kong Club, and Cercle de l’Union Interalliee. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Law and a Master in Political Science from the University of Lyon, France. He attended the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business in 1987.

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Kerry Halferty HardyHalferty Hardy has extensive experience in both the healthcare and the nonprofit sectors, particularly in strategic planning and development. Currently a principal and consultant at Alcuin Advisors LLC, she was previously the Chief Development Officer at the American Hospital of Paris, Director of Development at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) at the Johns Hopkins University, worked in the startup phase as the managing director of Altermind, a strategic consulting company with a classical liberal orientation, and also worked at the Cato Institute and the Texas Legislature.

Kerry also currently serves on the board of the Institute for Economic Studies Europe (IESE), Institut de Formation Politique (IFP), and is active in the Comité Paris-Chicago. Faithful to her Lone Star roots, she is also a member of the Texas State Society and a Texas-Ex. She is often invited to speak on topics related to healthcare, the free market, and the nonprofit sector, and is an annual speaker at the Free Market Road Show and the European Resource Bank. Kerry also lectures in the Business and M.B.A. program at INSEEC and was previously a guest lecturer at the Université Paris-Dauphine.

Kerry received her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin and obtained her M.S. in Management, with an emphasis on Nonprofit and Association Management, from the University of Maryland University College. She speaks French, German, and Spanish, as well as Texan.

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Laura Holmes JostJost is Vice President of Chandler Management Corporation, a multifamily real estate company which has bought and managed more than 6,000 apartment units in 23 complexes in Virginia, Florida, and Texas. She is a lifelong advocate of economic freedom, personal liberty, individual rights, and limited government. She has held leadership positions in countless political campaigns and civic organizations including serving as a founding member of the Human Rights Commission in Arlington County, Virginia.

Jost received a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Affairs from George Washington University in 1984 and a Master of Business Administration from George Washington University in 1987.

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Kent LassmanLassman is president and CEO of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where he oversees strategy for the free market organization, including management of a team of policy, communications, and fundraising staff. Prior to joining CEI, Lassman spent eight years as vice president at a public affairs firm in Washington, counseling clients on campaign approaches to issues ranging from telecommunications to privacy to biotechnology and state licensure. 

From 2003 to 2008, he served on the President’s Advisory Council for the State Policy Network.From 2001 to 2006, he served as an advisor to the Task Force on Telecommunications & Information Technology at theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council. His past experience includes a variety of policy work both inside and outside Washington, including testimony before Congress, state legislatures, and in regulatory proceedings.

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Geoffrey PohankaPohanka is president of Pohanka Automotive Group in Capitol Heights, MD. He started in the automotive business in 1973, working summers in his father's dealership. He is a third-generation dealer. The company was originally founded by his grandfather in 1919 selling and servicing Chevrolets. Today, the Pohanka Automotive Group sells ten makes of vehicles at their locations in Maryland and Virginia. Pohanka serves on the board of directors of the National Automobile Dealers Association, representing the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area franchised new-car dealers. He previously served on the NADA board from 2001 to 2009.

---

Fred L. Smith, Jr.Smith founded the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 1984 and is Chairman Emeritus. He combines intellectual and strategic analysis of complex policy issues ranging from the environment to corporate governance and leads CEI's Center for Advancing Capitalism. Smith is a frequent guest on national television and radio programs to discuss regulatory initiatives and policy issues. A prolific writer, Smith’s work has been published in leading newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Economic Affairs, and TheWashington Times. His academic articles have appeared in journals such as Harvard Journal of Law and Economics, CATO Journal, and Economic Affairs, and he is a contributing editor to Liberty magazine.

Before founding CEI, Mr. Smith served as Director of Government Relations for the Council for a Competitive Economy, as a Senior Economist for the Association of American Railroads, andfive years as a Senior Policy Analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency. Currently, he sits on the board of the Institute Turgot in Belgium.

---

Ike SuggSugg was an early member of the CEI senior staff serving in fundraising and policy roles. He worked with CEI throughout the 1990s until 1998. During that time, he fell in love with the ideas and mission of – and people at – CEI. In 1998, he returned to his home state of Texas, where he assumed the role of Executive Director for theExotic Wildlife Association.Since leaving the EWA, he has practiced what he preached about free market environmentalism by managing family ranches in West Texas.

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Richard TrenTren is a program officer for the Searle Freedom Trust, a grant making foundation that supports research and policy proposals that will lead to a more just, free, and prosperous society. Prior to working at Searle, he managed Africa Fighting Malaria, a non-profit he co-founded, dedicated to promoting policies to improve malaria control around the world, and in particular, to defending the use of public health insecticides.As part of his work he authored scholarly studies for numerous think tanks and academic journals.

Tren was born and grew up in South Africaand was educated at St. Andrews University and University College London in the United Kingdom. He moved to the United States in 2006 and became a U.S. citizen in 2014.

---

Todd J. ZywickiZywicki is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, Senior Scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and Senior Fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. 

In 2009, Professor Zywicki was honored as the recipient of the Institute for Humane Studies2009 Charles G. Koch Outstanding IHS Alum Award. Since 2006 he has served as Co-Editor of the Supreme Court Economic Review. From 2003–04, Professor Zywicki served as the Director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission. He teaches in the area of Bankruptcy, Contracts, Commercial Law, Business Associations, Law & Economics, and Public Choice and the Law. He has also taught at Vanderbilt University Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Boston College Law School, and Mississippi College School of Law.

---

update

https://cei.org/content/cei-comments-epas-proposed-review-national-ambient-air-quality-standards-particulate-matter

CEI Comments on EPA's Proposed Review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter

Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2015-0072

Marlo Lewis, Jr. • June 29, 2020

View Full Document as PDF

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on EPA’s review of the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for particulate matter (PM).[[1]](https://cei.org/content/cei-comments-epas-proposed-review-national-ambient-air-quality-standards-particulate-matter#_ftn1)

EPA proposes to retain the existing PM standards without revision. EPA’s proposal is consistent with the advice of the agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) on the primary 24-hour PM2.5 standard, the primary PM10 standard, and the secondary standards.However, not all CASAC members agree with EPA’s proposal to retain the annual primary PM2.5 standard. That proposal, moreover, is strongly opposed by many blue state politicians, progressive punditry, and, for want of a better term, the Regulatory Industrial Complex.[[2]](https://cei.org/content/cei-comments-epas-proposed-review-national-ambient-air-quality-standards-particulate-matter#_ftn2)

Accordingly, this letter addresses only EPA’s proposal to retain the annual primary PM2.5 standard. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) strongly supports EPA’s proposed decision not to tighten the standard.

Summary of Argument...

==

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horner

~ Brown CA gov climate summit, subnational

"off the books" experts? refugees from Obama admin?

https::{//cei.:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:org/governorsclimatescheme

Government for Rent

How Special Interests Finance Governors to Pursue Their Climate Policy Agenda

Christopher C. Horner •September 11, 2018

Executive Summary

FROM SEPTEMBER 12 TO 14, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown (D) will host a “Global Climate Action Summit,” an official state event using public positions and taxpayer resources to make climate change an issue of greater political concern before the 2018 elections.1 This three-day event is budgeted at $10 million, provided by “strong support from individuals, foundations, governments and businesses. Supporters will be able to engage Summit leaders”—e.g., elected office holders—“and shape an event that will catalyze [government] climate action worldwide.” 

Open record productions reveal that this summit is part of an enormous climate industry that funnels donor money through nonprofit organizations to staff up politicians’ offices. This is doneoff the books, and the nonprofits take a handsome percentage for serving as middlemen. The September event is just one component of a sprawling enterprise that underwrites “support functions” for politicians to advocate the parties’ aligned policy agenda...

Implementation of the Paris agenda requires domestic policies, and implementing those policies is the principal objective of the campaign detailed in this paper. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) recently revealed a similar model in the report, “Law Enforcement for Rent,” that is used to provide off-books staff members for state attorneys general to investigate opponents of the climate agenda.6 

This approach raises serious questions about transparency of and restrictions on gifts to elected officials under various state laws:7 Is this provision of outside consultants on a donor’s tab a gift? Does it violate gift limits? Are the gifts properly reported? Is this private provision of government services unlawful in that jurisdiction? It would be at the federal level under the Antideficiency Act, which was enacted to prevent a variety of abuses, including bestowing private benefits and having officials avoid incurring obligation to private parties.8...

The objective of all this effort is to advance a narrative through supportive media coverage of campaigns such as a governors’ U.S. Climate Alliance (USCA) and events such as Governor Brown’s San Francisco Summit, which is supposedly the product of public officials’ work, if courtesy of consultants and public relations agents provided by donors and through activist groups underwritten by donors using a nonprofit as the pass-through.

Privately Funded Government

The modus operandi revealed in the documents excerpted in this report entails seeding local and statewide elected offices with privately funded in-house staff members (governors’ staffs called them “refugees” from the Obama administration).17 The objective is to house former National Security Council and State Department [AKA DEEP STATE?] appointees to, as one email put it, “resume shaping the U.S. position on” the energy and climate change agenda.18

Those emails lay out the inducements of an outside network of privately funded consultants and public relations assistance for elected officials who agree to lend their offices to a donor-funded advocacy campaign for the donors’ climate agenda.

Documents suggest politicians are now using nonprofits and consultants as pass-throughs for donors to support politicians with resources that the relevant legislatures will not provide and that donors cannot legally provide directly. Emails such as Dan Carol’s pitch and others obtained under state open records laws reveal a campaign initiated immediately after the 2016 elections. The campaign assembled “some collection of former Obama staffers” teaming with nonprofit, 501(c)3 policy, and grant-making groups to put some portion of thatannual billion dollars to work directly at the disposal of elected officials.19

Those officials’ staff members took the lead in designing, proposing, obtaining off-the-books funding for the plan, and initially executing it. Their rationale was “[I]t can’t always be us staff” performing the work of government.20 Any public or legal expectations to the contrary took a back seat to their bosses’ and donors’ expectations.

The program involves not just running the money through “pass-through” charities. Given the pass-throughs’ often exorbitant fees for performing this service (up to 24 percent, depending on what function they are serving), donors also directly pay for still more consultants, including media promoters. Among the work that the PR firm promotes are reports produced for the officials by outside consultants. The donor’s cost for those can be $100,000 per report, a report plainly given to elected officeholders to tout their leadership and to advance an aligned policy agenda.

I. MODEL A—DONOR-FUNDED IN-HOUSE STAFF...

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==

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5425355

...the

COmpetitive Enterprise Institute, which gets some of its funding from such companies as ExxonMobil, has released a counterstrike to Al Gore's new documentary An Inconvenient Truth. While I haven't seen the film, from the press it's getting, it's a jeremiad against global warming.

CEI takes issue with that and has released two TV ads, that -- get this -- promote CO2. Now, a vast majority of scientists agree that man-made pollutants, especially CO2, are definitely causing an increase in the Earth's temperature. How fast and how much is open to debate, but pretty much everyone agrees, this is probably not a good thing.

CEI's ads sound like something that Saturday Night Live (which Gore recently hosted) might come up with. Their tag line about CO2, "They call it pollution. We call it life."

There are some things you just can't make up.

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ref 404 -->

https://web.archive.org/web/20060613053824/http://streams.cei.org/

dl works but warn on file type

http://pointers.audiovideoweb.com/stcasx/ny60win16080/eresources/cei/Global_Warming_Energy-low.wmv/play.asx

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We Call It Life   The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced two 60-second television spots focusing on the alleged global warming crisis and the calls by some environmental groups and politicians for reduced energy use.   "Energy" WMV: Hi - Low Quicktime: Hi - Low

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also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sGKvDNdJNA note change of music and darkness at end

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   "Glaciers"

 WMV: Hi - Low Quicktime: Hi - Low Special web-only bonus, on the occasion of the release of An Inconvenient Truth: Al Gore's Big, Fat Carbon Footprint "Al Gore: An Inconvenient Story" WMV: Hi - Low Quicktime: Hi - Low   

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Walker took lead on AGs United for Clean Power in March 2016,beat back by legal ctr-attack, VI depends on $ from congress (even before hurricane irma?  ‎August 30, 2017)

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from milloy 2:

May 18, 2016

Steve Milloy was a signatory to a full page color advertisement in The New York Times titled “Abuse of Power” (PDF) sponsored by The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).The ad serves as an open letter from 43 signatories including organizations and individuals in response to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, and the coalition of Attorneys General investigating groups denying man-made climate change.[38],[39]

“Attempts to intimidate CEI and our allies and silence our policy research are unconstitutional,” said CEI president Kent Lassman. “The First Amendment protects us and everyone has a duty to respect it – even state attorneys general. CEI will continue to fight for all Americans to support the causes in which they believe.” [38] BUT Attack ca climate summit pass thru]

The Competitive Enterprise Institute received a subpoena from AG Walker on April 7, 2016. On April 20, CEI filed an objection to the subpoena calling it “offensive,” “un-American,” and “unlawful,” and are contending that AG Walker is “violating CEI’s First Amendment rights.” [38]

The “freedom of speech” argument was echoed by ExxonMobil's legal team, as well as numerous other conservative groups including the Pacific Legal Foundation, and Heritage Foundation and the recently-formed Free Speech in Science Project, a group created by the same lawyers who defended the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the past. [40] FROM WHAT?

The CEI letter lists the following signatories:

• Kent Lassman — President & CEO, Competitive Enterprise Institute
• C. :{Boyden Gray — Former White House Counsel}:
• Andrew C. McCarthy — Former Chief Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of New York
• Michael B. Mukasey — U.S. Attorney General, 2007-2009; U.S. District Judge, 1988-2006
• Ross McKitrick — Professor of Economics, University of Guelph
• Ronald D. Rotunda — Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, Chapman University
• Richard S. Lindzen — Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT
• William Happer — Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University
• Jim DeMint — President, The Heritage Foundation
• James H. Amos, Jr. — President & CEO, National Center for Policy Analysis
• John A. Baden — Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment
• Lisa B. Nelson — CEO, American Legislative Exchange Council
• Paul Driessen— Author & Energy Policy Analyst
• Thomas J. Pyle — President, Institute for Energy Research
• Steven J. Allen — Vice President & Chief Investigative Officer, Capital Research Center
• David Ridenour — President, National Center for Public Policy Research
• Steven J. Milloy — Publisher, JunkScience.com
• Brooke Rollins— President & CEO, Texas Public Policy Foundation
• Paul Gessing— President, Rio Grande Foundation
• Ron Arnold — Researcher & Author
• William Perry Pendley — President, Mountain States Legal Foundation
• Adam Brandon — President & CEO, FreedomWorks
• Hank Campbell — President, American Council on Science and Health
• Craig Rucker — Executive Director, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
• Tom McCabe — CEO, Freedom Foundation
• Richard B. Belzer — Economist
• Heather R. Higgins — President & CEO,Independent Women's Voice
• Joseph G. Lehman — President, Mackinac Center for Public Policy
• Sabrina Schaeffer — Executive Director, Independent Women's Forum
• Joseph Bast — President, The Heartland Institute
• John C. Eastman — Founding Director, The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
• Robert Alt — President & CEO, The Buckeye Institute
• Michael Pack — President & CEO,The Claremont Institute
• Josh Blackman — Assistant Professor, South Texas College of Law
• Lynn Taylor — President, Tertium Quids
• David Rothbard — President, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
• Tracie Sharp — President & CEO, State Policy Network
• Kenneth Haapala — President, Science and Environmental Policy Project
• Tim Phillips — President, Americans for Prosperity
• Myron Ebell — Director of the Center for Energy & Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute
• George Landrith — President, Frontiers of Freedom
• John Tillman — CEO, Illinois Policy Institute
• Craig D. Idso— Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

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massive support for cei

https://www.cagw.org/thewastewatcher/we-stand-competitive-enterprise-institute

cits against gov waste BS

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June 1, 2016 Kent Lassman President Competitive Enterprise Institute 1899 L Street, NW 12th Floor Washington, D.C. 20036 Dear Kent, On behalf of the undersigned groups, and the millions of Americans we represent, we write to you today to show our support for the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Last month, CEI received a subpoena from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General (AG) Claude Walker. AG Walker is part of a group called “AG’s United for Clean Power.” The group is made up of 15 state AGs and the AG of the District of Columbia.

The subpoena tried to force CEI to hand over all communications between 1997 and 2007 on climate change. AG Walker eventually withdrew his subpoena, but this type of heavy-handed tactic is an affront to free speech.Throughout the years, CEI has been a leader in many issues, including having the courage to stand up to its adversaries and take on those that want to impose new onerous regulations on businesses and consumers. 

For example, in 2012 CEI sued the EPA when they challenged EPA’s “refusal to disclose information discussing the creation and use of ‘secondary’ email accounts created for top level officials by EPA’s Office of Electronic Information.” [logic/ HYPOCRISY?]

CEI also sought emails from former Administrator Lisa Jackson's account. CEI should be applauded for seeking this transparency.

This subpoena was an all-out assault on free speech. Forcing CEI to hand over private information to government officials is an affront to the First Amendment rights of all Americans. This is also a clear violation of NAACP v. Alabama in which the Supreme Court asserted that the State couldn’t compel the disclosure of the NAACP’s membership list. Disclosing membership lists could lead to government intimidation and weaken the guaranteed First Amendment rights and freedoms for all Americans. We are also concerned that confidential e-mail exchanges between CEI and other groups would be subject to discovery by the AGs.

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Free market and taxpayer groups have been under assault by government officials including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This is just another example of how the government is engaging in selective targeting based on a political agenda that is meant to intimidate others from participating and engaging in any debate that may run contrast to the position of the current administration. Even though the subpoena was withdrawn, this is dangerous precedent and the ramifications moving forward should concern organizations from all sides of the political and philosophical spectrum. 

Sincerely, David Williams, President Taxpayers Protection Alliance Matthew Kandrach, Executive Vice President 60 Plus Association Dan Greenberg, President Advance Arkansas Institute Phil Kerpen, President American Commitment Dan Schneider, Executive Director American Conservative Union Lisa B. Nelson, CEO American Legislative Exchange Council Brent Wm. Gardner, Vice President of Government Affairs Americans for Prosperity Grover Norquist, President Americans for Tax Reform Justin Owen, President & CEO Beacon Center of Tennessee

Mark Bucher, CEO California Policy Center Garrett Ballengee, Executive Director Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy John Hinderaker, President Center of the American Experiment Norm Singleton, President Campaign for Liberty Andrew F. Quinlan, President Center for Freedom and Prosperity Jeffrey Mazzella, President Center for Individual Freedom Alvin Quiñones, President Center for Integrity and Public Policy Tom Schatz, President Citizens Against Government Waste Col Francis X. De Luca USMCR (Ret.), President Civitas Institute

Robert Roper, President Ethan Allen Institute Tarren Bragdon, CEO Foundation for Government Accountability Tom McCabe, CEO Freedom Foundation Annette Meeks, CEO Freedom Foundation of Minnesota Adam Brandon, CEO and President FreedomWorksGeorge Landrith, President Frontiers of Freedom Randy Hicks, Chief Executive Officer & President Georgia Center for Opportunity

Kelly McCutchen, President and CEO Georgia Public Policy Foundation Andresen Blom, Executive Director Grassroot Hawaii Action, Inc. Joseph Bast, President Heartland Institute Mario Lopez, President Hispanic Leadership Fund Sabrina Schaeffer, Executive Director Independent Women's Forum Heather Higgins, President & CEOIndependent Women's Voice Andrew Langer, President Institute for Liberty Bob McClure, President and CEO The James Madison Institute Brett Healy, President The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy Kory Swanson, President & CEO John Locke Foundation Seton Motley, President Less Government Trent England, Vice President Liberty Foundation of America Forest Thigpen, President Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Brent Mead, CEO Montana Policy Institute Brandon Arnold, Vice President National Taxpayers Union Sharon J. Rossie, President Nevada Policy Research Institute Jonathan Small, President Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs Kevin P. Kane, President Pelican Institute for Public Policy Andrew Moylan, Executive Director and Senior Fellow R Street Institute Mike Stenhouse, CEO Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity Paul J. Gessing, PresidentRio Grande FoundationBerin Szoka, PresidentTechFreedomRick Esenberg, President and General Counsel Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty

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on p3 of ggl srch:

Virgin Islands AG withdraws Exxon subpoena

By ERIC WOLFF 

06/30/2016 10:00 AM EDT

Presented by Chevron

With help from Elana Schor, Darius Dixon, Marianne LeVine, and Anca Gurzu

EXXON DRAWS BLOOD IN CLIMATE FIGHT: The war between ExxonMobil and a coalition of attorneys general investigating the oil giant for alleged misrepresentations of climate science saw the end of a major battle late Wednesday, as Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker agreed to withdraw his subpoena of the company.Pro’s Elana Schor had the scoop on the announcement, which came in a mutual agreement to withdraw a challenge to the subpoena that Exxon had filed in Texas court.

What comes next?Walker argued that the withdrawn subpoena would help the case against Exxon by clearing space for the Justice Department — which has not yet confirmed an official inquiry into the company’s climate record — “to focus on its ongoing investigation, without the distraction of this procedural litigation.”

Walker added in a statement that he would “continue to work with our state partners to advance our common investigation, while preserving our limited resources to address the many other issues that face the Virgin Islands and its residents.” Fifteen state AGs joined Walker and D.C. AG Karl Racine in March to announce a joint climate fight, although only the Virgin Islands, Massachusetts, New York, and California have pursued direct inquiries into Exxon.

CEI: We’ve been freed:The Competitive Enterprise Institute, hit with a subpoena from Walker that was later withdrawn in D.C. Superior Court, cheered the withdrawal. CEI President Kent Lassman said in a statement that the move showed the territory’s anti-Exxon probe was “a baseless fishing expedition from the beginning.”

HAPPY THURSDAY! I'm your host Eric Wolff, and I'm trying to figure out Snapchat (So now you all have a floor for how old I am). I think I understand the mechanics, but now I need some good people to follow. Who's good on Snapchat for energy news? Let me know, along with your tips, quips, and comments to ewolff@politico.com, or follow us on Twitter @ericwolff, @Morning_Energy, and @POLITICOPro.

A message from Chevron:

It’s only human to find inspiration in nature and also find answers. Chevron’s search to transform farm waste into renewable natural gas led to our partnership with California Bioenergy, where we’re working to provide an alternative source of power for a cleaner way forward.

THE THREE AMIGOS AND THE 5,000 MW OF TRANSMISSION:

eric Wolff covers energy policy and politics. Prior to joining POLITICO in 2015, he covered the EPA for SNL Energy, an electric power trade publication. He started at the New York Sun, but he cut his teeth covering the real estate crisis and the emergence of solar power in San Diego County for the late North County Times, a daily newspaper. He is married and living in Washington, D.C. with twin toddlers. He keeps his head above water.

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media realclear and fedsoc

note 1st amend free sp fought hard for by tobacco (previous RICO?)

cei ~RICO

Free Speech and Climate Change

11,877 views• Apr 19, 2016

Andrew M. Grossman discusses climate change and freedom of speech in a Federalist Society produced video

sez  not //  tobacco RICO b/c it covered up harm that was certain; agw NOT certain of harm (catastrophic?)

answers unclear on AGW; objects to CEI subpoena off all docs related to climate for decades [true?]

puts a cloud of  legal uncertainty, intimidation, threat of criminal sanctions, will chill very important debate/discussions that we need to formulate correct policy, more speech is better (vs censor, implies truth will win)

Andrew Grossman, Partner at BakerHostetler, explains the investigation of the fossil fuel industry and public policy groups skeptical of climate change by the Attorneys General of nineteen states. He underscores the importance of free speech in public policy debates on climate change. Mr. Grossman is also Counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker. Related links: John Schwartz, Pressure on Exxon Over Climate Change Intensifies With New Documentshttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/sci...CEI Fights Subpoena to Silence Debate on Climate Change, April 7, 2016https://cei.org/content/cei-fights-su...Addressing the Risks of Climate Change: ExxonMobil's Views and Actionshttps://exxonmobil.com/Benelux-Englis...A.G. Schneiderman, Former Vice President Al Gore And A Coalition Of Attorneys General From Across The Country Announce Historic State-Based Effort To Combat Climate Changehttp://www.ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag...David Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman, Punishing Climate Change Skepticshttp://www.wsj.com/articles/punishing...

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WSJ. Magazine

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OPINION  COMMENTARY

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Punishing Climate-Change Skeptics

Some in Washington want to unleash government to harass heretics who don’t accept the ‘consensus.’

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman

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March 23, 2016

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Galileo Galileiwas tried in 1633 for spreading the heretical view that the Earth orbits the sun, convicted by the Roman Catholic Inquisition, and remained under house arrest until his death. Today’s inquisitors seek their quarry’s imprisonment and financial ruin. As the scientific case for a climate-change catastrophe wanes, proponents of big-ticket climate policies are increasingly focused on punishing dissent from an asserted “consensus” view that the only way to address global warming is to restructure society—how it harnesses and uses energy. That we might muddle through a couple degrees’ of global warming over decades...

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RELATED VIDEO

Opinion Journal: Free Speech for Scientists!

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Opinion Journal: Free Speech for Scientists!

Baker Hostetler Partner David Rivkin on a legal effort to protect climate-change scientists from bullying and intimidation

The Climate Change Inquisition by Peggy Littlehttp://www.fed-soc.org/blog/detail/th...The fossil-fuel industry’s campaign to mislead the American people by Sen. Sheldon Whitehousehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...}:

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https://cei.org/content/cei-fights-subpoena-silence-debate-climate-change

april 2016 kazman

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) today denounced a subpoena from Attorney General Claude E. Walker of the U.S. Virgin Islands that attempts to unearth a decade of the organization’s materials and work on climate change policy. This is the latest effort in an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate debate, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Vice President Al Gore.

“CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena. It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time.”

The subpoena requests a decade’s worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information. It demands that CEI produce these materials from 20 years ago, from 1997-2007, by April 30, 2016.

On March 30, 2016, Attorney General Schneiderman, former Vice President Al Gore, and attorneys general from Massachusetts, Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, Vermont, as well as Attorney General Walker, held a press conference in New York City to announce “an unprecedented coalition of top law enforcement officials committed to aggressively protecting and building upon the recent progress the United States has made in combating climate change.” Schneiderman said that the group, calling itself “AGs United for Clean Power,” will address climate change by threatening criminal investigations and charges against companies, policy organizations, scientists, and others who disagree with its members’ climate policy agenda.

CEI has long been a champion of sound climate change policy, and opposed previous attempts to use McCarthy-style tactics by officials aiming to limit discussions between nonprofit policy groups and the private sector regarding federal policies. CEI is being represented in this matter by attorneys Andrew M. Grossman and David B. Rivkin, Jr., who recently founded the Free Speech in Science Project to defend First Amendment rights against government abuses.

>> Read the subpoena here (PDF).

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https://cei.org/sites/default/files/CEI%20Subpoena%20from%20USVI%20AG%20Claude%20Walker%20April%207%202016.pdf

...ExxonMobil is suspected to have engaged in, or be engaging in, conduct constituting a civil violation of the Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act,14 V.I.C. § 605,by having engaged or engaging in conduct misrepresenting its knowledge of the likelihood that its products and activities have contributed and are continuing to contribute to Climate Change in order to defraud the Government of the United States Virgin Islands (''the Government") and consumers in the Virgin Islands, in violation of 14 V.I.C.§ 834 (prohibiting obtaining money by ··false pretenses) and 14 V.I.C. § 551 (prohibiting conspiracy to obtain money by false pretenses).

In relation to the Government's investigation of the above matter, YOU ARE HEREBY DIRECTED, by the authority granted to the Attorney General of the United States Virgin Islands ("USVI'') , pursuant to the provisions of 14 V.I.C. § 612, to produce and deliver the documents responsive to the inquiries set forth herein, on or before April 30, 2016,directed to the attention of Attorney General Claude Earl Walker, Esq. Failure to comply with this subpoena may result in an enforcement action being brought against you pursuant to 14 V.I.C. § 612(k)...

"Climate Change" refers to the general subject matter of changes in global or regional climates that persist over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity. All Documents or Communications concerning the likelihood, certainty, uncertainty, scope, causes, or impacts of Climate Change concern Climate Change. Any Documents or Communications using any of the terns "climate change," "climatology," "climate science," "climate model," "climate modeling,'' "global warming," "greenhouse gas," "greenhouse effect," "CO2 greenhouse," "Kyoto Protocol," "UNFCCC," "IPCC," "climate skeptics," "climate skepticism," "global cooling," "solar variation," "arctic shrinkage," "carbon tax," "climate legislation," or "Keeling Curve" concern Climate Change, although Documents or Communications need not include any of these terms to concern Climate Change.

Any Documents or Communications concerning rising sea levels, Arctic and/or Antarctic ice melt, declining sea ice, melting glaciers, declining snowfall, oceanic warming, ocean acidification, or increases in extreme weather events--or the opposites of these phenomena (e.g., dropping sea levels, oceanic cooling)-concem Climate Change, although Documents or Communications need not refer to any of these phenomena to concern Climate Change

...

The relevant time period, unless otherwise indicated in a specific request, is fromJanuary I, 1997 to January I, 2007. The time limits should not be construed as date limits; for example, if a policy, contract, or other document in effect during the relevant time period was created before the relevant time period, then such document must be produced.

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docs:

http://climatecasechart.com/case/exxon-mobil-corp-v-walker/

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13042016/exxon-virgin-islands-subpoena-climate-change-investigation-violates-rights-claude-walker

apr 2016

ExxonMobil Corp. sued to block a subpoena issued last month by the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands seeking almost 40 years of documents on climate change.

In his demand for records, Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker said Exxon may have violated the territory's anti-racketeering law, defrauding the government and consumers with the company's statements on climate change. It is the first time a prosecutor has cited racketeering law to probe Exxon over its longtime denial of climate change and its products' role in it, according to legal authorities.

Exxon alleged that the subpoena is invalid because it seeks records beyond the five-year statute of limitations, and that it violates the company's constitutional rights and "constitutes an abuse of process, in violation of common law." Exxon, based in Irving, Texas, filed the complaint in Tarrant County District Court in Texas. It listed Walker as a defendant, along with the Washington, D.C. lawyer and law firm representing the territory in the probe.

The subpoena is "a pretextual use of law enforcement power to deter ExxonMobil from participating in ongoing public deliberations about climate change and to fish through decades of ExxonMobil's documents with the hope of finding some ammunition," Exxon said in the suit. "The chilling effect of this inquiry, which discriminates based on viewpoint to target one side of an ongoing policy debate,strikes at protected speech at the core of the First Amendment."

While companies don't usually succeed in blocking such investigative subpoenas, the court filing signals Exxon's intention to strongly contest probes by an expanding number of states. New York, California and Massachusetts are either investigating the company's behavior or considering it, and Walker was among 17 attorneys general who announced a coalition last month to take action on global warming.

The investigations began after InsideClimate News reported on the history of Exxon's emerging understanding of climate change science in the 1970s and its subsequent efforts to challenge the scientific consensus. These efforts included financing research organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. The CEI also received a subpoena in the Virgin Islands investigation and said it would contest the request for 10 years of Exxon-related climate change records.

"You are suspected to have engaged in, or be engaging in, conduct constituting a civil violation of the Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act," Walker said in the subpoena to Exxon. The company may have engaged "in conduct misrepresenting your knowledge of the likelihood that your products and activities have contributed and are continuing to contribute to climate change in order to defraud" consumers and the government, he wrote.

The Virgin Islands statute is one of the "Baby RICO" laws adopted by more than two dozen states and territories after Congress passed the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. The laws were intended to give officials stronger weapons for prosecuting organized crime. State- and territory-level measures in some cases are broader than the federal version, according to the American Bar Association.

Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, Walker said he would not comment on the merits of the Exxon suit, but defended the investigation and the subpoena. His statement was issued by Linda Singer, partner in the Washington law firm Cohen, Milstein, Sellers & Toll, which was named by Exxon in the suit.Exxon criticizes the Virgin Islands for retaining the firm, calling it "outsourcing" the investigation, "likely on a contingency-fee basis."

"The First Amendment does not shield any company from being investigated for fraud," said Walker, whose jurisdiction covers the U.S. territory's  islands in the Caribbean. "Bringing in a private law firm to assist in our investigation of this well-resourced corporation is both necessary and entirely proper. Courts have routinely rejected the arguments that ExxonMobil has raised."

Exxon is complying with a subpoena issued last year by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in an investigation of whether the company's statements and actions on climate change over almostfour decades violated consumer and investor protection statutes. Exxon has turned over more than 10,000pages of records in the past two months, according to an official in Schneiderman's office.

Walker issued his subpoena more than a week before participating in a press conference in New York by the attorneys general coalition on March 29, according to the Exxon complaint. "The attorneys general press conference was a politically-motivated event, urged on by activists intolerant of contrary views," Exxon says in the suit.

Walker's subpoena seeks documents and communications of all kinds fromJan. 1, 1977, to the present, including documents related to research Exxon conducted or funded. The 16 categories of materials include "research, advocacy, strategy, reports, studies, reviews, or public opinions regarding climate change sent to or received from" dozens of people and groups.

In its lawsuit, Exxon said the subpoena seeks materials related to "88 named organizations, three-quarters of which have been identified by environmental advocacy groups as opposing policies in favor of addressing climate change or disputing the science in support of climate change." The subpoena also demands similar materials from 54 named scientists, professors and other professionals, Exxon says. In the copy of the subpoena filed in the suit, Exxon redacted the names of individuals and organizations.

The subpoena "appears to target individuals and entities that hold policy views with which Attorney General Walker disagrees," Exxon says in the suit. "Eighty percent of the individuals in this request, who have been identified in the media as having a viewpoint on climate change, either oppose policies in favor of addressing climate change or dispute the science in support of climate change."

Walker also requested Exxon communications related to articles by ICN and the Los Angeles Times on Exxon and climate change, published since last Sept. 1, as well as materials concerning investigations of Exxon's statements on global warming by "any state attorney general, other enforcement agency, or environmental or other organization."

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and several other federal lawmakers have long advocated that the Justice Department investigate whether Exxon and other fossil fuel companies violated the RICO statute by disputing for years the role of fossil-fuel burning in global warming.

"The fossil fuel effort to mislead the public relied on a complicated web of dark money and front groups that will be difficult to unravel," Whitehouse said after the scope of the Virgin Islands probe became public. "Attorneys general bringing investigative resources to bear on the question of fraud will be a big help in uncovering the truth."

Exxon raised some valid issues in response to the subpoena while coating it in hyperbole, said Pat Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at the Vermont Law School. Walker will have to show good reasons to suspect that the company broke the law, he said.

"The most serious question is whether the attorney general has any basis to suspect that Exxon has engaged in activities that violate the statutes about obtaining money by false pretense and fraud," Parenteau said. "Hopefully there is something more than unsubstantiated suspicion to support this."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

BUSINESS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

EXXON: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

LITIGATION

==

https:/:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{/insideclimatenews:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{.org/news/08042016/think-tank-fossil-fuel-ties-competitive-enterprise-institute-subpoena-attorney-general-climate-change-exxon

The  Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank and one of the fossil fuel industry's most steadfast allies, disclosed on Thursday that the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands is demanding to see records of the group's donors and activities involving climate policy.

The subpoena represents a broadening of a multifaceted legal inquiry into whether fossil fuel companies broke any laws as they sought for decades to undermine the scientific consensus and head off forceful action to address the climate crisis.

For the first time, the investigation now appears to touch on the actions of third parties supported by the industry—and perhaps into their joint lobbying actions.

CEI said it "will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena."

The island territory is just one of several jurisdictions now looking into the actions of ExxonMobil Corporation and other fossil fuel companies. The investigations, first announced by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, are thought to be in their early stages, and the investigators have offered few details of their scope.

CEI said the subpoena from Attorney General Claude E. Walker "attempts to unearth a decade of the organization's materials and work on climate change policy." Turning the spotlight on CEI is an assertive tactic from a surprising quarter. The Virgin Islands, while it may not have the legal muscle of New York with its powerful securities and consumer laws, is especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

"The subpoena requests a decade's worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI's work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information," the institute said. "It demands that CEI produce these materials from 20 years ago, from 1997-2007, by April 30, 2016."

"This is the latest effort in an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate debate, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Vice President Al Gore," the institute said.

Schneiderman's subpoena of Exxon last year sparked an expanding inquiry by several Democratic attorneys general. A group of them held a press conference along with Gore last week to describe their coordinated actions on climate change, including the inquiries as well as support for the Obama administration's climate agenda. The attorneys general of Massachusetts and California are also investigating Exxon or other fossil fuel interests.

The investigations began after InsideClimate News, and later the Los Angeles Times, as well as other journalists reported on the history of Exxon's emerging understanding of climate change science in the 1970s and its subsequent efforts to undermine the scientific consensus, in part by financing research organizations including CEI.

CEI's general counsel, Sam Kazman, said it was "an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group. If Walker and his allies succeed,the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time."

The inquiry's timeframe covers a crucial period beginning in2000 and 2001, at the start of the Bush-Cheney administration, when lobbyists from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies were pressing the new administration to reverse Clinton-Gore policies on global warming, reject the Kyoto Protocol and overhaul government research programs into climate change.

CEI was deeply involved in this campaign, according to multiple sources, including a detailed expose by a whistleblower named Rick Piltz.

For example, CEI filed a lawsuit against both the outgoing Clinton and the incoming Bush administrations, aimed at preventing a significant review of climate science, the 2000 National Climate Assessment, from forming the basis of federal policies and international negotiations. The lawsuit was dismissed, but the CEI had made its point with the Bush administration, which continued to resist the scientific consensus endorsed by the previous administration.

At the time the Bush administration was rewriting federal climate studies, a task carried out by a former oil company lobbyist who moved into the Council on Environmental Quality under Bush, and then went to work for Exxon when his role was publicly disclosed.

Much of the White House's engagement with the energy lobby during the early Bush-Cheney years still remains undisclosed. Theadministration refused to publish all its communications with the industry during its first year in office, when Vice President Dick Cheney ran an energy policy task force that consulted heavily with the industry behind closed doors.

The Virgin Islands subpoena suggests one way that some new details might be brought to light.

CEI is one of several organizations that have been repeatedly named over the years by those who have criticized Exxon and other fossil fuel companies for financing the climate denial work of third parties. After the Royal Society of the United Kingdom castigated Exxon in 2006 for giving money to groups misrepresenting climate science, Exxon said it had stopped financing the CEI.

In his remarks at last week's press conference, Walker said the fossil fuel investigation "is not an environmental issue as much as it is about survival. We try as attorneys general to build a safe community for all. But what good is that if, annually, everything is destroyed.

"It could be David versus Goliath—the Virgin Islands against a huge corporation," he said. "But we will not stop until we get to the bottom of this and make it clear to our residents as well as the American people that we have to do something transformational."

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https://cei.org/climatesubpoena

april 2017

First Amendment Fight: CEI’s Climate Change Subpoena

April 5, 2017

[nice heroic pix, statue justice scales w/ sword (no blindfold]

About | CEI Commentary | News Releases | Press | Legal | Resources

About:

On March 29, 2016, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and 16 other state attorneys general, joined by Al Gore, launched an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate policy debate. These AGs called themselves, “AGs United for Clean Power,” and one of their very first targets was the Competitive Enterprise Institute. On April 7, 2016, CEI received a subpoena from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker demanding a full decade’s worth of our communications, emails, statements, and other documents regarding energy and climate policy. Those documents included private donor information.

SUPPORT CEI's FIGHT TO PROTECT FREE SPEECH TODAY!

For the next few months, CEI and our allies worked together to beat back this subpoena. We succeeded, and in June 2016, AG Walker dropped his unlawful subpoena. However, that is not enough—it’s not enough for a government official to simply stop behaving badly. AG Walker violated one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy.

CEI filed sanctions against AG Walker, and we are awaiting a ruling on this motion. There must be a consequence for AG Walker's offensive use of government power to harass and silence people who hold differing opinions. This cannot be tolerated.

[vid]

TIMELINE: Fighting the Subpoena

• Wednesday, April 20, 2016: CEI filed an objection to the subpoena calling it "offensive," "un-American," and "unlawful."
• Friday, May 13, 2016: Walker’s local attorney informed CEI that they rejected the organization’s legal arguments, but they would withdraw the DC subpoena. Walker’s attorney gave us no decision about the underlying Virgin Islands subpoena, but she did note that Walker might reissue the DC subpoena if he changed his mind in the future.
• Wednesday, May 18, 2016: CEI sponsored a**full-page advertisement in The New York Times highlighting abusive efforts by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, and a coalition of other “AGs United for Clean Power” to silence the speech of the more than 100 businesses, nonprofits, and private individuals who question the AGs’ positions on climate change.
• Friday, May 27, 2016: We moved for sanctions in DC Superior Court.  https://cei.org/sites/default/files/CEI%20-%20Anti-SLAPP%20Fees%20Motion.pdf
• Tuesday, June 28, 2016: DC Superior Court held a hearing on our motion for sanctions.  In opposing our motion, Walker’s local counsel argued that Walker was conducting an ongoing investigation of ExxonMobil for fraud, and that he had a legitimate interest in CEI documents. In a letter to the Wall Street Journal on June 24, 2016, Walker said that he was subpoenaing CEI for information that “can shed light” on whether we “broke the law,” which is more than intimidation, it’s an accusation. The judge stated that she’d be issuing a ruling in due time.
• Wednesday, June 29, 2016: Walker announced that he was withdrawing his Exxon subpoena.
• Thursday, June 30, 2016: Walker announced he was withdrawing his Virgin Islands CEI subpoena. We immediately informed the court of these developments, pointing out that the withdrawal of the Exxon subpoena was seriously at odds with what his attorney had told the court at the hearing.
• What’s next? Our motion for sanctions against AG Walker is pending, and we are awaiting the court’s ruling. We also successfully sued Eric Schneiderman’s office under New York State’s freedom of information law, obtaining an official copy of the founding document of his AG coalition—the Common Interest Agreement. For more information on that case, see https://cei.org/litigation/cei-v-attorney-general-new-york

CEI has long been a champion of sound climate change policy, and opposed previous attempts to use McCarthy-style tactics by officials aiming to limit discussions between nonprofit policy groups [CTT] and the private sector [exxon funders of denial]  regarding federal policies.

CEI President Kent Lassman said:

"Walker’s subpoenas are a flagrant violation of the First Amendment, and the clear conclusion to draw following his withdrawal of the ExxonMobil subpoena is that these subpoenas were a baseless fishing expedition from the beginning. All Americans have the right to support causes they believe in and the CEI [A CORP?!] subpoena is an abuse of the legal system and an effort to intimidate and silence individuals who disagree with certain attorneys general on the climate debate. Disagreeing with a government official is not a crime; abusing government power to take away Americans’ rights is.​"

CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman said:

“Our case for sanctions against Walker is stronger than ever. Even aside from questions of misrepresentation to the court, Walker’s decision to yank his subpoenas in the face of legal challenges indicates that he had no valid reason to issue them in the first place. And that makes the need for sanctions even clearer—because when a law enforcement officer breaks the law, it’s not enough for him to simply stop behaving badly. A violation like this of the First Amendment needs to be paid for, because that’s the best way of ensuring that it doesn’t happen again.”

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Legal Documents:

October 19, 2016 | Virgin Islands Response to CEI Notice of Supplemental Authority

October 17, 2016 | CEI Notice of Supplemental Authority

August 31, 2016 | CEI v. The Attorney General of New York

July 5, 2016 | Virgin Islands response to Consent Motion

June 30, 2016 | Consent Motion by CEI for Leave To File Notice of Supplemental Authority in Support of Its Motions

June 30, 2016 | Letter Detailing Dismissal of VI Subpoena

June 17, 2016 | CEI Opposition to Cross-Motion

June 2, 2016 | Virgin Islands Opposition to Motion to Dismiss Under Anti-SLAPP, Fees and Sanctions

June 2, 2016 | TheCenter for Individual Rights Amicus Briefin Support of CEI

May 27, 2016 | Motion for Fees

May 20, 2016 | Notice of Termination of D.C. Subpoena

May 16, 2016 | Motion to Dismiss Under D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act | Memorandum | Declaration of Sam Kazman | Declaration of Andrew Grossman

May 13, 2016 | Letter Announcing Plan to End DC Action

May 10, 2016 | Letter from CEI’s Attorney to USVI’s Attorney

April 20, 2016 | CEI Objections to Attorney General Walker's Subpoena

April 20, 2016 | Letter to Attorney General Walker

April 12, 2016 | Letter to Sam Kazman

April 7, 2016 | Subpoena of CEI from U.S. Virgin IslandsAttorney General Walker

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News Releases:

October 19, 2016 | Texas Order in Exxon Case Flagged in CEI's Case Against AG Walker over Subpoena

August 31, 2016 | CEI Sues NY AG Schneiderman for Common Interest Agreement on Climate Change Subpoena Campaign

June 30, 2016 | Virgin Islands Withdraws CEI Subpoena, Bolstering Need for Sanctions Against AG Walker

June 30, 2016 | Virgin Islands’ Withdrawal of Exxon Subpoena Confirms Unconstitutional Nature of its Attack on CEI

June 28, 2016 | CEI Presents Arguments in Motion for Sanctions Against USVI Attorney General

June 17, 2016 | In Subpoena Saga, CEI Pushes for Sanctions Against Virgin Islands AG

June 15, 2016 | CEI Responds to Massachusetts AG Maura Healey over latest Climate Subpoena

June 6, 2016 | US Virgin Islands Attorney General Criticizes CEI For Defending Free Speech

May 23, 2016 | Virgin Islands AG Withdraws DC Subpoena of CEI

May 18, 2016 | CEI Runs “Abuse of Power” Ad In New York Times

May 16, 2016 | CEI Asks Court To Fine AG Walker Based On Bad Faith And DC Anti-SLAPP Law

April 20, 2016 | CEI Strikes Back At Unlawful Subpoena

April 18, 2016 | Emails Reveal AGs Colluding with Green Groups to Investigate Climate Skeptics

April 7, 2016 | CEI Fights Subpoena to Silence Debate on Climate Change

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CEI Commentary:

March 29, 2017 | Sam Kazman | One Year Later AGs United for Clean Power has Fallen Apart

August 23, 2016 | Kent Lassman | Our Fight against Government Intimidation

July 1, 2016 | Sam Kazman | Shake Up in Subpoena Land

June 27, 2016 | CEI Staff | How CEI Is Defending Your Right To Speak Freely

June 14, 2016 | Hans Bader | Attorney General Schneiderman's Lame Defense of Speech-Chilling Climate Change Investigation

June 09, 2016 | Sam Kazman | A Complaint We Didn't Expect to Hear: Virgin Islands Attorney General Now Says We're Wasting His Time

May 18, 2016 | New York Times**Ad**Attacks AGs’ Abuse of Power, Defends Free Speech

April 22, 2016 | The Washington Post | Kent Lassman and Sam Kazman|The Environmental Campaign that Punishes Free Speech

April 13, 2016 | Kent Lassman | CEI Will Surmount Crimethink Persecution

April 12, 2016 |Marlo Lewis| Our Take: The Climate-Related Subpoena

April 12, 2016 | What Others are Saying About CEI's Climate Change Subpoena

April 8, 2016 | Myron Ebell | Attorney General's Climate Investigation Subpoenas CEI

April 8, 2016 | Hans Bader | Attorneys General Launch Intimidation Campaign with Subpoena against CEI

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Press Highlights:

August 31, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal | Editorial| Schneiderman’s Climate Secrets

August 31, 2016  | Politico | Elana Schor| Conservative think tank sues Schneiderman over Exxon probe records

July 23, 2016 | The Hill | Timothy Cama| Exxon Allies Cry Foul Over Law Firm in Climate Probe

July 8, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal | Editorial| The Climate Police Crack-Up

June 29, 2016 | The Hill | Timothy Cama| Virgin Islands Withdraws Climate Subpoena Against Exxon

June 29, 2016 | The Washington Post | Hans A. von Spakovsky| The Real Victim in the ExxonMobil Lawsuit is the First Amendment

June 29, 2016 | WashingtonExaminer | John Siciliano| Dem AG Backs Down in Exxon Climate Fight

June 15, 2016 | Wall Street Journal | Editorial| The Climate Police Blink

May 27, 2016 | Fox News |Bret Baier |  VIDEO: Sam Kazman Discusses CEI's Climate Change Subpoena on Fox News

May 20, 2016 | The New York Times |John Schwartz | State Officials Investigated Over Their Inquiry Into Exxon Mobil’s Climate Change Research

May 16, 2016 | The Washington Times | Valerie Richardson | Think Tank Asks Court to Fine Virgin Islands A.G. After He Agrees to Pull Climate Subpoena

May 8, 2016 | Richmond Times-Dispatch| Editorial | Political Inquisitions on the Rise

April 30, 2016 | The Wall Street Journal | Editorial | The Climate Police Escalate

April 25, 2016 | Financial Times | Editorial | Climate Change Sceptics Must Be Able to Speak Out

April 22, 2016 | Washington Post | George Will |Scientific Silencers on the Left are Trying to Shut Down Climate Skepticism

April 19, 2016 | National Review | Rich Lowry  |Eric Schneiderman and His Gang of AGs Are Trampling the First Amendment

April 13, 2016 | U.S. News and World Report | Peter Roff  |Climate Change Witch Hunt

April 12, 2016 | The Washington Times | Editorial |Intimidation through Investigation

April 11, 2016 | USA Today | Glenn Harlan Reynolds | Dear Attorneys General, Conspiring Against Free Speech is a Crime

April 8, 2016 | The Blaze| Fred Lucas |‘Outrageous Violation of the First Amendment’: State AGs Take the Next Step in Going After Climate Change Skeptics

April 8, 2016| The Hill | Devin Henry | Think Tank Vows to Fight Climate Change Subpoena

April 8, 2016 | Overlawyered | Walter Olson |CEI Subpoenaed over Climate Wrongthink

April 8, 2016 | Bloomberg | Megan McArdle |Subpoeaned Into Silence on Global Warming

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Other Resources:

June 16, 2016 | Media Call with CEI

June 15, 2016 | ExxonMobil’s Complaint in US District Court against AG Healey

June 9, 2016 | Taxpayers Protection Alliance and 47 Free-Market Groups Support CEI’s Fight to Protect Free Speech

May 26, 2016 | Senators Demand DOJ Cease Investigation Into Opponents of President Obama’s Energy Policies

April 19, 2016 | Civil Investigative Demand of Exxon from Massachusetts AG Healey

April 13, 2016 | Complaint in *Exxon Mobil Corporation v. Claude Earl Walker et. al.* (Texas District Court)

March 15, 2016 | Subpoena of Exxon Mobil from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Walker

June 2015 | Marlo Lewis | Report: Time for a Sensible Sense of Congress Resolution on Climate Change

==

https://cei.org/sites/default/files/CEI%20-%20Anti-SLAPP%20Fees%20Motion.pdf

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIVIL DIVISION UNITED STATES VIRGIN ISLANDS OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Plaintiff, v. EXXONMOBIL OIL CORP., Defendant. Case No. 2016 CA 2469 Judge __

Nonparty Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Motion for Costs and Attorney’s Fees Under D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act, D.C. Code § 16-5504(a) Pursuant to the District of Columbia Anti-SLAPP Act of 2010, D.C. Code § 16- 5504(a) (“the D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act” or “the Act”), nonparty Competitive Enterprise Institute (“CEI”) hereby moves for an order providing that, as a prevailing party on a motion brought under D.C. Code § 16-5502(a), it is entitled to an award of its costs, including reasonable attorney’s fees.

CEI filed a special motion pursuant to the Act to dismiss the civil action initiated by U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker to issue a harassing and retaliatory subpoena to CEI. CEI substantially prevailed on that motion when Attorney General Walker subsequently filed a praecipe consenting to termination of his action and revocation of the issuance of the subpoena to CEI that he obtained from this Court. The Act therefore “entitles” CEI “to a presumptive award of reasonable attorney’s fees on request.” Doe v. Burke, 133 A.3d 569, 578 (D.C. 2016). The accompanying memorandum and the memorandum in support of CEI’s Special Motion To Dismiss, which CEI hereby incorporates to avoid duplicative briefing, demonstrate CEI’s entitlement to that relief. Accordingly, CEI respectfully requests that the Court grant CEI’s Motion for Costs and Attorney’s Fees Under D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act, D.C. Code § 16-5504(a), and find tha

...

grossman and rivkin

==

Search Results

Web results

First Amendment Fight: CEI's Climate Change Subpoena ...

cei.org › climatesubpoena

2.

Apr 5, 2017 - On April 7, 2016, CEI received a subpoena from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker demanding a full decade's worth of our communications, emails, statements, and other documents regarding energy and climate policy. Those documents included private donor information.

Virgin Islands AG revokes climate-change subpoena after being ...

cei.org › content › virgin-islands-ag-revokes-climate-ch...

1.

The Washington Times disucsses Attorney General Claude Walker's withdrawl of the DC subpoena of CEI, which was part of an intimidation campaign to silence ...

Exxon Fights Subpoena in Widening Climate Probe, Citing ...

insideclimatenews.org › news › exxon-virgin-islands-su...

2.

Apr 14, 2016 - In his demand for records, Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker said Exxon may have violated the territory's anti-racketeering law, ...

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/**2020/10/10**/snapshot-secret-funding-amicus-briefs-tied-leonard-leo-federalist-society-leader-promoter-amy-barrett/

lisa g

A new review of grant documents, first published on the dark web, provides a snapshot of how groups tied to Leonard Leo–the man who put Amy Barrett on President Trump’s list for the Supreme Court–have been secretly funded to file briefs with the Supreme Court to overturn U.S. laws, including the Affordable Care Act.

Leo, the co-chair of the Federalist Society's board, was previously the group’s Executive Vice President. Earlier this year, he announced the launch of a for-profit firm called CRC Advisors, which is working closely with Leo-tied non-profits that were being rebranded–including one previously known only as the “Judicial Education Project” (JEP).

His move came in the aftermath of an in-depth investigation of Leo in 2019 by Robert O’Harrow and Shawn Boberg of the Washington Post’s investigative unit, which documented how Leo directed millions from big donors to groups spending big to get nominees of Trump confirmed and to block Merrick Garland’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Senators Stabenow, Schumer, and Whitehouse recently announced that they will be issuing a new series ofreports about the impact of court capture on Americans’ rights, following on earlier white papers, and Senator Whitehouse recently testified about these issues before the House.

Last year, the Post tallied the Leo network’s spending to get federal and state judges appointed and to influence the law at more than $250 million over the past few years–not counting money given in 2018, which was not publicly available due to tax filing deadlines. Leo-tied groups, like the legally separate Judicial Crisis Network, have also recently funneled money from major donors, who are not publicly known, to fund activities by the Republican State Leadership Committee, which has used a related entity to spend big on negative ads the week before state supreme court elections, and the Republican Attorneys General Association. Earlier this year, JEP filed for the use of a “fictitious name” to do business in Virginia, calling itself the “Honest Elections Project.” This new Leo-connected group is amplifying claims of voter fraud and downplaying evidence of voter suppression measures, assertions that have been widely assailed.

The newly reviewed grant documents include emails showing that the Bradley Foundation”s grant officer conferred with Leo at the Federalist Society about how the foundation could fund “two Supreme Court amicus projects” without funneling the money through DonorsTrust, in 2014. Leo connected them to Neil Corkery, a long-time ally of his in an array of groups, and the listed leader of JEP. That group was launched in 2004 alongside another group Leo has deep ties to: the Judicial Confirmation Network, which is now known as the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN). JCN was created at a small dinner party Leo attended with Corkery and others that Justice Antonin :{Scalia attended too, after the 2004 election.}:

Corkery is also a central figure in the now-defunct Wellspring Committee, which transferred millions from one secret source to JCN, as it fought to block Merrick Garland’s confirmation to the Court and to advance Neil Gorsuch to that seat. Corkery has been on the board of a number of anti-choice and anti-gay rights groups and other entities–sometimes with Gary Marx or Dan Casey. At the time of the Bradley grant, Corkery was operating JEP as president, with Carrie Severino as staff and on the Board. She is a former law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas.

Severino is now the leader and spokesperson of JCN, which recently announced a multi-million dollar ad campaign in support of Barrett’s confirmation. As the Washington Post documented, during the fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination she had an office just down the hall from the Federalist Society.

The Bradley grant summary states that the request for funding for JEP’s amicus briefs was “initiated by Bradley Prize recipient Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.”

According to that document, JEP provided Bradley with a proposal seeking $200,000 to help subsidize the cost of two amicus briefs, which were described by Bradley as costing $250,000 each. Bradley’s grant officer recommended that its board approve $150,000 to help underwrite the costs of those briefs to the Supreme Court, stating:

At this highest of legal levels, it is often very important to orchestrate high-caliber amicus efforts that showcase respected high-profile parties who are represented by the very best lawyers with strong ties to the Court. Such is the case here, with King and Friedrichs, even given Bradley’s previous philanthropic investments in the actual, underlying legal actions. (Bradley Grant Proposal Record of the Judicial Education Project)

Bradley’s proposal summary expressly stated that the funding was needed “for two important cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The King Litigation Was an Attack on Health Care

“King” is a reference to King v. Burwell, which the Court decided later that year, in 2015. That case involved a challenge by four individual plaintiffs to an IRS rule providing federal-exchange subsidies nationwide as part of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the signature health insurance reform bill of the Obama administration.

Bradley’s recommendation to provide funding to support JEP’s amicus brief noted that “the King statutory interpretation case itself was brought with Bradley support by the Competitive Enterprise Institute” (CEI). The Supreme Court’s Rule 29.6 required disclosure in the case notes that the plaintiffs were four individuals. There is no reference to CEI in the Supreme Court’s docket sheet for the case as a lawyer or litigant, but the group’s website stated that CEI “is coordinating and funding both the King v. Burwell case and the D.C. Circuit Halbig v. Burwell case.” There is no mention of CEI as an intermediary for Bradley funding of this litigation.

After the Supreme Court ruled against the four plaintiffs and upheld the ACA, the Bradley summary for CEI’s grant stated:

[T]he U.S. Supreme Court handed CEl, and perhaps conservatism in general, one of its biggest legal losses ever. The Court ruled against CEI’s ambitiously creative challenge to Obamacare’s tax subsidies to individuals purchasing insurance coverage through the federal health-insurance exchange. CEI acknowledges that the loss was deeply disappointing – not only because it kept intact subsidies not authorized by statute, but also because it signaled a shift in the Court’s respect for the plain meaning of laws enacted by Congress. Nonetheless, it argues, the case succeeded in reshaping the country’s public discourse about health-care policy, the rule of law, the role of Congress, and agency accountability. (Bradley Grant Proposal Record of the Competitive Enterprise Institute)

Bradley’s grant summary also specifies that CEI has long been funded by the Koch family fortune, Sarah Scaife, Barre Seid, Exxon, Murray Energy, and Pfizer. It also noted that Leo was on CEI’s board of legal advisors alongside Michael Greve of George Mason’s law school, which has received many millions in Koch money. (CEI was founded by Fred Smith in the 1980s after he worked with Charles Koch at his Council for a Competitive Economy, the predecessor of Citizens for a Sound Economy, now known as Americans for Prosperity. CEI has a long history of peddling climate change denial.)

Billionaire Charles Koch’s political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has announced that it will spend millions to push for the quick confirmation of Barrett to the Supreme Court. Koch has spent tens of millions through organizations he controls to attack the ACA over the past decade. He began subsidizing litigation against anti-corruption election laws in the 1970s.

The Koch-founded and -funded Cato Institute also submitted an amicus brief in the King case, urging that the Supreme Court strike down the ACA.

The JEP brief that Bradley mentioned as worthy of its philanthropic subsidy had been filed in 2014 by Severino and other lawyers on behalf of seven elected officials: Senators John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Orrin Hatch, Rob Portman, and Marco Rubio as well as Reps. Dave Camp and Darrell Issa. The main law firm on the brief with JEP was Cooper & Kirk, one of the firms Bradley noted in its grant write-up. The discussion with Leo about funding occurred about two weeks before this brief was submitted to the Court.

So, in essence, the Bradley Foundation wanted to subsidize an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court prepared by a for-profit law firm for GOP Members of Congress by funding a non-profit group working with that firm.

The Bradley proposal documents also noted that it was funding two other groups that submitted amicus briefs in the King litigation: the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and the Galen Institute. Both groups specifically requested Bradley funding for amicus briefs seeking to get the Supreme Court to overturn the ACA. PRI’s brief is here. The Galen Institute’s brief is here, on the website of C. Boyden Gray’s law firm.

Galen also received funding for its amicus briefs against the ACA from the Randolph Foundation, which is controlled by Vicks VapoRub heir, Heather Higgins, who leads the Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) and Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). IWV received $150,000 from JCN in 2014, and later received $4 million from Leo’s Freedom and Opportunity Fund over two years as it opposed Garland’s confirmation and supported Gorsuch’s confirmation. Her groups also played a prominent role in defense of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, and JEP gave $300K to IWF in 2018. IWF and IWV leaders are actively pressing for Barrett’s rapid confirmation. Notably, Higgins has used claims about the ACA in outreach to swing-state voters right before the election in 2016, and she took credit for moving women in Wisconsin toward Trump in sufficient numbers to help him win the presidency.

IWF joined forces with the Cato Institute in the follow-on case to King, a consolidated set of cases under the name Zubik v. Burwell. IWF has received both Koch and Bradley funding for other work over the years. It has deep ties to Koch–even being led for years by the former top lobbyist for Koch Industries and being co-led and co-located with Citizens for a Sound Economy/Americans for Prosperity.

Judge Barrett, Trump’s nominee for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court, has criticized the Affordable Care Act. The Court has schedule oral arguments for November 10 in the latest case attacking that law–which extended access to health care to millions of Americans and which makes it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.

Trump has attacked the ACA repeatedly and sought its repeal, and never forgave Senator McCain for refusing to go along with his plan. Trump’s recently issued declaration “policy” about pre-existing conditions would provide no actual enforceable protections, if the Court were to strike down the law as he seeks. That declaration is little more than a talking point that was issued right after Justice Ginsburg died, as he prepared to nominate Barrett to the Supreme Court. With covid-19 spreading in the U.S., millions of Americans may now or in the future have significant pre-existing conditions as a result of this deadly pandemic.

The Friedrichs Litigation Was an Attack on Unions

The “Friedrichs” case mentioned by Bradley in its funding document was Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. That case attacked the dues collected by unions from employees to negotiate for benefits for all non-management employees.

Bradley noted in early 2015 that “Various amici in Friedrichs likely will include current and former governors, state attorneys general, First Amendment scholars, and leading Bradley-supported education-reform entities — including PRl. At this writing, two or three others may be commissioned.” The Koch-funded Cato Institute also filed an amicus brief in Friedrichs.

It is noteworthy that in its evaluation of which groups to fund on these issues, Bradley touted that the Friedrich’s case and a related case could be a “powerful one-two punch” against unions that could cause them to “lose an estimated $60 million annually.: (That was part of the summary of the Bradley grant recommendation for the group StudentsFirst in 2015.)

After Justice Antonin Scalia died in early 2016, the Court was deadlocked 4-4 in the Friedrichs case, which resulted in affirming a lower court decision that had refused to overrule “agency shop” rules for public sector unions. Those long-standing rules prevent free riders from benefiting from union negotiations without dues. However, after Gorsuch was confirmed, the Court struck down those rules in a 5-4 decision with a different plaintiff, Mark Janus, pursuing the same line of arguments as those subsidized by the Bradley Foundation. (A brief history of the roots of the Janus litigation and the so-called “right-to-work” laws that undermine collective bargaining rights is available here.)

The amicus brief JEP submitted in the Friedrichscase, after receiving Bradley funding, was on behalf of eight law professors, all of whom were then and are still leading voices in the Federalist Society, including one of its co-founders: Steven Calabresi. (One of them has since passed away.) In 2010, the Bradley Foundation awarded Calabresi, Leonard Leo, and other founders or leaders of the Federalist Society the Bradley Prize, a gift of $250,000, which it has also given to others like Paul Gigot, when he was on the Wall Street Journaleditorial board.

So, in the case of Friedrichs, the Bradley Foundation was in touch with the Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society about helping to subsidize an amicus brief for the U.S. Supreme Court that was later written and filed on behalf of professors, all of whom were contributors to the Federalist Society.

This is only one snapshot of the role that the Bradley Foundation and others have played in funding amicus briefs submitted to the Supreme Court to try to get laws overturned. In this instance, one of the groups that submitted amicus briefs the foundation subsidized is part of Leo’s dark money network, which has spent millions to get the judges he wants on our nation’s highest court.

The documents used to illustrate this story in the public interest are only a few of the thousands of pages of documents in the Bradley files trove, which the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) began examining in 2017. It noted:

“The documents were made public in October 2016 on two Twitter accounts that cyber security analysts have linked to one of the Russian hackers alleged to have breached the Democratic National Committee. The Bradley Foundation confirmed in a statement that the hack had taken place and was reported to the FBI. More information about how the Bradley files became public is available here.

The documents open a window to the behind-the-scenes workings of one of America’s largest right-wing foundations. With $835 million in assets as of June 2016, the Bradley Foundation is as large as the three Koch family foundations combined, yet receives much less attention as a significant funder of the right.”

For more on the Bradley Foundation’s activities, see CMD’s Bradley Files investigation.

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two Koch foundations gave CEI $288,000 from 2014-17. DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund combined to give nearly $3.9 million to CEI since 2014, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust have all contributed over $1 million since then.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers gave $95,000 to CEI from 2015-17, and another industry trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, has donated $70,000 to CEI since 2015.

“No evidence that CO2 emissions are the dominant factor” in climate change

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capt 818

see main and tag

ebell

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2x?

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112016/myron-ebell-climate-denier-epa-donald-trump

no lnx

Myron Ebell, the Climate Contrarian Now Plotting the EPA's Precarious Future

Donald Trump's choice to lead the EPA transition team has a long history of pushing climate denial, assailing environmental protections and trumpeting fossil fuels.

John H. Cushman Jr.

BY JOHN H. CUSHMAN JR.

NOV 16, 2016

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute

Myron Ebell's profile on the Competitive Enterprise Institute's website includes links to his work casting doubt on climate change and urging resistance to climate action. Photo illustration by Paul Horn/InsideClimate News

Myron Ebell, chosen by Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, traces a long history as a determined conservative firebrand.

He rose through the ranks of the "wise-use" movement to land at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, pushing an ideology of private property and free markets reigning supreme. He led activists calling themselves the Cooler Heads Coalition, pushing a brand of no-holds-barred climate denial, putting himself at the center of divisive advocacy wars over fossil fuels and the environment.

For decades, he has pushed the radical insistence that the environmental left has it all wrong: the science, the ideology, the economics and the politics of climate change.

The same views apply across the landscape of environmental policy, from land and water conservation to energy production.

During an earlier transition from one administration to another, as the Bush-Cheney Republicans arrived to displace the Clinton-Gore Democrats in 2001, he shared his views in an online chat sponsored by the Washington Post. He said Gail Norton, a Reagan-era private-property-rights champion nominated for Interior Secretary, and Spencer Abraham, a founder of the Federalist Society who had voted to abolish the Energy Department but now would run it, were "superb choices." But he reckoned that Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate from New Jersey who was to head the EPA, "may turn out to be a good choice or may not."

It was a savvy move to damn Whitman with such vanishingly faint praise. It would not be long before she was a victim of intense maneuvering against forceful action on climate change during the opening Bush-Cheney years. Ebell thought Whitman should only be retained if her EPA would "stop claiming regulatory authorities far beyond its legal authority."

It's just like his view today, except that there are new Obama-era targets, like the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.

Through all that ensued since 2001—the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol and the rise of the Paris Agreement; the Supreme Court decree that the EPA must control carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels; and the ensuing fight over regulations to do just that—Ebell has never wavered in his views.

So his ascendancy in the Trump camp alarms and exasperates people like Eric Schaeffer, former head of enforcement at EPA and now executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit watchdog group.

They know him as the author of a famous denialist alt-science memo in the 1990s, as an advocate who helped scuttle the Kyoto Protocol in the 2000s. He is also known as a happy warrior at CEI, funded generously by Exxon and by dark-money donors, that never concedes the field. They know that CEI remains engaged in a furious fight with state attorneys general over its own role in Exxon's record on climate change. They can only imagine how far he and the Trump team might go in de-funding and de-fanging the EPA.

"It tells me they are not approaching this analytically, logically, or even as economists," Schaeffer said. "They are approaching it as ideologues. And that's pretty dangerous. It used to be, even to some extent under 'W,' you talked in code or at least made some kind of showing of your interest in the environment and clean air and water, and having a credible EPA. They've completely thrown that overboard."

Already, CEI is getting very specific about the kinds of actions the Trump administration should take. This week it listed three executive orders exemplifying those that should be deep-sixed. (They involve energy conservation by the federal government, international development aid and protection of infrastructure from climate impacts.)

If the Clean Power Plan meets its demise, and particularly if the Paris Agreement goes down the same drain, the defeat for 21st century environmentalism would exceed the undoing of the Kyoto Protocol or the failure of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate bill early in the Obama years.

At its heart, it would be a victory for denial. And it would vindicate the long game plan of fossil fuel forces that recognized that financing the machinery of ideology was just as important as financing political campaigns—because Big Oil and Big Coal contributed relatively little this year to the Trump campaign, even as the fossil fuel camp scripted his thinly-embellished policy declarations.

One irony, said Jeremy Symons, associate vice president for climate policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, "is that Trump said he would 'drain the swamp,' but Ebell is a creature of the swamp. He has been taking money from years from industry to slow and stop climate change."

Robert Brulle, a sociologist who has extensively documented the industry's support of climate denial, said CEI's biggest funder, pouring in $9.1 million between 2002 and 2013, was the Florida-based Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking. Run by futures trader William Dunn, the foundation is a major donor to free market think tanks and advocacy groups like the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute.

The second largest funder, with $5 million since 2004, is Donors Trust, which has been called the "dark money ATM of the conservative movement." Its donors include the libertarian Koch brothers and other free enterprise philanthropists. Exxon also is among CEI's largest funders with $2 million between 2000 and 2005, but the big oil company hasn't given to CEI directly since 2006, when it began scaling back its funding of groups that deny climate science.

As far back as 1998, Ebell was among a group organized by the American Petroleum Institute and its allies proposing a denialist project to ''maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences,'' according to a memo they wrote.

During and after the election of 2000 and the transition from the Clinton-Gore administration to the Bush-Cheney regime, CEI fought to influence Washington's formal climate science assessments. Its lawyers sued to make sure that one major document, the National Climate Assessment, would not carry any policy weight.

In 2002, Ebell offered CEI's help to Philip Cooney, chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, to "clean up the mess." That was in the wake of the State Department filing a U.S. Climate Action Report that included the United Nations finding that global warming posed a significant risk and was caused by fossil fuel emissions.

Cooney, who joined the Bush administration after a decade as a lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute, had edited government reports to emphasize doubt about climate change. That was documented in 2005 by whistleblower Rick Piltz, a former senior official in the government's climate change science program. (Piltz resigned from the government and founded Climate Science Watch in 2005. He died in 2014. Cooney resigned from the Bush administration after Piltz's disclosures and took a job at Exxon.)

"Thanks for calling and asking for our help," Ebell said in an email to Cooney in 2002.

But true to form, his email had a badgering, even threatening tone, criticizing the Bush administration's handling of climate change reports and warning that CEI would fight any policies it viewed as errant. Ebell promised in the email "to do as much as we could to deflect criticism by blaming the EPA for freelancing."

Ebell said it was imperative to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think that they are serving the president's interests by publishing this rubbish."

Whitman, he said, should go.

"It seems to me that the folks at EPA are the obvious fall guys, and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible," Ebell wrote.

Whitman, who now runs her own strategic planning and consulting group, said in an interview that she never had any personal dealings with Ebell. While at EPA, the pressures that concerned her the most came mainly from Cheney and his staff. "I suspect he had a little more pull than Myron," Whitman said. As for Ebell: "There's always going to be those kind of people out there. You just can't worry about it."

The incident prompted two state attorneys general to request a Justice Department investigation into any improper collusion, but that went nowhere.

Several Democratic attorneys general referenced possible collusion between Exxon and groups like CEI when they announced investigations of Exxon for potential climate fraud. That came after InsideClimate News and others published histories of Exxon's own climate research and its subsequent support for campaigns to undermine the scientific consensus.

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands went so far as to subpoena CEI's records from the Bush-Cheney transition era, but CEI fought back hard—as did Exxon and several Republican state attorneys general and Republicans on a House committee—and deflected the inquiry.

At a meeting of Republican state attorneys general this summer, Ebell lashed out at Exxon foes, saying the Democratic attorneys general and environmental organizations were colluding to "silence and defund the opponents of global warming alarmism."

An audio recording of the session "Climate Change Debate: How Speech is Being Stifled" was obtained and released by the Center for Media and Democracy.

Ebell set the tone by disparaging those who embrace the overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth is warming.

"Why is the left so intent on trying to win the debate by silencing and de-funding their opponents? Well, they have a little problem, we've got reality on our side," Ebell said.

"So when you expose all of these arguments as phony, what is left but trying to win by silencing and defunding your opponents?" he said.

As CEI has done in legal filings and in newspaper advertising, he called it a matter of constitutionally protected free speech.

Months before Trump emerged victorious, and before Ebell was named to play a big role in the new administration's agenda-setting, he declared confidently that "right now the climate inquisition is in retreat," he said. "It's in retreat because of what ExxonMobil has done. What CEI has done."

Now that Ebell is on the inside of an administration, though, his influence is likely to multiply. "That's what worries me," said Whitman. "Of all the promises Trump made during the campaign that now seem to be a little less certain, EPA is probably the one he'll stick with, because it is so universally thought of as being the source of all evil. And that is very troubling."

Neela Banerjee, Marianne Lavelle and David Hasemyer contributed reporting for this story.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

POLITICS REGULATION

DONALD TRUMP EPA CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE DENIAL

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horner climate lawsuits

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/01/26/competitive-enterprise-institute-climate-denial-target-nbc-cities-liability-suits

Competitive Enterprise Institute's Climate Denial Efforts Target Media, Cities Filing Liability Suits

By Guest • Saturday, January 26, 2019 - 03:47

Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.

The conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute has been busily pressing forward with its mission to promote climate denial, using high-profile tactics like full-page ads in major newspapers. But it is also working behind the scenes, filing records requests to dig for information from cities filing climate liability suits and academics studying the topic.

As the science has grown definitive in tying global warming to the burning of fossil fuels, even oil companies have been forced to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus and back away publicly from climate denial efforts. But CEI continues to double down on their mission to claim the science is not settled.

CEI made a splash this week by purchasing full-page ads in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal taking issue with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd and NBC for refusing to give airtime to denialists during his Dec. 30 show about climate change.

The think tank has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry and has long worked to promote climate denial. And as municipalities have begun to sue fossil fuel companies, including Exxon, CEI has filed briefs and launched other campaigns defending them.

According to Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center, CEI’s most recent push is likely motivated by the increasing number of those lawsuits and investigations of the fossil fuel industry.

“CEI has a personal interest in how these lawsuits proceed because they had a contract with ExxonMobil Foundation from the 1990s — they got over $2 million through 2007 when Exxon abruptly dropped them,” said Davies, adding that he expects lawyers pressing suits against the company would want to see the contracts between CEI and Exxon during that period.

CEI’s tactics go beyond its attempts to sway public opinion.

Last year, CEI sued UCLA to obtain emails the organization said were exchanged between two UCLA climate law professors and state attorneys general offices involved in investigations of the oil giant.

An ethics complaint filed by another fossil fuel industry-backed group in December against then-New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood echoes a report written by CEI legal fellow Chris Horner. The report relied on public records requests to allege that attorneys general are involved in a coordinated scheme by private interests to hold oil giants responsible for climate change. That alleged conspiracy includes Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is also investigating Exxon for possible fraud.

Horner has also filed information requests with municipalities filing suit against the oil and gas industry, including Richmond and San Francisco. In those requests, he is seeking records related to a climate litigation-related briefing he said took place at Harvard in 2016 between activists, private attorneys and public employees of various states’ attorney general’s offices.

In July, he requested communication belonging to staff members in the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, after it became the first U.S. state to attempt to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change by filing suit against 21 oil and gas companies. Horner’s request was for communication between special assistant attorney general Greg Schult, senior policy advisor Matthew Lenz and legal experts involved in climate litigation in other municipalities, including attorney Matthew Pawa, Niskanen Center chief counsel David Bookbinder and director of climate policy Joseph Majkut.

Horner is also on the board of directors of the non-profit Government Accountability and Oversight, the organization behind Climate Litigation Watch, which posts public records obtained in an attempt to “expose the network of influence involving the litigation surrounding climate change.”

CEI has used full-page ads in major newspapers in previous campaigns to try to discredit climate action.

In one ad that appeared in The New York Times in 2016, CEI — along with more than 40 signatories — claimed that attorneys general across the country were abusing their power by attempting to silence the “debate” on climate science.

Between 1997 and 2014, those signatories and the organizations they represent received more than $10 million from Exxon and the ExxonMobil Foundation and they received more than $21 million from the Koch brothers, who have long funded climate denial efforts in support of their fossil fuel businesses.

Today, full-page ads in the Washington Post can cost $100,000 and more. Ads in the Wall Street Journal can top $325,000.

In a press release, CEI said the ads push back on Todd and NBC’s decision to “exclude guests who disagree with alarmists and calls for a real and open debate about the impacts of climate alarmist policies.”

“Sometimes, journalists like Chuck Todd are persuaded to join the activists in shutting down legitimate debate about policy issues and in those cases, we feel a duty to push back in defense of our rights and our policy positions,” a CEI spokesperson said in an email, adding that the organization’s requests for public records are made on their own initiative, and as part of this body of work defending their principles.

“Americans of all political stripes tune into NBC’s Meet the Press with the expectation that the great political issues of the day will be debated vigorously by guests representing a full range of viewpoints,” said CEI President Kent Lassman.

Because CEI does not disclose its donors, it’s unclear who is funding the current ads, but it has previously received funding directly from David Koch, as well as coal giants Massey Energy Company and Murray Energy Corporation.

ExxonMobil was a publicly-acknowledged contributor to CEI for a number of years.

“In 2006, however, ExxonMobil publicly announced that it would cease its support for CEI and a number of other groups,” a CEI spokesperson said in an email.

NBC did not respond to a request for comment.

The ads fit into a long-running strategy to cloud the issue of climate science to the public.

CEI was named in a 1998 email to the American Petroleum Institute’s global climate science communications team as a possible funding recipient in a campaign to implement a “Climate Action Plan.”

Text from the American Petroleum Institute memo on sowing doubt about climate change.

One conclusion of the “Global Climate Science Communications Plan,” a multi-million dollar proposal in 1998 to make climate change a “non-issue” by reaching out to media and the public. The plan was uncovered and documented by Greenpeace. Credit: Greenpeace

According to that plan, “victory will be achieved” when people and the media are convinced there is significant uncertainty in climate science and “media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognizes the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current ‘conventional wisdom.'”

Davies said in addition to potentially having to face an examination of its relationship with Exxon in the course of climate litigation, CEI has other concerns.

Davies pointed to a study published this week showing Greenland’s ice is melting faster than previously thought and a recent Yale poll showing that 73 percent of people in the U.S. understand climate change is occurring and 62 percent understand it is mostly human-caused.

“The evidence is in front of people, the weather‘s messed up, the climate’s messed up, the public opinion is moving away from CEI, and then they strike out at a national news broadcast for not including this extreme minority opinion that there’s nothing to worry about,” Davies said.

==

omfg coherent climate sci supp start nyt 619

...Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka made a well-publicized effort to talk him out of leaving the Paris accord in 2017. But after being vanquished by officials including Mr. Bannon, Mr. Pruitt, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II, there is little evidence she has resisted his approach since then.

The president’s advisers amplify his disregard. At the meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the rapidly warming region as a land of “opportunity and abundance” because of its untapped reserves of oil, gas, uranium, gold, fish and rare-earth minerals. The melting sea ice, he said, was opening up new shipping routes.DISASTER CAP'LISM?!

“That is one of the most crude messages one could deliver,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who served as the NATO ambassador under George W. Bush.

Image

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the Arctic as a land of “opportunity and abundance” as a consequence of global warming.CreditMandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images]

At the National Security Council, under Mr. Bolton, officials said they had been instructed to strip references to global warming from speeches and other formal statements. But such political edicts pale in significance to the changes in the methodology of scientific reports.

Mr. Reilly, the head of the Geological Survey, who does not have a background in climate change science, characterized the changes as an attempt to prepare more careful, accurate reports. “We’re looking for answers with our partners and to get statistical significance from what we understand,” he said.

Yet scientists said that by eliminating the projected effects of increased carbon dioxide pollution after 2040, the Geological Survey reports would present an incomplete and falsely optimistic picture of the impact of continuing to burn unlimited amounts of coal, oil and gasoline.

“The scenarios in these reports that show different outcomes are like going to the doctor, who tells you, ‘If you don’t change your bad eating habits, and you don’t start to exercise, you’ll need a quadruple bypass, but if you do change your lifestyle, you’ll have a different outcome,’” said Katharine Hayhoe, the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and an author of the National Climate Assessment.

Not all government science agencies are planning such changes. A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, asked if its scientists would limit the use of climate models, wrote in an email, “No changes are being considered at this time.”

The push to alter the results of at least some climate science reports, several officials said, came after November’s release of the second volume of the National Climate Assessment.

While the Trump administration did not try to rewrite the scientific conclusions of the report, officials sought to play it down — releasing it the day after Thanksgiving — and discredit it, with a White House statement calling it “largely based on the most extreme scenario.”

Image

This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to finalize the legal rollback of two of President Barack Obama’s most consequential policies: regulations to curb planet-warming pollution from vehicles and power plants.CreditGeorge Etheredge for The New York Times]

Still, the report could create legal problems for Mr. Trump’s agenda of abolishing regulations. This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to finalize the legal rollback of two of President Barack Obama’s most consequential policies: federal regulations to curb planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks.

Opponents say that when they challenge the moves in court, they intend to point to the climate assessment, asking how the government can justify the reversals when its own agencies have concluded that the pollution will be so harmful.

That is why officials are now discussing how to influence the conclusions of the next National Climate Assessment.

“They’ve started talking about how they can produce a report that doesn’t lead to some silly alarmist predictions about the future,” said Myron Ebell, who heads the energy program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded research organization, and who led the administration’s transition at the E.P.A.

A key change, he said, would be to emphasize historic temperatures rather than models of future atmospheric temperatures, and to eliminate the “worst-case scenarios” of the effect of increased carbon dioxide pollution — sometimes referred to as “business as usual” scenarios because they imply no efforts to curb emissions.

Scientists said that eliminating the worst-case scenario would give a falsely optimistic picture. “Nobody in the world does climate science like that,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton. “It would be like designing cars without seatbelts or airbags.”

Outside the United States, climate scientists had long given up on the White House being anything but on outlier in policy. But they worry about the loss of the government as a source for reliable climate research.

“It is very unfortunate and potentially even quite damaging that the Trump administration behaves this way,” said Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “There is this arrogance and disrespect for scientific advancement — this very demoralizing lack of respect for your own experts and agencies.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Climate Fight, Trump Will Put Science on Trial

==

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/10/25/exxon-faces-consequences-climate-denial

ExxonMobil, the $78 billion fossil fuel giant, has been lying to its shareholders about the threats of climate change, according to New York Attorney General, Barbara Underwood, following a multi-year investigation.

The New York state lawsuit, filed Wednesday, accuses Exxon of a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” to mislead investors on “the company’s management of the risks posed to its business by climate change regulation,” according to The New York Times. Citing messaging to the public that was inconsistent with internal practices, Underwood brought the lawsuit under the Martin Act, which empowers her to investigate and prosecute securities fraud.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported on Exxon’s illegal and unethical efforts to undermine climate science and hide the global impact of its operations for years.

In 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause complained to the IRS that Exxon was running an illegal scheme to use the American Legislative Exchange Commission (ALEC) to promote its climate denial policies and legislative agenda “in gross violation of ALEC’s 501(c)(3) charitable status.”

The Industry Plan to Sow Doubt over Climate Science

Evidence presented in the joint CMD/Common Cause IRS filing showed that Exxon had pumped more that $1.7 million into ALEC between 1998 and 2014 to finance lobbying activities that cast doubt on climate science and promoted public policies benefiting the corporation.

The Exxon/ALEC scheme arose from a 1998 “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” authored by the American Petroleum Institute (API). The stated mission of the API plan was to “inform the American public that science does not support the precipitous actions Kyoto [International Climate Treaty] would dictate, thereby providing a climate for the right policy decisions to be made.” [emphasis added]

Exxon was listed as a source of funding for the plan, while ALEC was listed as a “potential fund allocator.” Public records show that Exxon’s funding of ALEC subsequently increased.

Exxon’s more recent efforts to rehabilitate its public image around climate change led the oil giant to split with ALEC in July 2018, reportedly over ALEC’s opposition to the EPA’s findings on greenhouse gases.

Collusion Between Republican AGs and Industry Lobbyists

In 2016, CMD exposed secret, closed-door meetings between state attorneys general and fossil fuel interests to coordinate push-back against New York’s investigation of Exxon.

CMD published an audio recording of a meeting where representatives of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) — organizations historically funded in part by Exxon — discussed strategies with Republican attorneys general.

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) facilitated the private sessions, a premium service that the pay-to-play organization provides to corporations that pay RAGA up to $125,000 per year.

“These documents reveal a serious conflict of interest: RAGA is facilitating secret meetings between the profit-motivated fossil fuel industry and attorneys general to engineer pushback on investigations of ExxonMobil — and then raising money from oil and gas companies to keep those same Republican attorneys general in office,” said Nick Surgey, CMD’s Research Director at the time.

History of Misinformation Campaigns

Numerous investigations have shown that Exxon was fully aware of the risks of climate change from burning fossil fuels as early as the 1970s, despite funding multiple groups like ALEC that denied climate science and humans’ contribution to climate change.

A Harvard University study of Exxon’s communications between 1977 and 2014 found that “ExxonMobil misled the public about climate change,” even as its private and academic research acknowledged serious climate risks.

In 2015, the year New York launched its investigation of Exxon, Inside Climate News reported that Exxon had been aware of climate change but “put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming.” Exxon warned top executives of possible climate catastrophe, but then “led efforts to block solutions.” The Los Angeles Times also published an article that year telling a similar story. Exxon dismissed those reports as “cherry picked.”

According to the New York Times, this most recent lawsuit “poses a financial risk to Exxon, as well as a potential reputational blow.”

If history is any indication, Exxon could face significant damages. Similar litigation against tobacco companies found in 2006 that the industry had engaged in “a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public,” and resulted in a $246 billion settlement

==

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compare names to paris ltr?

desmog

Derrick Hollie signed a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) letter supporting legislation that would cancel Schedule B on non-profit reporting to the IRS. This would reduce transparency by removing the identification of contributors. [19]

“This bill presents an opportunity to strengthen free speech protections in light of recent cases of intimidation and mishandling of private information by the IRS. It would be a win for organizations across the political spectrum,” the letter claimed. [19]

“CEI Joins Coalition to Support the 'Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act',” Competitive Enterprise Institute, June 13, 2016. Archived July 17, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/mDw4I

june 2016

... organizations that represent the interests of millions of taxpayers across the country, we write in support of H.R. 5053, the “Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act,” sponsored by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.). This legislation would eliminate the Schedule B form for 501(c) organizations, which includes identifiable information of contributors to 501(c) organizations. Thisinformation is irrelevant to the routine handling of 501(c) organization tax filings and will help make tax compliance easier, as well as further curb the ability of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to hinder free speech and civic participation among the public.

This bill presents an opportunity to strengthen free speech protections in light of recent cases of intimidation and mishandling of private information by the IRS. It would be a win for organizations across the political spectrum.

Free speech has been under assault in recent years and the IRS has been at the center of the controversy. In several well-documented cases, the agency leaked private and sensitive Schedule B information that should never have been made public. For example, the agency settled a lawsuit with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) after an IRS official emailed NOM's Form 990, Schedule B to the Human Rights Campaign, which then published it.

The revelations of leaked information, as well as evidence proving that the IRS selectively grouped organizations based on their names, policy positions, and perceived ideology to deny or delay requests for non-profit status, show that the fight for free speech is alive and very real.

Lawmakers must take every opportunity to keep the IRS in check, as the agency has been both derelict in its oversight and abusive with its power. H.R. 5053 will reduce the risks of continued abuse.

Some officials at the IRS have even supported ending the Schedule B form requirement for some 501(c) classifications.  For example, in December of 2015,it was reported that Tamara Ripperda, IRS Director of Exempt Organizations, discussed the potential for elimination of Schedule B:

The IRS is considering eliminating Schedule B of the Form 990, which asks for the names and addresses of an exempt organization’s contributors and for certain information about contributions received.  Tax Analysts reported that, at a program sponsored by the Urban Institute, Tammy Ripperda (Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS) questioned whether the IRS should ask for the names and addresses of contributors, given that this information is not made public, and whether there is a need for the information from a federal tax law enforcement standpoint.

It is clear that the Schedule B form requirement is not needed.  Therefore, we urge all members of the House of Representatives to support H.R. 5053 and eliminate the Schedule B form requirement for 501(c) groups.

Sincerely,

James L. Martin, Chairman

60 Plus Association

Melissa Ortiz, Founder & Principal

Able Americans

Dan Greenberg, President

Advance Arkansas Institute

Caleb Crosby, President and CEO

Alabama Policy Institute

Colby May, Director and Senior Counsel

American Center for Law and Justice

Phil Kerpen, President

American Commitment

Dan Schneider, Executive Director

The American Conservative Union

George David Banks, Executive Vice President

American Council for Capitol Formation

Dan Backer, Chairman

American Dream Foundation

Gary L. Bauer President

American Values

Mark J. Fitzgibbons, President of Corporate Affairs

American Target Advertising, Inc.

Ernest Istook, President

Americans for Less Regulation

Rick Manning, President

Americans for Limited Government

Coley Jackson, President

Americans for Competitive Enterprise

Brent Wm. Gardner, Vice President of Government Affairs

Americans for Prosperity

Grover Norquist, President

Americans for Tax Reform

Becky Gerritson, Founder

Born Free American LLC

Norm Singleton, President

Campaign for Liberty

Linwood Bragan, Executive Director

CapStand Council for Policy and Ethics

Alfred J. Lechner, Jr., President and CEO

Cause of Action Institute

Andrew F. Quinlan, President

Center for Freedom and Prosperity

Jeffrey Mazzella, President

Center for Individual Freedom

Matt Patterson, Executive Director

Center for Worker Freedom

Twila Brase, President and Co-founder

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom

David Bossie, President

Citizens United

Michael Bowen, Co-Chairmen

Stephani Scruggs, Co-Chairmen Coalition for a Strong America

Nathan A. Benefield, Vice President of Policy

Commonwealth Foundation

Nick Dranias, President & Executive Director

Compact for America Educational Foundation, Inc.

Kent Lassman, President

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Jae Pak, President

Concerned Veterans for America

Herbert W. Titus, Senior Counsel

Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund

Shaun McCutcheon, Chairman

Coolidge Reagan Foundation

Tom Schatz, President

Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

Katie McAuliffe, Executive Director

Digital Liberty

Paul Weber, CEO

Family Policy Alliance

William J. Olson, Legal Counsel

Free Speech Coalition

Thomas P. Kilgannon, President

Freedom Alliance

Annette Meeks, CEO

Freedom Foundation of Minnesota

Mark V. Holden, Chairman

Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce

Adam Brandon, CEO and President

FreedomWorks

George Landrith, President

Frontiers of Freedom

Andrew Clark, President

Generation Opportunity

Andresen Blom, Executive Director

Grassroot Hawaii Action

Michael A. Needham, CEO

Heritage Action for America

Ambassador Henry F. (Hank) Cooper, Chairman

High Frontier

Mario H. Lopez, President

Hispanic Leadership Fund

Wayne Hoffman, President

Idaho Freedom Foundation

Kristina Rasmussen, Executive Vice President

Illinois Policy Action

Sabrina Schaeffer, Executive Director

Independent Women's Forum

Heather Higgins, President & CEO

Independent Women's Voice

Thomas Pyle, President

Institute for Energy Research

Andrew Langer, President

Institute for Liberty

Tom Giovanetti, President

Institute for Policy Innovation

Sal J. Nuzzo, Vice President of Policy

The James Madison Institute

Lisa B. Nelson, CEO

Jeffersonian Project

Dave Trabert, President

Kansas Policy Institute

Morton Blackwell, President

The Leadership Institute

Seton Motely, President

Less Government

Colin Hanna, President

Let Freedom Ring

Connor Boyack, President

Libertas Institute

K Carl Smith, Executive Director

Liberty Messenger USA

Daniel Garza, Executive Director

The LIBRE Initiative

Roman Buhler, Director

The Madison Coalition

Kyle Hauptman, Executive Director

Main Street Growth Project

L. Brent Bozell III, President

Media Research Center

Jason Jones, President

Movie to Movement

Willes K. Lee, President

National Federation of Republican Assemblies

Steve M. Antosh, General Counsel

National Pro-Life Alliance

Chris W. Cox

National Rifle Association

Pete Sepp, President

National Taxpayers Union

Paul Mero, President and CEO

Next Generation Freedom Fund

Alex-St. James, National Executive Director

One Day In America

Lorenzo Montenari, Executive Director

Property Rights Alliance

?Rich Lowrie, Co-founder

Put Growth First

Andrew Moylan, Executive Director and Senior Fellow

R Street Institute

Derrick Hollie, President

Reaching America

Matthew Brooks, Executive Director

Republican Jewish Coalition

Paul Gessing, President

Rio Grande Foundation

Samantha Dravis, President

Rule of Law Defense Fund

Karen Kerrigan, CEO

Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council

Tracie Sharp, President

State Policy Network

David Williams, President

Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Judson Phillips, Founder

Tea Party Nation

Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founder and President

Tea Party Patriots

Brooke Rollins, President

Texas Public Policy Foundation

C. Preston Noell III, President

Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.

Andrea S. Lafferty, President

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, Founder and Chairman Traditional Values Coalition

Michael Connelly, Executive Director

United States Justice Foundation

Christopher Prudhome, President

Vote America Now

Robert D. Thompson, Administrator

The Weyrich Lunch

Gerrye Johnston, Founder/CEO

Women for Democracy in America, Inc.

Signing on as an Individual:

Ted Baehr, Publisher, MOVIEGUIDE(R)

Hunter Lewis, co-founder of Cambridge Associates

Stephen Moore, Co-Founder

Committee to Unleash Prosperity

Nick Sorrentino, co-founder of Against Crony Capitalism

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/12/bradley-foundation-funds-web-climate-change-deniers/

Armiak

Bradley Foundation internal documents reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reveal a concerted effort by the organization to delegitimize climate science, while promoting fossil fuel energy development in the United States.

An analysis of Bradley’s climate-related activities shows that the foundation has made significant grants to support energy policy think tanks, attack-dog groups that target environmentalists, and efforts to discredit climate science.

A 2013 internal foundation document details how Bradley “instructed staff to explore options…to make more energy-related grants.” The document also notes that the Board gave a “terminal grant” of $263,591 to the Sand County Foundation (SCF), which previously administered the Bradley Fund for the Environment.

The documents do not reveal Bradley’s motivation in splitting from SCF, but they do outline a serious effort to promote fossil fuel industry interests at the expense of the environment.

CENTERS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL AND FOSSIL FUEL DEVELOPMENT

As part of its push to support studies and public relations to cast doubt on mounting scientific evidence on climate change, Bradley has focused its resources on “Energy Policy Centers,” many of which are housed in “Bradley-supported” State Policy Network (SPN) “think tanks.” SPN is a web of 156 right-wing groups in 49 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, and the UK that receives funding from the billionaire Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and the Roe Foundation, as well as many multi-national corporations.

The examined documents show that the Center for Energy Policy and the Environment (CEPE) at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MIPR), a member of SPN, received a total of $500,000 for its Center, with another $200,000 distributed in 2016. (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, February 23, 2016) CEPE works to promote fossil fuel development despite the devastating effects of climate change. A background document on CEPE states its goal clearly: “The Center’s research and public education activity aims at demonstrating that the United States is poised to reap substantial economic benefits in the form of job creation, lower gasoline and electricity prices, and increased productivity provided public policies allow companies to access valuable energy resources and distribute them at home and abroad.”

A recommendation by Bradley staff on the Manhattan Institute’s 2016 grant proposal specifically states that CEPE is worth funding because, “They have succeeded in identifying and publicizing so many of the falsehoods that surround energy and the environment.” (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, February 23, 2016) Anexample of this “success” can be found in the work of CEPE senior fellow Mark Mills, who is recognized as originating the idea that North America can surpass the Middle East as the largest energy supplier in the world. (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, November 12, 2013)

The Energy Policy Center (EPC) at another SPN “think tank”, the Independence Institute, received $195,000 from the Bradley Foundation between 2012 and 2016.

Bradley documents examined show that EPC’s purpose is to “consciously counter-balance former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s environmental think tank” at Colorado State University, which promotes a “New Energy Economy.”

Bradley considers EPC to be highly successful in fighting local and federal environmental initiatives. The Bradley documents note that EPC was a “key coalition partner” in preempting local bans on fracking in Colorado, and that it “has developed a toolkit for policymakers, attorneys general, and other conservative state think tanks to help them push back against U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.” (Independence Institute GPR, June 2, 2015)

In addition to these two centers, Bradley has funded the Center for Energy and Environment (CEE) at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an “associate member” of SPN, and the Center for Energy Innovation and Independence at Consumers’ Research.

CEE is led by the prominent climate change denier Myron Ebell, who steered Trump’s EPA transition team. Ebell also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, which brings together right-wing activists and scholars for monthly meetings. The coalition was established on May 6, 1997, “to dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific and risk analysis.”

CEI was long tied to tobacco disinformation campaigns, but is now a leading organization in the movement to discredit climate science.

Bradley does not mention how much of its funding to CEI was designated for CEE operations. Between 1986 and 2015, Bradley Foundation gave $2.2 million to CEI, the majority of which was “to support general operations.” (Competitive Enterprise Institute GPR, June 2, 2015).

The Center for Energy Innovation and Independence received $250,000 from Bradley in 2013 to get the new group off the ground. According to a background document, the group “will closely monitor federal environmental regulations and potentially lay the foundation for multi-state litigation against them, similar to those actions in the Obamacare and Dodd-Frank lawsuits, of which aggressive (Scott) Pruitt was and is a part.” Pruitt is the former AG of Oklahoma and recently resigned as the EPA Administrator under Trump.

SMEAR CAMPAIGNS AND FUNDING EFFORTS TO DISCREDIT CLIMATE SCIENCE

At the same time Bradley rolled out funding for “Energy Policy Centers,” it was doling out cash to discredit environmental organizations and climate change science.

A grant proposal record for the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a front group created by the close Bradley ally Rick Berman, details an organized effort to weaken the credibility of well-respected, national environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, and Food and Water Watch. (The Center for Consumer Freedom GPR, November 12, 2013) Berman also founded Berman and Company, a notorious Washington, D.C.-based corporate lobbying and PR company known for creating numerous corporate “front groups” and astroturf propaganda campaigns.

Berman’s anti-environmental project at CCF was called Big Green Radicals and was seeded with a $150,000 “public education” grant from Bradley in 2013.

According to Bradley’s background document, the Big Green Radicals project would include the following components:

[N]ew, updated research profiles for NRDC, Food and Water Watch, and Sierra Club; standalone websites for all three organizations; a Facebook group seeded with several thousand fans to provide a base for the message; the production of two online videos to explain the real agenda of the environmental left; and Google keyword advertising for members of the media and the public searching for information about one of the targeted groups.

In addition to providing the start-up funding for Big Green Radicals, Bradley gave $85,000 to the Capital Research Center (CRC), a group led by former Berman and Company employee Scott Walter. The grant was designated for “general operations,” but it may have been used to support the publication Green Watch. A background document on CRC states that, “Green Watch tracks the money flow to environmental nonprofits and critiques their positions, and those of their allies, including their policymaking ones.” (Capital Research Center GPR, August 19, 2014)

Since 2014, the Bradley Foundation has distributed numerous grants to discredit the vast amount of scientific research demonstrating the harmful effects of climate change. In 2014, it gave $65,000 to the George C. Marshall Institute (GMI), a right-wing front group largely funded by oil and gas interests. Newsweek called GMI “a central cog in the denial machine” in 2007.

GMI folded in late 2015, so Bradley recommended $50,000 in “seed funding” the following year for its “successor organization,” the CO2 Coalition. The coalition is led by a Dr. William Happer, a well-known climate change denier. “We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It’s not a pollutant at all,” Happer said at a Heritage Foundation event on energy and climate.

Another $10,000 Bradley grant in 2014 for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CSCDGC) went to support its Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI). A staff recommendation notes that SPPI “has helped demonstrate that no real-world data confirms that floods, draughts [sic], or hurricanes are becoming more frequent or severe, as global-warming alarmists allege. Neither is there any real-world data that sea levels are about to rise precipitously, inundating the world’s coasted [sic] lowlands, as is also often alleged.” (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change GPR, June 17, 2014)

ENERGY ROUNDTABLES

Documents show that, beginning in 2013, Bradley provided funding to the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, also an SPN member, to host and organize two “energy roundtables” a year — one before the Heritage Foundation’s annual Resource Bank meeting, and the other before SPN’s annual fall meeting. (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 10, 2015)

The $50,000-per-year grant from Bradley for the meetings was matched “by staff arrangement” by the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a front group for the energy industry that promotes fossil fuel development and opposes efforts to regulate its activities.

“Planned and put on in close cooperation with the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), the roundtables allow state think tanks to better promote free-market energy and environmental policies,” one document states. (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 12, 2013)

Attendance has been high at the roundtables, with as many as “67 SPN leaders” attending the event in Denver in September 2014. The agenda for that meeting details presentations from a number of fossil fuel lovers including: Artic Power, Consumer Energy Alliance, Vital for Colorado, Devon Energy, GOPAC (a political action committee that backs and trains Republican candidates), and Freedom Partners. Freedom Partners, a funding conduit for the billionaire Koch brothers, delivered a talk on “Messaging and State Action.” (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 11, 2014)

BRADLEY GRANTEES WORKED TOGETHER TO DEFEAT LOCAL REGULATIONS ON FRACKING IN COLORADO

In 2014, the Independence Institute and Berman’s Big Green Radicals worked in lockstep in Colorado to defeat local fracking bans, such as the one that passed by ballot measure in Longmont in November of 2013. A 2015 Bradley backgrounder on the Independence Institute praises the anti-fracking work of Independence Institute’s Energy Policy Center, saying, “It has also been a key coalition partner in the movement to stop local and statewide bans on hydraulic fracturing. Last year, current Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper crafted a delicately balanced compromise on local control of oil and gas drilling that removed all initiatives on the issue from the state ballot.”

Berman’s Big Green Radicals rolled out an attack campaign to discredit anti-fracking efforts in the state in May of 2014. Big Green Radicals assertedthat “extreme groups, mostly based far from Colorado in San Francisco, New York, or Washington D.C., are spending millions and spreading their anti-science message to scare voters into approving ballot measures in November to send the oil and gas industry (and the jobs and affordable energy it provides) packing from the Centennial State.”

The efforts by these two groups were successful in overturning local fracking bans. Bradley agreed and decreased its funding recommendation for EPC to $25,000 in 2016, saying, “it is unlikely that there will be any significant developments for EPC in the upcoming months, and therefore staff believes this reduced award is important.”

It is uncertain where the next battleground for energy development will be for Bradley, but the documents demonstrate that they have the funds to bankroll infrastructure in place to discredit climate science and smear the opposition.

OTHER NOTABLE BRADLEY GRANTS

Other significant Bradley grants to support fossil fuel development or dispute climate science in recent years include:

$150,000 to Opportunity Ohio for “program activities.” (2016)

$100,000 to Energy and Environment Legal Institute for “transparency practice general.” (2016) HORNER SCHNARE

$20,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment for “general operations.” (2016)

$200,000 to Competitive Enterprise Institute for “general operations” and “litigation.” (2013, 2015)

$100,000 to The Sand County Foundation for “energy resource development.” (2014)

$100,000 to National Center for Policy Analysis for “general operations.” (2014)

$20,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment for “general operations.” (2014)

==

==

https://cei.org/content/forty-four-free-market-groups-urge-trump-withdraw-paris-climate-agreement

We, the undersigned, write in enthusiastic support of your campaign commitments to withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty and to stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs.  We were heartened by the comments you made at your 100-day rally in Harrisburg and agree that the treaty is not in the interest of the American people and the U. S. should therefore not be a party to it.

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Treaty is an integral part of your energy agenda.  The Obama administration’s Nationally Determined Contribution (or NDC) to the Paris Climate Treaty commits the United States to take actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025.  Paris then requires a more ambitious NDC every five years in perpetuity.

The NDC cites specific policies undertaken by the Obama administration as part of the NDC.  These include: the greenhouse gas emissions rules for existing (the “Clean Power” Plan) and new power plants; Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for vehicles; methane emissions rules for the oil and gas sector and for landfills; and energy efficiency and conservation standards for buildings and appliances.

Environmental pressure groups and several state attorneys general have begun to prepare lawsuits in federal court to block withdrawal of the “Clean Power” Plan and other greenhouse gas rules.  One argument that they have already put forward is that these rules cannot be withdrawn because they are part of our international commitment under the Paris Climate Treaty.  Failing to withdraw from Paris thus exposes key parts of your deregulatory energy agenda to unnecessary legal risk.  The AGs revealed in a recruiting letter that they also plan other lawsuits “ensuring that the promises made in Paris become reality.”

Some officials in your administration are relying on recent statements from former Obama administration officials that the U. S. can withdraw its NDC and submit a new NDC that makes far less ambitious commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The clear language of Article 4 of the Paris Climate Treaty contradicts that claim.  Section 11 states: “A Party may at any time adjust its existing nationally determined contribution with a view to enhancing its level of ambition” (emphasis added).

Even if the U. S. were to be cleared by UN officials to submit a less ambitious NDC, this is not the end of the threats posed by the Paris Climate Treaty to your pro-energy agenda and to the economic future of our country.  Article 4 requires each party to submit a more ambitious NDC at least every five years in perpetuity.  This commitment to reduce fossil fuel use every five years cannot be wished away by those who argue that the U. S. should keep a seat at the negotiating table in order to advocate for fossil fuels.

In urging you to keep your campaign commitment, we recognize that there are several options for you to withdraw the U.S. from Paris.  Of the three options listed below, we think the first two are preferable to the third.

First, you could submit the Paris Climate Treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent with a recommendation that the treaty not be ratified.  Submitting the treaty to the Senate would return us to and restore the proper constitutional method for treaty-making and require a future administration to go through proper procedures if it were to attempt to rejoin the treaty.

Second, you could withdraw from the underlying UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  This action would also achieve your commitment to “stop all payments of the United States tax dollars to UN global warming programs,” including the Green Climate Fund, which is a part of the UNFCCC.

Third, you could announce your intention to withdraw the U. S. from the Paris Climate Treaty according to the four-year schedule specified in the treaty and continue the process of repealing the regulations that the previous administration submitted as part of its NDC.  This option is the least preferable because it runs the risk of legitimizing the Obama administration’s false claim that the treaty is merely an executive agreement.

The undersigned organizations believe that withdrawing completely from Paris is a key part of your plan to protect U.S. energy producers and manufacturers from regulatory warfare not just for the next four years but also for decades to come.  We will strongly support your decision to keep your campaign commitment to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty.

Sincerely,

Myron Ebell, Director, Center for Energy and Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Thomas J. Pyle, President, American Energy Alliance

Joseph Bast, President, The Heartland Institute

Grover G. Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform

Chrissy Harbin, Vice President of External Affairs, Americans for Prosperity

Michael Needham, CEO, Heritage Action for America

Michael Costigan, Senior Advisor, Strategic Outreach, The Heritage Foundation

James L. Martin, Founder and Chairman, 60 Plus Association

Craig Rucker, Executive Director, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

David Ridenour, President, National Center for Public Policy Research

Thomas Schatz, President, Citizens Against Government Waste

Craig Richardson, President, Energy and Environment Legal Institute

Tom DeWeese, President, American Policy Center

Richard Manning, President, Americans for Limited Government

Phil Kerpen, President, American Commitment

David Williams, President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Mario H. Lopez, President, Hispanic Leadership Fund

David Bozell, President, For America

Steven J. Allen, Vice President and Chief Investigative Officer, Capital Research Center

Kenneth Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Craig D. Idso, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

William Happer, President, The CO2 Coalition

E. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

John Droz, Jr., Founder, Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions

Timothy Lee, Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs, Center for Individual Freedom

Peter J. Thomas, Chairman, Americans for Constitutional Liberty

Ed Martin, President, Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund

Amy Oliver Cooke, Executive Vice President, Independence Institute (CO)

David T. Stevenson, Director, Center for Energy Competitiveness, Caesar Rodney Institute (DE)

Paul Gessing, President, Rio Grande Foundation

Kory Swanson, President and CEO, John Locke Foundation

Francis De Luca, President, Civitas Institute

Forest Thigpen, President, Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Eldon Alexander, President, Faith and Freedom Foundation

Lynne Roberts, President, Americans United for Freedom

Rich Johns, President, Liberty Tree Alliance

Aileen Milton, President, The Villages Tea Party

Debbie Gunnoe, President, Navarre Patriots

Sam Mullins, Co-Founder, Santa Rosa Tea Party Patriots

Hon. Mike Hill, Founder, Northwest Florida Tea Party

Stephani Scruggs Bowen, COO, Coalition for a Strong America

Alan Moran, Director, Australian Environment Foundation

Eunie Smith, President, Eagle Forum

Norm Singleton, President, Campaign for Liberty

=

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-ebell-epa-advisor-2097121562.html

ref no link img

By Alex Formuzis and Sonya Lunder

Myron Ebell, head of President-elect Donald Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, is a notorious denier of global warming whose biography unashamedly notes that he's considered a "climate criminal" by activists and "a superstar of the denialosphere" by The Climate War author Eric Pooley. But he's also director of environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which touts "the life-enhancing value of chemicals"—chemicals like arsenic, DDT and PCBs.

One of the the Competitive Enterprise Institute's projects is SafeChemicalPolicy.org. The site is bursting with articles and reports that cast doubt on the dangers of toxic chemicals and pesticides in food, water and consumer products, and disparage the work of public health advocates, with Environmental Working Group (EWG) one of the site's favorite targets

Here are just a few examples:

SafeChemicalsPolicy.org downplays the risks of arsenic in drinking water and toxic pesticides found on foods young children love to eat.

An article on the site says it's wrong for schools to notify parents before pesticides are sprayed inside and around schools.

It disparages public health advocates' concerns over fetuses being exposed to endocrine disruptors in the womb, including Monsanto's notorious PCBs and the now-banned pesticide DDT.

It actually makes the claim that glyphosate—the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, which the World Health Organization considers probably carcinogenic to humans—has "liberated" children from having to work in corn fields, pulling weeds.

There's much more: Anti-BPA Packaging Laws Jeopardize Public Health, Silent Spring Was Wrong and Erin Brockovich's Toxic Fearmongering.

"The simple reality," says the site, "is that modern living means living with chemicals." We couldn't agree more. The problem is that too many of those chemicals are hazardous to our health. The EPA is supposed to protect us from dangerous chemicals, not defend them, as Ebell would almost certainly do if he ran the agency.

As it turns out, EWG is a popular target among Trump's other top advisers. Steve Bannon, the former campaign CEO and incoming chief White House strategist attacked us when he was running the alt-right website Breitbart News.

We're used to it. In fact, when science deniers like Ebell and Bannon regularly get worked up over something you've said or done, it usually means you've said or done something right.

==

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trey son of bill kovacs?

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OMG NOT CPP

The New Congress Should Repeal All Energy Efficiency Mandates

Sam KazmanNovember 17, 2016 9:45 AM

Three Climate Policy Executive Orders the President-Elect Should Repeal

Marlo Lewis, Jr.November 15, 2016 10:29 AM

Free Market Opportunities for the Trump Administration

Fred L. Smith, Jr.November 10, 2016 12:23 PM

==

omg

Three Climate Policy Executive Orders the President-Elect Should Repeal

Marlo Lewis, Jr. • November 15, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to “cancel immediately” all of President Obama’s “illegal and overreaching executive orders,” and he strongly opposes Obama’s climate agenda. Will Obama’s climate policy executive orders be among the first on Trump’s chopping block?

Here are three prime targets for repeal, beginning with the most recent.

Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade (March 19, 2015). This order requires federal buildings to obtain at least 30 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030. All new federal buildings constructed in that year must be “energy net-zero,” meaning their energy consumption must be “balanced by onsite renewable energy.” Also in 2030, 50 percent of all new passenger vehicles in agency fleets must be zero-emission and plug-in hybrid vehicles. To carry out those and many other requirements, agencies must establish “chief sustainability officers” to implement “green supply chain management” under the tutelage of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In addition to using our tax dollars to expand the federal trough for green special interests, the order is a consciousness-raising exercise. If kept in place, it will help perpetuate climate-centric groupthink in federal agencies.

Climate Resilient International Development (September 23, 2014). “This order requires the integration of climate-resilience considerations into all United States international development work to the extent permitted by law.” The main problem here is that development is the best strategy for making poor countries more resilient, and affordable energy is critical to development. Elevating “climate-resilience considerations” too easily becomes an excuse to deny poor countries access to affordable energy, ignore the real causes of poverty (corruption, lack of strong property rights), and legitimize phony grievances against the fossil energy-rich United States.

Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change (November 1, 2013). This order requires federal agencies to promote “engaged and strong partnerships and information sharing at all levels of government” to help “safeguard our economy, infrastructure, environment, and natural resources” from climate change impacts. Agencies are to “support and encourage smarter, more climate-resilient investments by States, local communities, and tribes, including by providing incentives through agency guidance, grants, technical assistance, performance measures, safety considerations, and other programs, including in the context of infrastructure development.” In other words, the order directs agencies to recruit, indoctrinate, bankroll, and coordinate climate activists at all levels of government. Perhaps a better title for the order is “Mobilizing the Long March through the Institutions.”

==

Stealing You Blind

Iain MurrayJuly 11, 2011

Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America

Christopher C. HornerApril 6, 2010  REGNERY

Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Václav KlausMay 30, 2008  CEI book

The Really Inconvenient Truths

Iain MurrayApril 22, 2008

A Free Market Agenda for the 110th Congress

CEI StaffJanuary 9, 2007

Review of Robert Nelson's 'Economics as Religion'

Fred L. Smith, Jr.August 3, 2006

Tom Smith and His Incredible Bread Machine

Fred L. Smith, Jr., R.W. GrantApril 11, 2006

The Revolution Spins toward More Regulation

Clyde Wayne CrewsJune 6, 2005

The Environmental Source

Angela Logomasini December 30, 2004

The Role of Business in the Modern World: Progress, Pressures and Prospects for the Market Economy

David HendersonNovember 17, 2004

CEI's Twentieth Anniversary Report

CEI StaffMay 19, 2004

Field Guide for Effective Communication

CEI StaffJanuary 25, 2004

Cowboys Versus Cattle Thieves

Fred L. Smith, Jr.July 9, 2003

CEI Senior Fellow Publishes New Book On EPA's Regulatory Enforcement

James V. DeLong September 18, 2002

Excerpts from Solutions for an Environment in Peril

Fred L. Smith, Jr.December 1, 2001

Free Market Environmentalism: Protecting the Environment Via Private Property

Fred L. Smith, Jr.November 30, 2001

Economics As Religion

Robert H. NelsonJune 1, 2001

CEI High Tech Briefing Book 2001

James V. DeLongDecember 31, 2000

A Burning Issue

Robert H. NelsonAugust 6, 2000

Ecology, Liberty & Property

Jonathan H. AdlerJune 5, 2000

...

grabbed from amazon:

Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death Hardcover – Bargain Price, June 15, 2002

by Ronald Bailey (Author), Competitive Enterprise Institute (Author)

==

unlike aei and cato, do not seem to publish books per se vs reportand and articles

7/16 grab:

GOP Platform: It’s Time To Get Rid Of The EPA

Daily Caller

Clyde Wayne CrewsJuly 19, 2016

Capito attacks coal regulations, Clinton’s emails at RNC

Charleston Gazette-Mail

Clyde Wayne CrewsJuly 19, 2016

Free Market Groups Back Bill Nixing Obama’s ‘Wholly Arbitrary’ Enviro Regs

Daily Caller

July 19, 2016

CEI Expert Warns Against Reviving Glass-Steagall

July 19, 2016

CEI Applauds Court’s Decision to Stay EPA’s Regional Haze Takeover in Texas

July 18, 2016

California Dem: Our Global Warming Plans Devastate The Poor

Daily Caller

Myron EbellJuly 18, 2016

GOP divided over $500M for climate fund

The Hill

Myron EbellJuly 17, 2016

==

https://cei.org/blog/nyt-ad-abuse-power-free-speech

~RICO GW

Today, CEI sponsored a full-page advertisement in The New York Times highlighting abusive efforts by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, and a coalition of other “AGs United for Clean Power” to silence the speech of more than 100 businesses, nonprofits, and private individuals who question the AGs’ positions on climate change. Published as an open letter, the ad features signatures from 43 organizations, legal experts, and individuals who value Americans’ First Amendment rights and believe they should be protected.

Full text below. View the ad as a full color PDF here.

ABUSE OF POWER

All Americans have the right to support causes they believe in.

The right to speak out is among the most fundamental principles of American democracy. It should never be taken away.

Yet, around the country, a group of state attorneys general have launched a misguided effort to silence the views and voices of those who disagree with them.

Recently, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, and a coalition of other “AGs United for Clean Power” announced an investigation of more than 100 businesses, nonprofits, and private individuals who question their positions on climate change.

This abuse of power is unacceptable. It is unlawful. And it is un-American.

Regardless of one’s views on climate change, every American should reject the use of government power to harass or silence those who hold differing opinions. This intimidation campaign sets a dangerous precedent and threatens the rights of anyone who disagrees with the government’s position—whether it’s vaccines, GMOs, or any other politically charged issue. Law enforcement officials should never use their powers to silence participants in political debates.

We are standing up for every American’s First Amendment right to speak freely. We hope you will join us. This is a critical battle, and it will determine whether our society encourages spirited debate or tolerates only government-approved opinions.

Kent Lassman

President & CEO, Competitive Enterprise Institute

C. Boyden Gray

Former White House Counsel

Andrew C. McCarthy

Former Chief Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of New York

Michael B. Mukasey

U.S. Attorney General, 2007-2009; U.S. District Judge, 1988-2006

Ross McKitrick

Professor of Economics, University of Guelph

Ronald D. Rotunda

Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, Chapman University

Richard S. Lindzen

Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT

William Happer

Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University

Jim DeMint

President, The Heritage Foundation

James H. Amos, Jr.

President & CEO, National Center for Policy Analysis

John A. Baden

Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment

Lisa B. Nelson

CEO, American Legislative Exchange Council

Paul Driessen

Author & Energy Policy Analyst

Thomas J. Pyle

President, Institute for Energy Research

Steven J. Allen

Vice President & Chief Investigative Officer, Capital Research Center

David Ridenour

President, National Center for Public Policy Research

Steven J. Milloy

Publisher, JunkScience.com

Brooke Rollins

President & CEO, Texas Public Policy Foundation

Paul Gessing

President, Rio Grande Foundation

Ron Arnold

Researcher & Author

William Perry Pendley

President, Mountain States Legal Foundation

Adam Brandon

President & CEO, FreedomWorks

Hank Campbell

President, American Council on Science and Health

Craig Rucker

Executive Director, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Tom McCabe

CEO, Freedom Foundation

Richard B. Belzer

Economist

Heather R. Higgins

President & CEO, Independent Women's Voice

Joseph G. Lehman

President, Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Sabrina Schaeffer

Executive Director, Independent Women's Forum

Joseph Bast

President, The Heartland Institute

John C. Eastman

Founding Director, The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence

Robert Alt

President & CEO, The Buckeye Institute

Michael Pack

President & CEO, The Claremont Institute

Josh Blackman

Assistant Professor, South Texas College of Law

Lynn Taylor

President, Tertium Quids

David Rothbard

President, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Tracie Sharp

President & CEO, State Policy Network

Kenneth Haapala

President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Tim Phillips

President, Americans for Prosperity

Myron Ebell

Director of the Center for Energy & Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute

George Landrith

President, Frontiers of Freedom

John Tillman

CEO, Illinois Policy Institute

Craig D. Idso

Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

Affiliations listed for identification purposes only.

==

icn

CEI!

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/08042016/think-tank-fossil-fuel-ties-competitive-enterprise-institute-subpoena-attorney-general-climate-change-exxon

Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank and one of the fossil fuel industry's most steadfast allies, disclosed on Thursday that the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands is demanding to see records of the group's donors and activities involving climate policy.

The subpoena represents a broadening of a multifaceted legal inquiry into whether fossil fuel companies broke any laws as they sought for decades to undermine the scientific consensus and head off forceful action to address the climate crisis.

For the first time, the investigation now appears to touch on the actions of third parties supported by the industry—and perhaps into their joint lobbying actions.

CEI said it "will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena."

The island territory is just one of several jurisdictions now looking into the actions of ExxonMobil Corporation and other fossil fuel companies. The investigations, first announced by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, are thought to be in their early stages, and the investigators have offered few details of their scope.

Attorney General Claude Walker of the Virgin Islands/Credit: ICN

Turning the spotlight on CEI is an assertive tactic from a surprising quarter. The Virgin Islands, while it may not have the legal muscle of New York with its powerful securities and consumer laws, is especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

CEI said the subpoena from Attorney General Claude E. Walker "attempts to unearth a decade of the organization's materials and work on climate change policy."

"The subpoena requests a decade's worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI's work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information," the institute said. "It demands that CEI produce these materials from 20 years ago, from 1997-2007, by April 30, 2016."

"This is the latest effort in an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate debate, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Vice President Al Gore," the institute said.

Schneiderman's subpoena of Exxon last year sparked an expanding inquiry by several Democratic attorneys general. A group of them held a press conference along with Gore last week to describe their coordinated actions on climate change, including the inquiries as well as support for the Obama administration's climate agenda. The attorneys general of Massachusetts and California are also investigating Exxon or other fossil fuel interests.

The investigations began after InsideClimate News, and later the Los Angeles Times, as well as other journalists reported on the history of Exxon's emerging understanding of climate change science in the 1970s and its subsequent efforts to undermine the scientific consensus, in part by financing research organizations including CEI.

CEI's general counsel, Sam Kazman, said it was "an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group. If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time."

The inquiry's timeframe covers a crucial period beginning in 2000 and 2001, at the start of the Bush-Cheney administration, when lobbyists from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies were pressing the new administration to reverse Clinton-Gore policies on global warming, reject the Kyoto Protocol and overhaul government research programs into climate change.

CEI was deeply involved in this campaign, according to multiple sources, including a detailed expose by a whistleblower named Rick Piltz.

For example, CEI filed a lawsuit against both the outgoing Clinton and the incoming Bush administrations, aimed at preventing a significant review of climate science, the 2000 National Climate Assessment, from forming the basis of federal policies and international negotiations. The lawsuit was dismissed, but the CEI had made its point with the Bush administration, which continued to resist the scientific consensus endorsed by the previous administration.

At the time the Bush administration was rewriting federal climate studies, a task carried out by a former oil company lobbyist who moved into the Council on Environmental Quality under Bush, and then went to work for Exxon when his role was publicly disclosed.

Much of the White House's engagement with the energy lobby during the early Bush-Cheney years still remains undisclosed. The administration refused to publish all its communications with the industry during its first year in office, when Vice President Dick Cheney ran an energy policy task force that consulted heavily with the industry behind closed doors.

The Virgin Islands subpoena suggests one way that some new details might be brought to light.

CEI is one of several organizations that have been repeatedly named over the years by those who have criticized Exxon and other fossil fuel companies for financing the climate denial work of third parties. After the Royal Society of the United Kingdom castigated Exxon in 2006 for giving money to groups misrepresenting climate science, Exxon said it had stopped financing the CEI.

In his remarks at last week's press conference, Walker said the fossil fuel investigation "is not an environmental issue as much as it is about survival. We try as attorneys general to build a safe community for all. But what good is that if, annually, everything is destroyed.

"It could be David versus Goliath—the Virgin Islands against a huge corporation," he said. "But we will not stop until we get to the bottom of this and make it clear to our residents as well as the American people that we have to do something transformational."

==

---

By Sam Kazman and Kent Lassman April 22

Sam Kazman is general counsel and Kent Lassman is president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

With seven state attorneys general and Al Gore sharing a New York City stage , there was no doubt about it: It was showtime for a whodunit. The crime being investigated? Dissent.

The March 29 news conference unveiled, according to New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, an “unprecedented” coalition to fight not only climate change but also allegedly deceptive speech about climate change. The group, which dubbed itself AGs United for Clean Power, promised to “use all the tools at our disposal” to battle for progress on “the most consequential issue of our time.”

Schneiderman was blunt about his goal of shutting down debate: “You have to tell the truth. You can’t make misrepresentations of the kinds we’ve seen here.”

This isn’t a law-and-order drama. It’s politics clothed in messianic garb, and its primary tools are censorship and intimidation.

The AGs are following a familiar script here: target an unpopular, deep-pocketed business, harass that business’s potential allies with overly broad investigations, run roughshod over the target’s First Amendment protections and settle once the politically weakened company tires of fighting the endless resources of the state.

ExxonMobil was singled out by name at the news conference, but the coalition appears to be following the script perfectly. Now it’s on to the fishing-expedition stage.

On April 7, our organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was subpoenaed by coalition member and U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker for all CEI material on climate change and energy policy, as well as information on our supporters, over 10 years beginning in 1997. The subpoena’s purported focus is on our contacts with ExxonMobil, a former CEI donor that publicly ended its support for us after 2005. Nonetheless, the subpoena calls for practically all of our material on climate change and energy policy, as well as information on any donors who directly or indirectly supported that work.[NOTE horner is still foiaing sci right now?]

That’s one hell of a burden to slap on a nonprofit. The coalition’s purported justification is that the risks of global warming are so important and the scientific basis for them so settled that disputing them constitutes fraud. But the rhetoric of the AGs is blissfully oblivious to the First Amendment.

Court rulings make it clear that broad subpoenas aimed at restricting speech, especially in the context of policy debates, are invalid. Time and again, the Supreme Court has held that the remedy for unwanted speech is more speech in response. The chief law-enforcement officers of several states should know better, but their reaction to a dissenting policy position is punitive, coercive and unconstitutional.

As for breaching donor confidentiality, the obvious aims here are intimidation and to limit future use of the constitutionally protected right of anonymous donation. In 1958, in NAACP v. Patterson, the Supreme Court held that such attempts were illegal under the First Amendment’s right of association.

You might think that if the law is that clear, we have nothing to worry about. But fighting a subpoena is incredibly costly and time-consuming, especially when the attorneys general behind them have promised to “use all the tools” at their disposal, courtesy of their states’ taxpayers.

Regardless of where you stand on global warming policy, the notion of a multi-state campaign to end the debate ought to make you worry. After all, there are many science-driven policy debates out there, on topics ranging from genetically modified food to population control. It is not as if the government has a sterling reputation when it comes to science. From Galileo to today’s food plate, we know government politicizes science. It ought not to punish dissent, too.

Read more on this topic:

Robert J. Samuelson: The war against Exxon Mobil

The Post’s View: 2015: A year of progress and buffoonery on climate change

Sheldon Whitehouse: The fossil-fuel industry’s campaign to mislead the American people

==

AN

http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxon-using-tobaccos-failed-free-speech-defense-decades-deception-climate-change

he past week has seen a barrage of opinion pieces carrying water for the fossil fuel industry, defending against the ongoing fraud investigations. The Washington Post had two pieces, Newsweek had one and the Financial Times had an editorial, in addition to op-eds in a couple of other conservative outlets. Of those six, half were penned by groups funded at least in part by fossil fuel companies.

The arguments are all by and large the same, claiming that the investigations infringe on fossil fuels companies’ right to free speech while steadfastly ignoring the fact that ExxonMobil funded climate denial to protect their business model. Only the Financial Times editorial actually acknowledges the “misleading claims from fossil fuel interests and their allies” but concludes that it is “because the stakes [of the debate] are so high that all arguments must be heard.” While that sounds fair at first Glantz, it quickly sounds silly when applied to a recent example: the tobacco industry’s denial of the fact that its carcinogenic product is addictive.

All but one of the pieces similarly ignored the tobacco industry precedent and the only person who mentioned it was one of the few voices not plugged into the professional denial apparatus.

As for the pros, Newsweek ran a blog post from the Hoover Institution, which rambled on about climate science that’s supposedly still uncertain, lamenting that fair debate is impossible if one side can bring the other to court. Not mentioned is how a fair debate can be possible if one side launches multi-million dollar PR campaigns to mislead the public about the science.

Feds Refer Exxon #Climate Investigation to FBI: https://t.co/MS5BfY7PNp via @EcoWatch pic.twitter.com/mBWybUPmVb

— DeSmogBlog (@DeSmogBlog) March 7, 2016

Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky’s piece in the Washington Times misses the tobacco precedent, but went all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition for his First Amendment fear mongering. George Will used his column in the Washington Post to offer a lesson on how this campaign is part of a larger progressive strategy to shut down debate. But apparently it’s Will that needs a history lesson, as he uses as evidence a story about a 2013 IRS investigation accusing the agency of targeting conservatives. But that investigation “found no evidence” that the IRS actions were politically motivated. No doubt his column is similarly bereft of evidence.

The Washington Post also gave space to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) to defend itself by pretending it is being investigated for political dissent, not its years of Exxon funding for climate denial. Worth noting CEI’s careful phrasing about its relationship with Exxon, which CEI says “publicly ended its support for us after 2005.” With Donors Trust and others making it possible to anonymize giving, the key word is “publicly.”

Ironically, despite the admission that its Exxon funding is a perfectly legitimate reason to look into its communications, CEI considers its subpoena to be a fishing expedition. Meanwhile, CEI’s own coal-funded Chris Horner continues to engage in nuisance FOIAs for climate scientists.

Exxon’s defense is a hot topic in denierland, as it advances the narrative that the fossil fuel industry is an embattled population facing government persecution. But here’s a reality check: Before Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was murdered on March 2, she reported receiving 33 death threats after years of intimidation. Instead of investigating a man who had previously bragged about his plans to murder her, authorities claim the prime suspects are two of her fellow activists.

Heartbreaking! @GoldmanPrize Activist Berta Cáceres Murdered in Honduras https://t.co/Zj97cmwQi3 @FoEint @greenpeace pic.twitter.com/tAujvEGtMR

— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) March 3, 2016

Looks like the fossil fuel industry isn’t the one facing persecution after all.

---

---

4/16

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/the-truth-about-the-republican-war-on-caterpillars/255522/

In a statement widely taken as a metaphor, the chairman of the Republican National Committee on Thursday said his party is no more trying to hurt the nation's females than it is larval butterflies and moths.

"If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we'd have problems with caterpillars," Reince Priebus told Bloomberg Television, in response to a question about the party's supposed "war on women." "It's a fiction."

But the war on caterpillars and other innocent insects, it turns out, is not a fiction at all.

Under the guise of aiding the agriculture industry, Republicans and their allies in Washington have been waging a long-running campaign to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from limiting bug-killing pesticides. Last year, GOP Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas authored a letter, signed by several others in his party, calling on Democrats to "address the continued regulatory overreach by the Environmental Protection Agency that is a growing concern of farmers, ranchers, foresters and agribusinesses throughout the nation" by bringing up their bill to ease pesticide regulations. This obvious attempt to run roughshod over the rights of many-legged herbivores everywhere was laughably justified as a matter of "public health as we enter mosquito season."

In a similar gesture of outrageous insensitivity to the feelings of Creepy-Crawly-Americans, some conservatives also want to get the controversial insecticide DDT unbanned by the EPA. The free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute runs a website, RachelWasWrong.org, devoted to beating the drum for bringing back DDT, whose banning it terms the "dangerous legacy" of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. But for the liberals and their "tree-hugging political correctness," one NewsMax commentator wrote, bedbugs -- largely voiceless in this whole debate -- might be eradicated.

Republicans may claim that they have no anti-caterpillar agenda -- that they're just trying to protect people and plants from being bitten, that they're merely the victims of a liberal media that sympathizes with the radical bugs'-rights lobby. But the truth is clear, and it's nothing new: Republicans just don't care about caterpillars.

Need any more proof? How about this: Tom DeLay, the onetime leader of the GOP House majority, began his career as an exterminator.

---

==

2x?

---

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Smoking_as_a_civic_duty

CSE smoking as civic duty

Only a tobacco-funded think tank would ever go so far as to describe smoking as a civic duty. The tobacco industry has been a regular funder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, (CEI) which in turn has gone to bat repeatedly and eagerly for tobacco in its battles with government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Following the 1993 release of EPA's risk assessment linking secondhand cigarette smoke to lung cancer, CEI cranked out opinion articles for major newspapers with titles such as "A Smoking Gun Firing Blanks," "EPA's Bad Science Mars ETS Report," and "Safety Is a Relative Thing for Cars; Why Not for Cigarettes?"

CEI policy analyst Alexander Volokh went even further. "Perhaps, in the fine tradition of civil disobedience championed by Thoreau, we should even think of smoking as a civic duty," he wrote in the July 1994 issue of the CEI Update. "Perhaps," he continued, "every January 11th -- the anniversary of the Surgeon General's original 1964 report on smoking -- we should all light up, giving a filter-tipped finger, as it were, to a health-obsessed government." Volokh admitted that the government's efforts to discourage smoking "may further the cause of health," but concluded that "there are things more valuable than health."

In 1996, CEI was one of eight think tanks named in a report by Ralph Nader's Public Citizen titled "A Million for Your Thoughts: The Industry-Funded Campaign by Conservative Think Tanks Against the FDA." The report identified $3.5 million that these think tanks had received in funding from pharmaceutical, medical device, biotechnology and tobacco companies to help them pump out a "steady stream of reports, fact sheets, op-ed articles and newspaper, radio and television advertisements purporting to document the FDA's deadly overcaution and bullying of manufacturers." CEI's Julie DeFalco responded to the Public Citizen report by claiming that its positions on government regulations were developed "years before we ever received tobacco or drug industry money. Our position on FDA reform -- that the FDA is inherently prone to 'deadly overcaution,' and its veto power over new therapies should be removed -- hasn't changed in the nine years since then. How, then, does the fact that our support base has grown to include tobacco and pharmaceutical companies affect the validity of our position?"

Subsequently, however, additional information has become public about CEI's ties to the tobacco industry (including funding from Philip Morris that was not mentioned in the Public Citizen report). The 1997 settlement between tobacco companies and U.S. state attorney generals obligated the tobacco industry to place millions of pages of its internal documents online at locations such as the Philip Morris documents website. Those documents show that there was a hidden tobacco agenda behind CEI's attacks on FDA policies for regulating pharmaceuticals. Those attacks came at the very same time that tobacco executives were scrambling to head off the possibility that the FDA might acquire jurisdiction to regulate cigarettes. During the mid-1990s, Philip Morris alone gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to CEI and other think tanks and front groups such as the Washington Legal Foundation, Newt Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Citizens for a Sound Economy, which then argued publicly against FDA regulation of tobacco. According to the Wall Street Journal, "antipathy toward David Kessler's Food and Drug Administration, which wants to regulate cigarettes," was a major common denominator among the think tanks and policy groups to which tobacco companies donated during that time period. Rather than acting independently, CEI and other tobacco-funded think tanks coordinated their activities closely with the tobacco industry's attorneys, lobbyists and PR firms.

In February 1994, FDA Commissioner David Kessler suggested that the agency might have "a legal basis on which to regulate [tobacco] products," based on evidence from internal industry documents and industry insiders that nicotine in cigarettes was being manipulated to cause addiction -- in essence acting as a drug. This was the backdrop to the now-infamous incident in April 1994 when top tobacco executives testified before Congress that nicotine is not addictive.

That same year, Philip Morris received a request for funding from CEI titled "The Human Cost of Regulation: Reframing the Debate on Risk Management." The proposal stated, "Risk has become the secular version of sin in our society, and risk management is the modern-day equivalent of religious crusades. ... From Superfund to indoor air quality to medical drug and device approval, bureaucratic initiatives on this front have ended up as incredibly costly failures whose only real achievement has been the creation of public alarm." To counter this purported threat, CEI proposed to raise "public recognition of the adverse public health effects of medical drug regulation and nutritional labeling" by demonstrating that "risk management by government can often have lethal effects."

Philip Morris had already given $50,000 to CEI on June 29, 1993, and it sent another check for $25,000 on July 27, 1994. The quid pro quo came a few months later. In the fall of 1994, notes an internal Philip Morris memorandum, the tobacco company approached CEI, along with the Washington Legal Foundation and Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), seeking their help "to define the FDA as an agency out of control and one failing to live up to its congressional mandate regarding regulation of drugs and medical devices."

"To the extent FDA regulation was wrapped up in the youth smoking issue, it was hard to argue against," Steven C. Parrish noted in an August 1995 presentation to the Philip Morris board of directors. They therefore wanted CEI and the other think tanks to build a case against the FDA surrounding issues unrelated to tobacco. As Parrish explained, "Philip Morris representatives with scientific credentials were assigned the task of meeting with various 'think tanks' to discuss the issue of FDA regulation and encourage guest editorials and comments to the media." PM was "pleased," he said, "to see a chorus of rising criticism of Kessler and FDA." Beginning in December 1994, CEI joined CSE and the CEI in what Parrish described as "aggressive media campaigns ... through newspaper ads, policy papers, symposia, or by filing petitions directly with the FDA, and speaking directly to politicians." [1]

A January 26, 1995, attorney's memorandum by David P. Nicoli to Philip Morris, marked "privileged and confidential," details the company's behind-the-scenes role in a coordinated rollout of media attacks on the FDA by PM's "non-tobacco" allies. CEI began the attack on January 11, "running inside the Beltway anti-FDA radio and TV ads." The following day, CSE held a press conference with a sympathetic congressman and began running its own inside the Beltway ads. Simultaneously, the Washington Legal Foundation ran a full-page ad in the New York Times and a three-quarter-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. The FDA's first public response to these attacks occurred on January 17. This was followed, Nicoli noted, by an industry "counter attack that both AP and Reuters pick up. Further volleys fly between the two, as trade press, general media amplify the fight." Other voices began chiming in -- the drug industry, the Washington Post, Business Week. Nicoli added that further attacks were already in the works, organized by Jim Tozzi, one of PM's top lobbyists, in coordination with the Progress and Freedom Foundation and the blue-chip PR firm of Powell Tate. "Progress and Freedom Foundation, through Tozzi, set to release FDA piece on 2/1/95 with Powell Tate publicizing," Nicoli reported. [2]

==

cei eco terror

Greenpeace, Earth First!, PETA | Competitive Enterprise Institute

https://cei.org/op-eds-articles/greenpeace-earth-first-peta

Mar 1, 2004 ... Earth First! literature is sprinkled with the word “monkeywrenching” - its .... In 1992, the ELF [Earth Liberation Front] was founded in Brighton, ...

Free Market Advocates Confront Eco-Terrorism | Competitive ...

https://cei.org/news.../free-market-advocates-confront-eco-terrorism

Mar 6, 2002 ... Groups such as the Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Front, and Earth First! have intimidated researchers and destroyed ...

Washington, D.C., March 7, 2002 — In a Capitol Hill conference today, several experts in security, politics, and communications revealed the troubling rise in acts of violence and destruction being committed by environmental and animal rights activists.  The event, “Stopping Eco-Extremism: A Conference on Legislative, Legal, and Communications Strategies to Protect Free Enterprise, Private Property, and American Business,” was sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the crisis communications firm Nichols–Dezenhall.

“Environmental extremists have been successful in the part because opposition to their ideology and tactics was not coordinated,” said conference organizer Gregory Conko, director of food safety policy at CEI.  “Today’s conference is the beginning of an effort to inform those in business and academia to the threat such organizations pose.  Anyone who works in an environmentally unfashionable industry should be concerned.”

Speakers included Rep. Scott McInnis (R-CO), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, who spoke on the danger from groups like the Earth Liberation Front, whose members burnt down a ski lodge in his district in 1998 to protest commercial development in the Rocky Mountains.

James Jarobe, the FBI’s Section Chief of Domestic Terrorism/Counterterrorism Planning, described radical environmental groups as the largest and most active U.S.-based terrorist organizations, causing $43 million worth of damage since 1996 alone.  Groups such as the Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Front, and Earth First! have intimidated researchers and destroyed laboratories, businesses, and private property using arson, burglary, assault, and vandalism.

Nichols–Dezenhall CEO and author Nick Nichols also gave a warning about two trends he has tracked in recent years: first, a tendency of fringe environmental groups to rely increasingly on violent, destructive tactics, and second, the failure of corporations, universities, and other subjects of attack to defend themselves and their reputations.  Nichols especially condemned the instinct of many executives in affected companies to try to placate activists groups with donations or public gestures.

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.  For more information about CEI, visit our website at www.cei.org or email the communications department at pr@cei.org.

How About People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans ...

https://cei.org/blog/how-about-people-ethical-treatment-humans

Jan 25, 2007 ... PETA activists have a long history of association with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and a related underground organization, theEarth ...

Environmental Terrorists Deserve No Special Treatment ...

https://cei.org/.../environmental-terrorists-deserve-no-special-treatment

Oct 26, 2001 ... For example, the Earth Island Institute (EII) editorializing on their website site ... A distinct but related group, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), ...

Greenpeace, Earth First!, PETA

www.cei.org/pdf/3904.pdf

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat

Mar 6, 2004 ... 1992, the ELF [Earth Liberation Front] was founded in Brighton, England, by. Earth First members who refused to aban- don criminal acts as a ...

PETA or Medical Research? by Steven J. Milloy | Competitive ...

https://cei.org/op-eds-and.../peta-or-medical-research-steven-j-milloy

May 27, 2005 ... The Post article continued, “The [Animal Liberation Front] activists, ... committed by the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front.

Ecoterrorism Kills | Competitive Enterprise Institute

https://cei.org/op-eds-and-articles/ecoterrorism-kills

Oct 30, 2007 ... But rather than being directed by some “monkey-wrenching” Earth Liberation Front (ELF) activists, it's advanced by our national acceptance of ...

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And she was right. Because DDT was widely used, mosquitoes evolved resistance. In Sri Lanka, for example, this lead to a worsening epidemic and hundreds of thousands of cases of malariaas DDT became ineffective. The ban on the agricultural use of DDT that Carson inspired saved lives by slowing the development of resistance.

In conjunction with their Carson hate-site the CEI are also offering their expert, Angela Logomasini (she has a degree in politics, not malariology) for interviews about Rachel Carson’s legacy. You just know that some lazy reporters will balance their stories about Carson by quoting an environmentalist about great Carson was and then quoting Logomasini screeching about how Carson killed millions of people. And you just know that they won’t check Logomasini’s claims for accuracy.

Meanwhile Senator Tom Coburn has blocked a resolution to honour Rachel Carson, accusing her of causing the death of millions of people. And CEI alumnus Ron Bailey joins the chorus with a post blaming Carson for the deaths of millions from insect-borne diseases like malaria. In his post and in his articles he links, nowhere does he mention insecticide resistance or what Carson wrote about it. What a surprise.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/23/rachel-carson-kills-babies-org/

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First Amendment Fight: CEI's Climate Change Subpoena ...cei.org › climatesubpoena

Apr 5, 2017 - On April 7, 2016, CEI received a subpoena from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker demanding a full decade's worth of our communications, emails, statements, and other documents regarding energy and climate policy. Those documents included private donor information.

Virgin Islands AG revokes climate-change subpoena after being ...cei.org › content › virgin-islands-ag-revokes-climate-ch...

The Washington Times disucsses Attorney General Claude Walker's withdrawl of the DC subpoena of CEI, which was part of an intimidation campaign to silence ...

Exxon Fights Subpoena in Widening Climate Probe, Citing ...insideclimatenews.org › news › exxon-virgin-islands-su...

Apr 14, 2016 - In his demand for records, Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker said Exxon may have violated the territory's anti-racketeering law, ...

AG drops climate change subpoena against libertarian think ...www.foxnews.com › politics › ag-drops-climate-change-s...

May 23, 2016 - AG drops climate change subpoena against libertarian think tank ... Attorney General Claude Walker had issued the subpoena, demanding ... against some party line,” CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman said in a statement.

The Climate Police Crack-Up - WSJwww.wsj.com › Opinion › Review & Outlook

Jul 7, 2016 - Virgin Islands AG Claude Walker recently withdrew his subpoena of Exxon Mobil. He was a ... He pulled his subpoena against CEI last month.

Schneiderman's Climate Secrets - WSJwww.wsj.com › Opinion › Review & Outlook

Aug 31, 2016 - To great media fanfare, they unleashed a series of broad subpoenas ... tank that was hit in April with a subpoena from Virgin Islands AG Claude Walker. ... Specifically, CEI wants to know about any deal the AGs made with ...

Today, CEI filed its reply brief in its... - Competitive Enterprise ...www.facebook.com › CompetitiveEnterpriseInstitute › posts

Jun 17, 2016 - Today, CEI filed its reply brief in its push for sanctions over U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude E. Walker's climate change subpoena.

NO. EXXON MOBIL CORPORATION, Plaintiff, v. CLAUDE ...amlawdaily.typepad.com › ...

PDF

Apr 13, 2016 - Defendants Claude Earl Walker, Attorney General of the United States Virgin Islands; ... climate change” at a press conference, held on March 29, 2016, with former Vice ... It appears that mailing the Walker/Cohen Milstein subpoena to ... Press Release, A.G. Schneiderman, Former Vice President Al Gore ...

Foundation, Dozens of Groups Add Support to CEI Over AG ...www.georgiapolicy.org › issue › foundation-adds-supp...

Jun 1, 2016 - Letter supports CEI after attorney general's subpoena over climate change ... from U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General (AG) Claude Walker.

Koch-Backed TX AG Wants To Stop Climate Change Investigation ...realkochfacts.com › koch-backed-tx-ag-wants-to-stop-cli...

This week, he joined in the Kochs never ending fight against climate change ... Virgin Islands AG Claude Walker for threatening to subpoena CEI documents ...

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