webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Pyle, Thomas

POW poster boy?

primary 12/16 enemies lisTt transition trump

bak 120

see AEA and IER, same orgs SEE FISHER PERRY DOE GRID BS

ROBERT BRADLEY

PRUITT CHRIS WRIGHT?

KEYSTONE XL

HAPPER

See robert bradley

BROOKS BROS No. 1. Tom Pyle, who had worked for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), went private sector a few months later, getting a job as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries. 

POMBO

POSTER BOY? see also Perry and travis fisher

LEWANDOWSKI AFP

CA CAFE WAIVER

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pension plan?

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CALLER

10 25

LNX

Republican Utah Sen. John Curtis is reportedly planning to co-lead a delegation to the annual U.N. climate change conference, which some critics told the Daily Caller News Foundation clashes with President Donald Trump’s energy agenda.

Curtis told E&E News Friday that he and Democratic Delaware Sen. Chris Coons will lead a delegation to Brazil together for this year’s COP30 and that three other unnamed Republicans are also interested in joining the troop. The U.N. climate change conference is set to host several youth-led climate forums and discuss the Paris Agreement that Trump directed the U.S. to abandon through a day-one executive order.

“RINOs like Sen. Curtis are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of MAGA victory by going to the annual UN climate confab in Brazil,” Steve Milloy, Senior Fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute told the DCNF. “There, they will conspire with China and Europe in trying to subvert President Trump’s agenda of defeating the climate hoax, terminating the Green New Scam and making America energy dominant.” (RELATED: John Curtis Has History Of Raking In Thousands From Green Energy Donors)}:

U.S. Senator-elect John Curtis (R-UT) arrives for the Senate Republican leadership elections at the U.S. Capitol on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)

A spokesperson for Curtis’ office told the DCNF that “plans are not finalized yet for the Senator’s travel,” though E&E News reported Friday that Curtis said “we have an agenda that is really coming together nicely. We’re super happy with it.”

The Trump administration has not announced that it will send a delegation to the November conference and Trump recently called climate change policy the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” in front of the United Nations General Assembly in September. Trump has moved to ax federal support for green energy sources like wind and solar that the Biden administration favored while bolstering conventional resources like coal.

“Leave it to ‘Mitt Romney’ style Republicans like Sen. Curtis to try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. … The UN climate agenda and the UN’s COP30 meetings should be disbanded, not given credibility by GOP senators,” Marc Morano, author and Climate Depot executive editor, told the DCNF. “This is a pathetic throwback to the pre-Trump Republicanism of George H. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. … The UN climate agenda has quite literally overseen the outsourcing of the West’s once dominant industries to China, India, and the developing world. The U.S., Canada, and Europe have boasted about emission accounting tricks, while China builds two new coal plants a week and benefits from the West’s attempts at a ‘green transition.’ The U.S. does not need ‘a seat at the table’ at the UN climate summit, we need to knock the table over.”

Curtis has historically split with many Republicans over climate change policy and has notably advocated against a wholesale repeal of Biden-era green energy tax credits that Trump railed against. Earlier this year, Curtis told Secretary of State Marco Rubio that it is “really important” to have a “Republican voice at that table,” in reference to COP30.

The Senator pointed to nuclear specifically as an energy resource Republicans could elevate at COP30.

Critics like Milloy, Morano and President of the Heartland Institute James Taylor told the DCNF that COP30 should not be endorsed by Republican participation as it runs counter to Trump’s energy policies and suggests that the left-leaning climate talking points the president has fought hold legitimacy.

“Republicans who attend COP30 for any reason other than to mock it are hypocrites and grandstanders,” Taylor told the DCNF. “How much carbon dioxide are they going to spew into the atmosphere merely so they can have a ‘photo op’ at a portion of the Amazon rainforest that was destroyed in order to create a venue for this vacation conference of UN bureaucrats?”

Notably, developers razed portions of the Amazon rainforest to construct a road for COP30, and a 2024 study released right before COP29 showed that emissions rise sharply during major conferences due to private jet travel.

Coons’ office did not respond to the DCNF’s multiple requests for comment.

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REF

John Curtis Has History Of Raking In Thousands From Green Energy Donors | The Daily Caller

Mary Lou MastersContributor

January 14, 2024

Republican Rep. John Curtis of Utah, who recently jumped into the race for outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney’s seat, has raked in thousands of dollars in donations for his congressional bids from the green energy industry, according to campaign finance records.

Curtis launched a campaign for Senate on Jan. 2 after previously ruling it out shortly after Romney announced he would not seek another term in the upper chamber, adding to the primary already chock-full of prominent Republicans. The congressman, who has split from many on the right about climate change, brought in thousands from green energy organizations and companies’ affiliated political action committees (PACs) during his four House bids, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show.

“Congressman Curtis is one of the leaders of a small but vocal minority in the Republican Party that thinks that the Republicans need to capitulate on the issue of climate change for fear of losing younger voters, and the survey data simply just doesn’t bear that out,” Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Curtis is the chair of the Conservative Climate Caucus, which states its goal is to reduce emissions while not limiting consumer choices. The caucus aims to inform members of “climate policies and legislation consistent with conservative values.”

The congressman believes that curbing climate change will bolster the economy rather than hinder it through promoting energy innovation in the private sector, like carbon capture, according to Politico.

The Bipartisan Climate Action’s political arm has given $13,500 in donations to the congressman’s campaign from 2021 to 2023, FEC data shows. The group is focused on reelecting members who push “significant, enduring, and bipartisan legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” (RELATED: Rep Considering Bid To Replace Romney Has Long History Of Timely Stock Trading While In Office)

Between 2020 and 2022, the Environmental Defense Action Fund’s affiliated PAC donated $5,500 to Curtis’ congressional campaign, according to FEC filings. The nonprofit’s political arm, which is committed to “electing climate champions,” encourages the Biden administration to promote electric vehicles and reduce emissions.

Sunnova Energy’s corporate PAC contributed $1,000 to Curtis’s efforts in May 2023, along with another $1,000 donation in late September, just after he announced he was considering running for Senate, according to FEC filings. The company allegedly took advantage of elderly customers who were near-death by convincing them to sign expensive multi-decade rooftop solar contracts, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

“A lot of those companies are looking for a way to try to create a sense of bipartisanship in the sort of climate agenda. And when you have a member in the Republican Party that makes overtures about climate change, naturally, they will gravitate towards him,” Pyle said.

The campaign also brought in donations from the Solar Energy Industries Association’s affiliated PAC to the tune of $12,500 between 2022 and 2023, FEC records show. The trade association hopes that solar will “achieve 30% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030.”

Aligned PACs for SunPower and SunRun, two solar energy companies, have both given $2,500 to the congressman’s campaign in 2022 and 2023, respectively, according to FEC data.

Other affiliated PACs for green energy companies like NextEra Energy, Sempra Energy and Noble Energy have also donated thousands to Curtis’ campaign, to the tune of a combined $11,500 since 2018, according to FEC filings.

I just left the Lt Governor’s office where I filed to run for U.S. Senate! 🇺🇸 I’ll keep working hard to get things done for Utah & make our state an even better place. Together, we can ensure America has a bright future. Join me by donating/volunteering at https://t.co/U6Yw5H2k4H pic.twitter.com/1x9rSQndqx

— John Curtis (@CurtisUT) January 3, 2024

Curtis has been critical of the Biden administration’s costly green energy efforts, including the president’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, according to Politico. The congressman hosts the “Conservative Climate Summit” on college campuses to engage with younger voters on the issue, and has travelled abroad to the last three U.N. climate summits.

“Being a marginal Republican, he will be a very popular candidate with Republican front groups, like [Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions] and Clear Path. He will also be popular with formerly Republican-leaning operations like the [American Petroleum Institute] and the Chamber,” Mike McKenna, GOP strategist and former Trump administration energy adviser, told the DCNF. “He may be one of the few people in Utah who would not be an upgrade from Sen. [Mitt] Romney.”

Curtis, former mayor of Provo, Utah, used to be a Democrat and served as his county party chair in the early 2000s, according to Deseret News.

Brent Orrin Hatch, son of the late Sen. Orrin Hatch who was succeeded by Romney, jumped into the race on the same day as Curtis. State House Speaker Brad Wilson launched a Senate bid in late September, and Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs has been running for Romney’s seat since May.

The Cook Political Report characterizes Romney’s seat as in the “Solid R” category. The GOP primary will be held on June 25.

A Guidant Polling and Strategy survey released in mid-December found Curtis with 40% support among the crowded Republican primary field, followed by Wilson at 11% and Staggs at 6%. The remaining 43% of likely primary voters were not yet sure of their choice.

“Voters of Utah will have a choice,” Pyle said. “The Republican primary voters [sic] will have a choice to pick somebody as their nominee who is either more like Sen. [Mike] Lee, who I would argue is a true conservative, or more like Sen. [Mitt] Romney, who has never really been much of a conservative especially on these issues.”

Curtis’ campaign did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Tags : elections 2024 john curtis mitt romney senate utah

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3 22 oilman mag

"dishonesty"

AMERICAN ENERGY ALLIANCE’S STATEMENT ON PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN’S PROPOSAL TO RELEASE MORE OIL FROM THE STRATEGIC PETROLEUM RESERVE.

WASHINGTON DC – Today the Biden administration announced it would release 1 million barrels a day for the next six months from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, issued the following statement.

The Biden administration has done everything it possibly can to strangle domestic energy production, and this release from the SPR is not a sustainable plan to reduce prices. The SPR is not a Strategic Price Reserve. The President is trying to use it to bail out his failed policies. Over the past 10 years, no country in the world put more new oil on the market than the United States. More domestic production from the largest producer in the world–the US—is the only sustainable path toward bringing down prices.

while the Biden administration can change course, this would require a 180-degree change from their current approach. The Biden administration claims that “The fact is that there is nothing standing in the way of domestic oil production.” This is not true. According to the latest numbers from the Department of Interior, there are currently:

Less than 1.9 percent of federal areas are lands are leased for oil and gas developmen[t]

Not allowing oil production on over 98 percent of federal lands, when the federal government is the largest land manager is a serious impediment to domestic oil production.  Not only that, but just this week the Biden administration released a budget with no money to carry out offshore leasing. This would be the third year in a row without offshore leasing.

Additional Resources:

Instead of Allowing More Domestic Oil Production, Biden Is Tapping into Strategic Reserves Again and Ignoring the “Root Causes” of Higher Prices

For media inquiries please contact: THOMAS.PYLE@ENERGYDC.ORG

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Rigzone

Biden Must Ensure U.S.Energy Security Amid Aggression On Ukraine, AEA Says

The AEA President Thomas Pyle issued a statement ahead of President Biden addressing the nation and contemplating a proper reaction to a...

.1 month ago

E&E News

3 issues to watch with Biden's oil and gas overhaul

American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle said the “draconian increases in royalty payments” would only serve to push drilling off...

.Nov 29, 2021

The Waterways Journal

Ukraine Invasion Clarifies Climate Agenda Costs

President Joe Biden just announced a ban on oil and gas imports from ... to Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research.

.1 month ago

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12/16

no lnx

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/trump-doe-transition-team-lobbyist-oil-gas-koch

POLICY

Trump Energy Team Swaps Out Its Transition Team Leader

And the new guy has some choice words for clean energy lobbyists.

JULIAN SPECTOR DECEMBER 01, 2016

Donald Trump won the presidency with a pledge to "drain the swamp," reducing the undue influence of elites and Beltway insiders on the functioning of the government.

To uphold this pledge, the incoming administration instituted a policy that bars registered lobbyists from participating in the teams that land in the federal departments to oversee the transition. That made things a little awkward for the lobbyists Trump had chosen months before to run the energy policy handoff.

"Although I have reluctantly decided that I cannot continue on the transition in an official capacity, I am excited about continuing to work to make America great again," said Mike McKenna, [MWR PR LOBBYIST?] the Republican energy lobbyist who led the transition team for the Department of Energy, in a statement earlier this month.

Another lobbyist on Trump's energy policy team, Mike Catanzaro of CGCN Group, also stepped down.The departures turned the routine process of bureaucratic stewardship into a rather more suspenseful and unpredictable affair.

===

https://thinkprogress.org/obscure-think-tank-gains-influence-1644feb0b813/

This is how the Kochs’ anti-renewable agenda becomes White House policy
Koch-tied officials “got their wish” with Trump’s attacks on climate action, environment.

MARK HANDJUL 17, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump raised eyebrows late last year when he named the head of an obscure right-wing think tank, with close ties to petrochemical billionaires Charles and David Koch, to lead his energy transition team. Since then, officials from the Institute for Energy Research (IER) have been appointed to high-level positions at the Department of Energy where they are playing major roles in implementing pro-fossil fuel, anti-renewable energy policies.

Thomas Pyle, who serves as president of IER and its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), set the tone by drafting a priority list for the new administration; at the top of the list was withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

Soon after Trump took office, newly appointed officials across the federal government started a push to prop up the fossil fuel sector, particularly the coal industry. In the spring, Energy Secretary Rick Perry directed his staff to conduct a study of the U.S. electric grid to determine if renewables were harming traditional baseload generation sources, like coal and nuclear. A former IER official, Travis Fisher, was selected to oversee the study.

A draft of the study leaked last week concluded that renewables pose no threat to the grid. The leaked draft was completed by DOE career staff, and thus is subject to change by Perry and his team of Trump appointees. A DOE spokeswoman told Bloomberg that “those statements as written are not in the current draft.” The report clarifies that the spokeswoman “wouldn’t say they are incorrect, just the draft is ‘constantly evolving.’”

In an April memo, Perry wrote that pro-renewable energy regulations issued by past U.S. administrations “threaten to undercut the performance of the grid” and have caused “the erosion of critical baseload resources” derived from coal and nuclear energy. Since Perry ordered the study, numerous analyses and reports have been published rejecting that notion.

[Rick Perry called out for ‘thinly disguised’ attempt to undermine renewable energy

Former Koch-funded think tank official selected to lead DOE study.]

“From the beginning, all signs pointed to Perry’s so-called study as a piece of coal power propoganda,” Jim Marston, vice president of clean energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote in a blog post.

Fisher has been clear about his disdain for policies that encourage the growth of renewable energy: In 2015, he wrote a report on the nation’s power grid in which he recommended that policymakers eliminate the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and Mercury and Air Toxics Standards; the federal production tax credit for wind energy; state renewable energy standards; and net metering incentives for rooftop solar.

“It’s no coincidence that, now that Donald Trump is in the White House, some of the same clean energy policies that Fisher targeted for attack in his 2015 grid study for IER are now being rolled back,” Dave Anderson, the Energy and Policy Institute’s policy and communications manager wrote in a report.

IER receives funding specifically to produce research papers that attack renewable energy and promote fossil fuels, according to Jesse Coleman, a researcher with Greenpeace USA’s investigations team. Other right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute have a wide array of financial backers; IER’s funding circle appears to be much smaller.

With Koch brothers-linked groups serving as its major funders, IER “can get away with more extreme views, especially on renewable energy, than either Heritage or the American Enterprise Institute does,” Coleman explained.

IER plays “a very valuable and preconceived function within this greater Koch network.”

In May, Trump appointed Daniel Simmons, IER’s former vice president for policy who has questioned the value of promoting renewable energy sources, to oversee the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.Simmons also held a top position at AEA, which advocated for the office he now oversees at DOE to be eliminated.

Simmons is the highest-profile former IER employee to land a job in the Trump administration. Prior to joining IER, he served as director of the natural resources task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing group that drafts industry-friendly model legislation for policymakers.

Another former AEA staff member, Alex Fitzsimmons, is now a senior adviser in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, E&E News reported earlier this month. While at AEA, Fitzsimmons served as manager of policy and public affairs where he wrote blog posts on “green energy cronyism” and spotlighting Jay Leno’s criticisms of ethanol.

With the financial backing of tax-exempt organizations linked to the Kochs and other right-wing donor groups, IER has been promoting its pro-coal, anti-renewable energy agenda for years. Founded in 1989, IER is a small think tank, but its tentacles spread far and wide among other right-wing groups. AEA was formed in 2008. Between 2010 and 2014, IER and AEA received more than $5 million from Koch-tied funds.

[This Koch-backed group invites you to celebrate fossil fuels on Earth Day

The contest is designed to “showcase the awesomeness of fossil fuels.”]

IER plays “a very valuable and preconceived function within this greater Koch network, which is to provide academic ammunition for the other groups that fight for the Koch brothers and the oil and gas agenda writ large,” Coleman said in an interview.

“While they seem small, they’re part of the much larger Koch network that has always given them an echo chamber and increased their reach,” he continued. “And that’s the reason we see them with such seemingly outsized influence now.”

IER founder and CEO Robert Bradley, Jr. is an adjunct scholar at the Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute and the Koch-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute. Bradley previously served as director of policy analysis at Enron, where he wrote speeches for company founder Ken Lay. The company collapsed into bankruptcy in late 2001 with several officials, including CEO Jeff Skilling, serving prison sentences.

A ThinkProgress review of IER and AEA’s funders (according to data provided by Conservative Transparency, Guidestar, and CitizenAudit) revealed that since 2008, its donations included at least:

Institute for Energy Research
American Energy Alliance

Prior to joining IER, Pyle worked as a registered lobbyist for Koch Industries and served as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries from 2001 through 2005. Pyle also worked as policy analyst for then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX), who ranked among the top recipients of oil and gas industry funds during his time in Congress.

The Republican Party’s move further to the right, especially on energy and environmental issues, has political observers confused about how to describe its major players. Elliott Negin, a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out that the Washington Post called Simmons a “conservative scholar” when reporting his DOE appointment. As a veteran of the Koch brothers’ “climate science denier network,” the more accurate description of Simmons would be “fossil fuel industry propagandist,” Negin wrote.

Given its small size — it lists just nine current scholars and staff members on its website — IER cannot provide the Trump administration with an endless supply of anti-regulation energy officials. Industry trade groups and other right-leaning research organization are helping to fill the ranks of Trump’s energy and environmental team.

For energy and environment policy, though, IER is playing an important role in the Trump administration. “IER adheres to a very extreme brand of ‘free market’ ideology. As usually happens with other groups in the Koch network, they will specifically attack the enemies of Koch Industries’ profit centers. So… they attack solar and wind,” Coleman said.

During the presidential transition, the IER-AEA memo written by Pyle predicted that the Clean Power Plan would be withdrawn by the Trump administration. “Pyle, IER, and AEA soon got their wish,” Anderson wrote. “Trump signed an executive order that began the process of reviewing the Clean Power Plan during his first 100 days in the White House.”

With Pyle serving as Trump’s energy transition team chief, IER laid the groundwork for the energy policies that are now being amplified by the administration, Coleman said. Blaming renewable energy for a decline in the coal and nuclear industries, for instance, was a talking point that clearly came from IER.

“It’s such a crazy place that [other Republicans] don’t want to be a part of it.”

John Coequyt, global climate policy director for the Sierra Club, contends that the Trump administration is having trouble finding qualified people to fill appointed positions at DOE, which has created a vacuum for a small organization like IER.

“It’s such a crazy place that [other Republicans] don’t want to be a part of it,” Coequyt said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen with these [IER] guys or whether they are ultimately going to be successful. It’s hurting them that they’re such zealots.”

Release of the grid study ordered by Rick Perry has been delayed from its original late-June deadline. According to the leaked version of the study released last week, wind and solar power do not pose a significant threat to the reliability of the U.S. power grid, contradicting statements by Perry. The conclusions in the final study, after DOE’s political appointees get a chance to review it, will represent the key first test for IER’s influence on policies related to promoting fossil fuels and undercutting renewable energy sources.

Josh Israel contributed to this piece.

#CLIMATE, #DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, #ENVIRONMENT, #EPA, #KOCH BROTHERS

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https://www.ecowatch.com/electric-cars-public-opinion-polls-2641161506.html

Dana Drugmand

Fossil fuel interests appear intent on swaying public opinion about the electric vehicle tax credit, based on recent polling on the policy. A deeper look at these efforts reveals oil and gas funding behind the groups conducting the polls and blatant bias in the polling methodology, according to experts.

Survey results commissioned and publicized by the American Energy Alliance (AEA) seem on their surface to indicate that a majority of respondents are not thrilled about subsidizing EVs purchased by other consumers, particularly wealthy Americans. However, according to polling experts who reviewed the survey for DeSmog, the questions were designed to solicit a certain response and produce results to serve a predetermined narrative that supports the oil industry's interests. According to polling expert Ed Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, the surveys relied on "highly biased questions designed to elicit highly misleading answers."

Who Is Behind the 'Highly-Biased' Anti-Electric Vehicle Poll?

The organization that commissioned the surveys, AEA, is funded by oil interests including the Koch network and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the nation's leading trade group of oil refiners. The group is touting these findings from recent polls in Maine, Michigan and South Dakota, saying the results are consistent with those from surveys they commissioned in nine other states.

"This is further evidence that efforts to compel taxpayers, ratepayers, workers, and consumers to pay for the choices of others, and the preferences of government bureaucrats, are doomed and will lead directly to voter resistance," said Thomas Pyle, president of AEA. "The citizens of Maine, Michigan, and South Dakota see an expansion of the electric vehicle tax credit exactly for what it is: a giveaway to rich Californians and large,already prosperous corporations."

Pyle's statement, and the survey questions themselves, are loaded with misleading information. The tax credit's stated purpose is to lower the cost of electric vehicles, which is critically important for low-to-moderate income Americans. Automakers don't claim the credit, consumers do, including those who opt to lease an electric vehicle. But Pyle appears to disregard these points in an attempt to drum up opposition to the policy.

Pyle's approach makes sense within the context of his and his organization's backgrounds and former lobbying clients, as well as those of the firm conducting the surveys.

The American Energy Alliance is a 501(c)(4) organization — meaning it is not required to disclose its donors — and is the advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research. IER supports "free-market energy and environmental policy" and was formed in 1989 from a predecessor organization founded by petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch. Donors to IER include oil and gas interests such as the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and Charles Koch Institute as well as ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute. The AFPM oil refiners trade group is also a major donor, having given three times as much to the American Energy Alliance compared to any other organization, according to the most recently available tax records. AEA, is a former lobbyist for Koch Industries, the largest privately owned energy company in the U.S. Pyle has also lobbied for the Big Oil trade association formerly called the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, which is now AFPM. Both Koch Industries and the members of AFPM like Exxon make billions in profits from fueling internal-combustion engine vehicles, so policies supporting vehicles not fueled by their products, like the EV tax credit, threaten their bottom lines.

MWR Strategies, the firm conducting the surveys on the EV tax credit, is a research, communications and lobbying company whose clients include electric utility and energy companies with clear fossil fuel interests. For example, TECO Energy — owner of natural gas businesses in Florida and New Mexico — paid MWR $80,000 just this year. Among other energy and utility corporations paying MWR are ENGIE, Public Service Enterprise Group/PSEG Power, and Southern Company. Notably, Koch Industries has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the firm from 2008 to 2016, OpenSecrets data reveals. Other petroleum corporations and trade associations like El Paso Corp. and AFPM's predecessor National Petrochemical & Refiners Association have previously retained MWR.

Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies, is an energy lobbyist who led Trump's Energy Department transition team, and, as E&E reported, is "well-known in Republican energy circles" and was recently tapped to serve in the White House as an advisor to the president. McKenna previously worked at several other research and communications firms including Luntz Research Companies, founded by notorious climate denier Frank Luntz (who only recently announced he was wrong and has shifted his views).

The MWR Strategies website does not have information about current work, rather the "current" section is a list of links to polling on climate and energy topics dating back to 2008 and earlier. These "polls" are structured in much the same way as the polls about EV tax credits, with questions focused on the (debunked) premise that addressing climate change is too expensive and even asking about the "certainty" of climate science (exploiting scientific uncertainty has been a key strategy of the fossil fuel industry's well-documented disinformation campaign).

MWR's polling strategy appears to be posing misleading questions, some with inaccurate information, in order to garner a particular response. For example, in the firm's March 2008 poll on global warming, one question asked which is more important, addressing global warming or reducing reliance on foreign energy sources — which is a false choice given that renewable energy sources like solar and wind would do both. In another survey from 2006 on energy, the statement "liquefied natural gas cannot explode like gasoline" was posed to respondents. This is also misleading because while the liquid itself won't explode, blasts can occur at LNG sites and associated vapors are combustible.

How MWR's EV Tax Credit Survey Misleads Respondents and Deceives the Public

In the recent surveys MWR conducted on the EV tax credit, one of the statements that respondents could agree or disagree with was, "It is not right for GM to ask taxpayers for a tax credit." General Motors is lobbying to extend and expand the electric car tax credit, but the automaker would not actually claim the credit — consumers would.

Another question claims that "the average buyer of an electric car makes more than 150 thousand dollars per year," a claim that is demonstrably false. When pressed by DeSmog for a citation or clarification, McKenna responded through a media relations contact, pointing to the often-debunked Manhattan Institute report by Jonathan Lesser called "Short Circuit: The High Cost of Electric Vehicle Subsidies."

That report actually cites a 2013 UC-Davis study that examined "the characteristics of 1,200 households who actually purchased a new plug-in vehicle in California during 2011-2012," finding that "46 percent of electric car drivers in California alone had incomes above $150,000." This study, now six years old, does not translate to the statement regarding an "average buyer" that was presented in the survey. In effect, the survey question was premised on a falsified statistic from an outdated data set that only included California.

[grf]

Excerpt of misleading questions from the MWR poll about consumer attitudes toward the electric car tax credit.

Polling and communication experts told DeSmog that these EV tax credit surveys should not be considered legitimate measures of public opinion. Many of the questions are actually statements that respondents can agree or disagree with. But according to polling expert Joshua Dyck, associate professor of political science at UMass Lowell and director of the Center for Public Opinion, "Agree/disagree items are not a legitimate way to determine public opinion on policy issues."

"There is a well known response bias for respondents in surveys to agree to prompts in questions structured as agree/disagree items," he said. "This is known to survey researchers by the term 'response acquiescence.' In order to get at how respondents actually feel, you should allow respondents to pick from balanced options. I wouldn't put much stock in the agree/disagree items in this survey."

Ed Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, also said these surveys were designed to be misleading.

"Unbiased survey questions intended to elicit people's opinions about or support for a proposition (such as a proposed public policy) can be done in one of two ways. The proposition can be stated in neutral, factual terms with or without the leading arguments both for and against the proposition," he explained. "The questions on AEA surveys did not state the facts about the propositions, but instead made negative claims about the consequences of the propositions. Therefore, people were responding to the negative statements made about the proposition, not the proposition itself."

[Ed Maibach, a climate change communication researcher at George Mason University.

This response to negative statements gives the misleading appearance that there is little public support for the EV tax credit. "Elected officials who are concerned about voter opinion should probably think twice before expanding favorable tax treatment for electric vehicles. Voters in each of the 12 States we examined are very skeptical of them," MWR's McKenna said in a statement about the poll.

But as Maibach explained, this is probably not true. "The poll done for AEA was not intended to determine how people actually feel about public policies in support of EVs, rather it was done to give the impression that people do not support use of public resources to support EVs," he said.

Maibach's Center for Climate Change Communication, along with Climate Nexus and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, did a poll in July of 820 registered voters in Michigan on their attitudes towards various climate policies. According to the results, "Michigan voters favor expanding the tax credit for those who purchase EVs — close to two-thirds (66 percent) agree the federal tax credit for EVs should extend beyond each manufacturer's first 200,000 vehicles."

Pyle, AEA's president and former Koch lobbyist, told E&E News he stands by his surveys finding little support for the tax credit, adding that he is "not concerned about what the greens think about our work."

But Maibach pushed back against this statement. "The problem with his poll is not that 'the greens' don't like the findings," he said. "The problem is that his findings are bogus, because they asked highly biased questions designed to elicit highly misleading answers."

==

Lawmakers reach deal for $3 billion to repair ailing bridges

Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, released a statement on Tuesday calling the electric vehicle money a “regressive, ...

3 weeks ago

Rigzone

$287B Transportation Bill Would Subsidize AltFuel Stations

Tom Carper (D-Del.), Shelley ... In a letter addressed to EPW Chairman Barrasso, AEA President Thomas Pyle argues the grant program would:.

3 weeks ago

==

july 2019

Monday a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced the America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act of 2019 (ATIA), which authorizes $287 billion in transportation funding over five years and includes $1 billion to provide grants for electric, natural gas and hydrogen fueling stations.

The legislation – introduced by U.S. Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Tom Carper (D-Del.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) – is the largest highway legislation in history, according to a written statement from the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW).

Among its “Climate Change” provisions in this section-by-section breakdown of the legislation, ATIA would create a competitive grant program to support deploying alternative fuel vehicle charging and fueling infrastructure for drivers of electric, hydrogen and natural gas vehicles. It would allocate the following amounts each fiscal year from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is financed by federal fuel taxes and related excise taxes:

“America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act will move our country toward a safer, more connected, efficient and climate-friendly transportation system, one that can endure the test of time and keep up with the demands of a 21st century global economy,” stated Carper.

According to Ben Kellison, Wood Mackenzie research director, electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure represents the strongest need within the alternative fuels segment.

“With over 1.75 million electric vehicles in North America at the end of 2018, a nearly 60-percent increase from 2017, the need for expanded EV charging infrastructure is greater than that of the other two fuels,” Kellison said in a WoodMac statement emailed to Rigzone.

Adding that private owners and operators will still build most publicly available EV chargers in the United States, Kellison contends the case for spending public funds on “certain foundational infrastructure” is being made in a convincing fashion at the state level. For instance, he said the $250 million EV initiative by the New York Power Authority (NYPA) provides a glimpse of how the ATIA program might work.

“The program includes an effort to deploy direct current (DC) fast charging stations at key locations along major highways throughout the state,” Kellison explained. “These stations are meant to combat range anxiety among current and prospective EV buyers leery of traveling between major city hubs with limited or no access to fast charging. Funding provided by ATIA could alleviate the financing difficulties of erecting and operating DC fast charging infrastructure in a market that is rapidly growing but has yet to reach the critical mass to offer profitability to the majority of potential fast charging locations.”

Dan Gage, president of NGVAmerica, told Rigzone that including natural gas, electric and hydrogen in the legislative package will help fleet vehicle owners determine the best alternative fuel option for their respective applications and needs.

"As public and private fleets work to transition to cleaner, lower carbon-fueled vehicles, investments in publicly accessible refueling facilities is vital to expand adoption of natural gas trucks and buses," Gage said. "No freight shipper or carrier buys trucks he or she can't readily refuel quickly and affordably."

The American Energy Alliance (AEA), the public policy advocacy arm of the Institute for Energy Research, went on record against what it calls a “new federal program for EV infrastructure” and a “bloated $1 billion handout to special interests.” In a letter addressed to EPW Chairman Barrasso, AEA President Thomas Pyle argues the grant program would:

In his letter, Pyle called the proposal a “regressive, unnecessary, and duplicative giveaway program to wealthy, mostly coastal electric vehicle owners.”

The website EVAdoption presents statistics on EV charging stations by state.

On Tuesday, the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (SIGMA) expressed concern that the grants could entice electric utilities to seek “double subsidies” for charging infrastructure and discourage private-sector expansion. The groups argued that the program might be interpreted to allow utilities to bill all of their customers more to finance EV charging infrastructure and then take taxpayer-funded grants to subsidize those projects.

“This double-dipping by electric utilities would make it extremely unlikely that the private sector would invest in charging infrastructure given the unfair playing field it would create,” noted Paige Anderson, NACS’ government relations director. “The private sector is investing in electric charging infrastructure and wants to do more of that, but if double-dipping by utilities were allowed, private sector investment would dry up.”

NACS and SIGMA also contend that current fueling locations – such as the more than 153,000 U.S. convenience stores – represent the “most logical option” for locating alternative fuel infrastructure.

“We’re pleased the alternative fuel grants look to spur private sector investment, but we want to be sure that it doesn’t allow abuses by electric utilities,” concluded Doug Kantor, attorney for NACS and SIGMA with the law firm Steptoe and Johnson.

==

big win

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072018/anti-carbon-tax-resolution-house-vote-climate-solutions-caucus-curbelo-scalise-koch-influence-congress

U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a resolution denouncing the idea of a U.S. carbon tax as detrimental to the economy, one week before a Republican-sponsored bill to create a carbon fee is set to be introduced.

It was a win for a coalition of groups funded by the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers and other wealthy, right-wing opponents of climate action. And it revealed weak resolve for bucking GOP leadership among most of the 43 Republican members of the Climate Solutions Caucus.

If the bipartisan caucus had held firm, the resolution would have been handily defeated.

Instead, only six Republicans—four of them caucus members, including Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, who plans to unveil the carbon fee measure next week—joined most Democrats in opposing the resolution. Seven Democrats voted with the GOP.

The 229-180 vote marked a slight erosion in the GOP wall of opposition to climate action. In 2016, an identical measure passed the House 237-163with no Republicans opposed. Such resolutions are meant to express the views of the chamber and have no real-world impact, but with a different Congress in place now, carbon tax foes wanted a new vote.  The American Energy Alliance (AEA), the Heartland Institute, and 18 other conservative advocacy groups had urged House Speaker Paul Ryan earlier this month to bring the resolution to the floor.

AEA president Thomas Pyle said in an interview with InsideClimate News that the impetus was not the prospect of Curbelo's bill, but an effort to put members on the record before November. The groups put it this way in their letterto Ryan: "As we approach the 2018 midterm election, American voters need to know whether their elected representatives support the implementation of a new tax on the energy they rely on every single day."

The House's affirmation of a fossil fuel-friendly agenda comes in a week when President Donald Trump's administration did the same on multiple fronts.

The Environmental Protection Agency's new administrator, former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, finalized a plan to ease requirements for handling the toxic coal ash from power plants—rules developed by the Obama administration after costly spills in Tennessee and North Carolina. The Treasury Department announced it would scrap requirements that certain tax-exempt nonprofits disclose their donors, helping to cloak a key avenue for campaign contributions used by the Koch brothers and other wealthy political benefactors.

2 Views on How Climate Solutions Caucus Voted

The House vote showed the flimsiness of the Climate Solutions Caucus, the bipartisan coalition that Curbelo and others have sought to build behind the concept of a market-based solution for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

RL Miller, president of the advocacy group Climate Hawks Vote, said the caucus' credibility is in tatters after its GOP members, whom she has frequently criticized for their weak environmental voting records, failed to hold off a resolution that strikes at the heart of their purported purpose.

"It would be a joke were the subject not so serious. The caucus has no credibility, and no ability to do anything," Miller said. "The climate is changing far more quickly than Republican attitudes. That's why we do not hold faith in bipartisan solutions."

But Steve Valk, spokesman for the Citizens Climate Lobby, a grassroots advocacy group that favors a carbon tax and that helped bring together the caucus, noted the non-binding resolution has no real effect. Valk said he did not expect that its members would go out on a limb against such a measure, especially since it was sponsored by House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), the No. 3 Republican in the chamber and a potential successor to Ryan, who is retiring.

"Anybody who votes against this resolution—it's going to be a mark against them in the eyes of the leadership, which decides what assignments you get, whether or not you're on the committee you want, and who's chair," Valk said. "There's a lot of calculations that go into a decision like this. We're willing to look at that and say, yeah, it's not a simple choice for them.

"In my mind, if you can get a handful of Republicans to vote no on this, that's a victory."

The Conversation Is Shifting: Republicans Consider Carbon Pricing

Other carbon tax advocates expressed glass-half-full optimism, arguing the mere push for a vote by fossil fuel allies betrays their concern about the increasing support for the idea of putting a price on carbon to fight climate change.

"They feel that the momentum is shifting as the conversation commences, and they are trying to beat down any thoughtful analysis with a tribal drum that they are nervously beating louder," said former Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican from South Carolina and founder of a conservative carbon tax advocacy group republicEn.

"If we were able to discuss this, we'd find that this is something that could bring conservatives and progressives together," he said.

Conservative advocates for a carbon tax have been trying to make their case in Washington since the start of the Trump administration with little success.Trump's former chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, reportedly earned the derisive nickname "Carbon Tax Cohn" in the West Wing for giving a hearing to a revenue-neutral tax plan proposed by prominent Republicans, including former Secretary of State James Baker and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

But since then, other groups have popped up. The nuclear-heavy energy company Exelon, the American Wind Energy Association and First Solar are funding a coalition called Americans for Carbon Dividends, which has hired former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, to lobbyon the issue. Twenty-two college Republican groups came together earlier this year to form Students for Carbon Dividends. Its founding president, Alex Posner, an American history major at Yale, says the plan they favor would address international competitiveness and jobs creation and would look nothing like the carbon tax described in the Scalise resolution. "We want to see a plan that's pro-growth and pro-environment while shrinking the size of government," he said.

Pyle, of the American Energy Alliance, argues that no matter the design of a carbon tax program, consumers are worse off. "There's revenue generated, and then you haggle over how to spend it," he said. "It's no different than other taxes and fees. If you're giving back some to low-income households, it's a still a redistribution. And since poorer people pay a higher percentage of their incomes on energy, they are worse off."

A series of four reports released this week by Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy calls that argument into question, however, and provides ammunition for carbon tax advocates. The reports analyze various carbon tax legislation scenarios and conclude that they would increase government revenue by hundreds of billions of dollars a year and drive down U.S. emissions, far more than current policy, with minimal effects on the U.S. economy, families or businesses, or even on oil and gas production and consumption.

Curbelo: Resolution Presented 'a False Choice'

For now, the House vote preemptively throws cold water on Curbelo's planned introduction next week of legislation that wouldimpose an escalating tax on carbonemissions, while pausing federal regulations on climate change.Although Curbelo would not discuss details of his plan, reports said the revenue generated would be directed into infrastructure and in helping communities adapt to sea level rise and other impacts of climate change.

Curbelo did not speak on the House floor during the one-hour debate allotted for the Scalise resolution. But when asked by InsideClimate News to comment, he criticized the measure in an emailed statement.

"The resolution presents a false choice," Curbelo said. "While I agree a carbon tax on its own would not be the best way forward and could have negative effects on the economy, there are smarter, more innovative solutions that would not only reduce carbon emissions and mitigate for the effects they have on our planet, but also grow the economy and provide opportunities for American workers and businesses at home and abroad.

"I look forward to engaging with my colleagues on this topic next week, and sharing my own proposal in the near future," he said.

Curbelo, who represents the southern tip of Florida, one of the regions of the country most vulnerable to climate change impacts, is seen as one of the most vulnerable House Republicans. Cook Political Report and other political odds-makers call his race a toss-up.

With Democrats expected to gain between 20 and 35 seats in November, and just 23 needed for them to retake the majority, Inglis argues that Scalise wasn't doing his own party any favors by forcing a carbon tax showdown. "Steve, what are you doing, running for minority leader?" asked Inglis. "He's putting people at risk for an idea that is clearly going to become very passé and very retro looking."

The House Debate

During the House debate on the measure, Republicans urged a stand against carbon taxes while taking pains to assert that they were not denying the science of climate change.

"I'm not a climate denier. I'm not a science denier. I'm a climate thinker," said Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) "And real science isn't just about assessing costs only. It's about looking at benefits as well. ... Coal provides cheap, plentiful, reliable energy over the long term. We should not want the most carbon-free energy, but the best energy."

Democrats used up much of their 30 minutes of time attempting to change the subject from the anti-carbon tax measure to spotlight Trump's controversial meeting this week with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), managing the resolution for the GOP, repeatedly refused.

A handful of Democrats, most of them members of the Climate Solutions Caucus, offered full-throated defense of carbon taxes.

"For decades, economists from across the ideological spectrum have argued that a carbon price is the most efficient way to discourage the use of fossil fuels and the best way to encourage energy efficiency measures and market decisions on everything from housing to transportation," saidRep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). "The science continues to accumulate in prodigious amounts that the pollution is changing our Earth and the cost is staggering into the billions. Carbon pricing is the most market-oriented policy we can take to combat this."

Rep. Earl Blumenauer, (D-Ore.) said the resolution "encapsulates what's wrong with the Republican management of this Congress. It is a cartoon that doesn't deal with the underlying issues," he said. "We could have a debate about real legislation that would satisfy their answers and be able to deal with what our responsibilities are to the future. ... Instead, we're dealing with empty gestures."

In addition to Curbelo, Republicans voting against the resolution were Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mia Love of Utah—all members of the Climate Solutions Caucus—and Reps. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana and Francis Rooney of Florida. The Democrats who joined the GOP in voting for the resolution were Reps. Sanford Bishop of Georgia; Henry Cuellar and Vincente González of Texas; Conor Lamb of Pennsylvania; Stephanie Murphy of Florida; and Tom O'Halleran and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. 

PUBLISHED UNDER:

REGULATION

CLIMATE CHANGE

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==

https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/12/07/trump-energy-agenda-revealed-:{thomas-pyle-memo}:

The future Donald Trump administration's energy agenda is revealed in a memo prepared by Trump's energy transition head Thomas Pyle, titled "What to Expect from the Trump Administration." The document, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), was sent by Pyle on November 15th, just days before the Trump campaign announced Pyle's appointment as head of his Department of Energy transition team.

Pyle is the President of both the American Energy Allianceand the Institute for Energy Research. Both organizations have received cash from numerous fossil fuel funders includingExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and Koch Industries. From 2001 to 2005, Pyle was Director of Federal Affairs for Koch Industries.

The memo outlines fourteen policies to be expected from President-elect Trump, which collectively amounts to a fossil fuel industry wish list and which would be devastating for attempts to slow climate change.

The agenda includes withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Climate agreement, eliminating the Clean Power Plan, increasing the leasing of federal lands for exploitation of coal, oil and gas, expediting the approval of pipeline projects including the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline and rolling back federal fuel economy standards.

Read the memo here.

The memo, which was received and published by the Center for Media and Democracy, was sent by Pyle to a private email list just days before the Trump team announced that it would replace a Koch lobbyist with Pyle, a Koch-funded former lobbyist, to lead the Department of Energy transition team efforts.

Pyle is the president of both IER and its sister advocacy organization, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), which are both heavily funded by the Koch brothers and their affiliates. Last year, IER and AEA received $3 million from the Koch donor network. Charles Koch was one of the original founders and board members of IER. Pyle's Koch connections run even deeper, having served as Director of Federal Affairs for Koch Industries from 2001-2005.

The “Trump Administration's Energy Plan” reads like a fossil fuel industry wish list, including 14 policy proposals such as:

The memo from Pyle was echoed in a blog post on the AEA website published on Friday, December 2, which lays out “A Blueprint for America's Comeback” and includes many of the same policy proposals, similarly worded. The entirety of the original memo is uploaded on the ExposedByCMD blog.

==

evil spawn at DOE?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/key-hires-energy-department-raise-concerns

Most people who know anything about Rick Perry know he’s a friend to the fossil fuel industry. For 14 years, he was the Republican governor of Texas, a state that contains one-third of the nation’s oil reserves and is home to oil giants ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Valero Energy. As a political candidate, Perry received millions in donations from oil and gas companies and their executives. Until recently, he was a board member of Energy Transfer Partners, the co-owner of the dirty tar sands oil transport mechanism, Dakota Access Pipeline, which was approved by Donald Trump in January and runs through Native American lands in North Dakota.

Perry supported new coal plants in Texas as well, but he also allowed a major expansion of wind energy and signed a renewable portfolio standard that aided growth in that industry. He appears to favor an all-of-the-above approach to energy production, as opposed to the severely anti-clean energy agenda Trump projects and which the conservative Heritage Foundation hoped he would adhere to. In the past, however, Perry called the science of climate change a "contrived phony mess.”

Now, as head of the Department of Energy—an agency he wanted to eliminate during his 2012 presidential bid (and the name of which he famously forgot in a televised debate)—Perry seems to be welcoming climate-change deniers into his fold while at the same time sticking up for the department’s energy efficiency and renewables programs.

The Department of Energy made headlines when disaster was narrowly averted after a tunnel collapsed at a nuclear site in Washington state and when Perry refused to join the other G7 nations in a joint climate accord at a summit in Italy.

Here’s what’s been going on behind the scenes at the Department of Energy in its first three months under Perry.

Clean Energy Enemies Join the Department

At least three staffers from conservative, anti-clean energy think tanks now have roles in the Energy Department. This comes after Thomas Pyle, a former Koch Industries lobbyist, ran Trump’s transition team for the department. Pyle is president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a think tank co-founded and partially funded by fossil fuel industrialist Charles Koch, as well as its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance. A leaked Pyle memo obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy from December revealed Trump’s energy plan, a “fossil fuel industry wish list.”

Travis Fisher, an economist and current Energy staffer, most recently worked for IER, where he wrote columns opposing renewable energy and defending fossil fuels. Big funders of IER have included ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, several Koch-backed nonprofits and two Koch family foundations.

Fisher was once an intern at the John Locke Foundation,one of several North Carolina-based think tanks founded and funded by close Koch ally Art Pope.

On April 14, Perry issued a memo requesting a study, to be overseen by Fisher, on whether clean energy programs are hindering coal and nuclear programs. The study has caught fire from the left, with a group of Democratic senators writing to Perry with serious concerns, calling it “a thinly disguised attempt to promote less economic electric generation technologies, such as coal and nuclear, at the expense of cost-competitive wind and solar power.”

They wrote, “The notion that a 60-day review conducted by ideologues associated with a Koch brothers-affiliated think tank should supplant research and analysis conducted by the world’s foremost scientists and engineers would be a grave disservice to American taxpayers.”

Chief of staff to Perry is Brian McCormack, former vice president of political and external affairs at the Edison Electric Institute, an influential trade group for investor-owned electric utilities that has attacked residential solar access and opposed renewable energy targets and the 2007 Clean Water Restoration Act, according to SourceWatch. While there, McCormack was a key player in the institute’s campaign to take down rooftop solar energy. EEI’s PAC, funded mostly by employees in the fossil fuel industry, gives the majority of its campaign donations to Republican candidates and PACs, and the group funds independent super PACs and political nonprofits as well. At DOE, McCormack will likely help shape the future of several of the departments’ solar programs.

On May 3, the Department of Energy hired another Institute for Energy Research alum, Dan Simmons, to head the Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which Trump wants to cut by 70 percent and the Heritage Foundation wants to eliminate entirely. As vice president of policy at IER, he attacked subsidies for rooftop solar and called for increased fossil fuel exploration on federal lands.

Simmons also directed the Natural Resources Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative “bill mill” where politicians and big-business representatives, many from fossil fuel companies, work together to craft model legislation that will boost corporate profits. Finally, Simmons was a research fellow at the heavily Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Now he’ll oversee a major DOE office in charge of grants, competitions and initiatives including solar funding program SolarShot and efficiency program Energy Star, which is operated by both the DOE and the Environmental Protection Association (which, in turn, is led by fossil fuel shill Scott Pruitt, who has wanted to shutter the agency for some time).

Who else will carry out the Energy Department’s agenda is largely unknown, as most top department officials are only temporary appointees. Trump has yet to nominate anyone for 20 out of 22 top Energy positions, in keeping with his slow nomination process: Out of 557 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, Trump has put forth a mere 49 nominees, according to the Washington Post.

Aside from ordering the study on coal and nuclear energy, Perry has done other things that were surely hailed by fossil fuel companies.For instance, the new Energy secretary refused to join the six other nations at the April G7 summit in signing joint declaration reaffirming commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate. Perry found out there that opposing the agreement will have significant diplomatic and political consequences; he was met with foreign diplomats who voiced concerns that the U.S. will slow down its renewable energy production, thus hampering international efforts at combatting climate change.

A Perry Push for Energy Efficiency?

Trump’s 2018 budget blueprint called for steep cuts to the Energy Department’s efficiency and renewables programs, but Congress passed only modest cuts through the end of this year: The low-carbon transportation programs will get a 3.6 percent cut, and renewables program will see a 5.6 percent cut. However, its energy efficiency programs will have a 12.7 percent increase. Fossil energy research programs will get a 5.7 percent boost.

While the signs are not very good for clean energy expansion or significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions any time soon, it seems, at least for now, that a sliver of the Energy budget will still go toward efficiency and clean energy efforts.

According to Clean Technica, Perry has been “trolling his deputy” by aggressively promoting its energy efficiency programs. Although Trump wanted to kill Energy Star, which sets efficiency standards for appliances and buildings, the DOE has been regularly posting blogs about energy efficiency jobs and touting renewables on social media, including from Perry’s own Twitter account. If the EPA and the Department of Education crumble as planned, perhaps vestiges of the Department of Energy will remain.

Over in the State Department, Rex Tillerson, who worked for 40 years at Exxon, the oil company that dangerously misled the world on climate change, recently signed an international declaration recognizing climate change, despite the many powerful climate change deniers in the White House.

Don’t expect Perry to be a warrior for clean energy, but look for instances where he may do things that are out of step with the goals of Trump, Pruitt and other members of the opposed-to-any-form-of-green-energy cohort.

---

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/05/10/**conservative-groups-pushing-trump-exit-paris-deal-have-taken-millions-koch-brothers-and-exxon

The “conservative groups” urging President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement have accepted tens of millions of dollars from groups linked to the billionaire petrochemical brothers Charles and David Koch, ExxonMobil, and the Mercer family.

More than 40 groups have co-signed an open letterurging Trump to keep his campaign promise and “withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty.”

The groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), The Heartland Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, claim failing to withdraw from the treaty could put Trump’s policy agenda of promoting fossil fuels at risk.

The Wall Street Journal has quoted a White House spokesperson saying the president will not make a decision on the Paris agreement until after meeting G-7 leaders later this month.

Analysis carried out by DeSmog and the Climate Investigations Center (CIC) shows many of the groups signing the letter have taken multi-million dollar donations from groups tied to the Koch brothers, who own Koch Industries. Several of the groups have accepted cash from oil giant ExxonMobil while many also deny the basic science linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change.

In the letter, the groups say Trump should withdraw from the Paris deal and “stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs” — two promises made by Trump during his campaign.

Paris Deal

As part of the Paris deal, agreed to by almost 200 countries as part of the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change, the U.S. pledged in a document known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025, based on their levels in 2005.

“Paris then requires a more ambitious NDC every five years in perpetuity,” the groups write.

The letter says environment groups and some attorneys general are using court action to try and protect the Obama era’s Clean Power Plan that sought to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The U.S. participation in the Paris deal is being cited in these lawsuits, the groups claim.

“Failing to withdraw from Paris thus exposes key parts of your deregulatory energy agenda to unnecessary legal risk,” the letter claims.

Right-wing media outlets including Breitbart and The Daily Caller have been reporting the letter from conservative groups without mentioning the known links to the Koch brothers and to their denial of the science of climate change.

Koch Cash

The DeSmog and CIC analysis, using publicly available IRS disclosures, shows the Koch brothers have donated at least $6.9 million to the groups, much of which went to the Heritage Foundation. Exxon donated about $5.9 million to the groups since the late 1990s.

Several of the letter signers had roles in Trump’s various transition teams, including the CEI’s Myron Ebell and Thomas Pyle of the American Energy Alliance.

In 2014, Freedom Partners (FP) — a group once described as the Koch brothers secret bank — gave some $16 million to Americans for Prosperity, another of the letter’s signatories. FP also gave $2.3 miilion to the American Energy Alliance.

Denial Dollars

But as well as accepting millions of dollars from vested interests such as the Kochs and Exxon over the years, another thing the groups have in common is their denial of the clear science linking fossil fuel burning to dangerous climate change — an issue backed by all the major scientific academies around the world.

The analysis shows groups have also accepted about $80 million through two linked funding organisations — Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust — that academics have confirmed is a key financial source for many U.S. climate science denial groups.

The Koch brothers, through a funding group known as the Knowledge and Progress Fund (KPF), gave more than $7.6 million to the Donors Trust since 2010. The only grants made by the KPF over that period were to Donors Trust.

The Heartland Institute, which has been given more than $5 million in recent years by major Trump financier Robert Mercer, is known for organizing regular conferences where climate science denialists gather.

In the run-up to one conference in May 2012, Heartland said in a statement: “The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren't scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”

Another signer to the letter is Professor William Happer, the president of the CO2 Coalition — a group that emerged from the disbanded George C. Marshall Institute.

The CO2 Coalition denies the evidence that humans are causing dangerous climate change and runs with the tag line “CO2 — Essential for Life.”

Happer, thought to be in the running as Trump’s science adviser, has compared what he called the “demonization” of CO2, to the “demonization of poor Jews under Hitler.”

==

==

12/16

Although no one on the president-elect’s transition team has been publicly identified as a lead point of contact for science issues broadly or at the agency level, a few members of the landing teams for agencies including the Department of Energy and NASA have backgrounds in science and/or science policy.

Over the past two months, President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has been assembling agency-specific “landing teams” that are tasked with gathering information and recommending policy agendas and personnel selections for the incoming administration. The official transition website lists the landing team members announced to date here.

It is not yet clear how influential the DC-based landing teams will be with Trump’s New York-based inner circle of advisors. The landing team members are reportedly not in the running for Senate-confirmed positions, which if true, would mean that they may have little influence over future policy decisions. Nevertheless, the composition of the landing teams offer potential clues as to what policies the Trump administration may pursue.

No individual has been publicly identified as a lead point of contact for science issues broadly or at the agency level. However, a few members of the landing teams for agencies including the Department of Energy and NASA have backgrounds in science policy. The selection of former Texas Governor Rick Perry to head DOE as well as a controversial inquiry by the DOE landing team will be covered in a forthcoming FYI bulletin.

Department of Energy

Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, is leading the DOE transition team. One member of the team—Jack Spencer, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity—has written extensively about nuclear energy policy and energy R&D.

Notably, Spencer was co-author of a June 2016 report which recommended that the next president should eliminate the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, focus federal R&D on basic research, and reform the national lab system, among other actions. As reported in FYI #146, another one of this report’s authors, James Carafano, is on the landing team for the Department of Homeland of Security. Spencer also contributed to a 2013 report on the national labs entitled “Reimagining the National Labs in the 21st Century Innovation Economy.”

The June report asserts that DOE is “notorious for spending R&D resources on commercial energy technologies that may be promising or exciting but are well beyond the constitutional role of the federal government,” and expresses skepticism about the value provided by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. The report also argues that the labs should be given more independence and that the next president should “lead the way to consolidate labs and transfer others to non-federal entities, such as states, universities, or the private sector.”

The other landing team members are David Jonas, former general counsel of the National Nuclear Security Administration; William Greene, director of communications at DOE for Yucca Mountain during the George W. Bush administration; Mark Maddox, an acting assistant secretary for fossil energy at DOE during the George W. Bush administration; Travis Fisher and Daniel Simmons of the Institute for Energy Research; Martin Dannenfelser, Jr., a former staff member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee  UPTON ; and Kelly Mitchell, a vice chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

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Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance and a former Republican congressional aide.

Kelly Mitchell, sales executive at Multi-Automatic Tool & Supply Co., outreach vice chair for Michigan Republican Party.

Travis Fisher, economist at the Institute for Energy Research, former economist at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Martin Dannenfelser, Jr., previously at the Energy Innovation Reform Project and House Energy and Commerce Committee.

David Jonas, partner at Fluet, Huber + Hoang, PLLC; former general counsel for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Jack Spencer, vice president of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity at the Heritage Foundation.

William Greene, deputy director of government affairs at Safari Club International.

Mark Maddox, former acting assistant secretary of fossil energy at DOE during the George W. Bush administration.

Daniel Simmons, vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, formerly at the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Thomas Norris, owner of Cap Square Solutions LLC.

John Giordano, former aide to Trump presidential campaign.

===

http://www.micef.org/about-mcef/

Larry's dedication and commitment to conservative policies and solutions is evident throughout his political career.  His consulting firm, Republican Advisory Services LLC, successfully ran the campaign for current Secretary of State Ruth Johnson.  Larry served two terms as the Political Director of the Michigan Republican Party.  He has a long history of grassroots GOP activism, first as a candidate for State Representative, followed by his role as the Ingham County Republican Party Chairman.  Larry also served as a Deputy Coalitions Director for the DeVos for Governor Campaign, and served as the 8th District Chairman for the U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers.  In 2012, Governor Rick Snyder appointed Larry to serve on the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System Board (MPSERS).

dad, bl woman State Committee Member

Mitchell said she "grew up shadowing" Hatter, a retired automotive engineer who has served the GOP on the county, district and state levels and was an elector for President Gerald Ford in 1976.

Michigan Republican State Committee

Kelly Mitchell is a former Vice Chair of the Michigan Republican Party.  She has lived in Michigan her entire life, growing up in rural Thetford Township.  Her activism in Republican advocacy began as a Young Republican.  Having been a resident in Genesee and Kent Counties at different stages, she has served in multiple county, district and state level positions.  In 2016, Kelly was elected as one of 16 members of Michigan's Electoral College and was also appointed to the U.S. Department of Energy.  In addition to serving on the Michigan Republican State Committee, she is the Secretary for the Kent County GOP and a member of the Executive Committee.  She's currently serving appointments on the Kent County Board of Commission Solid Waste Management and the State Board of Barber Examiners.  Kelly earned an Associate's Degree in Applied Science and a Bachelor's Degree in Business.  She is a graduate of the Michigan Excellence in Public Service Series and was awarded the Michigan Republican Party Grassroots Leadership Award in 2015.

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oil and gas industry is quickly amassing power in Trump’s Washington

By Juliet Eilperin, Steven Mufson and Philip Rucker December 14

wapo

After eight years of being banished and sometimes vilified by the Obama administration, the fossil fuel industry is enjoying a remarkable resurgence as its executives and lobbyists shape President-elect Donald Trump’s policy agenda and staff his administration.

The oil, gas and coal industries are amassing power throughout Washington — from Foggy Bottom, where ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson is Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, to domestic regulatory agencies including the departments of Energy and Interior as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

“It feels like the grizzly bear in ‘The Revenant’ has been suddenly pulled off our chest,” said Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association.

The energy sector is no stranger to political influence. The oil industry once claimed a president as its own: George H.W. Bush, who co-founded and ran Zapata Oil before becoming the nation’s 41st commander in chief.

But the industry’s breathtaking power grab during the first month of Trump’s transition is palpably different — and has alarmed environmentalists, who fear the new administration will undo what they see as a decade of progress in combating climate change.

What a Trump presidency means for climate change Embed  Share Play Video2:19

Donald Trump will enter the White House with an environmental policy agenda opposed to that of the Obama administration and many other nations that have pledged support to the Paris climate agreement

. The Washington Post's Chris Mooney breaks down what a Donald Trump presidency will mean when it comes to climate change. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

“I think there’s a level to which the puppeteers have become the actors, a change unprecedented in its breadth,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on automobile fuel efficiency. “The ship of state is about to be turned into the Exxon Valdez.”

A slew of Obama administration policies on fossil fuels are expected to be reversed after Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20. Eliminating these regulations — which limit carbon emissions on power plants and restrict oil, gas and coal extraction — would represent major gains for the industry.

At a rally Tuesday night in West Allis, Wis., Trump vowed to “eliminate all wasteful job-killing regulations. On energy, we will cancel the restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean beautiful coal.”

Oil and gas favorites have been nominated to lead the Cabinet agencies that regulate the industry: former Texas governor Rick Perry as energy secretary, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator and Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) as interior secretary.

Energy executives are advising Trump in more informal ways, including Harold Hamm, a billionaire who heads the major oil producer Continental Resources, and Carl Icahn, a billionaire investor who owns a pair of oil refineries. Both men are friends of Trump’s and helped him devise energy and economic policies during the campaign.

[From Icahn’s lips to Trump’s economic policy plan (at least the first version)]

Other industry officials and allies, who have been sidelined and stigmatized during the Obama years, are working on Trump’s transition team to shape the next administration’s agenda and look to enjoy ready access to the Republican White House.

Here’s a look at Trump’s administration so far

View Photos The men and women the president-elect has selected for his Cabinet and White House team.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats plan to use whatever power they have in the minority of both chambers to serve as an aggressive check on the executive branch’s power, especially on energy and environmental policies.

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Trump “is rigging the Cabinet top to bottom with allies of the oil industry.”

“It’s pretty clear that the bottom line of oil companies is going to take precedence over clean air and water protections for American families,” Schumer said in an email. “We’re going to fight hard to make sure that the Senate is a bulwark against those who want to undo environmental protections next year.”

Trump transition officials did not respond to several requests for comment.

While Trump’s energy and environment picks have already come under sharp criticism from the left, Ben Bulis, president of the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, said he was hopeful Zinke would compromise when it comes to wildlife protection.

“He’s going to come with a balanced approach to it,” Bulis said. “As an industry, we’re not opposed to responsible oil and gas development.”

Registered lobbyists are banned from serving on Trump’s transition team, but some energy lobbyists are serving as informal liaisons between transition staffers and the industry.

For instance, Michael McKenna— a lobbyist who represents the utility giant Southern Co. — recently accompanied the head of Trump’s Energy Department transition team, Thomas Pyle, to an official meeting on the nation’s security grid with representatives from President Obama’s Energy Department and utility executives.

McKenna, who had to quit Trump’s transition team because he did not want to relinquish his lobbying work,said he made a brief appearance at Washington’s Mandarin Oriental hotel, where the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council was meeting Nov. 29, to introduce Pyle to Southern’s chief executive, Thomas A. Fanning. After doing so, he left, he said.

Pyle is not a paid lobbyist, but he once was one for Koch Industries, the oil and gas company owned by Charles and David Koch, who have funded a wide array of libertarian groups and think tanks. Pyle also has worked for American Energy Alliance and its sister group, the Institute for Energy Research, both with strong ties to the oil industry.

[Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump]

Paul Bledsoe, an energy consultant who served as a climate change adviser in the Clinton White House, said the permeation of “big oil” in the emerging Trump administration reflects the president-elect’s vision of geo­politics.

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“Trump seems to view fossil fuels as at the center of U.S. economic power at home and abroad, providing cheap energy for the dream of increased domestic manufacturing and also lucrative export markets for U.S. oil, natural gas and coal,” Bledsoe said. “Overseas, he appears stuck in a ’70s-era world view of oil and gas power plays, where flows of energy are the key to global geo­politics — perhaps because Russia and other traditional foes are so dependent on oil and gas revenues.”

Trump’s posture represents a turnabout from the Obama years, when fossil fuel industries and the White House navigated tense relations.

While it is not clear whether these policies can revive the sagging U.S. industry, which faces significant global market pressures, it could boost domestic energy production broadly and translate into higher carbon emissions.

Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said it was not just a matter of policy. It was, he said in his own energy-centric state of the union talk in January, because the Obama administration “continues to adhere to last century’s thinking that pits increased energy production against climate goals.” Obama, he said, had a “tendency to place ideology over experience.”

Yet the oil and gas industry fared reasonably well. Obama did not move to curtail shale oil and gas drilling and lifted the 40-year-old oil export ban. And industry executives have had ready entree. Tillerson, for example, met with half a dozen or more of the most senior White House officials early in the administration, and he continued to meet others later.

The energy industry has ambitious plans to overhaul energy and environmental policies almost immediately after Trump’s inauguration.

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Pyle mapped out an agenda that he described as “a big change” in a Nov. 15 email to supporters, which was obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy. In it, Pyle predicted that the Trump administration would withdraw from or stop participating in the Paris climate accord, lease more federal lands for drilling, lift the moratorium on coal leases on federal lands, push a “reset” button on the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and give states greater say in managing federal lands.

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Pyle’s note also said the new administration would stop using the “social cost of carbon,” a method the EPA uses in calculating the cost and benefits of climate change. It added that Trump’s government would relitigate the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that carbon dioxide was a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and that the EPA was obligated to regulate it as a result.

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Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist with CGCN Group who had recused himself from the Trump DOE transition team, recently spoke on behalf of the transition at a meeting in Washington of the Edison Electric Institute, the utility industry’s main trade group.

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During that session, Catanzaro identified himself as a member of Trump’s “policy implementation team” and outlined some of the legal tools the new administration would use to undo Obama policies, according to multiple individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.Catanzaro said the incoming administration has a “100-day plan” and “200-day plan” to roll back policies, including the Clean Power Plan and social cost of carbon.

Catanzaro could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

In the final months of Obama’s presidency, his administration has finalized several rules designed to bolster and protect his environmental legacy. They include an Interior Department restriction on the flaring of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, during oil and gas operations on federal land. The department also issued a five-year leasing plan that bars drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska, as well as in waters off the southeast Atlantic coast.

And the Army Corps of Engineers recently denied Energy Transfer Partners — on whose board Perry sits — a crucial permit to complete the controversial Dakota Access pipeline on the Great Plains.

All of these measures could be overturned, either through the Congressional Review Act, which allows a congressional majority to vacate a regulation within 60 legislative days of it being issued, or through other means.

The industry may expect favorable treatment from the Trump administration and congressional Republicans after heavily supporting their campaigns.

Under Tillerson, ExxonMobil’s PAC gave $1.8 million this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, with 91 percent of donations to federal candidates going to Republicans.

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The three politicians Trump has appointed to relevant Cabinet positions have taken in large campaign contributions from the energy sector.

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In Oklahoma, Pruitt received more than $318,000 from fossil fuel companies since 2002, and his 2013 reelection campaign was chaired by Hamm, federal campaign finance filings show.

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Nearly half of the donations made over the past two years to Pruitt’s affiliated super PAC, Liberty 2.0, came from the energy sector.

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The oil and gas industry gave more than $2.6 million to Perry’s two presidential campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, while Kelcy Warren, the chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, donated $5 million to a pro-Perry super PAC in the 2016 race. After his White House run ended, Perry joined the company’s board.

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In Montana, the oil and gas industry is Zinke’s largest-single industry contributor, giving him $345,136 for his campaigns, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

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Zinke has been a vocal proponent of coal extraction, representing a region, the Powder River Basin, where much of the federal government’s coal is leased.

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Popovich, the mining industry spokesman, said that given Zinke’s roots “he obviously understands the importance of natural resources like coal — too important to be ‘kept in the ground,’ as [the Obama] administration proposes to do.”

==

omg:

sci suppress

 Trump’s transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation’s carbon output.

The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and “which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”

[Pruitt, Trump’s EPA pick, has both sides of climate divide girding for a major fight]

Trump and his team have vowed to dismantle specific aspects of Obama’s climate policies, and Trump has questioned the reality of climate change. The questionnaire, which one Energy Department official described as unusually “intrusive” and a matter for departmental lawyers, has raised concern that the Trump transition team is trying to figure out how to target the people, including civil servants, who have helped implement policies under Obama.

Thousands of scientists have signed petitions calling on the president-elect and his team to respect scientific integrity and refrain from singling out individual researchers whose work might conflict with the new administration’s policy goals. This potential clash could prompt a major schism within the federal government, with many career officials waging a battle against incoming political appointees.

While there have been many instances of political appointees and career scientists clashing in various administrations, what is novel is the request for the names of so many individual scientists, and the fact that it comes during the transition period, before the Trump administration has even taken power. This may be a signal of even more intense politicization after the inauguration.

Yale University environmental historian Paul Sabin said in an interview that previous administrations have worked to install like-minded energy and environmental experts in key agencies, often at the expense of employees from previous administrations.

“But what seems unusual is singling people out for a very specific substantive issue, and treating their work on that substantive issue as, by default, contaminating or disqualifying,” Sabin said, adding that officials can now track a civil servant’s past activities “in such a systematic way.”

During Ronald Reagan’s time, when his political appointees sparred with officials at the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, Sabin noted, “it would have been so much harder to collect it on paper and track it down.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment. White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters that he could not speak to the questionnaire directly, saying, “If you have questions about activity that the president-elect’s team is doing, you should check in with them and try and figure out why they’re doing it.”

But Schultz added: “All I can tell you is that President Obama is enormously proud of the work of civil servants and federal workers across the administration, that over the past eight years they’ve worked to make this country stronger. And they don’t do so out a sense of great pay or because the hours are great. They do so out of a sense of patriotism. And the president’s proud of their record.”

The questionnaire was first reported by Bloomberg News. The Washington Post has obtained its own copies of both the initial document and one with some of the agency’s replies filled in, in addition to confirmation from other people in the department that the documents are legitimate.

Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), a physicist, warned that the questionnaire “threatens to undo decades of progress we have made on climate change,” and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said punishing civil servants for their work under previous administrations “would be tantamount to an illegal modern-day political witch hunt and would have a profoundly chilling impact on our dedicated federal workforce.”

The document spanned a broad area of Energy Department activities, including its loan program, technology research program, responses to Congress, estimates of offshore wind and cleanup of uranium at a site once used by the military for weapons research. In many cases, the inquiries meshed with the priorities of conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, which held a meeting on energy and environment issues in Washington on Thursday, as well as priorities outlined in a recent fundraising pitch sent by the American Energy Alliance (AEA), a wing of the Institute for Energy Research.

Thomas Pyle, who heads the AEA, leads Trump’s Energy Department transition team. In a recent fundraising pitch, Pyle wrote supporters: “After eight years of the Obama administration’s divisive energy and environmental policies, the American people have voted for a change — a big change. We expect the Trump administration will adopt pro-energy and pro-market policies — much different than the Obama administration’s top-down government approach.”

One question zeroed in on the issue of the “social cost of carbon,” a way of calculating the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. The transition team asked for a list of department employees or contractors who attended interagency meetings, the dates of the meetings, and emails and other materials associated with them.

The social cost of carbon is a metric that calculates the cost to society of emitting a ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The Obama administration has used this tool to try to calculate the benefits of regulations and initiatives that lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

At Thursday’s Heritage meeting, senior fellow David Kreutzer attacked the idea of using the social cost of carbon during the regulatory process. He said it “actually can be considered a fiction, the way it’s produced in the [Environmental Protection Agency] right now,” adding that it “is supposedly a measure of the damage done to the world economy for each ton of carbon emitted in a given year.” Kreutzer is a member of Trump’s EPA transition team; Trump recently named Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who is suing the EPA over its environmental regulations, to head the EPA.

[The staggering economic cost of air pollution]

Another question appeared to delve deeply into the mechanisms behind scientific tools called “integrated assessment models,” which scientists use to forecast future changes to the climate and energy system. It also asked what the Energy Department considers to be “the proper equilibrium climate sensitivity,” which is a way climate researchers calculate how much the planet will eventually warm, depending on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.

“My guess is that they’re trying to undermine the credibility of the science that DOE has produced, particularly in the field of climate science,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford climate and energy researcher, in response to the question about the integrated assessment models.

The questionnaire also appeared to take aim at the national laboratories, which operate with a high degree of independence but are part of the Energy Department. The questionnaire asked for a list of the top 20 salaried employees of the labs, the labs’ peer-reviewed publications over the past three years, a list of their professional society memberships, affiliations, and the websites they maintain or contribute to “during work hours.” Researchers at national labs focus on a range of issues, including renewable-energy development and climate analysis.

Career Energy officials who are the designated liaisons to the Trump transition team are allowed to disclose only publicly available information, unless it is in the context of a classified briefing to transition team members who have obtained security clearance through the White House. A response to the question about the top 20 salaried employees read: “DOE does not collect this information. This would require a call to the Labs, and the information is not available publicly.” The department gave a similar to reply to questions about professional society memberships, websites they maintain or contribute to, and paid and unpaid positions.

The transition team questionnaire also asked how to keep open aging nuclear power plants, restart the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site shelved by Obama and support the licensing of small modular reactors.

It included 15 questions for the Energy Information Administration, some of them routine but some questioning the way the agency uses data about energy production.

It included 15 questions for the Energy Information Administration, some of them routine but some questioning the way the agency uses data about energy production.

...

The questions called to mind past cases of conflicts between Republican administrations and federal agency scientists, on the environment and other matters.

In Reagan’s first term, Anne Gorsuch was appointed to head the Environmental Protection Agency amid a major push for regulatory rollback. But after Gorsuch resigned amid controversy in 1983, Congress opened investigations into supposed “hit lists” at the agency used to track the views of members of scientific advisory boards, according to contemporary news reports.

During the George W. Bush administration, there were complaints that scientific documents had been edited to raise doubts about the science of climate change and that researchers had been prevented from speaking openly to the media and sharing their expertise.

In late 2010, the Obama administration issued governmentwide “scientific integrity” guidelines aimed at shielding federal scientists from political interference, part of an effort to distinguish itself from the Bush administration. The four-page memo, written by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, included a prohibition against agency leaders or public affairs officers asking or demanding federal scientists to alter or suppress their findings. It also instructed agencies to “involve science and technology experts where appropriate” to craft “policymaking of the highest integrity.”

[Amid funding fears, NASA announces another climate research mission]

Energy Department officials have not yet decided how to respond to the questions targeting the agency’s climate activities, according to federal officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“With some of these questions, it feels more like an inquisition than a question, in terms of going after career employees who have been here through the Bush years to Clinton, and up to now,” said one current Energy Department employee. “All of a sudden you have questions that feel more like a congressional investigation than an actual probing of how the Department of Energy does its job.”

Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, called the memo’s demand that Energy officials identify specific employees “alarming.”

“If the Trump administration is already singling out scientists for doing their jobs, the scientific community is right to be worried about what his administration will do in office. What’s next? Trump administration officials holding up lists of ‘known climatologists’ and urging the public to go after them?” Halpern asked.

He added that lawmakers have attacked executive-branch scientists in the past for doing “work they find inconvenient. It seems that they are about to get accomplices in the Department of Energy. But don’t expect the federal workforce to simply roll over. The new administration will find thousands of federal workers who still believe in their departmental mission and will work hard to resist attacks on their peers. Scientists outside government are standing by to expose these actions and fight back.”

Christine McEntee, the executive director of the American Geophysical Union, a large society of Earth scientists, added in response to the questionnaire that “we don’t know at AGU the intent of all these questions, but if you look at them without knowing that intent, they are raising alarm for us.”

McEntee said that in general, when it comes to politics and science under Trump, “we’re hearing a lot from members, they’re quite concerned.” At the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco next week, where more than 20,000 scientists gather annually, there will be sessions on the consequences of the election for science and on giving publicly funded scientists legal advice on how to respond to requests for their communications, she said.

The Trump transition team’s meetings with Energy Department officials so far have excluded political appointees, one current official said.

At the Defense Department, Trump transition officials are having multiple meetings a day with Pentagon personnel but in some cases have asked Obama administration political appointees not to attend those meetings, officials there said.

Chris Mooney, Brady Dennis and Missy Ryan contributed to this report.

==

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http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2016/12/04/revealed-trump-energy-plan

The future Donald Trump administration’s energy agenda is revealed in a memo prepared by Trump’s energy transition head Thomas Pyle, titled “What to Expect from the Trump Administration.” The document, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), was sent by Pyle on November 15th, just days before the Trump campaign announced Pyle’s appointment as head of his Department of Energy transition team.

Pyle is the President of both the American Energy Allianceand the Institute for Energy Research. Both organizations have received cash from numerous fossil fuel funders including ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and Koch Industries. From 2001 to 2005, Pyle was Director of Federal Affairs for Koch Industries.

The memo outlines fourteen policies to be expected from President-elect Trump, which collectively amounts to a fossil fuel industry wish list and which would be devastating for attempts to slow climate change.

The agenda includes withdrawing from the 2015 Paris Climate agreement, eliminating the Clean Power Plan, increasing the leasing of federal lands for exploitation of coal, oil and gas, expediting the approval of pipeline projects including the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline and rolling back federal fuel economy standards.

Here is the list from Pyle (PDF available here):

“The federal government does have stewardship of millions of acres of land. Rather than selling the land to states and private enterprises, the first step should be establishing a shared governance structure with the states. This first step would allow for maintaining the aesthetics of the land while finding ways to gain revenue that would benefit both the federal and state governments.”

“This is an issue for Congress and the people they represent. Subsidies distort markets and should be used only when national security is at stake. Eventually, all subsidies should end so that the demand for energy will set prices, allow consumers access to the best values and encourage all facets of the energy industry to do all they can to keep their particular source competitive.”

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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-koch-brothers-231863

no links

Charles Koch once likened the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to being asked to choose cancer or a heart attack.

Now, Koch’s allies are helping to launch Trump’s administration, giving Charles and his brother David potential inroads with a president whose campaign they refused to support.

The president-elect, in filling out his transition team and administration, has drawn heavily from the vast network of donors and advocacy groups built by the billionaire industrialist brothers, who have sought to reshape American politics in their libertarian image.

From White House Counsel Don McGahn and transition team advisers Tom Pyle, Darin Selnick and Alan Cobb to PresidentialInaugural Committee member Diane Hendricksand transition-team executive committee members Rebekah Mercerand Anthony Scaramucci, Trump has surrounded himself with people tied to the Kochs.

“In creating the Koch network, I don’t think that we ever envisioned that we would besupplying staffers to this semi-free market, semi-populist president,” said Frayda Levin, a donor to the network who chairs the board of its main voter mobilization group, Americans for Prosperity. “But we’re happy that he’s picking people who have that free market background, particularly because on many issues, he is a blank slate, so anybody with expertise is in an amazing position to shape his agenda.”

Trump's baseless assertions of voter fraud called 'stunning'

By ANDREW RESTUCCIA

And many more Koch-linked operatives are expected to join Trump’s nascent administration in the coming weeks, according to Trump transition-team sources. Names being considered include Koch Industries lobbyist Brian Henneberry and former company spokesman Matt Lloyd, as well as Daniel Garza, who runs a Koch-backed nonprofit called the LIBRE Initiative that courts Latinos, not to mention a handful of veterans of the Koch network’s advocacy groups who worked on the Trump campaign — from top Pence adviser Marc Short and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to ex-campaign aides Stuart Jolly, Eli Miller, Scott Hagerstrom, Charles Munoz and Matt Ciepielowski.

Perhaps more surprisingly, despite some predictions of imminent policy clashes, there’s already informal communication between the Trump team and the Koch network, and both camps are signaling a willingness to work together on issues of mutual interest. David Koch even attended Trump’s election night victory party.

How long the comity lasts between Trump and the powerful Koch brothers could go far in determining whether Trump is able to take full advantage of the complete Republican control of Washington ushered in by his stunning victory over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Things weren’t so agreeable during the campaign, when the Koch operation blocked Trump from directly accessing its data or its candidate forums, while the brothers condemned the first-time candidate for his combative tone, his calls for a Muslim immigration ban and his opposition to the sorts of trade policies that facilitate the brothers’ vision of unfettered global capitalism. At one point, Charles Koch compared the choice between Trump and Clinton to choosing between “cancer or heart attack,” and the Koch network did not spend any money directly boosting Trump or attacking Clinton.

Trump in turn boasted that the Kochs could not influence him because he didn’t “want their money or anything else from them.” And he blasted his rivals for the GOP nomination as puppets of the Kochs. A possible truce after Trump clinched the nomination broke down quickly, with the two sides clashing over who rejected a proposed meeting.

The Koch network, which some believed was discouraging its operatives from working with Trump’s campaign, is now seen by insiders as welcoming the chance to have allies on the inside of Trump’s administration.

At the same time, though, the network already is signaling that it intends to oppose aspects of Trump’s agenda that run counter to the brothers’ brand of small government, low-regulation conservatism, possibly including the incoming president’s $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan and his pledge to renegotiate trade deals.

Trump’s press office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

James Davis, a spokesman for Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the central group in the Koch network, said, “We’ll try to find areas to work together to advance a free and open society and reverse the counterproductive policies that have created a two-tiered society.” He added: “We wish the new administration well.”

Setting aside the personal and policy conflicts, Trump’s willingness to draw from the Kochs’ operation makes sense in several ways.

Charles and David Koch over the past decade mobilized some of the biggest donors on the right to finance what amounts to a privatized political party — a network of donors and advocacy groups that became a leading employer of conservative operatives and policy professionals independent of the official GOP during a period when Republicans were mostly out of power in Washington.

The 1,200-employee network, which claims it will have spent about $750 million in the run-up to the 2016 election, would have been a logical pool from which any incoming Republican administration might have drawn as it endeavored to fill thousands of jobs.

But there’s an added appeal for Trump.

During the campaign, Trump railed against a Washington GOP establishment — embodied by the family of his vanquished primary foe Jeb Bush — from which the Kochs for years had worked to demonstrate their independence. And, after he won, President-elect Trump announced a sweeping lobbying ban that could be more of a deterrent for many conservative policy professionals than for Koch network staffers, who can work for years within the brothers’ network of think tanks and advocacy groups without directly lobbying federal or state officials.

“If you’re not going to pull from the Chamber of Commerce, Bush wing of the party, you don’t have that many places to go, so it makes sense to look to Koch world,” said a GOP operative who advised Trump team’s during the campaign and the transition. “Trump is looking for new blood that wasn’t part of the traditional establishment, and his presidency is already totally rewriting the Republican hierarchy. There were all these people who were locked out who are now getting their chance.”

Some former Koch staffers told POLITICO that the allure of joining Trump’s team was compounded by what they saw as the network’s retreat from the 2016 presidential race and its increased emphasis on advocating libertarian-infused policies such as decreasing incarceration and government subsidies.

“It’s less a result of Trump recruiting from the network as it is a result of the network retreating from the political field, leaving people looking for places they could go to have an impact,” said a former network staffer who worked on the Trump campaign.

In fact, many of the Koch veterans who played major roles in the Trump campaign had left the Koch network weeks or even months before joining forces with Trump, including Short, Lewandowski, Ciepielowski, Cobb, Jolly, Miller and Munoz — none of whom responded to requests for comment for this story.

Most notably, Short resigned his role as president of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce in late February to join Marco Rubio’s rival presidential campaign, motivated partly by the network’s decision to sit out the presidential race.

Short landed in Trump’s orbit when the Republican nominee tapped as his running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.A longtime ally of the Koch network, Pence had previously employed both Short and Lloyd, who later went to work for Koch Industries, the privately owned multinational oil and industrial conglomerate that is the source of the brothers’ fortunes, which are estimated at $43 billion each. Short is now helping Pence run the transition effort and is expected to fill a senior role in the vice president’s office, as is Lloyd, who is working as a deputy chief of staff in Pence’s gubernatorial office in Indiana and could not be reached for comment.

Other ex-Koch operatives, including Lewandowski, left the network on less-than-great terms, and jumped at the chance to join up early with Trump as he launched a campaign that few establishment operatives or donors took seriously.

Lewandowskihad worked for years at Americans for Prosperity, where he drew complaints from co-workers and directed an underperforming voter registration initiative. Still, he brought with him from AFP undeniable organizing experience. Under his leadership, the Trump campaign brought on a number of former AFP operatives, including Ciepielowski, Cobb, Jolly, Miller and Munoz — all of whom are up for posts in Trump’s administration or at the Republican National Committee, according to sources in Trump’s operation.

Cobb is currently working for the transition team, which also is getting advice from Selnick and Pyle.

Selnick is a senior adviser and consultant to Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit group funded by the Koch network that has pushed to allow veterans to access private health care — a goal that Trump embraced on the campaign trail.

“The Trump transition team’s collaboration with experts like Darin is a positive sign that the president-elect is prioritizing real VA reform,” said Dan Caldwell, a Concerned Veterans spokesman, referring to the Department of Veterans Affairs. “We are optimistic that President-elect Trump will now turn these ideas into tangible reforms, and we will support him in that effort.”

Pyle, who is leading the Trump transition team’s Energy Department landing team, is the president of a fossil fuel advocacy group called the American Energy Institute, which has received significant Koch network funding. But the group gradually has been cut out of the network, which may have given it leeway to officially endorse Trump over the summer, even as the Koch network was sitting out the race. Pyle declined to comment.

Additionally, some of the deepest pockets helping Trump have either contributed significant sums to the Koch network or attended its twice-a-year donor gatherings. They include transition team executive committee members Mercer, a hedge fund heiress, and Scaramucci, a Wall Street impresario; as well as self-made roofing billionaire Hendricks, a member of Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee. Family members of Betsy DeVos, whom Trump nominated last week as his secretary of education, have also been contributors to the network.

McGahn, who last week was named White House counsel, represented Freedom Partners and its affiliated super PAC — work he continued for a time even after signing on with the Trump campaign. He didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Garza, whose LIBRE Initiative is in good standing in the Koch network, told POLITICO that he is engaged in “some initial talks” about a possible role with the Trump team. But he suggested that, even if he joined the team, it wouldn’t mean that the Trump administration would get a free pass from his group. “We’ll encourage and advocate for freedom-oriented, pro-growth policy proposals and call out bad policy prescriptions regardless of party or personality.”

The first potential battle between the Kochs and the Trump administration — the one repeatedly mentioned by operatives in and out of the network — is Trump’s centerpiece infrastructure plan, which constitutes the sort of Big Government domestic spending for which the Kochs have long attacked Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

“It will be interesting to see whether AFP actually holds the line on something,” said one top Republican operative. “There really could be a Trump-Koch spat in Year One.”

Others are interpreting the Koch-Trump détente as evidence that the true allegiance of many Koch staffers was always to the Republican Party, despite the network’s attempts to cast its efforts as independent from the official GOP.

“Starting in 2006 when Republicans lost control of Congress and even more so in 2008, when we lost the White House, a lot of people just needed a paycheck to keep up with their mortgage, and the Koch network kept them afloat,” said one former network official. “That’s not the way Charles Koch saw it, but the people who were accepting the checks saw it that way. And now, there’s an opportunity for them to get off the Koch dole and get back in power.”

Then there’s the question of whether Trump will even want to collaborate.

Several operatives around the Koch network said there’s concern that the Trump administration will have no incentive to work with the network....

==

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/08/22/174407/dirty-energy-town-hall/

....

In fact, by attacking legislation that addresses climate change and our national dependence on fossil fuels, AEA is preventing a clean-energy economic boom. Laughably, AEA claims it has “no ties to any political party“:

AEA has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party.

AEA may be telling the truth that it has “no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party” — its only interest seems to be blocking progressive reform by spreading lies and distortions. However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative.Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay(R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep.Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

Patrick Creighton, AEA Communications Director, Worked For Bush And Pennsylvania Republicans. Patrick Creighton was the special assistant to Samuel T. Mok, the chief financial officer at the Department of Labor from 2004 to 2006. He then worked as a spokesman for oil and natural gas advocate Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) from 2006 to 2009, worked to elect Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), then joined Thompson’s office until May 2009. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Kevin Kennedy, AEA Federal Affairs Director, Promoted Alaska Drilling Under Don Young. After graduating from Union College in 2004, Kevin Kennedy worked for the Astroturf organization Arctic Power, which advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2007, Kennedy became a legislative assistant for thecorrupt Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He joined the Institute for Energy Research and American Energy Alliance in 2009. [Institute for Energy Research]

Laura Henderson, AEA Spokesperson, Served Shelby, Dole, And Tiberi. Laura Henderson was a former press secretary for offshore drilling advocate Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) from 2005-2009. Previously, she worked for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH). [Institute for Energy Research]

Daniel R. Simmons, AEA State Affairs Director, Is A Koch-Funded GOP Staffer. Simmons was the Director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing network funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and other corporate and right-wing organizations. Previously, Simmons was a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, also funded by Koch. From 2001 to 2005, Simmons served on the staff of Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA) on the House Natural Resources Committee. Simmons holds a B.A. in Economics from Utah State University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law, also supported by Koch Industries. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Furthermore, AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org website is run by yet another former GOP House staffer:

GOP.gov Webmaster Nathan Imperiale Runs EnergyTownHall.Org.AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org was designed by NJI Media Group, part of Endeavour Global Strategies. Endeavour’s head, Sean Spicer,is a long-time GOP operative, including communications work for the House Republican Conference and the Bush White House. NJI Media Group’s president, Nathan Imperiale, served as Director of New Media for the House Republican Conference, building its GOP.gov website. Twitter, [2/13/09; Endeavour Global Strategies]

AEA’s “American Energy Express” joins a field crowded by conservative oil and coal propaganda — the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s “Factuality” bus tour, the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” oil rallies, and the Americans For Prosperity “Hot Air” balloon tour.

==

American Energy Alliance/Institute For Energy Research

The Institute for Energy Research and its political arm, the American Energy Alliance, are both funded in part by the Koch brothers and their donor network and run by Tom Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. The group was recently identified as a beneficiary of the Kochs’ vast political network,which raised at least $407 million in the last election alone, according to a recent analysis by the Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics. In January, an IER blog post said the plan to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants “will wreak havoc on our largest source of electricity.”

Pyle told the New York Times in February that the group was preparing to attack the proposal with television and radio ads. “That’s going to be a big fight, when they roll out the rule for existing plants,” Pyle said. “We’ll be ready for them.”

AEA has recently been attacking vulnerable Democrats in fossil-fuel friendly states — Rep. Nick Rahall (WV), Sen. Mark Begich (AK) — for supporting a carbon tax,even though they never did. In 2012, the group sought to make the Production Tax Credit for wind energy “so toxic” that Republicans wouldn’t back it.

===

• Pyle and Associates, $40,000 (2007), which also lobbied for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association 279, of which Koch is a member.

• The Rhoads Group, $100,000 (2007) which also lobbies for the National Petrochemical and

Refiners Association280 of which Koch is a member.

 ===

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative. Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich(R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

===

sw stub

Thomas J. Pyle, a former energy policy aide for former House Majority Leader Thomas D. DeLay, is director of federal affairs for Koch Industries. [1][2]

Affiliations

External links

Categories: 

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Pyle has a colorful political résumé as well. He worked as a top aide to Tom DeLay, the former Republican Majority Leader of the House of Representatives who was later convicted of money laundering, and he was identified by the Washington Post as a participant in the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot,” in which Republican operatives from Washington stormed vote-counters in Florida during the hotly contested 2000 Bush v. Gore Presidential election. (“Tom Pyle is not running from his record at all,” Cole said, when asked about these ties. “It’s regrettable that the President is running from his.”)  jm nyer

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Note lack of details here: off bs

Thomas J. Pyle is the president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER). In this capacity, Pyle brings a unique backdrop of public and private sector experience to help manage IER’s Washington, DC-based staff and operations. He also helps to develop the organization’s free market policy positions and implement education efforts with respect to key energy stakeholders, including policymakers, federal agency representatives, industry leaders, consumer entities and the media.

Previously, Pyle was the founder of his own consulting firm, Pyle Consulting, Inc., an active public affairs consulting firm with a wide range of private and not-for-profit customers. Prior to starting his own firm, Pyle served as vice president of the Rhoads Group in Washington, DC where he represented and advised a variety of association and corporate clients in meeting their strategic public policy goals and priorities. Additionally, he also served as director of federal affairs for a major integrated manufacturing and services company focusing on energy, environment, regulatory and transportation issues.

Before coming to the private sector, Pyle held numerous positions on Capitol Hill including serving a policy analyst for the Majority Whip [Delay?] of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the Congressional Western Caucus, as well as other legislative staff positions.

Pyle holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Southern California.

--

Danish journalists have confirmed that The Institute for Energy Research commissioned and paid for the **anti-wind energy studyreleased last year by a Danish think tank that claimed Denmark exaggerates the amount of wind energy it produces (it doesn’t), questioned whether wind energy reduces carbon emissions (it does), and asserted that the U.S. should choose coal over wind because it’s cheaper (it’s not when you count the true costs of coal).

The Copenhagen Post reports:

“A controversial report critical of the wind energy industry from conservative think tank CEPOS was commissioned and paid for by an American think tank with close ties to the coal and oil industries.”

That American think tank is the Institute for Energy Research, which has received $307,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998 and unknown additional sums from other oil and coal industry sources.  The Guardian reported last year that the Institute for Energy Research has received recent funding from KBR and trusts set up by Koch Industries, which has multiple ties to IER and its sister organization American Energy Alliance.

IER’s President Thomas J. Pyle previously worked as a lobbyist for Koch Industries, while IER’s CEO Robert L. Bradley was formerly Director of Public Relations Policy at Enron, where he served as speechwriter for Enron CEO Kenneth Lay. 

Pyle, Bradley and IER have direct and indirect ties to a laundry list of dirty energy industry front groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, TASSC, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.   Bradley and the IER have argued that supplies of fossil fuels are virtually limitless, and that American dependence on oil imports from Middle Eastern dictatorships “pose no threat to national security.”

IER has railed against green jobs, arguing that oil and gas are better job creators, despite the fact that investment in clean energy technology creates four times as many jobs as investment in oil and gas.  IER continues its campaign against wind energy as well, asserting recently that the Obama administration had been “caught red-handed working with Big Wind energy lobbyists.”

Yes, those scary “Big Wind energy lobbyists” pose a real threat to America.  You can’t make this stuff up folks.  Unless, of course, you work at the oil-and-coal-funded Institute for Energy Research.

desmog http://www.desmogblog.com/institute-energy-research-admits-it-was-behind-anti-wind-study

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TheAmerican Energy Alliancethat is launching a $3.6 millionad campaign blasting President Obama over rising gasoline prices has—surprise!—strong ties to oil-and-chemical billionaires, Charles and David Koch.

The ads come after a $6 million campaign by the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity attacked the Obama administration for loan guarantees to the now-bankrupt Solyndra solar power company. The Koch brothers have, in fact, been running a war on Obama.

Before the run-up to 2010 midterm elections, the brothers had stuck pretty much to contributing money to projects at the state level supporting their radical libertarianism as well as disinformation campaigns denying climate change. But then they chose to back the tea party and tea party-aligned candidates for Congress in a big way through their AFP. It's said that they plan to spend $200 million on political ads and related activity this year. But such calculations are guesswork.

The American Energy Alliance is the political arm of  Institute for Energy Research. IER is notorious for its climate change denialism. Kenneth P. Vogel writes:

The groups are run by Tom Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. Pyle regularly attends the mega-donor summits organized by the Koch brothers, including the 2012 winter summit in Indian Wells, Calif., where the Kochs raised more than $150 million to be directed to groups ahead of the general election.

The American Energy Alliance’s ad campaign, which launches Friday in eight states, hammers Obama for his decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and recycles a 2008 quote from Energy Secretary Steven Chu about the benefits of European-level gas prices.

According to the web site Sourcewatch, Pyle worked for the ethically challenged Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX) when he was House Whip. He also lobbied for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association and Koch Industries. Another board member is William Gable, also a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. While the AEA does not reveal its contributors, past funding for IER has come from Exxon Mobil, Brown & Root, the Searle Freedom Trust, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is also run by executives of Koch Industries. What a tangled web we weave when spending millions to deceive.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse on Thursday accused the brothers of “funding yet another shadowy outside group to defend the interests of Big Oil and protect their own tax breaks and profits with Mitt Romney being the ultimate beneficiary.”

Among the other distortions in the anti-Obama ad is the implication that building theKeystone XLpipeline will reduce gasoline prices. In fact, if it is built, prices are likely to rise by as much as 20 cents a gallon in the Midwest since the oil now transported from Canada's tar sands deposits to refineries in the region where there is an oil surplus will be shipped to refineries a thousand miles away. Much of the oil will likely be shipped abroad to other markets, including China, whose growing economy has a voracious energy appetite.

The claim that Obama has blocked Keystone XL is only half-true since he has supported construction of the southern leg of the pipeline and given strong hints that he will approve the northern leg that he rejected in January when the builder, TransCanada, comes up with an alternative route. A TransCanada executive said two weeks ago that the application would probably be submitted sometime in early April.

So two falsehoods right out the door. But then the Koch brothers aren't peeling a few bucks off their $25 billion stash to spread the truth.  kos metoer blades

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problem w/ main node. thus backup:

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a front for front? IER?

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fight epa coal regs before published 5/14

American Energy Alliance/Institute For Energy Research

The Institute for Energy Research and its political arm, the American Energy Alliance, are both funded in part by the Koch brothers and their donor network and run by Tom Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. The group was recently identified as a beneficiary of the Kochs’ vast political network, which raised at least $407 million in the last election alone, according to a recent analysis by the Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics. In January, an IER blog post said the plan to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants “will wreak havoc on our largest source of electricity.”

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GOP Team At American Energy Alliance Runs ‘Energy Town Hall’ Oil Bus Tour

The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading the conservative lies that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will “cripple our sluggish economy.” AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus tour pictures workers in hard hats:

In fact, by attacking legislation that addresses climate change and our national dependence on fossil fuels, AEA is preventing a clean-energy economic boom. Laughably, AEA claims it has “no ties to any political party“:

AEA has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party.

AEA may be telling the truth that it has “no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party” — its only interest seems to be blocking progressive reform by spreading lies and distortions. However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative.  Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

Patrick Creighton, AEA Communications Director, Worked For Bush And Pennsylvania Republicans. Patrick Creighton was the special assistant to Samuel T. Mok, the chief financial officer at the Department of Labor from 2004 to 2006. He then worked as a spokesman for oil and natural gas advocate Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) from 2006 to 2009, worked to elect Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), then joined Thompson’s office until May 2009. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Kevin Kennedy, AEA Federal Affairs Director, Promoted Alaska Drilling Under Don Young. After graduating from Union College in 2004, Kevin Kennedy worked for the Astroturf organization Arctic Power, which advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2007, Kennedy became a legislative assistant for the corrupt Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He joined the Institute for Energy Research and American Energy Alliance in 2009. [Institute for Energy Research]

Laura Henderson, AEA Spokesperson, Served Shelby, Dole, And Tiberi. Laura Henderson was a former press secretary for offshore drilling advocate Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) from 2005-2009. Previously, she worked for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH). [Institute for Energy Research]

Daniel R. Simmons, AEA State Affairs Director, Is A Koch-Funded GOP Staffer. Simmons was the Director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing network funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and other corporate and right-wing organizations. Previously, Simmons was a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, also funded by Koch. From 2001 to 2005, Simmons served on the staff of Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA) on the House Natural Resources Committee. Simmons holds a B.A. in Economics from Utah State University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law, also supported by Koch Industries. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Furthermore, AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org website is run by yet another former GOP House staffer:

GOP.gov Webmaster Nathan Imperiale Runs EnergyTownHall.Org.AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org was designed by NJI Media Group, part of Endeavour Global Strategies. Endeavour’s head, Sean Spicer, is a long-time GOP operative, including communications work for the House Republican Conference and the Bush White House. NJI Media Group’s president, Nathan Imperiale, served as Director of New Media for the House Republican Conference, building its GOP.gov website. [Twitter, 2/13/09; Endeavour Global Strategies]

AEA’s “American Energy Express” joins a field crowded by conservative oil and coal propaganda — the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s “Factuality” bus tour, the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” oil rallies, and the Americans For Prosperity “Hot Air” balloon tour.

UPDATEAt Free Advice, Institute for Energy Research economist Bob Murphy writes that Paul Krugman doesn't understand tea party protesters because he doesn't care about checks on government power like they do, and continues:

So, by symmetry,

I think people on "our side" should realize that the great masses of Americans who are for health care reform and climate legislation (and it pains me to not put scare quotes around those phrases) aren't actually closet socialists who want to bring America to its knees.

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Pyle told the New York Times in February that the group was preparing to attack the proposal with television and radio ads. “That’s going to be a big fight, when they roll out the rule for existing plants,” Pyle said. “We’ll be ready for them.”

AEA has recently been attacking vulnerable Democrats in fossil-fuel friendly states — Rep. Nick Rahall (WV), Sen. Mark Begich (AK) — for supporting a carbon tax, even though they never did. In 2012, the group sought to make the Production Tax Credit for wind energy “so toxic” that Republicans wouldn’t back it.

==

The Center for Public Integrity used 990s obtained by CRP as it looked into the American Energy Alliance's claim that the $1.3 million it spent on ads in the 2012 elections were not actually political. In another rundown of new filings, CPI also cited tax documents and data from CRP.  :

Swing state voters in Virginia and Ohio last fall were bombarded with television advertisements encouraging them to "stand with coal" and "vote no on Obama's failing energy policy."

But the sponsor of these ads — a pro-business nonprofit advocacy group called the American Energy Alliance — says the messages weren’t designed to aid Republican Mitt Romney in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama.

In a new tax return filed Friday and first obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics, the American Energy Alliance, led by former Koch Industries lobbyist Thomas Pyle, told the Internal Revenue Service that it did not "engage in direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office" last year.

The group made an even more explicit pledge to be nonpartisan when it applied for tax-exempt status in 2008, telling the IRS that it had "no interest in supporting the agenda or any particular political party or political candidate."

While it acknowledged “the possibility that some of AEA's publications and communications may be considered ‘political,’” the group asserted that it was a “nonpartisan policy-oriented organization,” not a “‘political’ organization.”

The new tax documents also show that American Energy Alliance spent more than $5 million on "media and advertising," with vendor Mentzer Media, a media buying firm that works primarily with Republicans, receiving $3.9 million of that amount.

The “stand with coal” ads cost at least $1.36 million, according to disclosures the American Energy Alliance filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Because these broadcast ads came within 60 days of the November election and mentioned the president, the American Energy Alliance was required to report the spots to the FEC as “electioneering communications” — a special type of issue-based advertising that comes with enhanced disclosure requirements.

The group also engaged in a host of other pre-election activities that often included battleground presidential states and attacked Obama.

Marcus Owens, an attorney who previously headed the IRS’ tax-exempt division, said the American Energy Alliance’s new filing “certainly raises a red flag.”

“It’s a politically active organization,” he said, adding that the pre-election advertisements were veiled in what “sounds like a lobbying message on its face.”

Benjamin Cole, a spokesman for the American Energy Alliance, rejected accusations that his group behaved improperly.

Cole told the Center for Public Integrity that the ads were “designed to inform the American public about President Obama's energy policies… not his re-election efforts.”

“We could just as easily run those same ads today,” Cole continued, adding that all of the group’s ads are vetted by lawyers to “ensure that nothing we do runs afoul of federal election or tax laws.”

One element of the new IRS documents that’s for sure: The American Energy Alliance’s footprint has grown substantially. In all, the American Energy Alliance spent $7 million last year.

That's a nearly seven times what it spent in 2010 — and more than 300 percent above the roughly $1.7 million it spent during its inaugural year in 2008, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of IRS records.

It’s unclear who precisely has funded this surge, although the American Energy Alliance’s new annual report does show that just three donors — who each gave at least $1 million — accounted for three-fourths of the American Energy Alliance’s total $7.3 million haul last year.

=-=

Fri, 2010-05-28 20:04

Brad Johnson over at The WONK ROOM reports:

The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading the conservative lies that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will “cripple our sluggish economy.” AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus tourpictures workers in hard hats:

The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.In fact, by attacking legislation that addresses climate change and our national dependence on fossil fuels, AEA is preventing a clean-energy economic boom. Laughably, AEA claims it has “no ties to any political party“:

American Energy Alliance staffers Kevin Kennedy, Patrick Creighton, and Laura Henderson on tour in Pennsylvania. All are former House GOP staff.

AEA may be telling the truth that it has “no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party” — its only interest seems to be blocking progressive reform by spreading lies and distortions. However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative. Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

Patrick Creighton, AEA Communications Director, Worked For Bush And Pennsylvania Republicans. Patrick Creighton was the special assistant to Samuel T. Mok, the chief financial officer at the Department of Labor from 2004 to 2006. He then worked as a spokesman for oil and natural gas advocate Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) from 2006 to 2009, worked to elect Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), then joined Thompson’s office until May 2009. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Kevin Kennedy, AEA Federal Affairs Director, Promoted Alaska Drilling Under Don Young. After graduating from Union College in 2004, Kevin Kennedy worked for the Astroturf organization Arctic Power, which advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2007, Kennedy became a legislative assistant for the corrupt Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He joined the Institute for Energy Research and American Energy Alliance in 2009. [Institute for Energy Research]

Laura Henderson, AEA Spokesperson, Served Shelby, Dole, And Tiberi. Laura Henderson was a former press secretary for offshore drilling advocate Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) from 2005-2009. Previously, she worked for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH). [Institute for Energy Research]

Daniel R. Simmons, AEA State Affairs Director, Is A Koch-Funded GOP Staffer. Simmons was the Director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing network funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and other corporate and right-wing organizations. Previously, Simmons was a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, also funded by Koch. From 2001 to 2005, Simmons served on the staff of Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA) on the House Natural Resources Committee. Simmons holds a B.A. in Economics from Utah State University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law, also supported by Koch Industries. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Furthermore, AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org website is run by yet another former GOP House staffer:

GOP.gov Webmaster Nathan Imperiale Runs EnergyTownHall.Org.AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org was designed by NJI Media Group, part of Endeavour Global Strategies. Endeavour’s head, Sean Spicer, is a long-time GOP operative, including communications work for the House Republican Conference and the Bush White House. NJI Media Group’s president, Nathan Imperiale, served as Director of New Media for the House Republican Conference, building its GOP.gov website. [Twitter,2/13/09; Endeavour Global Strategies]

AEA’s “American Energy Express” joins a field crowded by conservative oil and coal propaganda — the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s “Factuality” bus tour, the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” oil rallies, and the Americans For Prosperity “Hot Air” balloon tour.

Update At Free Advice, Institute for Energy Research economist Bob Murphy writes that Paul Krugman doesn't understand tea party protesters because he doesn't care about checks on government power like they do, and continues:

So, by symmetry, I think people on "our side" should realize that the great masses of Americans who are for health care reform and climate legislation (and it pains me to not put scare quotes around those phrases) aren't actually closet socialists who want to bring America to its knees.

By Brad Johnson at The WONK ROOM. 

==

Conservative group launches broad anti-carbon tax campaign

By Zack Colman - 07/16/13 05:00 AM ET

A conservative energy group is rolling out a multi-pronged push ahead of the August congressional recess that aims to put the carbon tax in its deathbed.

“We’re hoping to put the final nail in the coffin on the carbon tax. The proposal should be dead on arrival by the time lawmakers come back from August recess,” Benjamin Cole, a spokesman with the Institute for Energy Research and its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance, told The Hill in an interview detailing the plan.

The effort includes a new poll of American opinion on a carbon tax and an advertising campaign centered on five House members, among other elements.

As early as Thursday, AEA will launch a two-week radio advertising campaign that targets five House lawmakers — four Democrats and one Republican.

The ad blitz, which will cost between $120,000 and $150,000, targets Democratic Reps. Bill Owens (N.Y.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Patrick Murphy (Fla.) and William Enyart (Ill.), along with GOP Rep. Chris Smith (N.J.).

AEA chose to focus on members who have been “soft on the carbon tax issue” and reside in “marginal districts,” Cole said.

“We obviously are ones to apply pressure in any way we can,” he said.

The timing of the IER and AEA operation is designed to get energy issues on the agenda when lawmakers meet with voters in their congressional districts, Cole said.

Cole compared the upcoming recess to the summer of 2010, when the House had recently passed ObamaCare, the national healthcare law.

He said the climate change plan Obama unveiled last month — which relies on a suite of executive actions that industry, Republicans and coal-state Democrats say will slow the economy — will draw fire from voters across the country.

“We know that there’s going to be town halls that congressmen go back to their districts to hear from their constituents. We want to make sure that energy is on the plate,” he said.

The effort will attempt to blunt any possible momentum for a carbon tax, Cole said.

Of that, there appears to be little.

Taxing carbon emissions has support from some environmentalists, as well as a collection of conservative economists and advocates who say it should be coupled with lower personal tax rates. But the idea has little political traction.

Carbon tax proposals are a non-starter in the GOP-controlled House. And Republicans combined a bloc of centrist Democrats threaten to thwart a carbon tax in the Senate. On top of all that, the White House has said it won’t pursue a carbon tax.

The concept has fueled intense opposition from the right.

The IER and AEA campaign has the support of several conservative outfits, including Americans for Tax Reform, FreedomWorks and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The first piece of the rollout is an IER-commissioned poll of 800 registered voters conducted last week by The Tarrance Group that says Americans reject the idea of a carbon tax.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they oppose a carbon tax “paid by businesses of all sizes,” compared with 35 percent of those who favored the concept.

The poll doesn't take into account different schemes for a carbon tax — for example, there’s variability in policy circles when deciding whether to apply a fee at the point of carbon emissions or fossil fuel extraction.

Still, the responses differed greatly among parties. A majority of Democrats — 54 percent — favored a carbon tax, while 80 percent of Republicans rejected it.

The results of that poll will be discussed at a carbon tax event IER is hosting Wednesday. Then comes the radio ad launch.

IER will also give lawmakers a point-by-point critique of the climate change plan Obama unveiled last month before they head home.

“It’s teeing up August recess interaction with constituents,” Cole said.

Cole said that IER and AEA plan to keep the heat on lawmakers until the heads of the congressional tax-writing panels, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), formally declare a carbon tax is off the table.

The two committee heads have demonstrated a desire to overhaul the federal tax code — and for both, time is of the essence. Baucus isn’t running for reelection in 2014, and Camp’s term as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is up after next year.

“There’s nothing that motivates a politician more than building his own legacy,” Cole said.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/311159-conservative-group-launches-broad-anti-carbon-tax-campaign#ixzz2bz7bE8Qk 

Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

==

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backed down grover http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/13/1182511/grover-norquist-abruptly-reverses-position-on-carbon-tax-after-facing-criticism-from-koch-backed-group/

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Grover Norquist Abruptly Changes Position On Carbon Tax After Facing Criticism From Koch-Backed Group

By Stephen Lacey on Nov 13, 2012 at 1:27 pm

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist raised a lot of eyebrows on Monday when he told National Journal that a carbon tax might be on the table if it were swapped with a cut to the income tax.

“It’s possible you could structure something that wasn’t an increase and didn’t violate the pledge,” he reportedly said.

As president of Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist has convinced hundreds of members of Congress to sign a pledge that they will never raise taxes. While his influence appears to be waningin Washington, Norquist’s tax pledge is still considered gospel for many Republicans. That’s why his willingness to consider a tax on global warming pollution is a big deal in political circles.

But one day later, after being criticized by the American Energy Alliance, the advocacy arm of a Koch-supported energy think tank devoted to promoting fossil fuel development, Norquist has completely reversed his statement, saying there virtually “no conceivable way” he could support a tax on carbon....http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/13/1182511/grover-norquist-abruptly-reverses-position-on-carbon-tax-after-facing-criticism-from-koch-backed-group/

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==

Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group

Institute for Energy Research (IER)

On this page

Read more about the Institute for Energy Research

Find more recipients of Koch foundation money

$175,000 received from Koch foundations 2005-2011 [Total Koch foundation grants 1997-2011: $235,000]

IER supported and promoted the "Spanish" and "Danish" studies critical of clean energy jobs, both of which have been debunked by credible sources. IER also argues that efforts to curb global warming would accomplish little at too great a cost, promotes ACCF/NAM and Heritage Foundation studies that exaggerate the costs of climate policy, and discourages U.S. leadership on the international stage.

Robert Bradley, a former Enron executive, is the CEO of IER and one of its founders. Thomas Pyle, a former Koch and oil-industry lobbyist, is the President of IER and the American Energy Alliance, the 501c4 counterpart to IER. Politico reports that IER and AEA still receive Koch money in support of a $3.6 million anti-Obama gas price advertising campaign, although Koch foundations appear to have stopped supporting IER after 2007. The most recent available Koch foundation tax filings to IRS are for the year 2010, indicating the Kochs picked IER back up in 2011 or are funneling money through other avenues.

AEA was founded by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute to fight the BTU tax proposal in 1993, and in recent years funded by ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. AEA has been active in the climate debate, from running ads repeating false claims about the costs of climate legislation to trashing clean energy at town halls around the US.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/institute-for-energy-research/

==

The romance between ALEC and fracking continued at this year's ALEC meeting in Utah -- an appropriate location for the frack-friendly ALEC crew. In May, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar approved a major shale gas project by Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. in Utah's Uinta Basin -- expected to develop more than 3,600 new wells over the next decade.

In another industry-friendly move, Utah's Governor Gary Herbert, who spoke the ALEC conference's opening luncheon, signed a bill into law in March demanding that Congress hand over 30 million acres of federal land to the state by 2015 or the state will sue. According to the Associated Press, Lawmakers in Utah and Arizona have said the legislation is endorsed by ALEC. As documented by the Center for Media and Democracy's ALEC Exposed Project, ALEC drafted the "Sagebrush Rebellion Act," which was "designed to establish a mechanism for the transfer of ownership of unappropriated lands from the federal government to the states." According to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the governor's initiative would open up millions of acres of the "Wilderness Study Areas and proposed wilderness areas to oil and gas development" but in the process would cost Utah taxpayers enormously.

At the meeting, the CEO of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) Dr. Robert Bradley was one of the featured speakers. Bradley, formerly a director of policy analysis at Enron, also spoke at the 2011 ALEC conference in New Orleans. He is also an "adjunct scholar" at the right-wing think tank the Cato Institute and specializes in "global warming alarmism." IER is a non-profit group focused on global energy markets that pushes for deregulation, advances climate change denial, and attempts to discredit renewable energy sources. The group's 2010 IRS 990 form said that its focus was narrowed in on "impediments to domestic energy production, including government restrictions on access, burdensome regulations, and the favoritism of energy sources that are unsustainable in the marketplace."

The PR Bus of AEA and Koch's AFP

IER received some $307,000 from Exxon Mobil between 2003 and 2007, according to the publicly traded company's "Corporate Giving Reports." IER also received a total of $235,000 from Koch Family foundations between 1997-2010, according to a Greenpeace report. Koch Industries, an ALEC member, also profits from the expansion of fracking. Unlike Exxon, because Koch is not a publicly-traded company, any corporate donations to groups like IER, AEA, or AFP are not publicly disclosed.

IER is a "partner" organization of the American Energy Alliance, a 501(c)4 organization which calls itself the "grassroots arm" of IER. Thomas Pyle is president of both organizations, and is a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and former energy policy aide for former House Majority Leader Thomas D. DeLay, who resigned from the leadership following his indictment on conspiracy charges. Wayne Gable, also a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and former president for two of the Koch Family foundations, is on the board of both IER and AEA.

In 2011 IER and AEA launched "Energy for America" as a joint initiative with a laser point in on fracking, with an aim to "educate" the public on the practice. In October 2011, AEA and IER, in partnership with Koch Industries' astroturf group Americans for Prosperity, started a "Energy for America" bus tour to encourage the expansion of domestic exploration of oil, gas and coal, targeting U.S. Senate battleground states for the upcoming 2012 elections.

Additionally, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck is one of the three chairs of the ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force. One of its clients is Freeport LNG, which owns and operates one of the first liquefied natural gas import terminals built in the United States. According to the law firm's website, "For the last nine years, Brownstein has been the lead counsel in the structuring, strategy and development of the $1.2 billion receiving and regasification facility with commercial output capacity of more than 2.0 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day."

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March 30, 2012

Funders Behind New Anti-Obama Ad Blitz Stay Hidden

Posted by Jane Mayer

A new and highly aggressive multi-million-dollar anti-Obama ad campaign has started airing on television stations in eight key political swing states—but for now at least, the funders are staying hidden in the shadows.

The ads in question have a distinctly oily aura, which is unsurprising, perhaps since the group sponsoring them has been funded in the past by major fossil-fuel companies. The group defines itself as a non-partisan nonprofit, but exemplifies the growing role that secret money is playing in the 2012 Presidential campaign. Technically, the ads have been produced and aired by the Washington-based American Energy Alliance, a 501c-4 social-welfare organization under the Internal Revenue Service’s tax code, whose activities, under the law, have to be largely non-political. This group shares office space and personnel with a sister organization, the Institute for Energy Research, a 501c-3, whose tax status is typically reserved for charities. Its activities have to be strictly non-partisan and non-political. Both groups hide the identities of their funders. All that Benjamin Cole, director of communications for both groups would say is that the ads are funded by “individuals, foundations, and corporations.”

Cole says that the $3.6 million ad campaign “is not election related at all. We’re not seeking to influence the elections.” It is, he says, only a coincidence that most of the eight states that the ads will air in—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia—are considered hotly contested swing states that could decide the outcome of the election. He says these states were chosen only because they are all places where energy is an issue. He explained, for instance, that offshore oil drilling is an issue in Virginia, and the high price of gasoline is an issue in Florida—a definition that would, it seems, allow for the group to chose any state.

He acknowledges, however, that the ads will directly blame Obama for recent increases in gas prices, despite the fact that even such conservative and libertarian voices such as Cato Institute scholars and Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal have protested that this is specious.

So who is behind the advertising campaign to push the line that Obama is to blame? Bill Burton, senior strategist at the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA believes that it comes from a familiar source. “The Koch brothers and other oil barons are using profits from high gas prices to fund false political attacks benefitting Governor Romney,” he says.

Cole retorts that there is “not a single penny of Koch money” paying for the two-week ad campaign. But he declined to confirm or deny reports, including one by Politico, that the Koch brothers, whose privately owned conglomerate, Koch Industries, is a major domestic-oil refiner, have steered funds to both the American Energy Alliance and the Institute for Energy Research. A spokesperson at Koch Industries did not respond to questions on the Kochs’ ties to the groups.

The ties, though, appear to be extensive. In the past, according to National Public Radio, the Energy Research Institute has received funds from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is controlled by the Kochs, as well as from Exxon Mobil and other energy companies.

The president of the American Energy Alliance, Thomas Pyle, formerly worked for Koch Industries, according to the watchdog group OpenSecrets.org. The records show that he also worked as an outside lobbyist for the Kochs’ private interests in Washington, first at Perceptum Consulting, and later at the Rhoads Group. According to Politico’s Ken Vogel, Pyle has “regularly attended” semi-annual political meetings run by the Kochs, including one this past winter in Indian Well, California, where the Kochs raised over a hundred and fifty million dollars to be directed to groups working against the Democrats in the 2012 general election. At a previous such political summit, Charles Koch described the 2012 election as “the mother of all wars.”

Pyle has a colorful political résumé as well. He worked as a top aide to Tom DeLay, the former Republican Majority Leader of the House of Representatives who was later convicted of money laundering, and he was identified by the Washington Post as a participant in the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot,” in which Republican operatives from Washington stormed vote-counters in Florida during the hotly contested 2000 Bush v. Gore Presidential election. (“Tom Pyle is not running from his record at all,” Cole said, when asked about these ties. “It’s regrettable that the President is running from his.”)

The Kochs have blazed the trail for this sort of secretly funded, independent campaign. The ads attacking Obama for high gas prices follow an even larger ad buy last January made by Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group founded and partly funded by David Koch, that, according to the Journal aired six million dollars’ worth of ads criticizing the President’s handling of Solyndra, the solar-energy firm that went bankrupt after receiving grants from the government. Those ads, interestingly, ran in many of the same key Presidential-battleground states earmarked for the new anti-Obama gas ads—specifically Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

So, whose money is behind the American Energy Alliance? The most striking feature of the 2012 Presidential campaign is that, at least for now, neither viewers of the ads, nor voters, nor virtually anyone else can tell.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/03/funders-behind-new-antiobama-ad-blitz.html#ixzz1rSpUvkYv

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The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, whose members include Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) in St. Louis and Southern Co. (SO) in Atlanta, is trying to reach voters with its campaign to promote coal and warn about the economic impact of the EPA’s rules.

Earnhardt Sponsorship

Last month it announced it would sponsor Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports team. An 18-wheel, mobile classroom will also be featured at NASCAR events to showcase the benefits of the fossil fuel, said Miller, the group’s spokeswoman, in an interview.

Meanwhile, the American Energy Alliance, which spent $3.6 million on a campaign targeting Obama on gasoline prices, produced a 4 1/2 minute long YouTube video describing the economic risks to Craig, Colorado, presented by state and federal policies that would limit coal use.

Coal’s complaints play into the Republican narrative that Obama administration regulations are hurting the economy.  bloomberg

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BTU Tax

In 1993 Burson-Marsteller led a $1.8 million campaign to

defeat a proposed tax on fossil fuels. President

Clinton’s BTU Tax was the most ambitious measure to

combat climate change yet proposed by an American

government. The BTU Tax was to be levied on fossil

fuels, specifically on the heat generating capacity of

fossil fuels – a BTU (British Thermal unit) is a measure

of how much heat will be released by a given mass of

fuel. The tax would have added 25 cents to the price of

a gallon of petrol.

The tax was at the centre of Clinton’s plans to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions, which he aimed to reduce to

1990 levels by 2000.

Big business was unhappy with the plans however. The

National Association of Manufacturers (a sponsor of the

Global Climate Coalition), the American Petroleum

Institute, over 1,600 companies, large and small, and

farmers organised themselves to create the American

Energy Alliance (AEA), specifically to derail the BTU

tax[37].

The AEA hired B-M to orchestrate the campaign. Deploying

around 45 staff in 23 states, B-M organised a ‘grass

roots’ letter writing and phone-in campaign. They placed

anti-BTU articles and editorials in the press,

commissioned sceptical economists to write reports and

obtained media access for businessmen to express their

views. Naturally they also lobbied against the Tax in

Washington D.C.[38]

Congressional support for the BTU tax quickly withered

away and Clinton’s plan was defeated. Congress voted for

the tax to be kept below the five cents level. Treasury

Secretary Lloyd-Bentsen described the campaign as “one

of the most sophisticated jobs I've seen by lobbyists in

a long time.”

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possible dupl:

oddly text invisible in webbrain?

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/the-koch-brothers-are-sti_b_4396033.html

...

So who signed the AFP letter? About half of the signatories are local tea party affiliates and anti-wind NIMBY groups of indeterminate size and funding. The other half are, for the most part, relatively obscure national groups, but there are a few that have attractedattention over the years for their contrarian views on climate science and renewable energy. Like AFP, those groups are awash in petrodollars. The American Energy Alliance (and its parent, the Institute for Energy Research), Competitive Enterprise Institute, Freedom Works, Frontiers of Freedom and Heritage Action (and its parent, the Heritage Foundation) collectively have received millions of dollars from Koch family foundations, ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's premier trade association.

The Institute for Energy Research's Questionable Research

On December 3, the Institute for Energy Research and its political arm, the American Energy Alliance, sponsored what they dubbed the "wind welfare" summit in Washington, D.C., featuring IER founder and CEO Robert Bradley Jr., a Koch network veteran. AEA announced it would spend $40,000 on print and digital ads calling for an end to the PTC and is flying in anti-PTC advocates for meetings on Capitol Hill.

Bradley presumably highlighted the findings of a report IER released the day before claiming that a small number of states with wind resources -- Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas -- are reaping the benefits of the PTC while 30 states and the District of Columbia are "losing millions" to fund it.

The report's findings, however, don't hold up to scrutiny. Mike Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out in a recent blog that IER ignored the fact that a number of the states it identified as "net payers" are home to wind industry manufacturing facilities. There are 62 companies in Ohio making turbine components, for example, 40 in Michigan and 21 in California. Jacobs also discovered that IER downplayed the fact that "the PTC benefits consumers where wind-generated electricity adds to the supply and lowers the price of electricity, landowners who receive lease payments from the wind turbines, and local communities that collect tax payments on installed wind farms."

Jeff Spross, blogging on the Center for American Progress' ThinkProgress website, alsochided IER, pointing out that most industries are not equally distributed across the country. "The oil and gas industries, for instance, benefit from a wealth of federal tax carve-outs," he wrote, "but the economic activity they generate is concentrated in just a few key states."

In other words, it's disingenuous to single out the wind industry....

==

a front for front? IER?

---

The Center for Public Integrity used 990s obtained by CRP as it looked into the American Energy Alliance's claim that the $1.3 million it spent on ads in the 2012 elections were not actually political. In another rundown of new filings, CPI also cited tax documents and data from CRP.  :

Swing state voters in Virginia and Ohio last fall were bombarded with television advertisements encouraging them to "stand with coal" and "vote no on Obama's failing energy policy."

But the sponsor of these ads — a pro-business nonprofit advocacy group called the American Energy Alliance — says the messages weren’t designed to aid Republican Mitt Romney in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama.

In a new tax return filed Friday and first obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics, the American Energy Alliance, led by former Koch Industries lobbyist Thomas Pyle, told the Internal Revenue Service that it did not "engage in direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office" last year.

The group made an even more explicit pledge to be nonpartisan when it applied for tax-exempt status in 2008, telling the IRS that it had "no interest in supporting the agenda or any particular political party or political candidate."

While it acknowledged “the possibility that some of AEA's publications and communications may be considered ‘political,’” the group asserted that it was a “nonpartisan policy-oriented organization,” not a “‘political’ organization.”

The new tax documents also show that American Energy Alliance spent more than $5 million on "media and advertising," with vendor Mentzer Media, a media buying firm that works primarily with Republicans, receiving $3.9 million of that amount.

The “stand with coal” ads cost at least $1.36 million, according to disclosures the American Energy Alliance filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Because these broadcast ads came within 60 days of the November election and mentioned the president, the American Energy Alliance was required to report the spots to the FEC as “electioneering communications” — a special type of issue-based advertising that comes with enhanced disclosure requirements.

The group also engaged in a host of other pre-election activities that often included battleground presidential states and attacked Obama.

Marcus Owens, an attorney who previously headed the IRS’ tax-exempt division, said the American Energy Alliance’s new filing “certainly raises a red flag.”

“It’s a politically active organization,” he said, adding that the pre-election advertisements were veiled in what “sounds like a lobbying message on its face.”

Benjamin Cole, a spokesman for the American Energy Alliance, rejected accusations that his group behaved improperly.

Cole told the Center for Public Integrity that the ads were “designed to inform the American public about President Obama's energy policies… not his re-election efforts.”

“We could just as easily run those same ads today,” Cole continued, adding that all of the group’s ads are vetted by lawyers to “ensure that nothing we do runs afoul of federal election or tax laws.”

One element of the new IRS documents that’s for sure: The American Energy Alliance’s footprint has grown substantially. In all, the American Energy Alliance spent $7 million last year.

That's a nearly seven times what it spent in 2010 — and more than 300 percent above the roughly $1.7 million it spent during its inaugural year in 2008, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of IRS records.

It’s unclear who precisely has funded this surge, although the American Energy Alliance’s new annual report does show that just three donors — who each gave at least $1 million — accounted for three-fourths of the American Energy Alliance’s total $7.3 million haul last year.

=-=

Fri, 2010-05-28 20:04

Brad Johnson over at The WONK ROOM reports:

The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading the conservative lies that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will “cripple our sluggish economy.” AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus tourpictures workers in hard hats:

The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.In fact, by attacking legislation that addresses climate change and our national dependence on fossil fuels, AEA is preventing a clean-energy economic boom. Laughably, AEA claims it has “no ties to any political party“:

American Energy Alliance staffers Kevin Kennedy, Patrick Creighton, and Laura Henderson on tour in Pennsylvania. All are former House GOP staff.

AEA may be telling the truth that it has “no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party” — its only interest seems to be blocking progressive reform by spreading lies and distortions. However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative. Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

Patrick Creighton, AEA Communications Director, Worked For Bush And Pennsylvania Republicans. Patrick Creighton was the special assistant to Samuel T. Mok, the chief financial officer at the Department of Labor from 2004 to 2006. He then worked as a spokesman for oil and natural gas advocate Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) from 2006 to 2009, worked to elect Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), then joined Thompson’s office until May 2009. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Kevin Kennedy, AEA Federal Affairs Director, Promoted Alaska Drilling Under Don Young. After graduating from Union College in 2004, Kevin Kennedy worked for the Astroturf organization Arctic Power, which advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2007, Kennedy became a legislative assistant for the corrupt Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He joined the Institute for Energy Research and American Energy Alliance in 2009. [Institute for Energy Research]

Laura Henderson, AEA Spokesperson, Served Shelby, Dole, And Tiberi. Laura Henderson was a former press secretary for offshore drilling advocate Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) from 2005-2009. Previously, she worked for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH). [Institute for Energy Research]

Daniel R. Simmons, AEA State Affairs Director, Is A Koch-Funded GOP Staffer. Simmons was the Director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing network funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and other corporate and right-wing organizations. Previously, Simmons was a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, also funded by Koch. From 2001 to 2005, Simmons served on the staff of Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA) on the House Natural Resources Committee. Simmons holds a B.A. in Economics from Utah State University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law, also supported by Koch Industries. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Furthermore, AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org website is run by yet another former GOP House staffer:

GOP.gov Webmaster Nathan Imperiale Runs EnergyTownHall.Org.AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org was designed by NJI Media Group, part of Endeavour Global Strategies. Endeavour’s head, Sean Spicer, is a long-time GOP operative, including communications work for the House Republican Conference and the Bush White House. NJI Media Group’s president, Nathan Imperiale, served as Director of New Media for the House Republican Conference, building its GOP.gov website. [Twitter,2/13/09; Endeavour Global Strategies]

AEA’s “American Energy Express” joins a field crowded by conservative oil and coal propaganda — the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s “Factuality” bus tour, the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” oil rallies, and the Americans For Prosperity “Hot Air” balloon tour.

Update At Free Advice, Institute for Energy Research economist Bob Murphy writes that Paul Krugman doesn't understand tea party protesters because he doesn't care about checks on government power like they do, and continues:

So, by symmetry, I think people on "our side" should realize that the great masses of Americans who are for health care reform and climate legislation (and it pains me to not put scare quotes around those phrases) aren't actually closet socialists who want to bring America to its knees.

By Brad Johnson at The WONK ROOM. 

==

Conservative group launches broad anti-carbon tax campaign

:{By Zack Colman - 07/16/13

A conservative energy group is rolling out a multi-pronged push ahead of the August congressional recess that aims to put the carbon tax in its deathbed.

“We’re hoping to put the final nail in the coffin on the carbon tax. The proposal should be dead on arrival by the time lawmakers come back from August recess,” Benjamin Cole, a spokesman with the Institute for Energy Research and its advocacy arm, the American Energy Alliance, told The Hill in an interview detailing the plan.

The effort includes a new poll of American opinion on a carbon tax and an advertising campaign centered on five House members, among other elements.

As early as Thursday, AEA will launch a two-week radio advertising campaign that targets five House lawmakers — four Democrats and one Republican.

The ad blitz, which will cost between $120,000 and $150,000, targets Democratic Reps. Bill Owens (N.Y.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Patrick Murphy (Fla.) and William Enyart (Ill.), along with GOP Rep. Chris Smith (N.J.).

AEA chose to focus on members who have been “soft on the carbon tax issue” and reside in “marginal districts,” Cole said.

“We obviously are ones to apply pressure in any way we can,” he said.

The timing of the IER and AEA operation is designed to get energy issues on the agenda when lawmakers meet with voters in their congressional districts, Cole said.

Cole compared the upcoming recess to the summer of 2010, when the House had recently passed ObamaCare, the national healthcare law.

He said the climate change plan Obama unveiled last month — which relies on a suite of executive actions that industry, Republicans and coal-state Democrats say will slow the economy — will draw fire from voters across the country.

“We know that there’s going to be town halls that congressmen go back to their districts to hear from their constituents. We want to make sure that energy is on the plate,” he said.

The effort will attempt to blunt any possible momentum for a carbon tax, Cole said.

Of that, there appears to be little.

Taxing carbon emissions has support from some environmentalists, as well as a collection of conservative economists and advocates who say it should be coupled with lower personal tax rates. But the idea has little political traction.

Carbon tax proposals are a non-starter in the GOP-controlled House. And Republicans combined a bloc of centrist Democrats threaten to thwart a carbon tax in the Senate. On top of all that, the White House has said it won’t pursue a carbon tax.

The concept has fueled intense opposition from the right.

The IER and AEA campaign has the support of several conservative outfits, including Americans for Tax Reform, FreedomWorks and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The first piece of the rollout is an IER-commissioned poll of 800 registered voters conducted last week by The Tarrance Group that says Americans reject the idea of a carbon tax.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they oppose a carbon tax “paid by businesses of all sizes,” compared with 35 percent of those who favored the concept.

The poll doesn't take into account different schemes for a carbon tax — for example, there’s variability in policy circles when deciding whether to apply a fee at the point of carbon emissions or fossil fuel extraction.

Still, the responses differed greatly among parties. A majority of Democrats — 54 percent — favored a carbon tax, while 80 percent of Republicans rejected it.

The results of that poll will be discussed at a carbon tax event IER is hosting Wednesday. Then comes the radio ad launch.

:{

IER will also give lawmakers a point-by-point critique of the climate change plan Obama unveiled last month before they head home.

“It’s teeing up August recess interaction with constituents,” Cole said.

Cole said that IER and AEA plan to keep the heat on lawmakers until the heads of the congressional tax-writing panels, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), formally declare a carbon tax is off the table.

The two committee heads have demonstrated a desire to overhaul the federal tax code — and for both, time is of the essence. Baucus isn’t running for reelection in 2014, and Camp’s term as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is up after next year.

“There’s nothing that motivates a politician more than building his own legacy,” Cole said.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/311159-conservative-group-launches-broad-anti-carbon-tax-campaign#ixzz2bz7bE8Qk 

Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

==

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backed down grover http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/13/1182511/grover-norquist-abruptly-reverses-position-on-carbon-tax-after-facing-criticism-from-koch-backed-group/

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Grover Norquist Abruptly Changes Position On Carbon Tax After Facing Criticism From Koch-Backed Group

:{By Stephen Lacey on Nov 13, 2012

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist raised a lot of eyebrows on Monday when he told National Journal that a carbon tax might be on the table if it were swapped with a cut to the income tax.

“It’s possible you could structure something that wasn’t an increase and didn’t violate the pledge,” he reportedly said.

As president of Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist has convinced hundreds of members of Congress to sign a pledge that they will never raise taxes. While his influence appears to be waningin Washington, Norquist’s tax pledge is still considered gospel for many Republicans. That’s why his willingness to consider a tax on global warming pollution is a big deal in political circles.

But one day later, after being criticized by the American Energy Alliance, the advocacy arm of a Koch-supported energy think tank devoted to promoting fossil fuel development, Norquist has completely reversed his statement, saying there virtually “no conceivable way” he could support a tax on carbon....http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/13/1182511/grover-norquist-abruptly-reverses-position-on-carbon-tax-after-facing-criticism-from-koch-backed-group/

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==

Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group

Institute for Energy Research (IER)

On this page

Read more about the Institute for Energy Research

Find more recipients of Koch foundation money

$175,000 received from Koch foundations 2005-2011 [Total Koch foundation grants 1997-2011: $235,000]

IER supported and promoted the "Spanish" and "Danish" studies critical of clean energy jobs, both of which have been debunked by credible sources. IER also argues that efforts to curb global warming would accomplish little at too great a cost, promotes ACCF/NAM and Heritage Foundation studies that exaggerate the costs of climate policy, and discourages U.S. leadership on the international stage.

Robert Bradley, a former Enron executive, is the CEO of IER and one of its founders. Thomas Pyle, a former Koch and oil-industry lobbyist, is the President of IER and the American Energy Alliance, the 501c4 counterpart to IER. Politico reports that IER and AEA still receive Koch money in support of a $3.6 million anti-Obama gas price advertising campaign, although Koch foundations appear to have stopped supporting IER after 2007. The most recent available Koch foundation tax filings to IRS are for the year 2010, indicating the Kochs picked IER back up in 2011 or are funneling money through other avenues.

AEA was founded by the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute to fight the BTU tax proposal in 1993, and in recent years funded by ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. AEA has been active in the climate debate, from running ads repeating false claims about the costs of climate legislation to trashing clean energy at town halls around the US.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries/institute-for-energy-research/

==

The romance between ALEC and fracking continued at this year's ALEC meeting in Utah -- an appropriate location for the frack-friendly ALEC crew. In May, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar approved a major shale gas project by Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. in Utah's Uinta Basin -- expected to develop more than 3,600 new wells over the next decade.

In another industry-friendly move, Utah's Governor Gary Herbert, who spoke the ALEC conference's opening luncheon, signed a bill into law in March demanding that Congress hand over 30 million acres of federal land to the state by 2015 or the state will sue. According to the Associated Press, Lawmakers in Utah and Arizona have said the legislation is endorsed by ALEC. As documented by the Center for Media and Democracy's ALEC Exposed Project, ALEC drafted the "Sagebrush Rebellion Act," which was "designed to establish a mechanism for the transfer of ownership of unappropriated lands from the federal government to the states." According to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the governor's initiative would open up millions of acres of the "Wilderness Study Areas and proposed wilderness areas to oil and gas development" but in the process would cost Utah taxpayers enormously.

At the meeting, the CEO of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) Dr. Robert Bradley was one of the featured speakers. Bradley, formerly a director of policy analysis at Enron, also spoke at the 2011 ALEC conference in New Orleans. He is also an "adjunct scholar" at the right-wing think tank the Cato Institute and specializes in "global warming alarmism." IER is a non-profit group focused on global energy markets that pushes for deregulation, advances climate change denial, and attempts to discredit renewable energy sources. The group's 2010 IRS 990 form said that its focus was narrowed in on "impediments to domestic energy production, including government restrictions on access, burdensome regulations, and the favoritism of energy sources that are unsustainable in the marketplace."

The PR Bus of AEA and Koch's AFPIER received some $307,000 from Exxon Mobil between 2003 and 2007, according to the publicly traded company's "Corporate Giving Reports." IER also received a total of $235,000 from Koch Family foundations between 1997-2010, according to a Greenpeace report. Koch Industries, an ALEC member, also profits from the expansion of fracking. Unlike Exxon, because Koch is not a publicly-traded company, any corporate donations to groups like IER, AEA, or AFP are not publicly disclosed.

IER is a "partner" organization of the American Energy Alliance, a 501(c)4 organization which calls itself the "grassroots arm" of IER. Thomas Pyle is president of both organizations, and is a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and former energy policy aide for former House Majority Leader Thomas D. DeLay, who resigned from the leadership following his indictment on conspiracy charges. Wayne Gable, also a former lobbyist for Koch Industries and former president for two of the Koch Family foundations, is on the board of both IER and AEA.

In 2011 IER and AEA launched "Energy for America" as a joint initiative with a laser point in on fracking, with an aim to "educate" the public on the practice. In October 2011, AEA and IER, in partnership with Koch Industries' astroturf group Americans for Prosperity, started a "Energy for America" bus tour to encourage the expansion of domestic exploration of oil, gas and coal, targeting U.S. Senate battleground states for the upcoming 2012 elections.

Additionally, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck is one of the three chairs of the ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force. One of its clients is Freeport LNG, which owns and operates one of the first liquefied natural gas import terminals built in the United States. According to the law firm's website, "For the last nine years, Brownstein has been the lead counsel in the structuring, strategy and development of the $1.2 billion receiving and regasification facility with commercial output capacity of more than 2.0 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day."

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March 30, 2012

Funders Behind New Anti-Obama Ad Blitz Stay Hidden

Posted by Jane Mayer

A new and highly aggressive multi-million-dollar anti-Obama ad campaign has started airing on television stations in eight key political swing states—but for now at least, the funders are staying hidden in the shadows.

The ads in question have a distinctly oily aura, which is unsurprising, perhaps since the group sponsoring them has been funded in the past by major fossil-fuel companies. The group defines itself as a non-partisan nonprofit, but exemplifies the growing role that secret money is playing in the 2012 Presidential campaign. Technically, the ads have been produced and aired by the Washington-based American Energy Alliance, a 501c-4 social-welfare organization under the Internal Revenue Service’s tax code, whose activities, under the law, have to be largely non-political. This group shares office space and personnel with a sister organization, the Institute for Energy Research, a 501c-3, whose tax status is typically reserved for charities. Its activities have to be strictly non-partisan and non-political. Both groups hide the identities of their funders. All that Benjamin Cole, director of communications for both groups would say is that the ads are funded by “individuals, foundations, and corporations.”

Cole says that the $3.6 million ad campaign “is not election related at all. We’re not seeking to influence the elections.” It is, he says, only a coincidence that most of the eight states that the ads will air in—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia—are considered hotly contested swing states that could decide the outcome of the election. He says these states were chosen only because they are all places where energy is an issue. He explained, for instance, that offshore oil drilling is an issue in Virginia, and the high price of gasoline is an issue in Florida—a definition that would, it seems, allow for the group to chose any state.

He acknowledges, however, that the ads will directly blame Obama for recent increases in gas prices, despite the fact that even such conservative and libertarian voices such as Cato Institute scholars and Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal have protested that this is specious.

So who is behind the advertising campaign to push the line that Obama is to blame? Bill Burton, senior strategist at the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorities USA believes that it comes from a familiar source. “The Koch brothers and other oil barons are using profits from high gas prices to fund false political attacks benefitting Governor Romney,” he says.

Cole retorts that there is “not a single penny of Koch money” paying for the two-week ad campaign. But he declined to confirm or deny reports, including one by Politico, that the Koch brothers, whose privately owned conglomerate, Koch Industries, is a major domestic-oil refiner, have steered funds to both the American Energy Alliance and the Institute for Energy Research. A spokesperson at Koch Industries did not respond to questions on the Kochs’ ties to the groups.

The ties, though, appear to be extensive. In the past, according to National Public Radio, the Energy Research Institute has received funds from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is controlled by the Kochs, as well as from Exxon Mobil and other energy companies.

The president of the American Energy Alliance, Thomas Pyle, formerly worked for Koch Industries, according to the watchdog group OpenSecrets.org. The records show that he also worked as an outside lobbyist for the Kochs’ private interests in Washington, first at Perceptum Consulting, and later at the Rhoads Group. According to Politico’s Ken Vogel, Pyle has “regularly attended” semi-annual political meetings run by the Kochs, including one this past winter in Indian Well, California, where the Kochs raised over a hundred and fifty million dollars to be directed to groups working against the Democrats in the 2012 general election. At a previous such political summit, Charles Koch described the 2012 election as “the mother of all wars.”

Pyle has a colorful political résumé as well. He worked as a top aide to Tom DeLay, the former Republican Majority Leader of the House of Representatives who was later convicted of money laundering, and he was identified by the Washington Post as a participant in the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot,” in which Republican operatives from Washington stormed vote-counters in Florida during the hotly contested 2000 Bush v. Gore Presidential election. (“Tom Pyle is not running from his record at all,” Cole said, when asked about these ties. “It’s regrettable that the President is running from his.”)

The Kochs have blazed the trail for this sort of secretly funded, independent campaign. The ads attacking Obama for high gas prices follow an even larger ad buy last January made by Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group founded and partly funded by David Koch, that, according to the Journal aired six million dollars’ worth of ads criticizing the President’s handling of Solyndra, the solar-energy firm that went bankrupt after receiving grants from the government. Those ads, interestingly, ran in many of the same key Presidential-battleground states earmarked for the new anti-Obama gas ads—specifically Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

So, whose money is behind the American Energy Alliance? The most striking feature of the 2012 Presidential campaign is that, at least for now, neither viewers of the ads, nor voters, nor virtually anyone else can tell.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/03/funders-behind-new-antiobama-ad-blitz.html#ixzz1rSpUvkYv

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The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, whose members include Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) in St. Louis and Southern Co. (SO) in Atlanta, is trying to reach voters with its campaign to promote coal and warn about the economic impact of the EPA’s rules.

Earnhardt Sponsorship

Last month it announced it would sponsor Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports team. An 18-wheel, mobile classroom will also be featured at NASCAR events to showcase the benefits of the fossil fuel, said Miller, the group’s spokeswoman, in an interview.

Meanwhile, the American Energy Alliance, which spent $3.6 million on a campaign targeting Obama on gasoline prices, produced a 4 1/2 minute long YouTube video describing the economic risks to Craig, Colorado, presented by state and federal policies that would limit coal use.

Coal’s complaints play into the Republican narrative that Obama administration regulations are hurting the economy.  bloomberg

---

BTU Tax

In 1993 Burson-Marsteller led a $1.8 million campaign to

defeat a proposed tax on fossil fuels. President

Clinton’s BTU Tax was the most ambitious measure to

combat climate change yet proposed by an American

government. The BTU Tax was to be levied on fossil

fuels, specifically on the heat generating capacity of

fossil fuels – a BTU (British Thermal unit) is a measure

of how much heat will be released by a given mass of

fuel. The tax would have added 25 cents to the price of

a gallon of petrol.

The tax was at the centre of Clinton’s plans to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions, which he aimed to reduce to

1990 levels by 2000.

Big business was unhappy with the plans however. The

National Association of Manufacturers (a sponsor of the

Global Climate Coalition), the American Petroleum

Institute, over 1,600 companies, large and small, and

farmers organised themselves to create the American

Energy Alliance (AEA), specifically to derail the BTU

tax[37].

The AEA hired B-M to orchestrate the campaign. Deploying

around 45 staff in 23 states, B-M organised a ‘grass

roots’ letter writing and phone-in campaign. They placed

anti-BTU articles and editorials in the press,

commissioned sceptical economists to write reports and

obtained media access for businessmen to express their

views. Naturally they also lobbied against the Tax in

Washington D.C.[38]

Congressional support for the BTU tax quickly withered

away and Clinton’s plan was defeated. Congress voted for

the tax to be kept below the five cents level. Treasury

Secretary Lloyd-Bentsen described the campaign as “one

of the most sophisticated jobs I've seen by lobbyists in

a long time.”

---

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BROOKS BROS No. 1. Tom Pyle, who had worked for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), went private sector a few months later, getting a job as director of federal affairs for Koch Industries. 

 ===

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative. Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

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sw stub

Thomas J. Pyle, a former energy policy aide for former House Majority Leader Thomas D. DeLay, is director of federal affairs for Koch Industries. [1][2]

Affiliations

"Team DeLay"

External links

Al Kamen, "Miami 'Riot' Squad: Where Are They Now?" Washington Post, January 24, 2005. Shows Pyle in photo.

"Political Contributions by DeLay Alumni During the 2003-2004 Election Cycle," Tech Politics (CQ Weekly, Federal Election Commissiondownloaded March 2005.)

Categories: 

Politics

Scandals

Corruption

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Pyle has a colorful political résumé as well. He worked as a top aide to Tom DeLay, the former Republican Majority Leader of the House of Representatives who was later convicted of money laundering, and he was identified by the Washington Post as a participant in the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot,” in which Republican operatives from Washington stormed vote-counters in Florida during the hotly contested 2000 Bush v. Gore Presidential election. (“Tom Pyle is not running from his record at all,” Cole said, when asked about these ties. “It’s regrettable that the President is running from his.”)  jm nyer

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Note lack of details here:

Thomas J. Pyle is the president of the Institute for Energy Research (IER). In this capacity, Pyle brings a unique backdrop of public and private sector experience to help manage IER’s Washington, DC-based staff and operations. He also helps to develop the organization’s free market policy positions and implement education efforts with respect to key energy stakeholders, including policymakers, federal agency representatives, industry leaders, consumer entities and the media.

Previously, Pyle was the founder of his own consulting firm, Pyle Consulting, Inc., an active public affairs consulting firm with a wide range of private and not-for-profit customers. Prior to starting his own firm, Pyle served as vice president of the Rhoads Group in Washington, DC where he represented and advised a variety of association and corporate clients in meeting their strategic public policy goals and priorities. Additionally, he also served as director of federal affairs for a major integrated manufacturing and services company focusing on energy, environment, regulatory and transportation issues.

Before coming to the private sector, Pyle held numerous positions on Capitol Hill including serving a policy analyst for the Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the Congressional Western Caucus, as well as other legislative staff positions.

Pyle holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Southern California.

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mau

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