Abraham, Spencer

co fdr fedsoc

pension?CTW wind sock dummy

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/05/09/blank-rome-hires-former-michigan-senator-energy-secretary-spencer-abraham-to-build-energy-and-lobbying-business/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/05/09/blank-rome-hires-former-michigan-senator-energy-secretary-spencer-abraham-to-build-energy-and-lobbying-business/</a>Blank Rome hires Spencer Abraham, a former senator and energy secretary, to build energy and lobbying businessFormer U.S. energy secretary Spencer Abraham has joined Blank Rome Government Relations. (Courtesy of Blank Rome)By Catherine HoMay 9, 2016Spencer Abraham, the former Republican senator from Michigan and U.S. energy secretary under President George W. Bush, has joined the lobbying practice at Blank Rome to boost the firm’s energy-sector business.Abraham served as Michigan senator from 1995 to 2001 and energy secretary from 2001 to 2004. He has since founded a business consulting firm, the Abraham Group, which advises U.S. and international companies on business development issues related to energy policy. He also serves as a member of the board of directors for Occidental Petroleum and NRG Energy, and he was previously non-executive chairman of the U.S. board of French nuclear energy company Areva....=

dept energy spenser abraham FEDSOC reclass nuke as 'incidental waste" strat ignor

<h2>=</h2><div><a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/12/15/505658511/like-perry-ex-epa-chief-abraham-moved-to-end-the-energy-department">https://www.npr.org/2016/12/15/505658511/like-perry-ex-epa-chief-abraham-moved-to-end-the-energy-department</a></div><div>
</div><div>...DAVID GREENE, HOST:</div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">President-elect Donald Trump has chosen former Texas Governor Rick Perry to be his energy secretary, and here's someone who thinks Perry would be good in the job.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">SPENCER ABRAHAM: He's got a military background [does he, nukes?] , and he comes from a state that has a huge, diverse energy portfolio.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: That's former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. He worked under President George W. Bush and has something in common with Rick Perry. Before being chosen to lead the Energy Department, he had called for the Energy Department to be abolished. For Abraham, that was back when he was a U.S. senator from Michigan.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ABRAHAM: I did obviously have to tell employees, the department, that I was committed and, you know, wanted to work with them and build a trust.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: You had a credibility problem that you had to get over.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ABRAHAM: Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I think we did OK on that. I'm - you know, I can't be the judge of that. But I thought that it's certainly surmountable and obviously he'll have to figure out how he wants to characterize things.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: Now, Rick Perry has also worried some people because he is a climate change skeptic. We raised that issue with Spencer Abraham, beginning with this question.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">Do you believe in climate change, that the science is settled?<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">ABRAHAM: I actually have worked on the boards of companies that are active in addressing a lot of the climate change issues. At this point, no one has the categorical answer to the question of how fast the climate's changing and when we're going to face consequences from that.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: I just - I just want to be really, really careful with this because a lot of people would hear what you were saying and they would say that you don't believe the science is settled, that you might be denying that climate change is (unintelligible).<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ABRAHAM: Well, that's - you know, I think that's the problem right now, to be honest with you. I think that's the problem because if people say we don't have total information, they suddenly become treated as climate deniers.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: I mean, there are a lot of people out there who feel the science is absolutely settled, that humans are causing the climate to change. I mean, do you - even though there are a lot of questions to be answered as time goes on, do you believe that that is the case?<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">ABRAHAM: I believe that the climate is changing. I believe that it is likely that humans are playing a role in that. How fast it's changing is the main issue I think that we have to deduce now. And in the meantime, I think moving forward with nuclear energy, renewable energy, energy efficiency and more natural gas are all ways that we're going to change the energy mix in a positive direction.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: Mr. Secretary, it sounds like some of the very questions I'm asking you have been asked by the Trump transition team in a questionnaire that was circulated at the Department of Energy asking for the names of people who have been involved in climate change programs, people who've gone to conferences. I spoke to a former colleague of yours from President George W. Bush's administration, Christine Todd Whitman who ran the EPA at the time. I asked her about this questionnaire, and here's what she said.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN: If I were a federal employee, I'd be very nervous about it. Why? Why would you need to know that? If they are a career civil servant that's carrying out the policies of the incumbent administration, why do you need to know that they've been good civil servants for this one issue?<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: It sounds like she's saying that civil servants in the department should be nervous if the incoming president is...<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">ABRAHAM: Yeah, I don't know - I don't see why they need to be because it seems to me it's perfectly typical for the new administration to want to know what the current people working in a department are doing. [non showed up for breifings?!] And the idea that that shouldn't be provided is, first of all, I think, silly. And second, the people who are career people shouldn't be worried. They're career people. They can't be, you know, punished for what they've done in a previous administration. I can't imagine that will happen.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: Couldn't they be fired by the Trump administration if...<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ABRAHAM: Well, they're not political appointees.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: And there's no way that a civil servant scientist could be pressured or fired if the Trump administration believes that...<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto;">ABRAHAM: I'm not going to speculate on some - I mean, look, if you're going to take that kind of approach that that's the immediate supposition, I mean, you know, you're taking it to the extreme.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: Is it normal practice? I mean, did you do that? Did the the Bush transition team do this when you were coming in and starting at the department?<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ABRAHAM: Well, first of all, it changes when there's actually a designated person to serve in the Cabinet. And I think whatever happened before Rick Perry's announcement is, you know, sort of prologue. Again, I'm not saying that, you know, somebody couldn't read into it what you're reading into it. But at the same time, I think you could read into it simply that there's an effort to try to find out who's working on what and how much time has been devoted to the various priorities of the department.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: All right, Spencer Abraham, always great talking to you. Thank you so much.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ABRAHAM: Thanks, yep.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">GREENE: That is former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. We should say the Trump transition team has walked away from that effort to identify people who have worked on climate change. The Energy Department had already declined to share any names.<div>
</div><div>=</div><div><div>Market Madness: A Century of Oil Panics, Crises, and Crasheshttps://books.google.com › books</div><div>Blake Carman Clayton · 2015 · ‎Business & Economics</div><div>Remarks by U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. National Energy Summit, March 19, 2001. Neumayer, Eric</div></div><div>=</div><div>12/2001</div><div><a href="https://prospect.org/features/saving-private-abraham/">https://prospect.org/features/saving-private-abraham/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div id="content" class="carousel content no_js" data-transition="content" data-loop="false" itemprop="articleBody" style="position: relative; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; opacity: 1; visibility: visible; transition: opacity 0.5s linear 0s, visibility 0.5s steps(1) 0s; overflow: hidden; width: 518.896px; line-height: 24px;"><div style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 518.896px;">last spring, Spencer Abraham of Michigan was widely considered to be the most vulnerable incumbent in the U.S. Senate--"a guy," says one veteran politico, "who could only have been elected in 1994." Like many Gingrichians, Abraham was known less as a politician than as an ideological enthusiast, with few legislative accomplishments and spectacularly low polls in his own state.Yet now, running against a perfectly plausible opponent, it looks like Spencer Abraham is about to win a second term. And therein lies a tale.It begins in the trenches of the Michigan Republican Party, when Abraham graduated from Harvard Law School in 1979. Around the same time, a Michigan businessman named Peter Secchia and a young legislator named John Engler were planning what they called a revival of the moribund state party. In truth, what they had in mind was a harbinger of the Reagan Revolution: replacing the urbane, liberal Republicanism of former governors George Romney and Bill Milliken with the conservative Republicanism that would soon come to dominate national politics. Abraham himself was relatively unknown but indubitably a true believer. A disciple of conservative eminence Russell Kirk, Abraham had helped to launch both The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (a right-wing version of the law review) and the Federalist Society (a group of conservative legal activists and intellectuals that would later have enormous influence in the Reagan Revolution). Abraham's parents, moreover, were active in local Republican circles and had helped elect Secchia to the Republican National Committee (RNC). In 1982, when Secchia and Engler decided to run a candidate for chair of the Michigan Republican Party, they settled on Abraham."Abraham's got a very difficult problem," Secchia used to joke. "The Arabs think he's Jewish, the Jews think he's Arab--and so both groups hate him." Abraham, who is of Christian Lebanese extraction, won anyway, defeating Milliken's handpicked candidate and becoming the country's youngest state party chair. The next year, a raft of Engler-backed conservative Republicans ran against Democratic Governor Jim Blanchard and his tax increase (and those Republican moderates who had supported it) and captured a majority in the state senate. With Engler as majority leader, Secchia as RNC committeeman, and Abraham running the state party, the three men came to dominate Michigan politics, paving the way for Engler's first gubernatorial victory in 1990.Shortly after, the up-and-coming Abraham decamped to Washington. There, he served as Vice President Dan Quayle's deputy chief of staff under William Kristol and as a co-chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), became a board member of the Washington Legal Foundation (a prominent conservative litigation outfit), and was briefly a contender to succeed Haley Barbour as chairman of the RNC. In 1993, at the dawn of the Clinton years, Abraham returned to Michigan to run for the Senate.It was not to be a cakewalk. Though deeply ambitious, Abraham was a diffident, almost shy public speaker, blessed with neither the rhetorical bombast nor the campaign-trail zeal of the other Gingrichians. He was "a classic staff guy, detail-oriented, you know, always making lists," says Kristol. "He's not a classic glad-hander and mixer with people." He barely eked out a primary victory over radio-show host Ronna Romney, and he looked to be in for a tough fight. But luckily for Abraham, the stars seemed to come into alignment: Donald W. Riegle, Jr., the three-term Democratic incumbent, decided to retire; his replacement, former congressman Bob Carr, was tarred by his association with Bill Clinton (then at the nadir of his unpopularity); Engler was on his way to a landslide gubernatorial victory; and anyway, this was 1994.Though Abraham won for reasons largely not of his own making, once in office, he was extraordinarily well-positioned to thrive. The most ideologically fervent congressional majority in modern U.S. history respected his ties to the right's emergent intelligentsia and heartily approved of his efforts to evict moderates from the Michigan state party. His friend and former boss Kristol would soon launch The Weekly Standard, the new movement's standard bearer. (The magazine's former deputy publisher, Jim Pitts, is in fact now Abraham's chief of staff.) Such were Abraham's intellectual credentials that in 1996, when Bob Dole went looking for a way reinvigorate his presidential campaign--to say nothing of his conservative bona fides--it was Abraham's proposal for a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut that Dole decided to adopt as his ownThere was just one problem: Two years into Abraham's term of office, three-quarters of Michigan voters either had never heard of their junior senator or, worse, simply had no opinion of him, according to a poll by the Michigan firm EPIC/MRA. And it wasn't just because Abraham had never before held elective office. The problem, says EPIC/MRA pollster Ed Sarpolous, was "a lack of activity in the state. You know, coming back to the state, constituent services, meeting with editorial boards, returning phone calls. I could go down the list."Abraham, too, read the polls. He began to ramp up his constituency service efforts. If not entirely successful, he was certainly innovative: After the death of Princess Diana in 1997, Abraham's regional offices transported a condolences book to schools, libraries, and community centers around the state, running Abraham-sponsored signing ceremonies for the good citizens of Michigan. ("There were lines around the block everywhere we went," says one Abraham staffer. "It was incredible.")On the legislative front, he championed a ban on the date-rape drug Rohypnol, and this move won him some visibility among women voters without the risk of rousing anyone's opposition. (It's not like Michigan has a pro-date-rape-drug lobby.) He nominated Rosa Parks for the Congressional Gold Medal, to similar effect.Still, for the most part, Abraham's priorities in the Senate seemed oddly divorced from those of his constituents. One of the issues for which he became best known--increasing the quota of H1-B visas for immigrant high-tech workers--was hardly high on the agenda of Michigan's struggling autoworkers and other old-economy refugees. H1-B visas were, however, near and dear to the U.S. high-tech industry--as were an Abraham bill outlawing "cybersquatting" and another granting electronic signatures the same validity as pen-and-ink signatures. Indeed, over time, Abraham's devotion to the concerns of the high-tech industry earned him the moniker "California's Third Senator."All this provided an opening for Debbie Stabenow, a Democratic congresswoman set on becoming Michigan's Second Senator. Like Abraham, Stabenow had been involved in politics almost all of her adult life. Unlike Abraham, she had spent that time in public office, first as a state representative, then as a state senator, and finally as a U.S. representative. Ideologically, Stabenow was a centrist with a moderate voting record well-suited to Michigan's mixed electorate. And despite a failed bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1994, she was widely considered to be a folksy, energetic retail politicker and a formidable campaigner.Governor Engler was the first to come to the rescue. In 1998 he appointed his old friend as chief spokesman for the state's "Clean Michigan" campaign, a $500-million bond initiative to fund brownfield cleanup, pollution control, and parks improvement. The initiative had no serious opposition in the state, but backers ran a $3.5-million ad campaign nonetheless. It featured Abraham, who has a meager 7 percent lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters (and earned 0 percent in 1999), hailing "clean water and better parks."Soon after, a group called Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) blanketed Michigan with $1 million of ads praising Abraham for his support of that year's massive, Republican-sponsored tax cut legislation. ATR, of course, is headed by Grover Norquist, conservative guru and part-time Microsoft lobbyist. Norquist found much to appreciate not just in Abraham's enthusiasm for tax cuts, but also in his outspoken criticism of the Clinton administration's lawsuit against Microsoft and his work on H1-B visas--an effort that Norquist and a group of business-minded and libertarian conservatives had informally advised. (A former Abraham aide, Shawn Vassel, now works for Bill Gates's father's law firm, Preston, Gates, Ellis.)But even after the ATR blitz, says Sarpolous, as many as one-quarter of Michigan voters had never heard of their junior senator, and considerably less than half of them said they would vote for him. Stabenow, meanwhile, had found a potent issue: prescription drug benefits for the elderly. Campaigning relentlessly on the high price of arthritis medications, she mounted prescription-buying bus expeditions to Canada and slowly drew even in the polls. And then, out of far-right field, a group called Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) suddenly launched a series of vicious ads against the senator. FAIR was paying Abraham back for his principled opposition to Republican-sponsored anti-immigration legislation in 1996. The ads claimed that he was "trying to make it easier for terrorists like Osama bin Laden to export their war of terror to any street in America."So Trent Lott, according to Newsweek, summoned a group of high-tech lobbyists, railed against the attacks on his young protégé, and demanded that the lobbyists help pay for a series of counterattack ads supporting Abraham. Days later, an obscure organization known as Americans for Job Security (AJS) launched $448,411 worth of anti-FAIR ads, followed by a second, $255,000 burst in July. The ads not only defended Abraham against FAIR's smearing; while they were at it, they attacked Stabenow for not attacking FAIR. They even suggested, absurdly, that the FAIR ads were the work of Stabenow's allies. "Call Stabenow," was the message, and "ask her to stop the smear campaign."A nd that was just the beginning. Whereas Stabenow favored a fairly standard Gore-style prescription drug benefit plan as well as a patients' bill of rights, Abraham--who had opposed both in Congress--was one of the Senate's top recipients of drug- and insurance-industry dollars. Pharmaceutical companies were also the primary funders of Americans for Job Security. AJS, moreover, was only one of several misleadingly labeled health industry groups involved in the campaign. Citizens for Better Medicare (backed by pharmaceutical companies), the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care (run by nursing-home operators), the Health Benefits Coalition (actually a coalition of big business coalitions, including the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Manufacturers) all ran ads either attacking Stabenow or praising Abraham. Drug companies also pumped another $2 million of anti-Stabenow ads through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Many of the ads, of course, deliberately distorted all or parts of Stabenow's health care platform--so much so, in the Chamber of Commerce's case, that two Michigan television stations pulled them off the air in October.Fellow Republicans also lent Abraham a hand. John McCain--demonstrably popular among Michigan independents and eager, perhaps, to patch things up with the Republican Senate leadership--taped an ad heralding Abraham as "Michigan's workhorse." Mike Murphy, McCain's and Engler's ad consultant, also signed on. Murphy has lately emerged as a sort of Lee Atwater manqué, so perhaps the subsequent launch of an Abraham-sponsored "Liberal Debbie" Web site is no coincidence; the site comes close to self-parody in its smearing of one "Deborah Rodham Stabenow" as "too liberal for Michigan." (Another page borrowed from the McCain playbook: Abraham's summer bus tour of Michigan was dubbed the "Workhorse Express.")Between February and early October, the Engler-controlled Michigan Republican Party and Michigan Republican State Committee dumped nearly $2.5 million of ads into the race. The Business Roundtable, whose individual corporate members have contributed more to the Abraham campaign than to any other senator in the country, spent nearly $400,000 on ads between December 1999 and August 2000. In August, according to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft quietly re-entered the fray, handing $250,000 to the Michigan Chamber of Commerce for anti-Stabenow ads. Even the NRCC--a group that doesn't usually concern itself with Senate races--chipped in, spending $92,300 on ads to help their former chairman. "There's been a lot of distortion by the Republicans, to try and neutralize [the health care] issue," says Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party. "And we're trying to get our message across. But it's not easy, I'll acknowledge."In recent weeks, Abraham has been widely praised in conservative circles for waging a successful health care-based offensive--proof, as one Weekly Standard writer argued recently, both that Republicans can win on the issue and that the party's business-supported plan is actually popular among voters. But the Stabenow-Abraham race has been less a war of ideas than a war of attrition. While Stabenow has also benefited from outside advertising and campaign donations, neither her fundraising (projected to be about $6 million) nor the total of pro-Stabenow/anti-Abraham independent expenditures ($6.3 million so far) comes close to Abraham's numbers (about $14 million and $9.9 million, respectively). Indeed, Abraham backers spent almost as much in pre-Olympics advertising as Stabenow's have spent, period. With relatively restricted funds, Stabenow's campaign was forced to hold off on major TV expenditures until the fall, leaving the barrage of negative ads unanswered for several months. And by pouring money into advertising, Abraham's friends and well-wishers shifted the battle from the campaign trail--where Stabenow had a clear advantage--to the airwaves, where the candidate with the most money inevitably dominates.Since May, Stabenow's poll numbers have declined steadily, from 43 percent to an all-time low of 32 percent in September. Her unfavorable ratings, meanwhile, have spiked from 19 percent at the beginning of the summer to a full 27 percent in one late-September poll. This hasn't made Abraham more popular among his constituents--he's only once topped the 45 percent mark, appallingly low for an incumbent, throughout the campaign. But there are many routes to office. "He's a hack," says Inside Michigan Politics editor Bill Ballenger, "somebody who's spent his entire life as a back room, partisan political operative, until--fortuitously, all of a sudden--he won his first public office ever." Sometimes that's all it takes. ¤</div></div><aside class="tags" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://prospect.org/topics/issue-difference/" rel="tag" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; line-height: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; padding: 0px; margin: 0.5rem 1rem 0.5rem 0px; border-radius: 0px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">ISSUE: WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?</a></aside><aside id="bottompageinfos" class="pageinfos" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px 0px 1rem; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(209, 209, 209); margin: 0.5rem 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="author" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0.3rem 0px 0px; padding: 1.2rem 0px; display: table;"><h3 style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 28.8px; text-transform: uppercase;"><a href="https://prospect.org/topics/nicholas-confessore/" rel="author" style="position: static; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none;">NICHOLAS CONFESSORE</a></h3>Nicholas Confessore is a reporter for The New York Times. Previously he was an American Prospect senior correspondent and an editor of The Washington Monthly.</div></aside></div><div>
</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">mahdi</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2p6LDwAAQBAJ" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://books.google.com/books?id=2p6LDwAAQBAJ</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">3 mil$ nat res almost 2 gas and oil sector; 13x Gore; 1998-2003 hallib over 1 mil$ gop 55k$ dems]; b43 got more oil $ than any other fed cand; 9 days before inaug API HQ K street mtg to draw up wishlist; ez drill fed land, more alaska an GOM, lower royalty for offshore etc; --> energy plan may 2001; API appt to admin: newsweek says not since rise of railroads so many footsoldiers; energy ceo 22.5m$ to BC has constant access to secret energy task force; lay b43 pal had most access; cheney starts mtgs w/ ff ceo contributors;  energy sec [NPI advisors] had 109 mtgs spencer abraham betw jan and may 2001, incl chevtex, exxxonmobil and enron, all big donors; </div><div style="">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">arbusto fail bought by spectrum? fail bought by harken (soros and harvard] for 2.25m$ in stock; b43 go 600K$ and bd seat 50-120K/yr</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">cheney secdeg 1990 got b41 to go after saddam in kuwait b/c of oil; aei kazakstan caspian pipeline operated by chevron, hallib built refineries Tengiz; azerjajan --> hallib ceo oct 1995 (he had good rel w/ saudis as secdef] 1994-2001 rev up 127%</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div>===</div>

<h2>Bush Reneges on Vow To Cut CO2 from Power Plants</h2>

<h2>Bush Reverses Vow to Curb Gas Tied to Global Warming</h2>

<h5>The New York Times, March 14, 2001</h5>

Under strong pressure from conservative Republicans and industry groups, President Bush reversed a campaign pledge today and said his administration would not seek to regulate power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas that many scientists say is a key contributor to global warming.

The decision left environmental groups and some Congressional Democrats angered at what they called a major betrayal. But the White House said a cabinet-level review had concluded that Mr. Bush's original promise had been a mistake inconsistent with the broader goal of increasing domestic energy production.

The president outlined his new view in a letter to four Republican senators, whose criticisms of Mr. Bush's initial plan had been among a torrent of protests by conservatives and industry leaders who warned that any effort to regulate carbon dioxide emissions could deal a severe blow to the energy industry and to the American economy.

As recently as 10 days ago, Christie Whitman, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, had described Mr. Bush's campaign promise as if it were already policy.

Administration officials would not say directly today whether Ms. Whitman had supported the change in position but suggested that she had not. They said the views of Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham had been most instrumental in the final decision.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Whitman, Tina Kreisher, said the E.P.A. chief would "follow the president's lead."

theheatisonline

----

Bush's first Secretary of Energy, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham" title="Spencer Abraham">Spencer Abraham</a>, was controversial at the time of his 2001 appointment because as a senator he co-sponsored S.896, a bill to abolish the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Energy" title="United States Department of Energy">United States Department of Energy</a>, in 1999.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_George_W._Bush#cite_note-40">[41]</a> [uhhn-oops perry]

---wiki?

Edmund Spencer Abraham (born June 12, 1952) is a former <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate" title="United States Senate">United States Senator</a> from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan" title="Michigan">Michigan</a>. He served as the tenth <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Energy" title="United States Secretary of Energy">United States Secretary of Energy</a>, serving under President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush" title="George W. Bush">George W. Bush</a>. Abraham is one of the founders of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society" title="Federalist Society">Federalist Society</a>.

<h2>Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#" class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>] </div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Education_and_family">1 Education and family</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Political_career">2 Political career</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Republican_Party_service">2.1 Republican Party service</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#United_States_Senate">2.2 United States Senate</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-5"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Committee_service_and_legislation">2.3 Committee service and legislation</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-6"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#U.S._Energy_Secretary">2.4 U.S. Energy Secretary</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-7"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Hoover_Institution">2.5 Hoover Institution</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-8"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Thompson_for_President">2.6 Thompson for President</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-9"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Later_career">3 Later career</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-10"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Electoral_history">4 Electoral history</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-11"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#Notes">5 Notes</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-12"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#External_links">6 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham&action=edit&section=1&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Education and family">edit</a>] Education and family</h2>

Abraham was born in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Lansing,Michigan" title="East Lansing, Michigan">East Lansing, Michigan</a> and a graduate of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Lansing_High_School" title="East Lansing High School">East Lansing High School</a>. Of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanon" title="Lebanon">Lebanese</a> descent, Abraham is married to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Abraham" title="Jane Abraham">Jane Abraham</a> (current co-chairwoman of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Republican_Party" title="Michigan Republican Party">Michigan Republican Party</a>) and has three children: a son and twin girls, Betsy and Julie. He holds a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor" title="Juris Doctor">Juris Doctor</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%28J.D.%29" title="(J.D.)" class="mw-redirect">(J.D.)</a> degree from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University" title="Harvard University">Harvard University</a>, and is a 1974 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University_Honors_College" title="Michigan State University Honors College">Honors College</a> graduate of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University" title="Michigan State University">Michigan State University</a>. In 1978, while at Harvard Law School, Abraham helped found the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Journal_of_Law%26_Public_Policy" title="Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy" class="mw-redirect">Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-0">[1]</a> It became one of the official journals of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society" title="Federalist Society">Federalist Society</a>, which was founded in 1982.

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham&action=edit&section=2&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Political career">edit</a>] Political career</h2>

Before his election to the Senate, Abraham was a law professor at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M._Cooley_Law_School" title="Thomas M. Cooley Law School">Thomas M. Cooley Law School</a>.

<h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham&action=edit&section=3&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Republican Party service">edit</a>] Republican Party service</h3>

He was elected chairman of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Republican_Party" title="Michigan Republican Party">Michigan Republican Party</a> from 1983 to 1990. He was deputy chief of staff for Vice President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Quayle" title="Dan Quayle">Dan Quayle</a> from 1990 to 1991. He later served as co-chairman of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Republican_Congressional_Committee" title="National Republican Congressional Committee">National Republican Congressional Committee</a> (NRCC) from 1991 to 1993 and ran for chairman of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_National_Committee" title="Republican National Committee">Republican National Committee</a> in 1993, coming second to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haley_Barbour" title="Haley Barbour">Haley Barbour</a>.

<h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham&action=edit&section=4&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: United States Senate">edit</a>] United States Senate</h3>

Abraham was elected to represent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan" title="Michigan">Michigan</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate" title="United States Senate">United States Senate</a> in 1994, and he served until 2001 when he was defeated for reelection to the Senate in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election,_2000" title="United States Senate election, 2000" class="mw-redirect">2000</a> for a second term by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debbie_Stabenow" title="Debbie Stabenow">Debbie Stabenow</a>. He was the only <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_American" title="Arab American">Arab American</a> in that chamber. According to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times" title="New York Times" class="mw-redirect">New York Times</a>, State Republicans attributed his loss to "scathing advertisements by a wide range of special interest groups, including advertisements that criticized Mr. Abraham's support for a relaxation of some immigration restrictions".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-1">[2]</a> During the campaign the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_for_American_Immigration_Reform" title="Federation for American Immigration Reform">Federation for American Immigration Reform</a> ran ads asking: "Why is Senator Spencer Abraham trying to make it easier for terrorists like Osama bin Laden to export their war of terror to any city street in America?"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-2">[3]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-3">[4]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-4">[5]</a> The media denounced these commercials as "vengeful".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-5">[6]</a> Abraham was a consistent advocate of large-scale immigration and worked relentlessly to lessen immigration controls and regulations. In 1997 he received the "Defender of the Melting Pot" award from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Council_of_La_Raza" title="National Council of La Raza">National Council of La Raza</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-6">[7]</a>

</td><td class="mbox-text">This section may contain <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research" title="Wikipedia:No original research">original research</a>. Please <a class="external text" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham&action=edit">improve it</a> by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability" title="Wikipedia:Verifiability">verifying</a> the claims made and adding <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:References" title="Wikipedia:References" class="mw-redirect">references</a>. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spencer_Abraham" title="Talk:Spencer Abraham">talk page</a>. (October 2008)</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h3>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham&action=edit&section=5&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Committee service and legislation">edit</a>] Committee service and legislation</h3>

He served on the Budget, Commerce, Science and Transportation, Judiciary, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_business" title="Small business">Small Business</a> Committees. He also chaired two subcommittees: Manufacturing and Competitiveness, and Immigration. Abraham authored the "H1B Visa in Global and National Commerce Act", establishing a federal framework for on-line contracts and signatures; the "Government Paperwork Elimination Act", and the "Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act", which protects Internet <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name" title="Domain name">domain names</a> for businesses and persons against <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright" title="Copyright">copyright</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement" title="Trademark infringement">trademark infringements</a>. In 1999, Abraham co-sponsored S.896, a bill to abolish the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Department_of_Energy" title="U.S. Department of Energy" class="mw-redirect">U.S. Department of Energy</a>, which would have transferred control of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve" title="Strategic Petroleum Reserve" class="mw-redirect">Strategic Petroleum Reserve</a> in large part to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.Defense_Department" title="U.S. Defense Department" class="mw-redirect">Defense Department</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-7">[8]</a>

<h3>U.S. Energy Secretary</h3>

</div>

Abraham was appointed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_of_Energy" title="Secretary of Energy" class="mw-redirect">Secretary of Energy</a> by the incoming <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush">George W. Bush</a>'s administration. On November 15, 2004, Abraham announced that he would resign from this position, effective with the swearing in of his successor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_W.Bodman" title="Samuel W. Bodman" class="mw-redirect">Samuel W. Bodman</a> on February 1, 2005.

In 2004, Lebanese Ambassador <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farid_Abboud" title="Farid Abboud">Farid Abboud</a> awarded Abraham the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Order_of_the_Cedar" title="National Order of the Cedar">National Order of the Cedar</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-8">[9]</a>

<h3>Hoover Institution</h3>

Abraham was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Institution" title="Hoover Institution">Hoover Institution</a>, an influential <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism" title="Conservatism">conservative</a> think tank based at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University" title="Stanford University">Stanford University</a> from 2005 through 2007. After leaving office, Abraham opened <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.abrahamgroupllc.com/">The Abraham Group</a>, a Washington DC based international strategic consulting firm. In 2006, Spencer Abraham has accepted the appointment as Chairman of the Board of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva" title="Areva">Areva Inc.</a>, the US subsidiary of the French nuclear energy company.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-9">[10]</a>

<h3> Thompson for President</h3>

On July 24, 2007, Abraham was announced as an "ambassador to official Washington" in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Thompson" title="Fred Thompson">Fred Thompson</a> presidential campaign.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-camp3-10">[11]</a>

<h2>Later career</h2>

In 2006 Abraham was appointed Non-Executive Chairman of the Board of AREVA Inc., the American arm of the French nuclear company <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areva" title="Areva">Areva</a>, which is planning to build <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_Power_Reactor" title="Evolutionary Power Reactor" class="mw-redirect">EPR</a> nuclear power plants in the United States, and is building the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_oxide_fuel" title="Mixed oxide fuel" class="mw-redirect">mixed oxide fuel</a> (MOX) manufacturing plant at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site" title="Savannah River Site">Savannah River Site</a> to convert legacy weapons-grade plutonium into power station fuel.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-nyt-20110410-11">[12]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-areva-officers-12">[13]</a>

With William Tucker, Abraham wrote Lights Out!: Ten Myths About (and Real Solutions to) America's Energy Crisis, which was published in July 2010.

Abraham is also the Chairman and CEO of The Abraham Group, a strategic consulting firm providing assistance to clients seeking opportunities in the U.S. and global markets.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-areva-officers-12">[13]</a>

-----

announced early US needed to add 90 coal power plants? backed DC on 180?

---sw

Spencer Abraham was US Senator for Michigan from 1995 to 2001, where he received thousands of pounds from nuclear interests.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-MSNBC-0" title="">[1]</a>

He sworn in as the tenth Secretary of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Department_of_Energy" title="Department of Energy" class="mw-redirect">Department of Energy</a> on January 20, 2001, following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate. He held the position until 2005. He was a member of Bush's National Energy Policy Development Group, known as Cheney's Energy Task Force, that heavily recommended development of nuclear power.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-1" title="">[2]</a>

After leaving office, Abraham opened The <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Abraham_Group&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Abraham Group (page does not exist)">Abraham Group</a>, "strategic consulting" firm based in Washington. In 2006, he was named non-Executive Chairman of Areva Inc, the US subsidiary of global giant <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Areva" title="Areva">Areva</a>.

<h2>Contents</h2>

[<a class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>]</div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#A_Conflict_of_Interest.3F">1 A Conflict of Interest?</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#Biographical_Note">2 Biographical Note</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#Affiliations">3 Affiliations</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#Resources">4 Resources</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#References">4.1 References</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#Related_SourceWatch_Articles">4.2 Related SourceWatch Articles</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#External_links">4.3 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>A Conflict of Interest?</h2>

In January 2007, Abraham was asked by MSNBC about any conflict of interest from moving from the US government (where he promoted nuclear power) to the Chairmanship of a huge nuclear company, looking to build plants in the US."  Abraham is not troubled by possible appearances of conflict over having helped formulate policies that could benefit a firm for which he now works", wrote MSNBC. Abraham told them "The federal government has strict guidelines regarding post-employment restrictions for Cabinet members. I have followed those guidelines to the letter of the law".<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-MSNBC-0" title="">[1]</a>

<h2>Biographical Note</h2>

According to his Department biography, <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/abraham-bio.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/abraham-bio.html" rel="nofollow">[1]</a> "Prior to becoming Energy Secretary, Abraham represented Michigan in the United States Senate from 1995 to 2001.

"Elected in 1994, he served on the Budget, Commerce, Science and Transportation, Judiciary, and Small Business Committees. He also chaired two-important subcommittees: Manufacturing and Competitiveness, and Immigration.

"A forceful voice for the business community and free enterprise, Abraham endorsed policies and practices that promote and enhance America's competitiveness and global leadership. Among other things, Abraham was a leader in the Senate on support of free trade, legal and regulatory reform, and tax reform.

"Representing Michigan in the Senate made Abraham keenly aware of the many issues impacting manufacturers, businesses, and consumers.

"In addition, Abraham was widely viewed by his colleagues and most observers as the Senator with the best understanding of high-tech policy and issues and the contributions this important economic sector makes to America's economy and global success.

"Among other accomplishments, Abraham authored the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Electronic_Signature_in_Global_and_National_Commerce_Act&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act (page does not exist)">Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce Act</a>, establishing a federal framework for on-line contracts and signatures; the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Government_Paperwork_Elimination_Act&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Government Paperwork Elimination Act (page does not exist)">Government Paperwork Elimination Act</a>, and the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anti-Cybersquatting_Consumer_Protection_Act&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (page does not exist)">Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act</a>, which protects Internet domain names for businesses and persons against copyright and trademark infringements.

"Maintaining affable relationships with his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Abraham authored twenty-two pieces of legislation that have been signed into law, an unprecedented accomplishment for a freshman Senator.

"Before his election to the Senate, Abraham served as co-chairman of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Republican_Congressional_Committee" title="National Republican Congressional Committee">National Republican Congressional Committee</a> (NRCC) from 1991 to 1993.

"Prior to his tenure at the NRCC and following a successful term as the Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, Abraham was tapped to serve as Deputy Chief of Staff to Vice President <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Dan_Quayle" title="Dan Quayle" class="mw-redirect">Dan Quayle</a> from 1990 to 1991. In this senior position, he worked closely with the Vice President and senior administration officials, managing the daily operations of the Vice President's office, budget, and staff. Abraham was also active in the affairs of the Vice President's Competitiveness Council, the Vice President's operation designed to provide administrative leadership on issues pertaining to U.S. business competitiveness.

"At 30, Abraham was elected to serve as chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, a position he held from 1983 to 1990. Abraham took over a party deeply in debt and not holding any major positions in the state government, but quickly began to reestablish the party as one of the strongest state political operations in the country.

Spencer Abraham resides in Michigan and Virginia. "He holds a law degree from Harvard University and is a native of East Lansing, Michigan."

<hr />

"Former Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham was a top aide to former Vice President Dan Quayle, and helped found the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Federalist_Society" title="Federalist Society" class="mw-redirect">Federalist Society</a> while in law school. The right-wing Christianity Today magazine described Abraham's unsuccessful reelection bid in 2000 as a key loss for <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Religious_Right" title="Religious Right">Religious Right</a> forces." <a href="http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=6179" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=6179" rel="nofollow">[2]</a>

<h2>Affiliations</h2>

<ul>

<li>Trustee of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Meridian_International_Center" title="Meridian International Center">Meridian International Center</a>.</li>

<li>Director, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Occidental_Petroleum" title="Occidental Petroleum">Occidental Petroleum</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#cite_note-2" title="">[3]</a></li>

</ul>

<h2>Resources</h2>

<h3>References</h3>

<li id="cite_note-MSNBC-0">↑ <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#cite_ref-MSNBC_0-0" title="">1.0</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#cite_ref-MSNBC_0-1" title="">1.1</a> Mike Stuckey, <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16554514/" class="external text" title="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16554514/" rel="nofollow">"Nuclear Energy's French Connection: Ambitious Areva is Second to None at American-Style Power Politics"</a>, MSNBC, January 25, 2007.</li>

<li id="cite_note-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#cite_ref-1" title="">↑</a> <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/" class="external text" title="http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/" rel="nofollow">Report of the National Energy Policy Development Group</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Spencer_Abraham#cite_ref-2" title="">↑</a> <a href="http://www.oxy.com/Investor_Relations/governance/Pages/director_bios.aspx" class="external text" title="http://www.oxy.com/Investor_Relations/governance/Pages/director_bios.aspx" rel="nofollow">Directors</a>, Occidental Petroleum, accessed May 13, 2010.</li>

</ol>

<h3>Related SourceWatch Articles</h3>

<h3>External links</h3>

<div id="mw-normal-catlinks"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories">Categories</a>: <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Nuclear_PR" title="Category:Nuclear PR">Nuclear PR</a> | <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:United_States" title="Category:United States">United States</a> | <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:US_Individuals" title="Category:US Individuals">US Individuals</a> | <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Individuals_linked_to_the_push_for_nuclear" title="Category:Individuals linked to the push for nuclear">Individuals linked to the push for nuclear</a> | <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Chickenhawks" title="Category:Chickenhawks">Chickenhawks</a></div></div>

Abraham, Spencer

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