ron arnold bak
zombie pension
DEAD DING DONG
hit man tho orgs/ngo as well as ppl, thus on caller and signal
MERRI OK
arnoldron322
clexit 2015
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HEARTLAND OBIT
Ron Arnold (1937 – 2022)
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CENTER FOR THE DEFENSE OF FREE ENTERPRISE
Ron Arnold passed away on January 24, 2022.
Arnold was the author of eight books, a researcher and editor of ten books, and columnist for the Washington Examiner. His pioneering work on exposing the left’s funding, displayed in the Undue Influence website, led to invitations to testify before congressional committees, resulting in a congressional investigation into the left’s funding irregularities.
Arnold’s weekly Washington Examinercolumns had been cited as authoritative in U.S. Senate hearings and the Congressional Record.
- 425-503-0328
- media@heartland.org
Ron Arnold (1937 – 2022) Contributions
December 21, 2018
PRESS RELEASE: Heartland Institute Experts Comment on EPA’s New Rule for Coal Plants
- Environment & Energy
June 28, 2017
US Funding Dubious Science and Unfounded Fear
- Environment & Energy
- Health Care
February 9, 2017
Natural Resources Defense Council: The Scaremongering Chemophobe-in-Chief
- Environment & Energy
December 7, 2016
Environmental Working Group Undermines Public Health, Good Government
- Climate Change
- Environment & Energy
October 26, 2016
Was Hillary’s Secret Plan to Attack Climate Skeptics Exposed by Wikileaks?
- Government & Politics
- Environment & Energy
- Government & Liberty
Was Hillary’s Secret Plan to Attack Climate Skeptics Exposed by Wikileaks?
Published October 26, 2016
On Tuesday, October 25, 2016, Wikileaks released a series of emails sent between Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, and the infamous “social change” media activist, David Fenton. The emails revealed a $3 million plan to attack the Wall Street Journal and Fox News Channel to put them ‘on the defensive’ about their realistic climate stand. The goal was to scare conservative politicians into supporting new government global warming rules and bans.
The series of emails WikiLeaks hacked from Podesta’s account shows that David Fenton thanked Podesta for a meeting on February 19, 2015. Fenton and sent him two emails documenting their conversation.
The first email said: “Here is the [Fenton Communications] plan to go after [the Wall Street Journal] and Fox [News Channel] on climate. I have 500,000 [dollars] of this pledged if I can raise another million.”
The plan, attached to the email, used “guerilla tactics,” budgeting $350,000 for groups including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace for civil disobedience and social media campaigns, and $600,000 for advertisements in the Wall Street Journal and on the Fox News Channel. It would involve the creation of websites that disseminated true-believer views about climate change, and directly challenged the reporting in Rupert Murdoch’s Fox media.
Fenton’s email said:
“Fox News is the biggest single factor keeping almost 40% of Americans from believing humans are changing the climate, while only 10% know that 97% of climate scientists agree we are warming the earth at our peril. In some ways, the effect of the Wall Street Journal is even worse, as it sows regular confusion among its 3 million daily subscribers – business leaders and investors among the most influential people in the country.” [Murdoch’s companies also own the Wall Street Journal and he heads 21st Century Fox.]
Fenton continued his increasingly desperate email plea: “Unless and until the Journal and Murdoch are put on the defensive on climate change, opening political space for conservatives to come forward, it is unlikely that bipartisan efforts on climate change will be achieved in time.”
Part of Fenton’s plan involved “public shaming” of Murdoch so that his six children, who have more fanatic views on climate change, would have “leverage with their father”.
Clinton’s campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the Wikileaks emails, but has attacked what it said were Russian state actors involved in obtaining them. A Clinton campaign source dubbed the Wikileaks website a “propaganda arm of the Russian government” seeking to help elect the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, a conspiracy theory that serves as its own public shaming.
Fenton’s proposal to Podesta and its prime goal to “make Murdoch’s climate denial a major issue,” and “bring the scientific facts on climate change to his audiences,” was ironically released a day after an unwelcome story ran in London’s *Daily Mail* with the headline “Exposed: How top university helped secure £9million of YOUR money by passing off rivals’ research as its own… to bankroll climate change agenda.” So much for the integrity of “scientific facts on climate change.”
The Daily Caller covered the story for Americans:
“The UK government gave $11 million dollars to the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) in exchange for research that the organization reportedly never actually did. Many papers CCCEP claimed to have published to get government money weren’t about global warming, were written before the organization was even founded, or were written by researchers unaffiliated with CCCEP. The government never checked CCCEP’s supposed publication lists, saying they were “taken on trust.”
According to The Daily Mail, “Academics whose work was misrepresented reacted with fury. Professor Richard Tol, a climate change economics expert from Sussex University, said: ‘It is serious misconduct to claim credit for a paper you haven’t supported, and it’s fraud to use that in a bid to renew a grant. I’ve never come across anything like it before. It stinks.’ “
How could such a scandal begin? The chairman of the CCCEP since 2008 has been Lord Nicholas Stern, a militant global advocate for drastic action to combat climate change. He is also the president of the British Academy, an invitation-only society reserved for the academic elite. It disburses grants worth millions to researchers – and to Lord Stern’s own organization. Do we see the seeds of corrupt power here? Is this the beginning of another ClimateGate for the U.K.?
Meanwhile, the WikiLeaks emails between David Fenton and John Podesta show us only a proposal for a multi-million dollar attack against people with opposing but honestly held opinions, who are not given the right to those opinions – a signature mindset increasingly visible among intolerant progressives.
Fenton concluded his WikiLeaks email:
“We have let Rupert Murdoch get away with this atrocious behavior for too long. It’s time to make his endangerment of national and economic security a prominent, inescapable issue.”
Fenton is no scientist. His climate opinions are second hand, “taken on trust” from government science. Government science has been seen as the same type of oxymoron as military intelligence.
Evidently, Podesta did not take Fenton’s razzle-dazzle on trust. There is no evidence that Fenton’s $3 million campaign ever went ahead. To the contrary, climate change seems to be the poor stepchild of the 2016 election’s leading issue awards. If, somehow, the Fenton fantasy was actually put into action, it left the Wall Street Journal and Fox unscathed in their climate realism. Certainly, Rupert Murdoch doesn’t seem to be taking climate policy advice from his six offspring. So, perhaps David Fenton’s Wikileaks email plans are what the Roman Empire once referred to as brutum fulmen – harmless thunderbolt.
But do not underestimate the man. Fenton is remembered as the one who engineered the phony 1989 Alar “poison apples” scam with the Natural Resources Defense Council to wrongfully disparage hundreds of blameless orchardists into bankruptcy.
He gloated about it.
First published at [LeftExposed.org.]
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C 2017
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WIKI 2X? 1 24
:{Ron Arnold (August 8, 1937 – January 22, 2022) was an American writer and activist. He was the Executive Vice-President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. He wrote frequently on natural resource issues and is an opponent of the environmental movement.
Critics saw Arnold as promoting abuse of the environment, typified in an assessment by Wild Wilderness executive director Scott Silver: "Fifteen years after creating his 25 Point Wise-Use Agenda, an agenda prescribing unrestrained, unregulated and unconscionable abuse of the American commons, Ron Arnold is within striking distance of checking off every agenda item on his list."[1] A key U.S. Senate staffer writing in 2011 noted his impact on federal legislation.[2]}:
Biography
Arnold was born in Houston, Texas and studied business administration at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington.[3] He died on January 24, 2022.[4][5]
Career
Arnold worked as a technical writer for the Boeing Company from 1961 until he left in 1971 to found Northwoods Studio. In 1974 he began contributing to Western Conservation Journal, which exposed him to the effects of litigation related to environmental issues upon logging and mining industries. Between 1978 and 1981, Arnold was a contributing editor of Logging Management Journal. His 1979 magazine series, "The Environmental Battle", analyzed the utilization / preservation conflict, and won the American Business Press 1980 Editorial Achievement Award.[6]
In 1981, Arnold wrote the authorized biography of Interior Secretary James G. Watt.[7] Between 1982 and 1990, he wrote a weekly column for the Bellevue (Washington) Journal-American. In 1987, he founded the Free Enterprise Press, later merged into Merril Press, and began writing a series of books on the environmental movement. His "EcoTerror" was included in the "100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century" Random House / Modern Library Reader's List.[8]
Arnold also uncovered the identity of the actual founder of the United States National Forest after a century of mystery shrouded the origin in conflicting claims. An almost forgotten politician named William S. Holman created the concept and the initial legislation, as revealed in documents Arnold discovered in the National Archives. He was invited to present his findings at the centennial symposium of the United States Forest Service in 1991.[9]
Environmentalists have challenged Arnold's “Wise Use Movement,” launched at a Reno, Nevada conference in 1988, as inappropriately co-opting the term from utilitarian conservationist and first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, who held different views on man and nature than Arnold and his movement. Arnold readily admits the borrowing, but disputes arguments that it is improper, a controversy that continues unresolved.[10]
He has mobilized political allies to protests, as covered by ABC News Nightline (broadcast February 24, 1994) by using case histories of environmentalist excesses in influencing policymakers to adopt his ideas. Certain policies of President George W. Bush]] have been attributed to Arnold's influence. Playboy magazine's May 2004 issue featured a profile of Arnold in the Playboy Forum, by reporter Dean Kuypers. Titled, Guru of Wise Use, its headline read: The spiritual father of the Bush administration's environmental policies says we shouldn't be timid about timber. ^[11]
Arnold has built a network of academic colleagues to help analyze large-scale social movements, and told the Boston Globe that environmentalism is "the third great wave of messianism to hit the planet, after Christianity and Marxism-Leninism." The Globe commented, "'Wise users' charge that the environmental crisis has been largely trumped up as an excuse to take control of the nation's natural resources." ^[12]
Arnold's conclusion that movements of social change, including environmentalism, are fundamentally a kind of war was examined and found valid by sociologist Luther P. Gerlach in the RAND research document, "Networks and Netwars."[13]
Arnold ran the Left Tracking Library,[14] a site that tracks what it claims to be undue influence by left-wing politicians and environmentalists.
In late 2010, Arnold began writing a weekly column for The Washington Examiner; one was placed in the Congressional Record in early 2011.[15] Another was used as source material by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) in a Senate confirmation hearing in December 2013.
Bibliography
- At the Eye of the Storm: James Watt and the Environmentalists, Regnery Gateway (1982), 282 pp. ISBN 978-0895266347.
- The Grand Prairie Years: A Biography of W.C. Perry, Introduction by Gov. John B. Connally, Merril Press (October 1987), 722 pp. ISBN 978-0936783017.
- Ecology Wars: Environmentalism as if People Matter, Merril Press (January 1, 2010), 182 pp. ISBN 978-0939571147.
- Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America, Second Edition, co-authored with Alan Gottlieb, Merril Press (January 1, 2010), 670 pp. ISBN 978-0939571178.
- Politically Correct Environment co-authored with Alan Gottlieb, Merril Press (January 1, 2010), 178 pp. ISBN 978-0936783154.
- EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature: The World of the Unabomber, Merril Press (January 1, 2010), 324 pp. ISBN 978-0939571185.
- Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant Driven Environmental Groups, and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your Future, Merril Press (October 1, 1999), 344 pp. ISBN 978-0939571208.
- Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, Merril Press (November 30, 2007), 444 pp. ISBN 978-0-936783-51-2.
References EG BILL BERKOWITZ...
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EDU CHART
Ron Arnold on Environmentalism and the Wise Use (Anti-environmental)Movement
Ron Arnold on Environmentalism and the Wise Use (Anti-environmental) Movement
(Some taken from Arnold's "Wise Use: What Do We Believe?")
| Dominant Western Worldview | Environmental Movement Challenges Dominant Western World View | Anti-Environmental Movement Accepts Dominant Western World View |
|---|---|---|
| --Growth not= Betterment --Unlimited growth not sustainable | --Traditional growth is good and sustainable |
| --Are environmentalists Luddites or technophobes? --Technological pessimists? --Environmentalism advocates appropriate technology Can technology solve the problems of poverty, starvation, discrimination, crime, species extinction, loss of wilderness, global warming? | --Technological optimists --Techno-fix mentality? --Examples of technological proposals (geo-engineering) to address climate change: --Dump iron particles into the sea, stimulate algal growth, which take out more atmospheric CO2/ -- Inject sulphur particles into the stratosphere in order to suppress global warming by simulating volcanic eruptions? --Solve pollution problems by engineering species that can withstand pollution (instead of stopping polluting)? |
| --Skeptical of unregulated market�s consequences on environment --Need env. regulations --Worried about "Free Market Environmentalism?" | --Little government regulation of the market needed --Environmentalists are eco-socialists or eco-authoritarians |
| Environmental Paradigm (according to Arnold) | What Environmentalists actually favor | Arnold's "Wise Use" (anti-environmental) movement |
| -Yes limit growth and aim instead for betterment --Bigger not necessarily better --Progress involves betterment, not growth | --Do not limit growth; growth is the mechanism of progress. --In a recession, growth is seen as desirable by nearly all; only way people can see of creating jobs. For discussion, see"Is Recession Good for Environment? |
| --Why restrain science? Do not favor this --Encourage environmental science (e.g., for restoration) --Only env. harmful technologies need to be limited --Environmentally helpful technologies need to be encouraged | Let science and technology flourish according to the dictates of the free market and minimally regulated by government |
| -Yes; we live on a finite planet with finite resources -We can't keep taking from nature forever; we must learn to conserve and recycle | --Don�t believe this --A resource (not finite) is a natural object (finite) + work and human ingenuity (not finite) --Human ingenuity & technology can always come up with new ways to use resources -"Our limitless imaginations can break through natural limits to make earthly goods and carrying capacity virtually infinite" |
| Is nature delicate or stable? There is a debate about the resilience of nature and recent ecology stresses natural instability and disturbance in nature | --Balance of nature is a fiction --Nature is tough/resilient, not fragile and delicate. |
| -Human intervention in nature is bad by definition? -Value of non-cultural? -Agreed; nature not always good on balance | --Nature is not necessarily good |
| -Unsustainable human activity is unacceptable; unfair to humans and the earth -Should fairly share the earth's resources and use it softly and lovingly | --Admit that unavoidable env. damage is the price of human survival -"Improve the earth for the massive use of future generations" |
Additional criticism ofenvironmentalism Arnold makes:
...Additional criticism of environmentalism Arnold makes:
- Destroyers of the economy, jobs, and private property (with too much government regulation)
- Destroyers of material well being (pushing life of simplicity)
- Destroyers of industrial civilization (�Back to the Pleistocene�)
- Destroyers of individual liberty and rights (favor a totalitarian, eco-authoritarian system)
- Believe their use of the environment is the only legitimate one (environmentalists have a holier than thou, self-righteous attitude�skiing is better than snowmobiling)
Study Questions Arnold
- According to Ron Arnold, what are the three basic assumptions of the dominant Western worldview with which the "Wise Use" movement agrees? (Hint: Faith in growth, technology, and unregulated markets.) How does he claim environmentalism challenges this worldview? Do you think this characterization of the environmental debate is fair and accurate? Which side of this dispute do you most agree with and why?
- Identify and explain Arnold’s criticisms of environmentalism. In what ways, if any do you agree with him? In what ways not? Why?
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GGL 1 24
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[### Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant Driven ...
Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com › Undue-Influence-Founda...](https://www.amazon.com/Undue-Influence-Foundations-Environmental-Bureaucrats/dp/093957120X)
Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant Driven Environmental Groups, and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your F [Arnold, Ron] on Amazon.com.
Rating: 3.9 · 8 reviews · $8.98 · 30-day returns
Books by Ron Arnold (Author of Cracking Big Green)
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com › 327374.Ron_Arnold](https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/327374.Ron_Arnold)
Ron Arnold has 27 books on Goodreads with 334 ratings. Ron Arnold's most popular book is Miracle Molecule: Carbon Dioxide, Gas of Life.
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BAD FORMAT SEE BAK
signed cei open letter 2017? thus seen as legit? not a liability?
omg daily signal 3/22
LI
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-arnold-51a1669?trk=org-employees
Ron Arnold...
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https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/ron-arnold
Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and a policy advisor to The Heartland Institute.
Arnold is the author of eight books, a researcher and editor of ten books, and columnist for the Washington Examiner. His pioneering work on exposing the left’s funding, displayed in the Undue Influence website, led to invitations to testify before congressional committees, resulting in a congressional investigation into the left’s funding irregularities.
Arnold’s weeklyWashington Examiner columns have been cited as authoritative in U.S. Senate hearings and the Congressional Record. He has been the chief contributor to the Heartland Institute research website LeftExposed.org.
DECEMBER 21, 2018
PRESS RELEASE: Heartland Institute Experts Comment on EPA’s New Rule for Coal Plants
By James Taylor, Jay Lehr, H. Sterling Burnett, Tom Harris, Robert Bradley,Ron Arnold,Cedric Keith, Mischa Popoff
"The Trump administration deserves strong praise for standing up for American consumers and affordable energy." - James Taylor
Energy
JUNE 28, 2017
US Funding Dubious Science and Unfounded Fear
By Ron Arnold
Eco-militants that defiled scientific integrity in government agencies defy corrections.
Tags
Environment
Health Care
FEBRUARY 9, 2017
Natural Resources Defense Council: TheScaremongering Chemophobe-in-Chief
By Ron Arnold
The Natural Resources Defense Council is one of the largest, most politically influential environmental scaremongering groups pushing bans on modern chemicals and fossil fuel use.
Tags
Environment
Energy
DECEMBER 7, 2016
Environmental Working Group Undermines Public Health, Good Government
By Ron Arnold
The Environmental Working Group is an activist organization that stokes unwarranted fears of modern agriculture, chemicals, and some medical technology.
Tags
Environment
Climate Change
AUGUST 26, 2015
The Books That Begat ‘Big Green’
By Paul Driessen, Ron Arnold
A handful of doomsaying bestsellers has made possible today's politically powerful environmental movement.
OCTOBER 26, 2016
Was Hillary’s Secret Plan to Attack Climate Skeptics Exposed by Wikileaks?
By Ron Arnold
The Wikileaks emails revealed a $3 million plan to attack the Wall Street Journal and Fox News Channel to put them ‘on the defensive’ about their realistic climate stand.
Tags
Environment
Government & Politics
OCTOBER 17, 2016
The Climate Action Network: Funding Climate Alarmist Stunts Around the World
By Ron Arnold
Climate Action Network International and its U.S. subsidiary, the U.S. Climate Action Network, are climate-alarmist coordination centers with unique access to climate negotiations and an outsized influence on climate policies.
Tags
Climate Change
Energy
SEPTEMBER 19, 2016
UCS: Anti-Science Advocacy Gone Wild
By Ron Arnold
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is not a professional scientific organization, instead it is pursues left-wing advocacy on technology, environmental, and energy issues—regardless of what the scientific data show.
Tags
Environment
Climate Change
AUGUST 8, 2016
Democratic Insiders’ Climate Ads Not ‘Bipartisan’ as Claimed
By Ron Arnold
Three Democratic Party insiders, using a new environmental group they formed called Partnership for Responsible Growth (PRG), have created a media stir with a series of 12 advertisements espousing climate alarmism.
Tags
Climate Change
Energy
exxonmobil
JUNE 8, 2016
Attorney General Delegates Powers to Tort Lawyer in Exxon Climate Case
By Ron Arnold
At a press conference held on March 29, 2016, a coalition of 16 Democratic state attorneys general, the attorney general for the U.S.
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
JUNE 1, 2016
Naomi Oreskes Warps History
By Ron Arnold
Harvard historian of science Naomi Oreskes is best known to climate realists by her 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt and its scurrilous demonization of climate skeptics as paid hacks parroting the fossil-fuel industry’s self-serving opposition to the
Tags
Environment
williesoon11
MAY 6, 2016
Facts Clear Astrophysicist Soon of Wrongdoing, Indict Journalists Covering Climate Debate
By Ron Arnold
Willie Soon, Ph.D., is an astrophysicist in the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
APRIL 20, 2016
A Few Facts For Climate Alarmists Waging War Against Astrophysicist Willie Soon
By Ron Arnold
Dr. Willie Soon is an astrophysicist in the Solar, Stellar and Planetary Sciences Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He began as a post-doctoral fellow in 1991 and took his scientist position in 1997.
Tags
Environment
APRIL 8, 2016
Wikipedia and the Climate Non-Debate
By Ron Arnold
Wikipedia, known as the “people’s encyclopedia,” has proven to be anything but a reliable source in regards to the debate concerning the causes and possible consequences of climate change.
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
MARCH 25, 2016
Environmentalists Wield Powerful ESA to Kill Jobs
By Ron Arnold
“Another one gone,” began the Lost Coast Outpost’s report in late January. A.A.
Tags
Employment
Energy
Environment
greens_for_sale
FEBRUARY 10, 2016
How the Environmental Movement Morphed into the Climate Change Movement
By Ron Arnold
“Network” has become a common last name for dozens of radical environmental groups, including the Rainforest Action Network, Pesticide Action Network, Climate Action Network, and many others, but the push to be part of a network is about more than...
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
.=
JANUARY 19, 2016
Wildfire Control Suffers from Activists’ Undue Influence
By Ron Arnold
On August 13, a congressional staffer inspecting the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness Area, straddling the Oregon-Washington State border, had just finished eating lunch when a violent lightning storm suddenly appeared.
Tags
Environment
ore
NOVEMBER 2, 2015
Activists Push to Create National Park in Maine’s North Woods
By Ron Arnold
A battle is underway over a proposal by Roxanne Quimby, the founder of skin care company Burt’s Bees, to create a new national park near Mount Katahdin in Maine’s north woods.
Tags
Environment
SEPTEMBER 22, 2015
Sometimes You Can Fight the Government and Win
By Ron Arnold
National parks are among the most-loved amenities provided by the federal government, except by those thousands of people whose homes and businesses were demolished in recent years to make way for expansion, a problem much on the mind of Maine Governor
Tags
Environment
AUGUST 26, 2015
The Books That Begat ‘Big Green’
By Paul Driessen, Ron Arnold
A handful of doomsaying bestsellers has made possible today's politically powerful environmental movement.
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
AUGUST 5, 2015
Lawsuit Forces Payback for Green Defamation of Property Owner
By Ron Arnold
In December 1993 several environmental radicals, led by a young man namedKieran Suckling, gathered in New Mexico and incorporated the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity.
Tags
Environment
JULY 23, 2015
Environmental Protection Agency Flooded With Lawsuits Over Controversial Water Rule
By Ron Arnold
Twenty-nine states, more than half the stars on the American flag, have filed lawsuits against the U.S.
Tags
Environment
JULY 13, 2015
Award Winner Happer Spreads Climate Wisdom Through Humor
By Ron Arnold
William Happer, a professor at Princeton University, received the 2015 Frederick Seitz Memorial Award from presenter S. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project at the Tenth International Conference on Climate Change keynote dinner.
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
JULY 11, 2015
Groups Fight Bureaucracy Over Endangered Bird That Was Never in Danger
By Ron Arnold
Bad science and corrupt bureaucrats turned a beautiful migratory songbird that nests only in Texas into a 1990s terror that good science and concerned citizens are now fighting to exonerate.
Tags
Environment
pope
JULY 1, 2015
How The Power Elite Prejudiced The Pope’s Climate Change Encyclical
By Ron Arnold
Among all the hallelujahs and groans about Pope Francis and his highly politicized climate change encyclical Laudato Si’, there’s scant mention of who actually formulated its core content. It wasn’t the Holy Father.
Tags
Environment
JUNE 23, 2015
Rep. Smith (R-TX) Rips Secret Science, Unconstitutional Regulations
By Ron Arnold
Stuart Varney, host of FOX Business’ Varney & Co., complained about President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders during the June 10 broadcast of the show, focusing specifically on the administration’s climate change regulations.
Tags
Energy
Regulation
Environment
Climate Change
cfact-pipeline-rally
JUNE 8, 2015
Investor Buffett’s Money Not Where His Mouth Is
By Ron Arnold
Warren Buffett, billionaire investor and fundraiser for President Obama, made headlines in March for blasting the White House veto of the Keystone XL pipeline bill, saying he would have passed it.
Tags
Energy
Environment
newspaper
MAY 29, 2015
Environmental Journalism Has Become Ideological Warfare
By Ron Arnold
Why do so many climate-related news reports sound like propaganda written by zealous, even fanatical, environmentalists who could never be called impartial or objective?
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
greenpeace
MAY 28, 2015
National Security, The Seattle Oil Rig, And Greenpeace’s Dirty Money
By Ron Arnold
President Obama had it all wrong in his commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. He warned that climate change “deniers” endanger our national security – denying “undermines the readiness of our forces,” he said.
Tags
Environment
john_kerry
MAY 17, 2015
Climate Alarmist John Kerry Invests Massively In Fossil Fuel Stocks
By Ron Arnold
In a March 12 address to the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State John Kerry warned that climate change outranks terrorism, epidemics and poverty as the worst threat facing the world today.
Tags
Energy
tax documents
APRIL 15, 2015
Heartland Institute Experts Comment on Tax Day
By Ronald D. Rotunda (1945 - 2018), David L. Applegate, Dan Pilla, Jesse Hathaway, Michael Warder, John McAdams (1945 - 2021), John C. Goodman, William F. Shughart II , Merrill Matthews, Barry Garelick, Larry Kaufmann, F.H. Buckley, Jay Lehr, John Coleman (1934-2018), Richard J. Trzupek, Greg R. Lawson, Richard A. Viguerie, Ron Arnold, Gary Wolfram, John Dale Dunn
Today is April 15: Tax Day – the day many Americans account for a big chunk of their earnings going to state and federal governments – and the first year Obamacare is a part of filing a tax return.
Tags
Taxes
Government Spending
APRIL 6, 2015
Big Government, Foundations Undermine Scientific Integrity
By Ron Arnold
Democrats’ attempts to paralyze climate skeptics in academia, think tanks, and companies, using intimidating letters threatening a federal investigation into their funding connections, backfired.
Tags
Environment
186767766
APRIL 2, 2015
MARCH 25, 2015
The Trouble with Google as Truthsayer
By Ron Arnold
Google, Inc., with its $385 billion share value, has bumped Exxon to become America’s No. 2 ranking company in market capitalization.That may not be a good thing.
Tags
InfoTech & Telecom
frozenearth
MARCH 9, 2015
President Obama Spreads Climate Witch Hunt to Elected Officials
By Ron Arnold
Hot on the heels of the assault by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey and Arizona Representative Raul Grijalva against climate change skeptic scientists by demanding their academic institutions reveal who is funding their work, President Barack Obama has
Tags
Environment
186767766
MARCH 2, 2015
Naomi Oreskes Warps Climate Skeptic History
By Ron Arnold
Harvard historian of science Naomi Oreskes is best known to climate realists for her 2010 screed Merchants of Doubt, but a short, obscure, error-riddled essay she wrote as a chapter in the book How Well Do Facts Travel?
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
russian_sub_ice
FEBRUARY 16, 2015
Military Tensions Between Russia and West Spill into Climate Policy
By Ron Arnold
If war is politics by other means, in the debate pitting climate change against energy development, one side is arming, as Russia uses climate agreements to pressure the West to remove economic sanctions against it.
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
FEBRUARY 8, 2015
Will President Obama's New Drilling Policy Give the Arctic Over to Russian Domination?
By Ron Arnold
The anger, outrage and frustration in Alaska are palpable after the president stripped the state of vast stores of its oil and gas wealth.
Tags
Energy
JANUARY 19, 2015
Well-Heeled Activists Are Trying to Eradicate Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
By Ron Arnold
“Planes, trains, and automobiles” is not just the name of Steve Martin’s 1987 everything-goes-wrong comedy film, it is also a growing casualty list of the foundation-led anti-fossil fuel campaign called the Divest/Invest movement.
Tags
Energy
Environment
Climate Change
JANUARY 4, 2015
How the Left Wants to Eradicate Planes, Trains and Automobiles by Shutting Off Their Financial Fuel
By Ron Arnold
“Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is not just the name of Steve Martin and John Candy’s 1987 everything-goes-wrong comedy film. It’s also the prospective casualty list of the foundation-led anti-fossil-fuel campaign called the Divest-Invest movement.
Tags
Environment
barack_obama_harvard_law_school
DECEMBER 23, 2014
Tribe’s Opinion That ‘EPA’s Clean Power Plan Is Unconstitutional’ Means More Than You Think
By Ron Arnold
It’s a dead certainty that the Left will denounce Harvard constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe for accepting a retainer from coal giant Peabody Energy to write an analysis concluding that “the EPA acts as though it has the legislative authority to...
dECEMBER 15, 2014
How Obama and His Environmental Base Are Planning to Eradicate the Oil and Gas Industry
By Ron Arnold
Why does the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory war against hydraulic fracturing look like the Natural Resources Defense Council’s 2007 agenda for eliminating domestic oil and natural gas development? Because it is.
Tags
Environment
epa mccarthy
DECEMBER 4, 2014
Congress Moves to Block EPA’s Land Grab
By Ron Arnold
Republican lawmakers are pushing hard to corral President Obama’s rogue Environmental Protection Agency with stringent bills and a blunt warning against finalizing its most dangerous land grab ever, the pending redefinition of“Waters of the United
Tags
Environment
NOVEMBER 20, 2014
For Once, a Court Sided With People Rather Than ‘Threatened’ Rodents
By Ron Arnold
For the first time, a federal court has struck down a regulation under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 for exceeding the government’s constitutional power.
Tags
Environment
private property
NOVEMBER 14, 2014
Proposed Water Rule Could Put ‘Property Rights of Every American Entirely at the Mercy’ of EPA
By Ron Arnold
It seems incredible, but a single missing word could turn a water law into a government land grab so horrendous even a U.S.
Tags
OCTOBER 16, 2014
Environmentalists Halt Obama Administration Plan to Cut Trees in Alaska
By Ron Arnold
A family-owned timber firm that operates the last significant sawmill in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest has won a momentous U.S. Forest Service contract: the Big Thorne Project, which will allow the harvest of nearly 150 million board feet of wood.
Tags
Environment
heartland_climate_conference_1
JULY 15, 2014
Heartland Institute Conference Shows the Growing Power of Climate Realism
By Ron Arnold
Heartland Institute's Ninth International Conference on Climate Change, with its 64 speakers from 12 countries, marked a turning point in the climate wars between alarmists and skeptics: A lot more first-timers than dogged veterans showed up for the...
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omg daily signal 3/22
LI
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ron-arnold-51a1669?trk=org-employees
Ron Arnold
Executive Vice President at Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
Bellevue, Washington, United States 500+ connections
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
University of Washington
Websites
About
Ron Arnold (1937- ) has written more than 300 magazine articles, numerous book chapters, and is the author of ten books and editor of eleven books. He was born in Houston, Texas, adopted and raised by his grandparents, grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and began his work career as a technical writer and illustrator for Boeing in Seattle in 1961. He founded his own photojournalism company, Northwoods Studio, in 1971, freelancing for outdoor and natural resource industry magazines, where be became known as a friend of loggers, miners, oilmen, ranchers and others whose lives were impacted by environmentalist activism. Between 1976 and 1981, Arnold was a contributing editor of Western Conservation Journal and Logging Management Journal, where his 1979 magazine series, "The Environmental Battle", won the American Business Press 1980 Editorial Achievement Award at a New York City ceremony.
In 1981, Arnold was commissioned to write the authorized biography of President Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary, James G. Watt. His growing political expertise brought an invitation to direct the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise in 1984, where he remains Executive Vice President. He subsequently founded the Free Enterprise Press to give a voice to writers on politically incorrect themes and edited ten of the Press's books. In 1988 he founded the Wise Use Movement to advocate for property rights and resource workers. His own highly acclaimed books on politics and the environment were distributed by Merril Press, which became his publisher. His "EcoTerror" was included in the "100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century" Random House / Modern Library Reader's List. Ron's "Undue Influence" spurred a congressional hearing, which resulted in a House Committee investigation of environmental groups. He is listed in Who's Who in America, and currently writes a column for the Washington D.C. Daily Caller. He is editor of the ebook-only publishing project of CFACT.
Articles by Ron
Save Nature and People too!
By Ron Arnold
Aug 27, 2018
Return to the publishing world
By Ron Arnold
May 22, 2018
Experience
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
38 years
Executive Vice President
Mar 1984 - Present 38 years 1 month
Select and execute programs.
Executive Vice President
1984 - Present38 years
Program selection and management, contact with policymakers, opinion leaders and the general public, research on socioeconomic issues, writing books, white papers, and articles on free enterprise topics, expert comment on radio and television shows, speaking engagements to general and professional audiences, and contracting research projects for non-profit and corporate use.
The Daily Caller
Contributor
The Daily Caller
2015 - Present 7 years
Washington D.C. Metro Area
Commentary and analysis
CFACT
Editor
CFACT
2014 - Present 8 years
Editing and production management of Ebook publishing
The Daily Signal
Investigative Columnist
The Daily Signal
Sep 2014 - Present 7 years 7 months
Washington D.C. Metro Area
Writes on inside politics and government actions that affect individual liberties, free enterprise, and the economy.
Northwoods Studio
Owner
Northwoods Studio
Jan 1971 - Present 51 years 3 months
Bellevue, Washington
Freelance writer, photographer, film maker, and magazine contributing editor. Consultant to individuals, non-profit organizations, and large corporations on crisis management when under attack by corporate campaigns. Conceived and organized the Wise Use Movement in 1988, a social change network to challenge anti-property rights, anti-industry and anti-technology activists with direct action, mirroring the tactics of the Left. After 11 years of national conferences, Arnold considered the…
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The Heartland Institute
Research Associate
The Heartland Institute
Aug 2014 - Jan 201 2 years 6 months
Greater Chicago Area
Research issues, opposition, funding sources, government employees, non-profit executives, foundation donations and executives, federal employee financial records, scientists' government grants, corruption and collusion between non-profit agents and federal regulatory agencies, more.
Heartland Institute
Researcher
Heartland Institute
2014 - 2015 1 year
Research and writer profiles of organizations and people for Heartland's LeftExposed.org website.
Merril Press publishers
Editor
Merril Press publishers
1987 - 2014 27 years
Selecting titles, managing production and distribution
Regnery Gateway Publishers
Author, At the Eye of the Storm: James Watt and the Environmentalists
Regnery Gateway Publishers
1982 - 1982 less than a year
Washington, D.C.
Unique insider view of a major cabinet officer's tenure and the huge department he headed. Arnold was given official free access by James Watt to every executive in the department and to every file in the department that had not been sealed by order of the Solicitor. Such freedom given to a journalist is unparalleled in Washington politics.
Boeing Company Graphic
Computer Graphics Manager
Boeing Company
1958 - 197113 years
Seattle, Washington
This position was the culmination of a ten-year career beginning as a technical illustrator and writer, 4 years on the U.S. Supersonic Transport proposal, 2 years on military proposals, and finally in the company's early analog computer graphics devices such as the Illustromat, and pioneering point-plotting digital programs for civilian and military aerospace proposals and manufacturing. The field rapidly evolved into Computer Assisted Design and the modern explosion of digital image creation…
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Education
University of Washington
2 years transfer credits and alumni standing Business Administration
1958 - 1962
The University of Texas at Austin
Fine and Studio Arts Management
2 years 1954-1956, transferable credits to University of Washington
Publications
Cracking Big Green: To Save the World from the Save-the-Earth Money Machine
CFACT September 30, 2014
Sixteen shocking stories exposing the dark side of the environmental movement and what you can do to shine a light on it. A must read for those who love nature and people too.
Other authors
Paul Driessen
See publication
Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America
Merril Press January 1, 2010
They challenge environmentalism! Eco-group leaders polled by People magazine voted Ron and Alan the Number One "Enemy of the Earth" they'd like to see living next to a toxic waste dump. Everybody is talking about them. Time magazine said, ".in the wise-use movement, its ideologues are Ron Arnold, a former Sierra Clubber who did a philosophical backflip, and Alan Gottlieb, a longtime fundraiser for conservative causes." The New York Times wrote, " Mr. Gottlieb is the most successful fund-raiser…
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Other authors
Alan Gottlieb
See publication
EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature: The World of the Unabomber
Merril Press January 1, 2010
Conviction records of radical environmentalists! Detailed lists of sabotage against people and property! Names of the guilty groups-no punches pulled! EcoTerror author Ron Arnold has long challenged the assumptions and rhetoric of organized environmentalism. In this extensively documented book he now exposes an entire underground movement of violence to save nature. The Unabomer used radical environmental publications to target his last two victims, Thomas Mosser and Gil Murray. The vicious…
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See publicationExternal link
Ecology Wars: Enviromentalism as if People Matter
Merril Press January 1, 2010
This book is about ecology wars. Ecology wars are fought in legislatures, courtrooms and the hearts and minds of men and women. Keep one fact in mind while you read this book: Ecology isn't environmentalism. Nobody seems to notice, but ecology is a science. Environmentalism ia a social movement. an ecologist is a qualified professional in ecology, the science of how organisms interrelate with their environments. An environmentalist is anyone who claims to be one. This a crucial distinction to…
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Politically Correct Environment
Merril Press January 1, 2010
"Why did we write this little book of gritty gags, saber-tongued stories, irreverent illustartions and zany zingers? Well, the truth is, we just felt like it. But you have to admit that when any subject is elevated to a cultural fetish surrounded by politically correct bowing, scraping and general pussyfooting, it's ripe for parody. When spotted owls and kangaroo rats become more important than people, you know it's time to poke a few holes in self-satisfied, holier-than-thou, sanctimonious…
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Other authors
Alan Gottlieb
Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy
Merril Press November 30, 2007
Stunning expose of today's left wing power and pressure groups, tracking the money that wealthy individuals and foundations use to manipulate their political strategy, and revealing the web of dangers they pose for America s free society, its energy future, and its political survival.
See publicationExternal link
Undue Influence: Wealthy Foundations, Grant Driven Environmental Groups, and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your Future
Merril Press October 1, 1999
The environmental movement has become a center of money, power and politics on a campaign of "rural cleansing"-purging America's natural resource workers. Loggers, miners, ranchers, and farmers are despised and disposable, all because of groups claiming to protect the environment. Grant-driven environmental groups have become the pawns of wealthy foundations bent on "progressive" social change. Foundation bosses design "environmental justice" projects and find-or create-groups to do their…
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See publication External link
The Wise Use Agenda The Citizen's Policy Guide to Environmental Resource Issues
Merril Press 1989
A task force report to the Bush Administration by the Wise Use Movement.
Other authors
Alan Gottlieb
See publication External link
Grand Prairie Years: A Biography of W.C. Perry
Dodd Mead Oct 1987
A vivid story about the early years of the vast Grand Prairie of Texas, its culture and development, as the background in which a poor farm boy struggled against class prejudice to get an education, and after years of dedication, won through to became a Dean of Baylor University. Arnold's evocation of Texas and Texana prompted a lyrical introduction by former Texas Governor John B. Connally, who was wounded in the shooting that assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
Other authors
Introduction by John B. Connally
See publicationExternal link
Organizations
Congress of Racial Equality
political advisor
Groups
U.S. Court of Federal Claims and Federal Circuit News & UpdatesU.S. Court of Federal Claims and Federal Circuit News & Updates Graphic
U.S. Court of Federal Claims and Federal Circuit News & Updates
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State Policy Network (1896918)State Policy Network (1896918) Graphic
State Policy Network (1896918)
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Engage Research
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Natural Gas NOW Natural Gas NOW Graphic
Natural Gas NOW
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Recommendations received
Click here to view Chuck Cushman’s profile
Chuck Cushman
“Ron has special skills at investigative reporting. He has a remarkable series of books helpful to landowners and Federal land users. He is especially skilled at reporting on the environmental groups and and the tactics they use to undermine business and communities. He has a terrific grasp of the political process and has usually been way ahead of his time analyzing the political combat taking place in Washington, DC.”
Click here to view J.J. Brown’s profile
J.J. Brown
“Senator Orrin Hatch was behind two laws that strengthened the hand of law enforcement to 1) track ecoterrorists and 2) put them in jail. As an aide advising the senator on the issue, I can say that Ron Arnold's work directly inspired and informed the policy formulation behind those laws. It's no stretch to say that due to Ron's work, ecoterrorists are in jail today who would otherwise be free. No American has done more to expose the radical side of the "green" movement for the conspiracy it is. Ron's regular opinion columns continue to shed light on the forces that would take away our freedoms.”
2 people have recommended Ron
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also no BA, plenty BS
Chuck Cushman
Exec. Dir. American Land Rights/Cushman Consulting
Battle Ground, Washington, United States500+ connections
Join to connect
Cushman Strategic Consulting
Cushman Strategic Consulting
Cal State Northridge
Cal State Northridge
Company Website
Company WebsiteExternal link
About
Political Activist, Public Policy Organizer, Political Consultant, Grassroots Organizer, Our job is to create an environment in the political process whereby enlightened reasoning can occur in Congress and the Administration. 1981 Reagan appointee to the National Park System Advisory Board. Provides grassroots political action services including mass e-mail, fax and mail alert campaigns to members and outside groups and individuals.
Specialties: Issue Identification, E-mail campaigns, Fax campaigns, Direct Mail on public policy issues, Online Advocacy, Grassroots organization, letter writing campaigns, event turnout, message development, issue identification, team building and large Internet and fax networking. Works to protect our members in farming, ranching, private land ownership, Federal land use, mining, forestry, landowners threatened by FDIC Bank closures and foreclosures and those threatened by Federal land use regulations. www.landrights.org
Articles by Chuck
Stop The San Gabriel Mountains National Monument
By Chuck Cushman
Sep 1, 2014
Experience
Cushman Strategic Consulting Graphic
Owner
Cushman Strategic Consulting
Feb 2013 - Present9 years 2 months
Battle Ground, Washington
Cushman Strategic Consulting provides outside political consulting consistent with and compatible with to goals of American Land Rights Association and the League of Private Property Voters.
www.landrights.org ccushman@pacifier.com
League of Private Property Voters Graphic
Chairman, Coalition Coordinator
League of Private Property Voters
Jul 1989 - Present32 years 9 months
Publishes a Congressional Vote Scorecard on how Members of the US Senate and US House of Representatives vote on private property, environmental issues affecting private and the access to and use of Federal lands. Past publications available at www.landrights.org
American Land Rights Association
American Land Rights Association
44 years 3 months
Executive Director
Jan 1978 - Present44 years 3 months
Battle Ground, WA
Political Activist and Public Policy Consultant
Manage national private property and Federal land access organization active is environmental and Federal regulatory affairs.
Helps form and lead coalitions on public policy issues to compete in the political process in Congress nationally as well as on local and state issues. Active in every state. Networks with hundreds of other organizations who have the same general goals. Helps organize and guide local and regional groups to help…
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Executive Director
Jan 1978 - Present44 years 3 months
PO Box 400 Battle Ground, WA 98604
American Land Rights Association (ALRA) is a landowner rights group that protects farmers, ranchers, forestry, miners, forest cabin owners, park inholders, Federal land inholders, all private property owners, family recreation advocates and Federal land users.
ALRA is the Coordinator for the The League of Private Property Voters that publishes a Congressional Scorecard on how Congress votes on private property, Federal land and environmental issues. It has over 600 member organizations.
Mutual Of NewYork Graphic
Insurance Executive
Mutual Of NewYork
Jul 1972 - Jul 19775 years 1 month
For the better part of 15 years I was an insurance executive in the LA and Beverly Hills areas. During that time I was a Member of the Million Dollar Round Table for 13 years and qualified for the Hall of Fame with both Mutual of New York, and before that, Mutual Benefit Life. I led Mutual Benefit Life in number the people insured in the country for five years.
Mutual Benefit Life Graphic
Life Insurance Agent
Mutual Benefit Life
Jun 1963 - Jun 19729 years 1 month
I was an insurance executive. I led the US in number of people insured for Mutual Benefit Life for five years.
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Jared J. Brown (JJ) [VOLUNTARILY?]
left nearly two decades of policymaking on Capitol Hill to help others more effectively petition their government.
For more than 18 years, JJ was one of Senator Orrin G. Hatch’s most prolific policy advisors, drafting countless ideas into bills and ushering dozens of bills into law through at least seven Senate Committees and their House counterparts.
JJ has a depth of experience at every level of the Congressional process, including staffing the Chairman for committee hearings and markups, maneuvering bills and amendments through floor consideration, and actively negotiating details of major proposals at the Conference Committee stage. He also helped to promote policy approaches with the Executive Branch, including meetings at the White House and in the West Wing.
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his database http://www.undueinfluence.com/guide.htm
pretty extensive, attack on sourcewatch (mirror/crypto)
http://www.undueinfluence.com/sourcewatch.htm
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https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/08/zinke-blamed-environmental-terrorists-for-wildfires-heres-the-crazy-backstory-that-led-to-that/
grist
From California to British Columbia, the West is burning up. While fire experts are clear that climate change is a major factor in making wildfires more frequent and more intense, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke can’t seem to make up his mind about its role. Instead, he has blamed an unusual boogeyman for the fires: environmental terrorists.
“We have been held hostage by these environmental terrorist groups that have not allowed public access—that refuse to allow [the] harvest of timber,” he told Breitbart earlier this month. The underlying cause of catastrophic blazes, he said, is the “fuel load” of dead and dying timber in our forests. Whoa there, Zinke!
Fire experts do say that there’s more fuel in Western forests than there used to be, thanks to decades of aggressive fire suppression—and, well, because the warmer weather has been drying everything up.
Understanding Zinke’s bizarre claim about environmental terrorists requires a short history lesson. The concept came from one of the environmental movement’s biggest foes: libertarian activist Ron Arnold, who once told theNew York Times that he wanted to “destroy environmentalists.”
Arnold coined the term “ecoterrorism” in 1983 article and later published the book Eco-terror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, which attempted to link the environmental movement with the Unabomber. Arnold used “ecoterrorism” to refer to groups like Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, and Earth First! that sometimes engaged in property crimes, like vandalism and tree spiking, to combat environmental degradation and animal rights abuses.
Experts who have studied the phenomenon say “ecoterrorism” is not an appropriate term.
“In my research, I found that 90 to 95 percent of all direct actions, or crimes if you will, perpetrated by these groups do not fall anywhere close to the term ‘terrorism,'” says Donald Liddick, author of Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements.
A 2013 study that surveyed the acceptance of “ecoterrorism” found that “there is no documented evidence of harm coming to humans as a result of actions by radical environmentalists.” The authors suggest that terms like “obstruction,” “vandalism,” and “sabotage” more accurately described actions labeled as “ecoterrorism.”
Tree spiking, the widely feared practice of boobytrapping trees with metal rods, resulted in only one serious injury. Tree-spiking groups gave ample warning of their actions—they didn’t want the trees to be cut down, after all.
Liddick points out that Arnold had political motivations when he coined the phrase. Arnold is a policy advisor to the climate-denying think tank The Heartland Institute and the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from ExxonMobil and the ultra-conservative Mercer Family Foundation.
The term “ecoterrorism” picked up steam through the ’80s and ’90s, and began to appear in the prosecution of environmental and animal activists. Things took a turn for the weird in 2004: The FBI’s top official in charge of domestic terrorism, John Lewis, named ecoterrorism and the animal rights movement “the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat,” over far-right extremism, the KKK, and anti-abortion groups. (Arnold, it turns out, had asked the FBI to take a closer look at “ecoterrorists” in 2002.) At the time of the FBI’s declaration, no one had been killed in any attacks by these groups, according to CNN.
While accusations of “ecoterrorism” have fallen in recent years, the label has been used against activists at Standing Rock, the valve turners, and other pipeline opponents. Zinke’s use of the term didn’t surprise Seymour.“To call something terrorism when it doesn’t actually entail a loss of human life is problematic, to say the least,” says Nicole Seymour, assistant professor of English at California State University, Fullerton.
“It’s kind of those boogeymen that the Trump administration and similar folks have been trying to implant in our imagination—these concepts made up to create public panic,” Seymour says.
Seymour sees Zinke’s use of “environmental terrorism” as a sound bite that casts blame off of climate change and onto environmentalists.
Liddick has a different perspective. “Knowing politics as I know politics, I think it’s about lumbering the Sierra,” he says. “Some of the corporate interests want to get the Sierra Nevada softwood and hardwood.”
On Thursday, the day after I spoke with Liddick, the Trump administration announced plans to fight wildfires with more logging and controlled burns on federal land. The timber industry has long used fire prevention as an excuse to clear forests.
So Zinke’s comments didn’t come out of nowhere. But how is all this connected to ecoterrorists? It all goes back to our old libertarian pal Ron Arnold. In addition to coining “ecoterrorism,” he was also the leading force behind the “Wise Use” movement—an anti-environmentalist approach to managing federal lands that emphasizes extraction. Its agenda, spelled out by Arnold in 1988, includes drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, opening all public lands to mining and oil exploration, and clear-cutting old growth in national forests — partly for wildfire prevention, of course. In other words, this tenuous link between ecoterrorism and logging is 20 years old.
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JANUARY 8, 2016
Rancher Rebels: the Rise of the Wise-Use Movement
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR - JAMES RIDGEWAY
Out in the high desert of Nevada’s basin and range country, down roads with names like the Extraterrestrial Highway that run off into the sky, and where the hardscrabble rancher and the miner still call the shots, a full-scale insurrection was born.
You drive through this sagebrush landscape for miles and never see another car. Then, suddenly, you come across a man sitting by the side of the road, staring off into the distance of a bombing test range, watching for the latest incarnation of the Stealth bomber or maybe a UFO. This is Edward Abbey country, home to loners and drifters, people on the lam, desert anarchists.
In the corner of a Tonopah coffee shop, called the Station, next door to the incessant cacophony of a casino, where old ladies play the slots and men gather in clouds of ambient smoke around the roulette wheels, sat Wayne Hage, a top icon of the Sagebrush Rebels. Three years after his death in 2006, Hage remains a heroic figure for Western traditionalists in their fight against the evil doers in Washington and the environmentalist menace.
Here at the Station House, Hage sat, day after day, drinking bottomless cups of bitter cowboy coffee and looking out the window at the rusting remnants of mining derricks strewn across the town. Trucks thundered past, and in the sky, the odd Japanese tourist teetered precariously with his camera from a hot air balloon that carried him past the wonders of the old mining world, being celebrated at the annual Jim Baker Days, a weeklong drunkfest in honor of the miner who, the story goes, discovered Tonopah’s silver load when his mule kicked at him and dislodged some rocks that glistened in the sun.
Wayne Hage was the man to see if you really wanted to know what motivated the Wise Use Movement’s battle against environmentalists and the federal government. Hage was reluctant to meet on this blistering day in early June. He said he’d been hammered by the press too often, especially by the liberal press with an ax to grind against the Wise Users.
The Wise Use Movement consists of more than a thousand local organizations across the country, representing roughly three million people—people who fear the infringement of their property rights, mostly by what they see as oppressive federal government regulations. These are Palin people– rural, gun-packing Christians.
Some of these groups are simply out for money: they want the federal government to pay them considerable sums in exchange for changing traditional uses of their property that have run afoul of federal laws or even in exchange for cutbacks in the commercial use of public lands or resources. Custom and culture, they call it.
Other Wise Use groups have congealed as a political force to demand unrestricted access to federal lands, whether it be to log, run cattle, or for less than environmentally friendly recreational pursuits, such as off-road motorcycling or snowmobiling.
Corporate America has also invested heavily in certain factions of the Wise Use movement, using them as a grassroots stalking horse in their efforts to the preserve the archaic system of laws and regulations that allow them heavily subsidized entry to the natural wealth of the public domain. With the active help of Republicans in congress and a weak, conflict-averse executive branch , the big transnationals are intensifying their efforts to exploit the land, notably through the revival of gold mining and wide-spread oil and gas drilling.
The federal lands are at the center of a growing political struggle over the concept of property rights. Making up one-third of the nation, the public domain is by federal agencies, such as the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, and encompasses what remains of the nation’s valuable minerals, old growth forests, native grasslands and the extremely valuable oil and gas reserves—from the Rocky Mountain Front to the outer continental shelf.
Although shown as a lush green on road maps, much of this territory has been grotesquely transformed over the last half century by big companies into kind of industrial wasteland, consisting of atomic and other bombing ranges, ammo dumps, military and energy facilities, strip mines, clearcuts, dammed, dredged and scoured rivers, and leaching mounds of cyanide. Still, though victim to decades of abuse and neglect, the public lands also hold the last remnants of wild America, its salmon and trout, elk, grizzlies, spotted owls and wolves, its ancient forests, deserts and mountains—the American wilderness.
The Wise Use movement has created a profile of its enemy. They see themselves as being engaged in a high-stakes chess game with the elite legions of the environmental movement, who are covertly carrying out a sinister master plan, a vast socialist experiment to depopulate the rural West. As evidence they point to the Wildlands Project and to quotes from various greens calling for a 50 percent reduction in North America’s population by the year 2100. The Wise Use movement often suggests that the real goal of the environmental movement is to clear rural Westerners off the land, so the West can be turned into an “eco-theme park” for the pleasures of vacationing suburbanites.
In order to advance their socialist agenda, the Wise Users argue, environmental infiltrated the federal government. Under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the thinking goes, embedded key leaders into powerful positions inside the EPA, Interior and Agriculture Departments, and then, acting through their positions on government regulatory bodies, the environmentalists have set out to first reduce and then eliminate all grazing and logging on public lands and sharly curtail mining by driving up the cost of doing business.
Furthermore, Wayne Hage argued, through the Endangered Species Act, environmentalists have covertly turned fights over such seemingly innocent creatures as the coho salmon, northern spotted owl and gray wolf into national symbols of a broad land use planning instrument, a kind of bureaucratic club wielded against rural landowners.
Occupying a ranking position on the Wise Use movement’s enemies list is former Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who initiated the National Biological Survey in 1993—known in the ominous parlance of the Wise Use movement as the NBS. “The NBS is fascist, man, it’s socialist,” proclaimed Chuck Cushman, head of the American Land Rights Association, based in Battle Ground, Washington. “These guys map your property with infrared satellite photos, looking for plants, you know, then they can actually come on your property without your permission. If they find one of those plants, you know you’re screwed worse than if they found dope.”
But, of course, in the minds of many of these Sagebrush populists, the real menace lies not with the environmentalists, but with the political and financial powers that prop them up. It is the big East Coast foundations who now provide the principle financing of the big green organizations that are pulling the strings. And who is behind these foundations? The Rockefellers, the Pews, the Mellons and other titanic American families made rich through the Standard Oil trust and the like. Through their securities portfolios, naturally, these foundations are interlocked with the multinational corporations that run the world, and who eye the public estate as a source of cheap wealth when times get hard. And thus it is, according to Hage and his followers, that the small rancher in the Interior West is driven off the land by Forest Service and BLM rangers who are nothing more or less than federal agents of the Rockefellers.
“It’s not some deep dark conspiracy,” Hage told us in 1994. “The information is out there for anyone to see. Most people don’t pay attention to economics. And when they do, they say, ‘My god, it’s one of those conspiracy theories.’ No, it isn’t. It’s just the record. So you have the environmental movement as a stalking-horse, used to carry out the transfer of property rights of individuals over to the hands of government and multinational corporations, which serve the interest of the old nobility under the monarchists. And look at who owns these damn gold mines out here in Nevada … foreign corporations.”
In 1991, Hage’s cattle were impounded and sold off by Forest Service agents after the rancher blatantly overgrazed his allotment on the Toiyabe National Forest in central Nevada. Hage promptly closed down his cattle operation and filed a $24 million suit against the Forest Service in federal claims court The suit, which became a cause celebre for the property rights movement, alleged that the seizure amounted to a “taking” of his property rights.
Hage wrote a manifesto titled Storm Over Rangelands, which presented his historical overview of the political economic of the western United States. Hage and his book have become part of a carefully crafted legend that occupies center stage in the Wise Use movement.
According to Hage’s interpretation of western history, the public lands were always meant to be sold off to private ownership—and even though they never were, the actual ownership at the end of the 20th century has become a mélange of various tangled interests, both public and private: the so-called split estate. In fact, Hage argued, there’s no such thing as “public” lands. Of course, that didn’t stope the government from expropriating them, nationalizing the lands over and over again.
As an example of this kind of thought lurking in the shadows of American history, Hage pointed to the career of Carl Schurz, Interior Secretary under President Rutherford B. Hayes. Hage wrote in Storm Over Rangelands that “Schurz’s efforts to prevent the establishment of private property rights on the public lands may have sprung from his socialist background. Schurz was a controversial German immigrant who had fought along with Karl Marx in the Revolution of 1848, came to America, was elected senator from Missouri and supported the radical Republican’s reconstruction plans.”
So, argued Hage, with the nation deeply in debt after the Civil War, the European banking houses, led by the Rothschilds, conspired with the federal government to use the western lands as collateral against repayment of the war debt. The government reneged on the Spanish land grants and sent the cavalry out to kill off the Indians, who had real and justifiable land claims, to clear away any obstacles to this loan repayment scheme. The European financial interests joined forces with the big East Coast families to build the railroads, control the new towns and farms and, through the American Cattle Trust, turn the livestock business into a huge monopoly.
It was, after all, that great hero of environmentalism, geologist Clarence King, explorer of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the father of the Smithsonian Institution and Geological Survey, the very father of federal science, who secretly sent his geology students from Ivy League schools to rustle cattle for his own profit on the western plains during summer vacation, abetting his huge cattle operation.
As time went on, according to Hage’s history, western lands were set aside through the conservation movement, starting with Yellowstone National Park, then Yosemite. These shrines to conservation were, according to Hageian theory, part of a vast project of “nationalization,” the equivalent, Hage wrote, of the “crown lands” in England.
Hage also contemptuously cites how the Taylor Grazing Act, which organized and regulated public land grazing during the 1930s, “created the collateral base for funding of Roosevelt’s New Deal.” According to Hage similar expansions of federal authority over western lands coincided with the Vietnam War (Wilderness Act).
Hage was one of the leaders of a group called Stewards of the Range, headquartered in Boise, Idaho, and founded by Hage’s attorney Mark Pollot, a former assistant secretary of the Interior under James Watt during the early Reagan years. During his tenure at Interior, Pollot authored Executive Order 12630, which required the federal government to attest that all federal agencies compensated landowners if federal regulations or actions infringed on property rights. Pollot’s group, Stewards of the Range, became a legal battering ram in the ranchers’ running resistance against federal authority, backing, for example, Cliff Gardner’s willful trespass of his cattle on lands of the Humboldt National Forest in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada.
* * *
A thousand miles north in the posh Seattle suburb of Bellevue, Washington, are the officesof the group that published Hage’s manifesto: the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. The group is run by Ron Arnold, the man who coined the term “eco-terrorism,” and his business partner Alan Gottlieb. Together they served as the field managers and media packagers for the property rights movement.
Arnold was a former draftsman for Boeing, a public relations man for different companies, a writer and film-maker, while Gottlieb made his money (lots of it, too) from direct mail operations for Republican candidates, and most significantly, from gun groups, including the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Bear Arms. Gottlieb also published a magazine called Women and Guns.
The Wise Use movement is a significant popular grouping. “There are 1200 to 1500 groups we can identify,” said Arnold. “Few of these groups ever got any real money from big corporations. Neither are they especially aligned with small business. In fact, probably a third of our members are housewives.” Altogether, Arnold and Gottlieb estimated that there are as many as three million people on their mailing list.
Much of the Wise Use movement has a strong, though peculiar, libertarian bent. “There’s a strain that runs through it that is upset with government interfering in their lives,” said Gottlieb. “Not just libertarian or conservative, but an awful lot of people who are to the left of center and they are very upset with the government telling them what to do.”
These people are the proto-tea-baggers, a strange mix of populists, anarchists and libertarians. “It’s a diverse collective,” Arnold said. “For example, I’m pro-abortion and Alan is not. I’m for legalization of marijuana. We never got into immigration. We did try to see if there was a bridge between the Wise Use groups and the gun movement. But, no. Wise Use people pretty much support gun right. But it doesn’t work the other way around. Gun rights people don’t do much for the property rights movement. And that’s the part that pisses me off.”
Even though the Wise Use movement may attract people form diverse political and ideological heritages, it was also lustily embraced (and some might say co-opted) by Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey’s anti-government revolution of the 1990s. Today the Wise Use movement nestles among the rightwing organizations and tendencies of the post-Bush Republican party on Capitol Hill and in statehouses across the south and the mountain West. But it can be an uneasy alliance.
It is a world that Ron Arnold knows very well. During the early 1980s, Arnold was brought in by Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation to write a glowing authorized biography of James Watt, then viewed by the media and most of America as a kind of neo-fascist, born again lunatic from Wyoming.
Watt, of course, was the messiah of the Sagebrush Rebellion, the precursor of the Wise Use movement, which helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House. Once installed Reagan began talking about privatization of public lands and Watt soon had people thinking he would sell them off to the highest bidder.
But, according to Arnold, shortly after Watt took over at Interior, he told the more radical factions of the Sagebrush Rebels (folks like Wayne Hage) to knock it off. Privatization was scrapped,” Arnold recalled, “because Watt and the others discovered that you can’t sell off what you don’t own. If you try to auction off pieces of ‘public’ property, you can’t do it because the ownership is split. There are so many stratifications you could never figure out who really owned what. So notions of ownership looked more and more like a commons than a capital asset.”
Among many in the Wise Use movement, however, there is a deeper feeling of betrayal associated with Watt’s abbreviated tenure, a belief that Watt came to be entranced by the corridors of power, that he was seduced by the sense of control he had over the public lands. As an example of this, hard core rebels like Hage pointed to the “good neighbor policy,” developed by Watt, which allowed the governors of the western states to work with the Interior Department in developing policy for federal lands, a gutless retreat from the core principles of private property rights.
The administration of George W. Bush also proved to be a disappointment to the aspirations of the Wise Use ultras. While giving lip service to the Wise Users, his Interior Department, headed by Watt protegé Gale Norton, rapidly began cutting one sweatheart deal after another with the big oil and gas companies and mining operations and the property rights agenda stalled once again on the doorstep of power.
* * *
Until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the Wise Use movement was building a great deal of political momentum. Then suddenly it had to backpedal furiously to get away from both the militia and county supremacy movements, which threatened to drag them onto the dangerous edges of the anarchist right.
Political investigators, such as Tarso Ramos and David Helvarg, linked some elements of the Wise Use movement to both the racist Posse Commitatus and the militias. Ramos and Helvarg highlighted the role some of the Wise User leaders have played in the National Federal Lands Conference, headquartered in Bountiful, Utah. Ron Arnold, for example, once served on the board of advisors of the Conference and Wayne Hage served as its former president. The Conference was a leading force behind the county supremacy movement in the West.
More to the point, the Conference enthusiastically endorsed the creation of the militia movement in its October 1994 newsletter, urging interested individuals to get in touch with, among others, MOM, the Militia of Montana. The article argued that militias are needed to defend states from an overbearing federal government poised to enforce “seizure orders which can be enacted with the stroke of a bureaucratic pen,” plunging the nation into “an absolute, marital law mode of repression.”
Arnold bristled at questions about the Conference, saying he cut all association with it years ago. He had a right to be concerned. With this one article, investigators, journalists and opponents of the Wise Use movement have been able to tar them as little more than a collection of pistol-packing whackos, aligned with the most paranoid and dangerous elements of the far right.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/08/rancher-rebels-the-rise-of-the-wise-use-movement/
A version of this article was published by the Village Voice.
Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch and author of Born Under a Bad Sky. James Ridgeway is a journalist living in Washington, DC.
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lobbywatch (note eur version of WU ==LM)
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise - CDFE
The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE) has been at the very heart of the backlash against the environmental movement. Although it has not had an especial focus on the GM debate, the aggressive PR tactics that CDFE has promoted, as a means of attacking and seeking to discredit those raising environmental concerns, have had an enormous influence.
CDFE was founded in 1976 by its President Alan Merril Gottlieb, a nuclear engineering graduate. In 1984 Gottlieb was joined by the man who became CDFE's Executive Vice President, Ron Arnold. Arnold has also been a consultant for Dow Chemical, as well as Head of the Washington State chapter of the American Freedom Coalition, the political arm of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (1989-91). Alan Gottlieb also connects to the American Freedom Coalition which has also shared offices with CDFE. (Profile: Ron Arnold/The Wise Use Movement/Merchant of Fear)
In 1991 Arnold told the New York Times, 'We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along.' CDFE's previous main focus had been opposing gun controls with Gottlieb establishing two pro-gun foundations. According to the New York Times, Gottlieb shifted the Center's focus when he realized the fundraising potential of opposing environmentalism, 'For conservative fundraisers like Mr. Gottlieb, the enemies were Senator Edward M. Kennedy and the threat of gun control. But now Mr. Gottlieb has found a better target. "For us" said Mr. Gottlieb... "the environmental movement has become the perfect bogeyman."' (Profile)
A year before Arnold joined CDFE, he had written a report for Reason magazine on EcoTerrorism. Lyndon LaRouche, the American Marxist leader turned far right anti-semite, had been one of the first people to use the term 'terrorist' in relation to environmentalists. As early as 1977 LaRouche's supporters had tried to halt a peaceful demonstration against a nuclear power plant in New Hampshire by contacting the police and claiming that acts of violence were being planned. A subsequent FBI memorandum stated the information had been 'fabricated' by LaRouchians. (LaRouche and Wise Use)
LaRouche's tactic of creating friction with environmentalists by painting them as violent and dangerous, as well as his terrorist terminology, were picked up by Arnold, who has been called the 'Father of the Wise Use Movement'. That movement was launched in 1988 by Gottlieb and Arnold. The Wise Use Agenda was published by CDFE the following year. Among the organisations attending or supporting the 1988 conference that set the Agenda were DuPont, Exxon, the National Rifle Association,Consumer Alert and the Moonie-linked American Freedom Coalition. CDFE's advisors have included Richard Ichord of the American Freedom Coalition, Barbara Keating of Consumer Alert, and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. (Disinfopedia )
The aim of Wise Use was to counter the environmental movement with a broad-ranging, loose-knit coalition of interest groups, including industry-funded front groups and 'grassroots groups', often organised by PR consultants on behalf of corporations or trade associations.
Gottlieb, who describes himself as 'the premiere anti-communist, free-enterprise, laissez-faire capitalist' and who has spent time in prison for tax-evasion, has had a long history of direct mail fundraising. Gottlieb and his wife own Merril Mail Marketing, a direct mail company. Gottlieb has claimed that CDFE mails more than 20 million items a year (The Wise Use Movement). Fear, hate, and revenge 'are the oldest tricks in the direct mail handbook', according to Arnold, who has also said, 'Facts don't really matter. In politics, perception is reality.' (Profile: Ron Arnold/Anti-environmentalism)
Gottlieb and Arnold paint environmentalists as self-serving communists or Nazis who seek to broaden the power of big government, impose restraints on individual liberty, and destroy civilization. Arnold, who has described himself as the 'Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution', has openly stated that his aim is 'to destroy the enviro...
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http://www.sciencecorruption.com/ATN165/00476.html
Ron Arnold
Arnold is considered to be the 'father of the Wise Use movement' and a leading anti-environmentalist, with a no-holds-barred approach to the manipulation of democracy. He is the master of inflammatory rhetoric who lays claim to having invented terms like "eco-terrorist" and "rural-cleansing."
In a May 30, 1993 interview with CNN, he described the role of a Wise User as akin to a warrior wielding a sword. "And that sword has two purposes: to carve out a niche for your agenda, to reshape the American law in your image; and, kill the bastards."
Six-gun totting cowboy of the wild-West from 1950s John Wayne movies has clearly been a strong influence on Ron Arnold , and on many supporters of the Wise Use movement
Academics Ralph Maughan and Douglas Nilsona write that Wise Use is a "desperate effort to defend the hegemony of the cultural and economic values of the agricultural and extractive industries of the rural West", and have "argued that the Wise Use agenda stemmed from an ideology that combined laissez-faire capitalism with cultural characteristics of an imagined Old West."
"Environmentalism is a new paganism that worships trees and sacrifices people."
Ron Arnold
Some critics of the Wise Use movement claim that the strong rhetoric used has deepened divisions between opposing interest groups, and has created a climate that has led to an increase in violence and threats of violence against environmental groups and public employees.
"Many observers noted that Wise Use activity in some areas overlapped heavily with the 1990s formation and growth of militias, self-styled volunteer paramilitary organizations presciently committed to their own version of homeland security."
The movement is characterised by the strong rhetoric and threats of phyical violence, and it is this that has brought Ron Arnold to the forefront of the anti-environmental movement.
See
An excellent biography on Sourcewatch.
Also see substantial entry in Lobbywatch
And this Wapedia piece on the Wise Use movement,
See Commondreams
There is such a wealth of material on Ron Arnold that there is little point in us duplicating the material already available at these sites. Below are a few notes, mainly to provide taste of the longer documents.
1981: Arnold co-authored At the Eye of the Storm, a hagiography of the new Reagan Secretary of the Interior, James Watt which Watt himself helped to edit. In 1981 - 83, Watt's attempts to dismantle environmental regulation and open federal lands to logging and mining produced short-term gains for corporate interests; with the long term result public revulsion and the explosive growth of the environmentalism in the late 1980's.
1982: A year before Arnold joined CDFE, he had written a report for Reason magazine on 'EcoTerrorism'. Arnold now claims credit for coining the term 'eco-terrorism'. [It was used before by Lyndon LaRouche]
1983: [Reagan and Watt's choice for EPA Director] Anne Gorsuch enthusiastically gutted EPA's budget by sixty percent, crippling its ability to write regulations or enforce the law.
"I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."
James Watt
She appointed lobbyists fresh from their hitches with the paper, asbestos, chemical and oil companies to run each of the principal agency departments. Her chief counsel was an Exxon lawyer; her head of enforcement was from General Motors.
These attacks on the environment precipitated a public revolt. By 1983, more than a million Americans and all 125 American-Indian tribes had signed a petition demanding Watt's removal. After being forced out of office, Watt was indicted on twenty-five felony counts of influence-pedaling. Gorsuch and twenty-three of her cronies were forced to resign following a congressional investigation of sweetheart deals with polluters, including Coors. Her first deputy, Rita Lavelle, was jailed for perjury.
[Crimes Against Nature by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Published in the December 11, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone ]
1984: Arnold joined the Center for Defense of Free Enterprise's (CDFE's) as Executive Vice President (of the then two-man organisation). It was founded by Alan Gottlieb who held the position of President.
Arnold has also been a consultant to Dow Chemical and the timber industry. He was also the head of the Washington State chapter and a board member of the American Freedom Coalition which is the political arm of the Rev Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church (1989-91). The American Freedom Coalition shares offices and staff with CDFE.
1986: On a visit to New Zealand, sponsored by the Agricultural Chemical and Animal Remedies Manufacturers , Arnold described himself as the "Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution" and defended the use of herbicides which have been identified with the dioxin 2,4,5-T. He maintained that chemical manufacturers wanted to make sure their chemicals were used safely, and he warned New Zealanders that the US was experiencing a dangerous "upsurge in eco-terrorism."
The New Zealand Herald reported him as saying:
"We have had power stations blown up, bridges burned, electrical transmission towers collapsed, forest trails booby trapped with wired shotguns, attacks on forestry pesticide application crews, Forest Service officers shot to death and numerous other acts of violence in the name of the environment."
When he was later asked in a law court for his sources, he referred to a government report and claimed the incident occurred in Southern Oregon in relation to a marijuana patch. When pressed about the connection to environmentalism, he referred to an article he had written years earlier for a conservative magazine. This article had no connection with marijuana or to Southern Oregon.
1988: Lyndon LaRouche's tactic of creating friction with environmentalists by painting them as violent and dangerous, as well as his terrorist terminology, were picked up by Arnold, who has been called the 'Father of the Wise Use Movement'. That movement was launched in 1988 by Gottlieb and Arnold.
The Wise Use Agenda was published by CDFE the following year. Among the organisations attending or supporting the 1988 conference that set the Agenda were DuPont, Exxon, the National Rifle Association, Consumer Alert and the Moonie-linked American Freedom Coalition.
CDFE's advisors have included Richard Ichord of the American Freedom Coalition, Barbara Keating of Consumer Alert, and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. (Disinfopedia)
1988: The Wise Use movement is a loose-knit coalition of groups promoting the expansion of private property rights and the reduction of government regulation of publicly-held property [] to allow use of the water and air for the benefit of human beings. (eg ranching, oil and mineral extraction)
The Wise Use movement first gained prominence when Ron Arnold helped organize a Multiple Use Strategy Conference in Reno, Nevada in 1988. Arnold, a vice-president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE) and advocate of the "right to own property and use nature's resources for the benefit of mankind" helped produce a 25-point Wise Use Agenda.
1988: The Wise Use movement was launched by Gottlieb and Ron Arnold and the Wise Use Agenda was published by CDFE the following year.
Among the organisations attending or supporting the 1988 conference that set the Agenda were DuPont, Exxon , the National Rifle Association, Consumer Alert and the Moonie-linked American Freedom Coalition . CDFE's advisors have included Richard Ichord of the American Freedom Coalition, Barbara Keating of Consumer Alert, and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
[See also Disinfopedia ]
1991 Miscellaneous Arnold Quotes:
"We're going to destroy them, like they're trying to destroy you!"
"Environmentalism is a new paganism that worships trees and sacrifices people."
"Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality." [Comment made to a meeting of the New Mexico Wool Growers Association.] (Jon Krakauer, "Brown Fellas", Outside Magazine, December 1991)
" Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement We're mad as hell. We're not going to take it anymore. We're dead serious we're going to destroy them."
[Katherine Long, "His goal: Destroy environmentalism; Man and group prefer that people exploit the Earth," Seattle Times, 2 December 1991]
1991 Dec 2: Arnold told the New York Times,
'We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along.'
CDFE's previous main focus had been opposing gun controls with Gottlieb; they had establishied two pro-gun foundations.
According to the New York Times, Gottlieb shifted the Center's focus when he realized the fundraising potential of opposing environmentalism,
'For conservative fundraisers like Mr. Gottlieb, the enemies were Senator Edward M. Kennedy and the threat of gun control. But now Mr. Gottlieb has found a better target. "For us" said Mr. Gottlieb... "the environmental movement has become the perfect bogeyman."'
(Profile - not now available online)
1993 /E: Many of Arnold's books are published by CDFE's publishing arm, The Free Enterprise Press, which works in tandem with Gottlieb's for-profit Merril Press. The Free Enterprise Press was founded by Arnold in 1987 'to create an outlet for important free enterprise authors' - authors like Paul Driessen.
Paul Driessen is a Senior Fellow at CDFE as well as principal of Global-Comm Partners , a Northern Virginia public relations firm specializing in environmental public policy issues. He is also a senior fellow for the far right Atlas Economic Research Foundation .
In last week's column, Caruba an adjunct fellow at Ron Arnold's anti-environmentalist Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise CDFE) expressed anxiety over our SourceWatch article on his friend Michael Fumento The title of his column was "Smearing Conservative Writers"
1993 May 30: In a CNN interview Arnold described the role of a Wise User as akin to a warrior wielding a sword. " And that sword has two purposes: to carve out a niche for your agenda, to reshape the American law in your image; and, kill the bastards."
Books by Arnold
Ecology Wars (1987) is the 'bible' of the radical wise-use movement activists.
The Wise Use Agenda, (1989) Arnold & Gottleib's book, brought the "wise use" movement to the center of an anti-environmental, pro-industry nexus.
EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, the World of the Unabomber — traces the history of the radical environmental movement and attempts to link Unabomber Ted Kaczynski to mainstream environmentalists
Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America (1993) with Gottleib also.
2003 Dec 11: Robert Kennedy Article "Crimes Against Nature " in Rolling Stone
The indictments and resignations put a temporary damper on the Sagebrush Rebels, but they quickly regrouped as the "Wise Use" movement. Wise Use founder, the timber-industry flack Ron Arnold, said, "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely."
By 1994, Wise Use helped propel Newt Gingrich to the speaker's chair of the U.S. House of Representatives and turn his anti-environmental manifesto, "The Contract With America," into law.
Gingrich's chief of environmental policy was Rep. Tom DeLay, the one-time Houston exterminator who was determined to rid the world of pesky pesticide regulations and to promote a biblical worldview. He targeted the Endangered Species Act as the second-greatest threat to Texas after illegal aliens. He also wanted to legalize the deadly pesticide DDT, and he routinely referred to the EPA as "the Gestapo of government."
In January 1995, DeLay invited a group of 350 lobbyists representing some of America's biggest polluters to collaborate in drafting legislation to dismantle federal health, safety and environmental laws.
2004 Apr: The R/W Capital Research Center published an article by Executive Director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise , Ron Arnold railing at the prospect that Teresa Heinz Kerry could become the 'first lady' of the United States and still control her philanthropic foundations.
In recent years Arnold, a Wise Use Movement leader and a declared Republican, has found a niche for himself in having articles published in CRC's monthly newsletter, Foundation Watch.
Challenging the use by Heinz personally of two person Heinz Kerry trusts, Arnold argued that "exempt foundations have an obligation to be transparent and straightforward about their revenue and their grants."
One project funded by Heinz foundation money — the Clean Air Task Force — particularly irritated Arnold.... http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ron_Arnold
2004 April: The "Earth Day Information Center", a project of the National Center for Public Policy Research listed Arnold as one of eight "public policy experts" available for interviews for Earth Day saying:
"Arnold is an expert in eco-terrorism, the funding of the establishment environmental movement, the Endangered Species Act, federal land management and property rights."
2004 May: In Playboy, Arnold complained to writer Dean Kuipers that:
"There is a criminal section of the environmental movement, and it's probably getting money from the above-ground sector. Some of the environmental movement is simply anti corporate; some of it is more ideological."
2004 July 7: Terrorist Tree Huggers: Ron Arnold, Father of the 'Wise Use' Movement, sets his Sights on 'Eco-Terrorists' by Bill Berkowitz.
Ron Arnold — the father of America's "wise use" movement — is back. And this time he's adding accusations of terrorism to his arsenal. Consider the following:
On June 8, the FBI distributed its weekly intelligence bulletin to some 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, warning that eco-terrorists were planning a "day of action and solidarity" that could involve violent actions in a number of U.S. cities.
At the recent BIO 2004 annual conference in San Francisco, Phil Celestini, supervisory special agent assigned to the FBI domestic terrorism operations unit, told attendees that they could be targets of attacks by eco-extremists despite the fact that "they don't conduct animal testing at their own facilities," the San Francisco Business Times reported.
And in early June, Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., introduced the "Ecoterrorism Act of 2004" which intends to "protect and promote public safety and interstate commerce."
All of these stories have Ron Arnold's fingerprints on them. With friends in the Bush administration, a recent Playboy magazine interview under his belt, a series of radio appearances and PowerPoint presentations at industry-association gatherings, and a new anti-terrorism consulting contract, Arnold is back riding high in the anti-environmentalism saddle.
Since 9/11, Arnold, the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise , has been energetically and enthusiastically revving up his anti-environmental gospel with a new twist to his message: Environmental activists not only are working to stifle America's economic growth, but they are a breeding ground for terrorism in the homeland.
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arnold coined term eco terror:
We want to destroy environmentalists by taking their money and their members. . . . No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along.[1]Facts don't matter, in politics, perception is reality.
http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html
Ron Arnold, Father of the Wise Use Movement and Creator of the Term
The term "eco-terrorist" was pioneered by a conservative anti-environmentalist named Ron Arnold, who helped convince government officials that members of groups like Earth First!, Earth Liberation Front, and Animal Liberation Front, were on par with Al Qaeda. Explaining the rise of the so-called "Green Scare," journalist Will Potter writes in his book Green is the New Red, that it was the result of "slowly merging the rhetoric of industry groups with that of politicians and law enforcement." Potter, himself a environmental activist, was once arrested for leaf letting and approached by the FBI to be an informant.
On Thursday July 21st, 2011, Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with author Will Potter about his book, Green is the New Red.
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kinder and gentler side:
Massey’s “news release” doesn’t specify who those “many” are who consider Mike and his colleagues to be “domestic terrorists.” But even right-wing activist Ron Arnold, who’s written an entire book on “ecoterrorism,” asserts that “Roselle may be a terrible pain in the ass, but he’s no terrorist.” Writing shortly after Mike’s first trespassing arrest on Massey property, at Marfork’s Bee Tree strip mine site a year ago, Arnold scolded those who would “dilute” the meaning of the word terrorism by applying it to nonviolent protest.
“Face it,” he wrote, “what he did was civil disobedience, not terrorism.” ctrpunch
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Published on Wednesday, July 7, 2004 by Working For Change
Terrorist Tree Huggers
Ron Arnold, Father of the 'Wise Use' Movement, sets his Sights on 'Eco-Terrorists'
by Bill Berkowitz
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0707-12.htm
Ron Arnold -- the father of America's "wise use" movement -- is back. And this time he's adding accusations of terrorism to his arsenal. Consider the following:
On June 8, the FBI distributed its weekly intelligence bulletin to some 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, warning that eco-terrorists were planning a "day of action and solidarity" that could involve violent actions in a number of U.S. cities.
At the recent BIO 2004 annual conference in San Francisco, Phil Celestini, supervisory special agent assigned to the FBI domestic terrorism operations unit, told attendees that they could be targets of attacks by eco-extremists despite the fact that "they don't conduct animal testing at their own facilities," the San Francisco Business Times reported.
And in early June, Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., introduced the "Ecoterrorism Act of 2004" which intends to "protect and promote public safety and interstate commerce."
All of these stories have Ron Arnold's fingerprints on them. With friends in the Bush administration, a recent Playboy magazine interview under his belt, a series of radio appearances and PowerPoint presentations at industry-association gatherings, and a new anti-terrorism consulting contract, Arnold is back riding high in the anti-environmentalism saddle.
"Fifteen years after creating his 25 Point Wise-Use Agenda, an agenda prescribing unrestrained, unregulated and unconscionable abuse of the American commons, Ron Arnold is within striking distance of checking off every agenda item on his list," Scott Silver, executive director of Wild Wilderness, told me in a recent interview.
Arnold is no novice when it comes to leveling charges that environmentalists are eco-terrorists. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber point out in their new book Banana Republicans (Tarcher/Penguin, 2004) that Arnold "has been tossing around the term eco-terrorism for years, defining it as 'any crime committed in the name of saving nature,' which 'includes but it not limited to crimes officially designated as 'terrorism' by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' This definition... is so broad," Rampton and Stauber write, "that is even includes activities such as sit-ins and other forms of peaceful civil disobedience."
Since 9/11, Arnold, the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, has been energetically and enthusiastically revving up his anti-environmental gospel with a new twist to his message: Environmental activists not only are working to stifle America's economic growth, but they are a breeding ground for terrorism in the homeland.
The Bush administration's cutbacks in the enforcement of environmental regulations, coupled with its focus on the war against terrorism, have planted the seeds for Ron Arnold's makeover as an expert on ecoterrorism. "It comes as no surprise that in today's Orwellian world where perception has become reality, Arnold has been recast as the fearless protector of corporate interests while mainstream environmentalists are being portrayed as terrorists," Silver says.
Silver pointed out that Arnold's anti-environmental agenda is salted by his public relations expertise and the understanding that, as Arnold told Outside magazine in 1991, "Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality." The same year Arnold also told The New York Times : "We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along."
These days, Arnold maintains that a phalanx of liberal foundations is not only funding anti-growth and anti-labor environmental campaigns, but that the environmental movement has become fertile ground for budding ecoterrorists. While none of this is particularly new -- he's been plowing similar ground for more than two decades -- it resonates with the industry groups that support his work, as law enforcement officials struggle to keep on top of President Bush's permanent war against terrorism, and has helped him snare a consulting contract supported by government funds.
In the May 2004 issue of Playboy, Arnold told Dean Kuipers that: "There is a criminal section of the environmental movement, and it's probably getting money from the above-ground sector. Some of the environmental movement is simply anti corporate; some of it is more ideological." And in the May issue of Foundation Watch, a publication of the Washington, D.C.-based right-wing think tank Capital Research Center, Arnold's profile of the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts -- a leading donor to environmental groups -- concludes that Pew, which recently changed its legal status from "private foundation to public charity," is now be in a position to play "an even more active role in advocating sweeping policies to combat the alleged global warming threat."
A month earlier, in the same publication, Arnold took a close look at Teresa Heinz Kerry, the head of the Heinz Foundation and the wife of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Among other issues, Arnold looked at the "relationship between the foundation's charitable gifts to environmental groups and environmentalist supporters of the senator's presidential campaign" and what [that] might mean for a Kerry presidency."
Twelve years ago, Audubon magazine's Kate Callaghan pointed out that during the 20th century's first decade, Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, likely used the term, "wise use" when he "called conservation 'the wise use of resources.'" Eighty years later, Ron Arnold expropriated the phrase and turned it into a political movement. Using the term during a multiple use strategy conference in Reno, Nev., Arnold suggested that "wholesale mining, logging and grazing are possible while simultaneously preserving the land."
Arnold's 1989 book, The Wise Use Agenda , brought the "wise use" movement to the center of an anti-environmental, pro-industry nexus. A savvy corporate fundraiser and public relations spinmeister, he once proudly proclaimed himself as the "Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution."
Arnold's resume also includes his job as the executive vice president of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a pro-corporate group founded in 1976 by his longtime comrade, Alan Gottlieb. (Gottlieb is also credited with founding the anti-gun control Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.) According to the Center for Media and Democracy's Disinfopedia, CDFE claims to be "a non-partisan education and research organization which works on free enterprise studies, public policy research, book publishing, conferences, white papers and media outreach." CDFE's website asserts that it tracks "threats to free markets, property rights and limited government."
Over the years, CDFE, a tax-exempt educational organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Tax Code, has received support from a network of corporations, including Georgia Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, MacMillan Bloedel, Pacific Lumber, Exxon, DuPont and Boise Cascade.
In 2002, Arnold launched a campaign to convince the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program to take a close look at the Green Anarchy Tour 2002. He told the Conservative News Service (CNS) that the tour "presents probable cause for investigation. You do have people here recommending violence, murder, property damage, everything you can think of."
In November 2003, according to the organization's website, Arnold, the author of EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, the World of the Unabomber -- which traces the history of the radical environmental movement and attempts to link Unabomber Ted Kaczynski to mainstream environmentalists -- was "retained as expert consultant on ecoterrorism" for a University of Arkansas Terrorism Research Center study funded by a $343,885 grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ).
Arnold will work with Brent Smith, a professor of sociology and director of the Terrorism Research Center at the University of Arkansas, who is working on a project called "Pre-incident indicators of Terrorist Incidents: The Identification of Behavioral, Geographic and Temporal Patterns of Preparatory Conduct," an effort aimed at predicting future terrorist attacks.
His warnings may be paying off. In early June, Pork Alert, an online publication of Pork magazine, reported that Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., had introduced the Ecoterrorism Act of 2004. Nethercutt's legislation would "establish federal criminal penalties and civil remedies for violent, threatening, obstructive and destructive conduct that is intended to injure, intimidate or interfere with plant or animal enterprises. This bill would serve to protect livestock from tampering by ecoterrorists." The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration.
"From drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge to clear-cutting the Tongass National Forest, from opening all public lands to mining and energy production, to gutting the Wilderness Act, from amending and weakening the Endangered Species Act to turning America's national parks over to the Walt Disney Company, Ron Arnold's agenda is on a roll," Scott Silver pointed out. "All that stands in the way of Arnold and his ideologically extreme brethren are decades-worth of environmental laws and those who are dedicated to defending our public lands." For more please see the Bill Berkowitz archive.
Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column 'Conservative Watch' documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.
---
rfk2
Wise Use plus Xian Moonie (arnold head of Wa State Am Freedon Coalition
(moonie pol arm) 28 also Pat Rob CC, 1991 New Wolrd Order best seller ,
fed gov alien trying to wreck family and take guns. on gren see mike Lind
NY rev bks 2/2/95 env evil pagan preists; opened door of militia, racist
and other fringe to be anti green (?) r reed his #2, gave seminars to
corps on how electronic and grassroots to ctr green; ant-gr staple of C B
network 29 ind $ behind Xian 1st x, so its pols got elected 29 by 94 got
most ~ eco congress in hist, wise use helped gingrich revo (Contr w/ A, ~
grn) assist by consigiore sp delay, w/ "biblical worldview" 30 TD: DDT
as safe as aspirin", ~ESA; colunbine b/c teach evol
...
vio (could mean up to 138B$) 35 BUT John Ashcroft used sailor mongering act ~
Greenpeace for 1st x in 132 yrs (fines and probation 5 yrs) fed judge threw out
(!?)
JD gave ron arnold 325K to study eco-terror, JA says #1 terror threat krugman jn
22 nyt 2004
---
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
sw http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_the_Defense_of_Free_Enterprise
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ron_Arnold
Ron Arnold is the Executive Vice-President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE) from 1984 to present. He is considered the father of the Wise Use movement.
Contents
[hide]
1 Bio
2 Wise use movement
2.1 What's in a name?
2.2 Biography of James Watt
2.3 Ron Arnold & Alan Gottlieb
3 Interviews & quotes on 'eco-terrorism'
3.1 New York City Indymedia & Reason Magazine
3.2 New Zealand Herald
3.2.1 War Against the Greens
3.3 Portland Oregonian
3.4 Outside magazine
3.5 New York Times
3.6 Toronto Star
3.7 Boston Globe
3.8 CNN
3.9 Conservative News Service
3.10 Playboy magazine
4 Ron Arnold & "rural cleansing"
5 Ron Arnold takes aim at philanthropic foundations
5.1 Ron Arnold & Teresa Heinz Kerry
6 Ron Arnold & animal rights
7 Contact
8 Articles & sources
8.1 SourceWatch articles
8.2 References
8.3 External articles
8.4 External resources
8.4.1 Books & Publications by Ron Arnold
Bio
Ron Arnold was born in Houston, Texas and studied business administration at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington. After graduation, he worked as a technical writer for Boeing from 1961 to 1971; when he founded the Northwood Studio. In 1974 he began contributing to the Western Conservation Journal, and began his public opposition to environmentalism. Between 1978 and 1981, Mr. Arnold was a contributing editor of Logging Management Journal. His 1979 magazine series, "The Environmental Battle", was the winner of the American Business Press 1980 Editorial Achievement Award.
In 1981, he wrote the authorized biography of Interior Secretary James G. Watt, who served under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1983. In 1988, he was one of the catalysts for the founding conference of the Wise Use movement in Reno Nevada and published its policy wish-list, the "Wise-Use Agenda". The movement is comprised of a loose-knit coalition promoting expansion of private property rights and reduction of government regulation.[1]
Mr. Arnold is a former Dow Chemical consultant. He was also head of Washington State chapter of the American Freedom Coalition, the political arm of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church from 1989-91. [2]
Wise use movement
Since the late 1980's, CDFE has been at the center of the Wise Use Movement.
Alan Gottlieb, a former tax felon, [3] founded CDFE in 1974, along with two anti-gun control groups; the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and the Second Amendment Foundation. Other Gottlieb ventures include the Free Enterprise Press (book publisher), the American Press Syndicate and the American Broadcasting Network. CDFE's Free Enterprise Press has published several books by Ron Arnold, including Ecology Wars (1987) and Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, the World of the Unabomber (1997). [4]
In the last days of the 1992 presidential campaign, George H.W. Bush denounced "environmental extremists". At the heart of this imagined green conspiracy was the "Ozone Man", Senator Al Gore Jr., author of Earth in the Balance. Bush's attack on environmentalism failed to save his candidacy, but it was a high water mark for the wise use movement, a network of loosely allied right-wing, astroturf and corporate interest groups which attack environmentalism in order to promote unfettered resource exploitation. They are often funded by timber, mining, and chemical companies. In return, they loudly claim that the well-documented hole in the ozone layer doesn't exist; carcinogenic chemicals in the air and water don't harm anyone and trees won't grow properly without (government subsidized) clear cutting. Proponents were temporarily slowed by Bush's defeat and media exposure of the movement's founders' connections to Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church network. However, it quickly rebounded with relentless disinformation campaigns about the purpose and meaning of environmental laws in every state. According to wise users, environmentalists are pagans, eco-nazis and communists to be fought with shouts and threats. [5]
What's in a name?
The term was appropriated from the moderate conservationist tradition by Ron Arnold. In 1910, Gifford Pinchot, first head of the U.S. Forest Service, called for national forestry policies based on the wise use of America's trees and minerals. This triggered a simmering feud between Pinchot and Sierra Club founder John Muir; who wanted to the wilderness valued for its own sake, as the spiritual center of the world. The current U.S. system of combining resource extraction of national forests with wilderness areas managed for recreation, is a compromise to this debate.
Biography of James Watt
Ron Arnold's big career break coincided with the coming of the Reagan administration and his own rapid swing to the right. In 1981, he co-authored At the Eye of the Storm, a flattering biography of James Watt that the former Secretary of the Interior helped to edit. Mr. Watt's attempts to dismantle environmental regulation and open federal lands to logging and mining produced short-term gains for corporate interests; with the long term result public revulsion and the explosive growth of the environmentalism in the 1980's.
Ron Arnold & Alan Gottlieb
His movement building was also enhanced by joining forces with Alan Gottlieb; who seemed to possess a genius for dancing along the edge of legal business practices. He purchased the CDFE headquarters with money from two of his own non-profit foundations, then transferred the building title to his own name. He then charged his own foundations over $8,000 per month in rent.
Mr. Gottlieb also spent seven months in prison for tax evasion. [6]
Interviews & quotes on 'eco-terrorism'
New York City Indymedia & Reason Magazine
In a September of 2007 response to an on-line issue of NYC Indymedia, Mr. Arnold claimed credit for coining the term eco-terrorism in a 1982 Reason Magazine article. [7]
New Zealand Herald
In a 1986 visit to New Zealand, sponsored by the Agricultural Chemical and Animal Remedies Manufacturers, Arnold described himself as the "Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution" and defended the use of the carcinogenic chemical 2,4,5-T. He claimed that chemical manufacturers wanted to make sure their chemicals were used safely. [8]
Mr. Arnold warned New Zealanders that the U.S. was experiencing a dangerous "upsurge in eco-terrorism." According to an interview with the New Zealand Herald:
"We have had power stations blown up, bridges burned, electrical transmission towers collapsed, forest trails booby trapped with wired shotguns, attacks on forestry pesticide application crews, Forest Service officers shot to death and numerous other acts of violence in the name of the environment".[9]
War Against the Greens
In his book on the Wise Use movement, The War Against the Greens; David Helvarg reported that Arnold was subsequently cross examined on the claims he made in New Zealand, as part of an activists lawsuit against the government. According to the activists, they were being targeted as marijuana growers because of their anti-pesticide work; an industry strategy suggested by Ron Arnold. When asked in the court for his sources, he referred to a government report and claimed the incident occurred in Southern Oregon in relation to a marijuana patch. When pressed about the connection to someone involved in campaigning for the environment, he referred to an article he had written years earlier for a conservative magazine. Upon retrieval and examination, it was found that the article had no connection with marijuana or the incident. Mr. Arnold explained that the connection was the similarity between incidents like damage to logging machinery and ideological views of environmentalists who use marijuana. He eventually gave up attempting to connect environmentalists with the killing of a Forest Service official. [10]
Portland Oregonian
For a number of years, Mr. Arnold was a registered agent for the American Freedom Coalition, a political offshoot of Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The American Freedom Coalition takes credit for funding the first Wise Use conference in 1988. Aside from telling Outside he is willing to ignore facts to achieve his goals, Arnold proclaims at every opportunity that his mission is to destroy the environmental movement.
"We're mad as hell. We're dead serious. We're going to destroy them," he told the Portland Oregonian. [11]
Outside magazine
In 1991, Ron Arnold told Outside magazine that he chose the term because it was ambiguous and fit neatly in newspaper headlines. Such duplicitous and opportunistic tactics are a trademark of the movement:
"Facts don't really matter. In politics, perception is reality." [12], [13]
New York Times
According to Mr. Arnold in a December 1991 article in the New York Times by reporter Timothy Egan:
"We want to destroy environmentalists by taking away their money and their members." [14]
"We (CDFE) created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along."
While CDFE's IRS return states that Mr. Arnold works 20 hours a week without any compensation, Mr. Egan reported that in 1991 he charged $3,000 a day as a speaker or organizer of anti-environmental groups. For conservative fundraisers like Mr. Gottlieb, the enemies were Senator Edward M. Kennedy and gun control. However, he realized the potential financial rewards of opposing environmentalism:
"For us" said Mr. Gottlieb... "the environmental movement has become the perfect bogeyman." [15]
Toronto Star
It was a theme he re-stated within days to Toronto Star reporter Katherine Long:
"Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement ... We're mad as hell. We're not going to take it anymore. We're dead serious - we're going to destroy them," he said. "We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely ... and we want people to understand that is a noble goal."
He claimed that spotted owls weren't on the verge of extinction but preferred regrowth forests. He suspected the hole in the ozone layer had always existed:
"If chlorflourocarbons really destroy ozone, why isn't there a hole over chlorflourocarbon factories? As for the greenhouse effect, he was emphatic. "There isn't any such thing".[16]
Boston Globe
While he denies the reality of environmental problems, he does not aim to persuade the middle ground. Rather, he aims to mobilize those receptive to his polemical rhetoric which equates policy to wars. According to an January 1992 interview with the Boston Globe:
"We are sick to death of environmentalism and so we will destroy it. We will not allow our right to own property and use nature's resources for the benefit of mankind to be stripped from us by a bunch of eco-facists." [17]
CNN
While he often expressed his "fear" that someone will be hurt as a result of 'eco-terrorism', he doesn't shy away from inflammatory rhetoric. In a May 30, 1993 interview with CNN, he described the role of a wise user as akin to a warrior weilding a sword. "And that sword has two purposes: to carve out a niche for your agenda, to reshape the American law in your image; and, kill the bastards." When asked to describe how he would like to be thought of, he replied:
"People in industry, I'm going to do my best for you. Environmentalists, I'm coming to get you. ...We're out to kill the fuckers. We're simply trying to eliminate them. Our goal is to destroy environmentalism once and for all." [18]
Conservative News Service
When a small group, Green Anarchists, organized a tour in 2002, Arnold latched on to their support of people such as the imprisoned 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski as a 'political prisoner' to call for the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program to investigate the group. Arnold told the Conservative News Service (CNS) that the tour:
"presents probable cause for investigation. You do have people here recommending violence, murder, property damage, everything you can think of." [19]
The following year Mr. Arnold, long considered a fringe player, landed a role as an "expert consultant on ecoterrorism" to a University of Arkansas Terrorism Research Center project to study terrorism cases in the US. The project was funded to the tune of $343,885 by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). [20]
Playboy magazine
In a 2004 interview with Playboy, Mr. Arnold recounted key policies:
"Number one was educate the public about the use of natural resources. Immediately develop petroleum resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Cut down remaining old-growth forests on public lands and replace with new trees. Cut down 30,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest each year to promote economic forestry practices. Open all public lands, including national parks, to mining and oil drilling. Construct roads into all wilderness areas for motorized wheel chair use. Stop protecting endangered species, such as the California condor, that were in decline before man arrived. Force anyone who loses litigation against a development to pay for the increase in costs for completing the project, plus damages. But the idea of wise use has become embedded. It's no longer a list like that. [21]
In Arnold's view, the threat of 'eco-terrorism' warrants more far-reaching investigative powers for law enforcement agencies than were even allowed for under the Patriot Act. According to a 2004 interview with Playboy magazine:
"It's easy to throw rocks at industry, because everybody can think of a corporate abuse. But there are also problems with eco-terrorism, both in giving too much and not enough power to law enforcement. Under the Patriot Act the FBI can't keep a database of people suspected of being subversive or working with enviro-terrorists unless they've been convicted. Some nonprofits have assembled databases on ecoterror. The mink farmers have done it. We want to be able to make this information accessible to police. [22]
Ron Arnold & "rural cleansing"
More recently Arnold coined the term 'rural cleansing' in an attempt to starkly portray environmental movement campaigns as being only in the interests of urban elites. Arnold explained 'rural cleansing' as being:
"The deliberate use of environmental laws - by appeals, lawsuits and administrative actions - to remove all the resource workers from rural America. All of them. It's essentially an effort to dismantle rural America so that there no longer are loggers, miners, fishermen, ranchers or farmers, with the intent of "off shoring" these jobs and industries to other nations. [23]
Ron Arnold takes aim at philanthropic foundations
Where in earlier years Mr. Arnold worked on rallying the 'Wise Use' movement against Clinton administration environmental policies, more recently he has taken aim at foundations that fund environmental campaigns. He complains that as a result of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations against corporate foundations, 'self-dealing' corporations also fund environmental groups:
"That's why the wise-use movement gets almost nothing from industry, and why the total corporate donations received by the whole wise-use movement - all 3,000 or 4,000 grass-roots groups - is not as much as one environmental group gets in that same year."
Mr. Arnold's complaint is not that foundations funding is out of touch with the American public, but that they are in tune with them; depriving right wing groups of resources.
"It's also a result of the overall liberal cast of American society, which has thoroughly permeated many big foundations, so you find that $3 out of every $4 given by foundations go to left-leaning groups rather than to right-leaning groups."[24]
In his testimony before a U.S House of Representatives committee in February 2000, Arnold invoked Newt Gingrich's "iron triangle" analogy (originally coined to describe Congressional liberals helping advocacy groups gain federal funds) to portray the environmental movement as doing the bidding of foundations.
"The foundations direct their funds to the second leg of the triangle, environmental groups with insider access to the third leg, executive branch agencies. This powerful 'iron triangle' unfairly influences federal policy to devastate local economies and private property."[25]
Mr. Arnold is viewed favorable by other conservative think tanks as well. In April of 2004, the "Earth Day Information Center", a project of the National Center for Public Policy Research; listed Arnold as one of eight "public policy experts" available for interviews for Earth Day. According to the media alert:
"Arnold is an expert in eco-terrorism, the funding of the establishment environmental movement, the Endangered Species Act, federal land management and property rights." [26]
His last book attacked foundations funding environmental groups. For his next book, he stumped around energy industry conferences to tout 'Freezing in the Dark - The Green Energy Plan for Your Future'. In May of 2004, he addressed the GasMart 2004 conference in Denver. According to a media release prior to the conference:
"An elite group of foundations is creating hysteria in the general public over environmental issues and undermining development of the energy infrastructure".
According to the release, Arnold would advise participants that the energy industry was not doing enough to aggressively counter environmental groups:
"Industry is not doing anything but defense, and in football, the defensive team doesn't score any touchdowns. Anything you do that isn't aimed at putting these groups out of business is a total waste of time. You cannot fight this huge amount of money if you don't frontally attack," the media release stated.[27] At the actual conference Mr. Arnold was reported as stating that industry needed to "point the finger" at activist groups responsible for shutting down an gas and oil projects. Natural Gas Week reported Arnold warned companies against developing 'partnerships' with environment groups. "Instead, he said, the energy industry must learn to develop a corps of supporters, mobilize them when the time comes, and learn 'to fight when it comes to fight'." [28]
According to the December 2003 edition of Oil & Gas Investor, Mr. Arnold spoke to the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), warning them against foundation funding of environmental groups in the U.S. and overseas:
"You may say 'Thank God we're going overseas.' Well, you won't be alone," the magazine reported. Arnold warned that in Russia there are more than 90 environmental activist groups.
Arnold told the IPAA that its plans for a PR campaign to allow exploration in the Rockies wouldn't be easy.
"You are a day late and a dollar short. Who loves big corporations? You don't hug trees. You don't even kiss babies."
Mr. Arnold advised that it would need professional assistance if it was going to win in the Rockies:
"If you think you're going to do this with just your friends, count your friends. [29]
Ron Arnold & Teresa Heinz Kerry
See also Ron Arnold and Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Ron Arnold & animal rights
See also Conservatives target the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Contact
Phone: 425-454-9470 [30]
Articles & sources
SourceWatch articles
Alan Gottlieb
Astroturf
Conservatives target the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Criminalising civil disobedience
Disinformation
Earth Liberation Front
Eco-terrorism
Eco-terrorism hoaxes
Ecoterrorism Prevention Act of 2004
Environmentalism
Environmental activists who have been injured or killed
Earth Liberation Front
Global Warming
Intimidating democracy
Intimidating foundations
Intimidating public interest groups
RANamuck
Undue Influence
Wise Use
References
↑ Ron Arnold, Absolute Astronomy, accessed January 2009
↑ Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, Spin Profiles, accessed January 2010
↑ Jim Halpin, Paul de Armond Alan Gottlieb: The Merchant of Fear, Sweet Liberty, 1994, 1995
↑ Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, Spin Profiles, accessed January 2010
↑ William Kevin Burke The Wise Use Movement: Right-Wing Anti-Environmentalism, The Public Eye, 1993
↑ William Kevin Burke The Wise Use Movement: Right-Wing Anti-Environmentalism, The Public Eye, 1993
↑ The Birth of a Buzz-Word: Eco-Terrorism" (Ron Arnold response to article), Indymedia, September 2007
↑ 2,4,5-T comprised half of the chemical mixture found in the notorious Agent Orange, the other being 2,4,D Agent Orange and other chemicals, Digger History, accessed January 2010
↑ "'Green campaign just cover' says 'Hit man'", New Zealand Herald, March 19, 1986
↑ David Helvarg The War Against the Greens: The Wise-Use Movement, The New Right, and the Browning of America, pg, 407-8, May 2004, ISBN 978-1555663285
↑ William Kevin Burke The Wise Use Movement: Right-Wing Anti-Environmentalism, The Public Eye, 1993
↑ Outside Magazine, December 1991
↑ William Kevin Burke The Wise Use Movement: Right-Wing Anti-Environmentalism, The Public Eye, 1993
↑ Timothy Egan Fund Raisers Tap Anti- Environmentalism, New York Times, pg 2, December 19, 1991
↑ Timothy Egan Fund Raisers Tap Anti- Environmentalism, New York Times, pg 1, December 19, 1991
↑ Katherine Long, "A grinch who loathes green groups: our goal is to destroy the environmental movement' says affable Ron Arnold, champion of Wise Use'", Toronto Star, December 21, 1991
↑ New, militant antienvironmentalists fight to return nature to a back seat., Boston Globe, January 13, 1992
↑ David Helvarg The War Against the Greens: The Wise-Use Movement, The New Right, and the Browning of America, pg 7, May 2004, ISBN 978-1555663285
↑ Marc Morano Eco-Terror Expert Calls For Inquiry of Green Anarchists", CNSNews.com, July 18, 2002
↑ Ron Arnold named as ecoterrorism expert in major study: Researchers will examine planning and preparation of terrorist attacks", Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, 2003
↑ Dean Kuipers, "Guru of Wise Use: the spiritual father of the Bush Administration's environmental policies says we shouldnlt be timid about timber", The Playboy Forum", May 1, 2004.
↑ Dean Kuipers, "Guru of Wise Use: the spiritual father of the Bush Administration's environmental policies says we shouldnlt be timid about timber", The Playboy Forum", May 1, 2004.
↑ Sean Paige Arnold Pulls Back the Veil of 'Green' Tyranny, Insight on the News, October 16, 2000
↑ Sean Paige Arnold Pulls Back the Veil of 'Green' Tyranny, Insight on the News, October 16, 2000
↑ Ron Arnold, Ron Arnold Testimony: U. S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health", 106th Congress, 2nd session, February 15, 2000
↑ Earth Day Information Center: Free 'Earth Day Interview Locator Service' and Earth Day Fact Kit Available to Journalists: Experts Available for Earth Day 2004", U.S. Newswire, April 19, 2004
↑ 'Undue Influence' Author to Address GasMart 2004 audience - hosted by Natural Gas Intelligence", Media Release, Businesswire, March 23, 2004
↑ John A. Sullivan, "Strong Message Needed to Fight Greens' Anti-Industry Agenda", Natural Gas Week, May 21, 2004.
↑ Nissa Darbonne, "Oil industry launching anti-development counter-campaign", Oil & Gas Investor, Volume 23, No. 12; December, 2003, page 9. ISSN 07445881
↑ The Birth of a Buzz-Word: Eco-Terrorism" (Ron Arnold response to article), Indymedia, September 2007
External articles
Bill Berkowitz, "Terrorist Tree Huggers: Ron Arnold, Father of the 'Wise Use' Movement, sets his Sights on 'Eco-Terrorists'", TomPaine, June 25, 2004.
Special Alert: Post 9/11 Anti-Environmentalism Threatens Green Activism, Clear View, Volume 9 Number 1, January 23, 2002
External resources
Brian Glick, Abbie Smith War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do about It, South End Press, July 1999, ISBN 978-0896083493
...http://www.amazon.com/At-eye-storm-James-environmentalists/dp/0895266342" rel="nofollow">At the Eye of the Storm: James Watt and the Environmentalists, Regnery Gateway, 1982, ISBN 978-0895266347
Ron Arnold,"Undue Influence Wealthy Foundations, Grant-Driven Green Groups, and Zealous Bureaucrats That Control Your Future, Free Enterprise Press, October 1999.
Ron Arnold, "EcoTerror The Violent Agenda to Save Nature - The World of the Unabomber", Free Enterprise Press, April 1997
Ron Arnold, Alan Gottlieb, "Trashing the Economy How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America", Merril Press, 2nd edition, October 1998
Ron Arnold, "Ecology Wars Environmentalism as if People Mattered", Merril Press; Reissue edition, October 1998.
Politically Correct Environment, 1996
Battered Communities, 1998
Ron Arnold, "Tides Foundation's Activist Network exerts 'undue influence'", Foundation Watch, April 2000.
Ron Arnold "The Heinz foundations and the Kerry campaign: one has money, the other needs money", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, April 2004.
Ron Arnold, "The Pew Charitable Trusts: global warming power nexus", Foundation Watch, Capital Research Center, May 2004.
see also http://www.docstoc.com/docs/14352139/Global-Warming-Power-Nexus
Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ron_Arnold"
Categories: Front groups portal | Environment | United States | Global warming | Environmental fronts | Lobbyists | Industry-funded organizations
Ron Arnold Arnold is considered to be the 'father of the Wise Use movement' and a leading anti-environmentalist, with a no-holds-barred approach to the manipulation of democracy. He is the master of inflammatory rhetoric who lays claim to having invented terms like "eco-terrorist" and "rural-cleansing."
In a May 30, 1993 interview with CNN, he described the role of a Wise User as akin to a warrior wielding a sword. "And that sword has two purposes: to carve out a niche for your agenda, to reshape the American law in your image; and, kill the bastards."
Six-gun totting cowboy of the wild-West from 1950s John Wayne movies has clearly been a strong influence on Ron Arnold , and on many supporters of the Wise Use movement
Academics Ralph Maughan and Douglas Nilsona write that Wise Use is a "desperate effort to defend the hegemony of the cultural and economic values of the agricultural and extractive industries of the rural West", and have "argued that the Wise Use agenda stemmed from an ideology that combined laissez-faire capitalism with cultural characteristics of an imagined Old West."...Environmentalism is a new paganism that worships trees and sacrifices people."Ron ArnoldSome critics of the Wise Use movement claim that the strong rhetoric used has deepened divisions between opposing interest groups, and has created a climate that has led to an increase in violence and threats of violence against environmental groups and public employees.
"Many observers noted that Wise Use activity in some areas overlapped heavily with the 1990s formation and growth of militias, self-styled volunteer paramilitary organizations presciently committed to their own version of homeland security."
The movement is characterised by the strong rhetoric and threats of phyical violence, and it is this that has brought Ron Arnold to the forefront of the anti-environmental movement.
See
An excellent biography on
See Commondreams
There is such a wealth of material on Ron Arnold that there is little point in us duplicating the material already available at these sites. Below are a few notes, mainly to provide taste of the longer documents.
1981: Arnold co-authored At the Eye of the Storm, a hagiography of the new Reagan Secretary of the Interior, James Watt which Watt himself helped to edit. In 1981 - 83, Watt's attempts to dismantle environmental regulation and open federal lands to logging and mining produced short-term gains for corporate interests; with the long term result public revulsion and the explosive growth of the environmentalism in the late 1980's.
1982: A year before Arnold joined CDFE, he had written a report for Reason magazine on 'EcoTerrorism'. Arnold now claims credit for coining the term 'eco-terrorism'. [It was used before by Lyndon LaRouche]
1983: [Reagan and Watt's choice for EPA Director] Anne Gorsuch enthusiastically gutted EPA's budget by sixty percent, crippling its ability to write regulations or enforce the law..."I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations."James WattShe appointed lobbyists fresh from their hitches with the paper, asbestos, chemical and oil companies to run each of the principal agency departments. Her chief counsel was an Exxon lawyer; her head of enforcement was from General Motors.
These attacks on the environment precipitated a public revolt. By 1983, more than a million Americans and all 125 American-Indian tribes had signed a petition demanding Watt's removal. After being forced out of office, Watt was indicted on twenty-five felony counts of influence-pedaling. Gorsuch and twenty-three of her cronies were forced to resign following a congressional investigation of sweetheart deals with polluters, including Coors. Her first deputy, Rita Lavelle, was jailed for perjury.
[Crimes Against Nature by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Published in the December 11, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone ]
1984: Arnold joined the Center for Defense of Free Enterprise's (CDFE's) as Executive Vice President (of the then two-man organisation). It was founded by Alan Gottlieb who held the position of President.
Arnold has also been a consultant to Dow Chemical and the timber industry. He was also the head of the Washington State chapter and a board member of the American Freedom Coalition which is the political arm of the Rev Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church(1989-91). The American Freedom Coalition shares offices and staff with CDFE.
1986: On a visit to New Zealand, sponsored by the Agricultural Chemical and Animal Remedies Manufacturers , Arnold described himself as the "Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution" and defended the use of herbicides which have been identified with the dioxin 2,4,5-T. He maintained that chemical manufacturers wanted to make sure their chemicals were used safely, and he warned New Zealanders that the US was experiencing a dangerous"upsurge in eco-terrorism."
The New Zealand Herald reported him as saying:
"We have had power stations blown up, bridges burned, electrical transmission towers collapsed, forest trails booby trapped with wired shotguns, attacks on forestry pesticide application crews, Forest Service officers shot to death and numerous other acts of violence in the name of the environment."
When he was later asked in a law court for his sources, he referred to a government report and claimed the incident occurred in Southern Oregon in relation to a marijuana patch. When pressed about the connection to environmentalism, he referred to an article he had written years earlier for a conservative magazine. This article had no connection with marijuana or to Southern Oregon.
1988: Lyndon LaRouche's tactic of creating friction with environmentalists by painting them as violent and dangerous, as well as his terrorist terminology, were picked up by Arnold, who has been called the 'Father of the Wise Use Movement'. That movement was launched in 1988 by Gottlieb and Arnold.
The Wise Use Agenda was published by CDFE the following year. Among the organisations attending or supporting the 1988 conference that set the Agenda were DuPont, Exxon, the National Rifle Association, Consumer Alert and the Moonie-linked American Freedom Coalition.
CDFE's advisors have included Richard Ichord of the American Freedom Coalition, Barbara Keating of Consumer Alert, and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. (Disinfopedia)
1988: The Wise Use movement is a loose-knit coalition of groups promoting the expansion of private property rights and the reduction of government regulation of publicly-held property [] to allow use of the water and air for the benefit of human beings. (eg ranching, oil and mineral extraction)
The Wise Use movement first gained prominence when Ron Arnold helped organize a Multiple Use Strategy Conference in Reno, Nevada in 1988. Arnold, a vice-president of theCenter for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE) and advocate of the "right to own property and use nature's resources for the benefit of mankind" helped produce a 25-point Wise Use Agenda.
1988: The Wise Use movement was launched by Gottlieb and Ron Arnold and the Wise Use Agenda was published by CDFE the following year.
Among the organisations attending or supporting the 1988 conference that set the Agenda were DuPont, Exxon , the National Rifle Association, Consumer Alert and the Moonie-linked American Freedom Coalition . CDFE's advisors have included Richard Ichord of the American Freedom Coalition, Barbara Keating of Consumer Alert, and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
[See also Disinfopedia ]
1991 Miscellaneous Arnold Quotes:
"We're going to destroy them, like they're trying to destroy you!"
"Environmentalism is a new paganism that worships trees and sacrifices people."
"Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality."[Comment made to a meeting of the New Mexico Wool Growers Association.] (Jon Krakauer, "Brown Fellas", Outside Magazine, December 1991)
" Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement We're mad as hell. We're not going to take it anymore. We're dead serious we're going to destroy them."
[Katherine Long, "His goal: Destroy environmentalism; Man and group prefer that people exploit the Earth," Seattle Times, 2 December 1991]
1991 Dec 2: Arnold told the New York Times,
'We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along.'
CDFE's previous main focus had been opposing gun controls with Gottlieb; they had establishied two pro-gun foundations.
According to the New York Times, Gottlieb shifted the Center's focus when he realized the fundraising potential of opposing environmentalism,
'For conservative fundraisers like Mr. Gottlieb, the enemies were Senator Edward M. Kennedy and the threat of gun control. But now Mr. Gottlieb has found a better target. "For us" said Mr. Gottlieb... "the environmental movement has become the perfect bogeyman."'
(Profile - not now available online)
1993 /E: Many of Arnold's books are published by CDFE's publishing arm, The Free Enterprise Press, which works in tandem with Gottlieb's for-profit Merril Press. The Free Enterprise Press was founded by Arnold in 1987 'to create an outlet for important free enterprise authors' - authors like Paul Driessen.
Paul Driessen is a Senior Fellow at CDFE as well as principal of Global-Comm Partners , a Northern Virginia public relations firm specializing in environmental public policy issues. He is also a senior fellow for the far right Atlas Economic Research Foundation .
In last week's column, Caruba an adjunct fellow at Ron Arnold's anti-environmentalist Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise CDFE) expressed anxiety over our SourceWatch article on his friend Michael Fumento The title of his column was "Smearing Conservative Writers"
1993 May 30: In a CNN interview Arnold described the role of a Wise User as akin to a warrior wielding a sword. " And that sword has two purposes: to carve out a niche for your agenda, to reshape the American law in your image; and, kill the bastards."
Books by Arnold
Ecology Wars (1987) is the 'bible' of the radical wise-use movement activists.
The Wise Use Agenda, (1989) Arnold & Gottleib's book, brought the "wise use" movement to the center of an anti-environmental, pro-industry nexus.
EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature, the World of the Unabomber — traces the history of the radical environmental movement and attempts to link Unabomber Ted Kaczynski to mainstream environmentalists
Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America(1993) with Gottleib also.
2003 Dec 11: Robert Kennedy Article "Crimes Against Nature " in Rolling Stone
The indictments and resignations put a temporary damper on the Sagebrush Rebels, but they quickly regrouped as the "Wise Use" movement. Wise Use founder, the timber-industry flack Ron Arnold, said, "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely."
By 1994, Wise Use helped propel Newt Gingrich to the speaker's chair of the U.S. House of Representatives and turn his anti-environmental manifesto, "The Contract With America," into law.
Gingrich's chief of environmental policy was Rep. Tom DeLay, the one-time Houston exterminator who was determined to rid the world of pesky pesticide regulations and to promote a biblical worldview. He targeted the Endangered Species Act as the second-greatest threat to Texas after illegal aliens. He also wanted to legalize the deadly pesticide DDT, and he routinely referred to the EPA as "the Gestapo of government."
In January 1995, DeLay invited a group of 350 lobbyists representing some of America's biggest polluters to collaborate in drafting legislation to dismantle federal health, safety and environmental laws.
2004 Apr: The R/W Capital Research Center published an article by Executive Director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise , Ron Arnold railing at the prospect that Teresa Heinz Kerry could become the 'first lady' of the United States and still control her philanthropic foundations.
In recent years Arnold, a Wise Use Movement leader and a declared Republican, has found a niche for himself in having articles published in CRC's monthly newsletter, Foundation Watch.
Challenging the use by Heinz personally of two person Heinz Kerry trusts, Arnold argued that "exempt foundations have an obligation to be transparent and straightforward about their revenue and their grants."
One project funded by Heinz foundation money — the Clean Air Task Force — particularly irritated Arnold.... http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ron_Arnold
2004 April: The "Earth Day Information Center", a project of the National Center for Public Policy Research listed Arnold as one of eight "public policy experts" available for interviews for Earth Day saying:
"Arnold is an expert in eco-terrorism, the funding of the establishment environmental movement, the Endangered Species Act, federal land management and property rights."
2004 May: In Playboy, Arnold complained to writer Dean Kuipers that:
"There is a criminal section of the environmental movement, and it's probably getting money from the above-ground sector. Some of the environmental movement is simply anti corporate; some of it is more ideological."
2004 July 7: Terrorist Tree Huggers: Ron Arnold, Father of the 'Wise Use' Movement, sets his Sights on 'Eco-Terrorists' by Bill Berkowitz.
Ron Arnold — the father of America's "wise use" movement — is back. And this time he's adding accusations of terrorism to his arsenal. Consider the following:
On June 8, the FBI distributed its weekly intelligence bulletin to some 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, warning that eco-terrorists were planning a "day of action and solidarity" that could involve violent actions in a number of U.S. cities.
At the recent BIO 2004 annual conference in San Francisco, Phil Celestini, supervisory special agent assigned to the FBI domestic terrorism operations unit, told attendees that they could be targets of attacks by eco-extremists despite the fact that "they don't conduct animal testing at their own facilities," the San Francisco Business Times reported.
And in early June, Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., introduced the"Ecoterrorism Act of 2004" which intends to "protect and promote public safety and interstate commerce."
All of these stories have Ron Arnold's fingerprints on them. With friends in the Bush administration, a recent Playboy magazine interview under his belt, a series of radio appearances and PowerPoint presentations at industry-association gatherings, and a new anti-terrorism consulting contract, Arnold is back riding high in the anti-environmentalism saddle.
Since 9/11, Arnold, the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise , has been energetically and enthusiastically revving up his anti-environmental gospel with a new twist to his message: Environmental activists not only are working to stifle America's economic growth, but they are a breeding ground for terrorism in the homeland.
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Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
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The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE) claims to be "a non-partisan education and research organization which works on free enterprise studies, public policy research, book publishing, conferences, white papers, and media outreach." According to their website, they track "threats to free markets, property rights and limited government." CDFE sponsors seminars, conferences and appears on radio programs focusing on the "threats" posed by environmentalism. It also sells training videos, books and distributes newsletters teaching supporters how to "fight back" against environmentalists.
Executive Vice-President Ron Arnold has frequently testified before Congress on topics such as the threats of eco-terrorism. A term he claimed credit for coining in a 1982 Reason Magazine article. [1] He is considered the father of the Wise Use movement.
CDFE maintains Undue Influence and its Green Tracking Library, an online database "to make the money, power, politics, and undue influence of the environmental movement transparent." [2]
Contents
[hide]
1 History
2 CDFE activities
2.1 CDFE & animal rights
3 Interviews & quotes
4 Beyond the 'Wise Use' movement
5 Funding & finances
5.1 Partial funding history
6 Personnel
6.1 Advisors
7 Contact
8 Articles & sources
8.1 Sourcewatch articles
8.2 References
8.3 External articles
8.4 External resources
History
Since the late 1980's, CDFE has been at the center of the Wise Use movement. It was originally founded by Alan Gottlieb on July 4, 1976, "the bicentennial of the American Revolution" as CDFE points out in its statement of purpose:
"The Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise's programs include research, publication, conferences, consulting, training and media awareness on threats to free enterprise. We operate a book publishing division, the Free Enterprise Press, to disseminate important investigative and analytical research, and have a variety of programs to help individuals and businesses face free enterprise-related crises.
"CDFE has received national recognition for its programs and services, particularly in tracking the money of non-profit groups opposing free enterprise. Although we receive no government funding, we are dedicated to providing information and assistance to those struggling with government interference and civilian opposition to free enterprise." [3]
CDFE activities
At CDFE's website you can also read the:
"rave reviews of Paul Driessen's new book Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death that exposes the green racist agenda to withhold malaria control and life-saving GMO crop from Africa and other developing nations. A horrifying account of green genocide."
They fail to mention that the supposed ban on DDT in some third world countries, used to control malaria, is a myth. [4] [5] They also don't mention the known and significant hazards presented by GMO foods and that most countries, including African countries, have banned them. See also Food and Drug Administration.
In February 2004, Mr. Driessen appeared before the House Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, as a senior fellow representing three think tanks; the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and CDFE. He also claimed that the Economic Human Rights Project, which he was a director of, "was an initiative of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, in cooperation with the Congress of Racial Equality. According to Mr. Driessan:
"Reflecting its belief that 'Economic rights are human rights' the growing coalition is dedicated to correcting prevalent environmental myths and misguided policies that help perpetuate poverty, misery, disease and early death in developing countries. [6]
CDFE & animal rights
See also Conservatives target the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Interviews & quotes
According to CDFE Executive VP, Ron Arnold in a December 1991 article in the New York Times by reporter Timothy Egan:
"We want to destroy environmentalists by taking away their money and their members." [7]
"We (CDFE) created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along."
While CDFE's IRS return states that Mr. Arnold works 20 hours a week without any compensation, Mr. Egan reported that in 1991 he charged $3,000 a day as a speaker or organizer of anti-environmental groups. For conservative fundraisers like Mr. Gottlieb, the enemies were Senator Edward M. Kennedy and gun control. However, he realized the potential financial rewards of opposing environmentalism:
"For us" said Mr. Gottlieb... "the environmental movement has become the perfect bogeyman." [8]
In June 1993, Mr. Arnold told Washington Times reporter Valerie Richardson that "since the Democrats got into power, our income has doubled." [9]
CDFE and Ron Arnold, are considered by many to be the founding and principle strategy-setting forces in the grassroots anti-environmental movement. In his essay "Overcoming Ideology" he depicts environmentalists as "eco-ideologists" whose stand
"against promoting economic growth, technological progress and a market economy" stands in sharp contrast to the wise use movement's actual stewardship of the land, the water and the air." Environmentalists are portrayed as "eco-fetishists" whose moral self-righteousness is "about the people, but not by or for them."
The CDFE headline declares this essay is "regarded by many as the seminal expression of the ideas that have evolved into the richly diverse wise use movement."[10]
The Environmental Working Group, in a Wise Use group analysis, says it is ironic that the CDFE website purports to represent a credible, rational opposition to environmentalism, given Arnold's role:
"in developing the radical, polarized and extreme early version of 'wise use' that vilified environmentalism and environmental activists."
In a May 30, 1993 interview with CNN, he described the role of a wise user as akin to a warrior weilding a sword. "And that sword has two purposes: to carve out a niche for your agenda, to reshape the American law in your image; and, kill the bastards." [11]
Then again, Arnold has also been quoted as having said that "Facts don't matter. In politics, perception is reality." [12], , [13]
In June 2004, the CDFE posted a commentary article from a Canadian newspaper objecting to environmental campaigns against the seal hunting to its website. The accompanying note summarized what CDFE thought of environmental groups.
"Now it's time to turn the tables and outlaw or de-fund the anti-extraction groups that practice this barbaric brand of deliberate destruction of resource-extracting cultures." [14]
Beyond the 'Wise Use' movement
For all the hype about its plans, CDFE gives the impression of a floundering organisation. The conservative Capital Research Center, which has published several articles by Arnold since 2000 states in its Green Watch database that CDFE "publishes The Private Sector, a quarterly, Advise and Consent, a periodical, and the Wise Use Conservation Memo, a quarterly". However, there is no mention of these publications on the CDFE website.
In its 2002 IRS return CDFE lists only two achievements for the organisation in the preceding year. The first was the creation of "a publicly accessible computer database tracking activities and donations to anti-industry groups." It is a project that emulates what other conservative - and bigger budget -groups are doing. In a 2002 outline, CDFE had planned to:
"Expand existing publicly accessible computer database to track activities and donations of animal rights groups."[15]
Its other achievement for 2001 was the publishing of "an important new book by a widely respected crisis managment executive to aid businesses faced with organized opposition." CDFE also planned to take advantage of the focus on terrorism in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorists. As an objective for 2002, CDFE planned to:
"Create an outreach program increasing public awareness of eco-terrorism and how the public can help law enforcement stop anti-business crime."
The CDFE website features categories such as PETA-probe, eco-imperialism, and the latest headlines from Fox News. CDFE also hosts two increasingly dated websites:
Undue Influence, "tracking the environmental movement's money, power, and harm."
RANamuck, an anti-Rainforest Action Network site.
While CDFE have made a name for themselves championing anti-environmentalism, their advocacy efforts occasionally take a bizarre twist. In July 2003 Arnold issued a media release calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to prevent a takeover bid of computer software company PeopleSoft by Oracle.
The month before Arnold had dispatched a media release to business editors stating that it had developed a list of major "scandals in the making" and was launching "Scandal-Scan because of recent corporate scandals". In what reads like a pitch seeking support from the business community, CDFE announced that it was "taking action before they can become 'corporate disasters.'" The problems identified weren't corporate accounting standards, but issues such as the activities of the Nature Conservancy and re-insurance contracts. Topping the list was "greenmail". According to the media release:
"Are corporations being coerced into paying off activist organizations in exchange for their no longer accusing them of 'social irresponsibility' or environmental damage? Are such non-profit activist groups subject to Federal Trade Commission rules on anti-competitive acts and collusions with for-profit firms to unfairly manipulate markets and damage competing businesses?" [16], [17], [18]
Funding & finances
CDFE is a tax-exempt, educational organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the United States Tax Code. Employer Identification Number (EIN) is 91-0973976. CDFE states that it is a "non-partisan" non-profit that "accepts no government grants". [19]
The Capital Research Center, states in its Green Watch database that CDFE has a "membership" of 75,000. However, this seems overstated given the CDFE finances of recent years have been been modest.
Partial funding history
Coors Foundation
Georgia Pacific
Louisiana-Pacific
MacMillan Bloedel
Pacific Lumber
Exxon
DuPont, Agricultural Products Division
Boise Cascade
Seneca Sawmills
Sun Studs
Burkland Lumber
F.M. Kirby Foundation
In 2003 ExxonMobil donated $40,000 to CDFE for "global climate change issues". [20]
This contribution represents 47% of the reported "gifts, grants, and contributions received" by the CDFE.
Month Total revenue Total expenses Net assets
1999 26,812 26,947 35,299
2000 64,114 42,048 54,879
2001 142,246 98,881 99,247
2002 76,899 100,702 74,846
[21]
Personnel
Ron Arnold, Executive Vice President
Alan Gottlieb, founder
Samuel M. Slom, Vice President
Merrill R. Jacobs, Secretary
Julianne Versnel, Treasurer
Advisors
Ted Stevens - (R-AK) Senator
Dick Cheney - Former VP & Secretary of Defense
Richard Ichord - American Freedom Coalition
Barbara Keating - Consumer Alert
William Simon - Heritage Foundation
Contact
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise 12500 NE 10th Place
Bellevue, WA 98005
Phone: 206.455.5038
Web address: http://www.cdfe.org/
Articles & sources
Sourcewatch articles
Alan Gottlieb
Astroturf
Biotechnology
Conservatives target the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
Criminalising civil disobedience
Disinformation
Intimidating public interest groups
Intimidating democracy
Intimidating foundations
Earth Liberation Front
Eco-Imperialism
Eco-terrorism
Eco-terrorism hoaxes
Ecoterrorism Prevention Act of 2004
Environmentalism
Environmental activists who have been injured or killed
Earth Liberation Front
Global Warming
Ron Arnold
Wise Use
References
↑ The Birth of a Buzz-Word: Eco-Terrorism" (Ron Arnold response to article), Indymedia, September 2007
↑ Website Accessed April, 2010
↑ Nonprofit Report: Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, Guidestar, accessed February 2010
↑ Jim Norton The DDT Ban Myth, Infopollution
↑ Jim Norton More DDT myths, Infopollution, accessed February 2010
↑ Paul Driessen Statement of Paul K. Driessen, APR, Esq. Director, Economic Human Rights Project to House Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources", February 4, 2004
↑ Timothy Egan Fund Raisers Tap Anti- Environmentalism, New York Times, pg 2, December 19, 1991
↑ Timothy Egan Fund Raisers Tap Anti- Environmentalism, New York Times, pg 1, December 19, 1991
↑ Valerie Richardson, "'Wise Use' drive fights environmentalists: grass-roots groups spread across West to defend human, business interests", Washington Times, June 20, 1993
↑ Ron Arnold Overcoming Ideology,
↑ David Helvarg The War Against the Greens: The Wise-Use Movement, The New Right, and the Browning of America, pg 7, May 2004, ISBN 978-1555663285
↑ Outside magazine, December, 1991
↑ William Kevin Burke The Wise Use Movement: Right-Wing Anti-Environmentalism, The Public Eye, 1993
↑ Canadian seal hunt protests: Eco-colonialism or legitimate concern?", CDFE, June 8, 2004
↑ Nonprofit Report: Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, Guidestar, accessed February 2010
↑ 'Foundation Calls on Justice Department to Stop Oracle's Bid to Buy PeopleSoft, CDFE Media Release, U.S. Newswire, July 8, 2003
↑ Ron Arnold, "In Antitrust We Trust", Investor's Business Daily, July 15, 2003
↑ Ron Arnold, "Oracle's bluff", letter to the editor, Chicago Tribune, July 16, 2003
↑ Nonprofit Report: Center for Defense of Free Enterprise, Guidestar, accessed February 2010
↑ Corporate Giving Report, ExxonMobil, 2003
↑ IRS 990 Tax Return, CDFE, 2006
External articles
Bill Berkowitz, "Terrorist Tree Huggers: Ron Arnold, Father of the 'Wise Use' Movement, sets his Sights on 'Eco-Terrorists'", TomPaine, June 25, 2004.
Special Alert: Post 9/11 Anti-Environmentalism Threatens Green Activism, Clear View, Volume 9 Number 1, January 23, 2002
Ron Arnold, Ron Arnold Testimony: U. S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health", 106th Congress, 2nd session, February 15, 2000
Jim Halpin, Paul de Armond Alan Gottlieb: The Merchant of Fear, Sweet Liberty, 1994, 1995
External resources
Brian Glick, Abbie Smith , South End Press, July 1999, ISBN 978-0896083493...http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_the_Defense_of_Free_Enterprise" http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_the_Defense_of_Free_Enterprise Front groups portal | Consumer fronts | Global warming fronts | Environment | United States | Global warming | Environmental fronts | Lobbyists | Industry-funded organizations
...Ron Arnold and Teresa Heinz Kerry
In April 2004, the Capital Research Center published an article by Executive Director of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Ron Arnold railing at the prospect that Teresa Heinz Kerry could become the 'first lady' of the United States and still control her philanthropic foundations.
In recent years Arnold, a Wise Use Movement leader and a declared Republican, has found a niche for himself in having articles published in CRC's monthly newsletter, Foundation Watch, published by the conservative (CRC).
"The United States has never had a wealthy spouse overshadow its President," Arnold melodramatically warned. "But Teresa Heinz Kerry leads and funds philanthropic foundations, and she is on the board of directors of highly political nonprofit groups that receive her foundation's support and that can advance or frustrate the policies of her husband, should he become president," he wrote. http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pubs.asp?ID=174...Heinz Kerry is the widow of the late Senator H. John Heinz III who was killed in a plane crash in 1991. While he was alive Heinz foundations - established with the inheritance the Heinz food company - funded a range of groups, including environmental projects.
Following his death Teresa Heinz became chairman of the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Vira I. Heinz Endowment and she is now also Chairman of the board of the Heinz Family Foundations. The foundations give modest grants to a range of environmental groups, including the League of Conservation Voters, which ranks the envionmental voting record of members of Congress. Arnold told the Los Angeles Times"this is very Machiavellian".
"Perhaps you could chalk up the environmental movement's strong and early support for John Kerry's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination to the influence of his wife," he speculated. "Heinz foundation grants pay for groups sponsoring thinly disguised anti-business drives and partisan political campaigns," he complained.
Chellenging the use by Heinz personally of two person Heinz Kerry trusts, Arnold argued that "exempt foundations have an obligation to be transparent and straightforward about their revenue and their grants".
One project funded by Heinz foundation money - the Clean Air Task Force - particularly irritated Arnold. While the grant was to protect air quality in south-western Pennsylvania from power utilities emissions Arnold claimed this really mean it was "to turn public opinion against the Bush administration and shut down Midwest coal-and-oil fired utilities".
Arnold's article succeeded in gaining traction in the mainstream media. Most reported the Capital Research Center as a conservative non-profit group but none reported Arnold's role as a leader of the Wise Use Movement. Nor was it reported that Arnold's Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise received funding from ExxonMobil in 2003. Nor did CRC disclose that it has received funds from ExxonMobil in 2002 and 2003.
The President of the Capital Research Center, Terrence Scanlon told the New York Times that "when Hillary was doing health care it wasn't like she controlled nine health maintenance organizations that could lend their clout to her. Teresa has three endowed foundations at her disposal."
While CRC and Arnold got a good run with their timely newsletter profile of Heinz Kerry, it wasn't all plain sailing. The New York Times noted that one of the biggest funders of the CRC was the Sarah Scaife Foundation - chaired by Richard Mellon Scaife- which contributed $700,000 to the center from 1998 to 2002.
Scaife's cousin, the New York Times reported, is James M. Walton who is not only the chairman of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment but is also a member of the board of the Sarah Scaife Foundation which approved CRC's funding. While Scaife foundations did not respond to inquiries, Walton wrote in an email that he supported funding for CRC.