Corporate Enablers

These individuals and associations are at the forefront in the battle to dismantle agencies and laws developed over the years to protect our environment and our democracy. Call them corporate enablers. They are public officials, lobbyists for hire, agents of the corporate elite, and foundations or trade associations with very misleading names. Their goal is to dismantle government agencies and regulations that restrict the activities and profits of their benefactors, usually, a corporation. The fact that we live in a democracy is irrelevant to these enablers. They use money and influence to circumvent the process of democracy while promoting the misguided philosophy that big business will serve the nation's interests better than the collective will of the people. Remember, one vote is all you and I have. These guys spend millions to get their way, and guess what happens to our one vote. Our government has been taken over by these enablers, and the people's voice has been long erased from the minds of our representatives as a result.

Citizens have very little clout in our democracy. Until we change our system of governance and insist on representation of the people, by the people, and for the people, these powerful interest groups, not you and I, will control our lives and our future. The first step towards rehabilitating our democracy is to admit there is a problem. If we truly want democracy to prevail, it is up to us to return the Congress to the People. This list is being updated daily.

 

George W. Bush As incoming governor of Texas, Bush declared tort reform, "an emergency", appointing judges who made it all but impossible to bring a class action lawsuit against polluters. In 1995 he pushed through the Private Real Property Rights Preservation Act, making taxpayers pay polluter's cost of complying with pollution laws. He installed the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission to run the states environmental agency, then cut funding to that agency, making it impossible to fulfill its duty as the states environmental watchdog.
In 1995 he pushed through the Texas Audit Privilege and Immunity Law, and the Voluntary Emissions Reduction Permit Program, making it possible for his biggest benefactors, TXI Corporation, Alcoa, Exxon, Shell, Amoca, Enron, Dow Chemicals, and others, to escape public disclosure of their environmental record, fines, and avoid any government follow-up.

In 2000, more than 200 ''Pioneers'' narrowly helped put him in the White House, George W. Bush has rewarded at least 43 of these elite fundraisers with federal appointments. The Bush ''Pioneers'' raised a minimum of $100,000 for Bush by bundling together contributions of up to $1,000 (the legal limit) from other individuals. Bush's 43 Pioneer appointees delivered more than $4.3 million to Bush's presidential race. Collectively they also gave $204,000 to Bush's two gubernatorial races.

''Political patronage is alive and well in the Bush White House,'' said Craig McDonald, Director of Texans for Public Justice. ''Rewarding big donors with ambassadorships is a surefire way to keep the campaign money rolling in. If Congress outlaws soft money, Pioneer bundling will become a blueprint for the future of special-interest politics in Washington.''

The highest-ranking Pioneers are Terrorism Czar Tom Ridge (a former Pennsylvania Governor) and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (an ex-Heritage Foundation Fellow and the wife of US Senator Mitch McConnell).

Dick Cheney Documents released under America's Freedom of Information Act reveal that an energy task force led by vice-president Dick Cheney was examining Iraq's oil assets two years before the latest war began. The Sierra Club is suing Vice President Cheney and the Energy Task Force under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), seeking an accounting of energy industry participation in crafting the Bush Administration's destructive energy policy, which relies on subsidies to polluting and outdated fossil fuel industries. The District Court ordered the Administration to provide information about participation from these industries, which the Bush Administration refused to do, claiming Constitutional immunity from such inquiries. The District Court rejected that contention, pointing out that the Administration was attempting to "cloak what is tantamount to an aggrandizement of Executive power with the legitimacy of precedent where none exists." The Administration appealed, asking the DC Circuit to make new law that would effectively shield it from any legal scrutiny. The Circuit Court and Appeals Court have now twice denied their request.

Darleen Druyun The former weapons buyer for the U.S. Air Force, checked into a special women’s prison this January 2005, about 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico in the heart of Florida’s Panhandle region, for a nine month stay, after pleading guilty to giving Boeing special treatment on an $23.5 billion government contract. Her crime? Violating conflict of interest laws. Druyun had been talking about possible job opportunities with Boeing at the same time she was negotiating a contract that would let Boeing pump up the price tag by $6 billion on a lease agreement for one hundred 767s tankers.

Once a Pentagon star, Druyun, 57, spent most of her adult life climbing the rungs of the male-dominated Pentagon where she publicly cultivated an image as a hard-knuckled bargainer on billions of dollars in defense contracts with the nation’s largest defense companies. She was called the "Dragon Lady," but behind closed doors Druyun exercised a much cozier relationship when spending $30 billion a year, she admitted at her sentencing last fall. Since 2000, she gave special consideration on other billion-dollar contracts awarded to Boeing, a company where her daughter and future-son-in-law were given jobs, Druyun told the court.


Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs May be the most anti-democratic institution in government. Headed by John Graham, this office, part of our government, now operates in virtual secrecy. Created by Congress in 1980 to review proposed regulation, under Graham's direction, the office has become a virtual shredder for any progressive regulations passed by congress.

Joseph Coors Conceived the unholy alliance between pollutting industries and the radical right. In 1976 Coors founded the Mountain States Legal Foundation to challenge environmental laws. Funded by multinational polluters such as Phillips Petroleum, Exxon, Texaco, Amoco, Shell, Ford Motor Company, and Chevron, the MSLF filed suits intended to block efforts by environmentalists, unions, minorities, and handicapped Americans that might cut into corporate profit taking..

Mountain States Legal Foundation Founded in 1976 by Joseph Coors, owner of one of Colorado's biggest polluters to challenge environmental laws. Funding comes from multinational polluters like Phillips Petroleum, Exxon, Texaco, Amoco, Shell, Ford Motor Company, and Chevron. The MSLF filed suits intended to block efforts by environmentalists, unions, minorities, and handicapped Americans that might cut into corporate profit taking.

Heritage Foundation Founder, Joseph Coors. This foundation provides the philosophical underpinning of the anti-environmetal movement to the radical right. Through clever invocations of patriotism, Christianity, and laissez-faire capitalism, Heritage offers pithy philosophical justifications for national policies that promote the narrow interests of a wealthy few. Funding comes from several right wing foundations, all funded by major corporate polluters.

John M. Olin Foundation

 

Donald Rumsfeld

 

Anne Gorsuch Handpicked by Joseph Coors to administer the EPA under Secretary of the Interior James Watt, then appointed by Reagan in 1982. She cut the agency's budget by 39%, destroyed the Superfund program at it's birth, appointed lobbyists fresh from their private sector jobs in the paper, asbestos, chemical, and oil industries to run each of the principal agency departments. Her chief of staff was a timber-industry lawyer; her enforcement chief was from Enron.

 

Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation

Charles G. Koch Wise Use funder, Bush megadonor, and owner of the countrys largest privately held oil company, Koch Industries. KI was found guilty by the government of discharging 90 metric tons of carcinogenic benzene at a refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, with $352 million in fines brought against the company as a result. The Bush justice department reduced the fines to $20 million.

The Castle Rock Foundation

Sarah Scaife Foundation

The Bradley Foundation

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Angela Logomasini

 

The Environmental Conservation Organization A front group for land developers and other businesses opposed to wetlands regulation.

The Evergreen Foundation A timber-Industry mouthpiece that promotes the idea that clear-cut logging is beneficial to the environment.

Citizens for Sensible Control of Acid Rain A front group for the oil and electric industries that is opposed to all controls of acid rain.

The American Enterprise Institute

The Reason Foundation

The Federalist Society

The Marshall Institute

Mercatus Center

Bob Grant

Tom DeLay

John Ashcroft

Wise Use

John Arnold

Gale Norton In 1979, she worked for the Mountain States Legal Foundation, filing several lawsuits to dispute federal grazing limits, impede EPA clean air rules, and to support oil and gas drilling offshore, in wilderness areas, and in wildlife refuges. Each of these lawsuits promoted the interests of MSLF funders, Exxon, Burlington Northern, the Independent Petroleum Association, and the Rocky Mountain Oil & Gas Association.

James Watt

The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition Actually a junk-science think tank led by Monsanto lobbyist Steven Malloy. TASSC receives it's funding from Philip Morris, Exxon, Proctor & Gamble, Dow, and 3M. Gale Norton serves as an adviser to the Coalition.

Steven Milloy

Defenders of Property Rights

Public Lands Council The Taylor Grazing Act grants the Secretary of the Interior authority to divide the public rangelands into grazing districts, to specify the amount of grazing permitted in each district, and to issue grazing leases or permits to "settlers, residents, and other stock owners." When Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced new regulations governing the administration of livestock on 170 million acres of public range, the Public Lands Council (Council), a group of nonprofit ranching-related organizations, objected. The Council's members who held grazing permits brought an action against Secretary Babbitt challenging 10 of the new federal grazing regulations issued by the Secretary in 1995. The Council claimed that the Secretary acted beyond his power in regulating the grazing patterns. The District Court found 4 of the 10 regulations unlawful. Reversing in part, the Court of Appeals upheld three previously overturned regulations, which changed the definition of "grazing preference," permitted those who were not "engaged in the livestock business" to qualify for grazing permits; and granted the United States title to all future range improvements.

National Public Lands Grazing Campaign (NPLGC) This group is lobbying Congress to provide funds to compensate federal grazing permitees who voluntarily return their federal grazing permits to the federal government. The NPLGC is proposing a compensation rate of $175 per animal unit month (AUM). If approved, the program could cost the American Taxpayer over 3.2 billion dollars.

National Cattelmen's Beef Association

Steven Griles As Deputy Director of Surface Mining, Griles gutted strip-mining regulations and was a relentless booster of the oil-shale scheme, one of the most outlandish giveaways and environmental blunders of the last century. He also pushed to overturn the popular moratorium on off shore oil drilling on the Pacific Coast, a move of such extreme zealotry in the service of big oil that it even caught Reagan off guard.

James E. Carson

David Drier

John Graham Founder of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, 1989, and head of the OIRA under Bush. Amoung regulation Graham targeted for the shredder were laws establishing safe levels of arsnic in drinking water, the preservation of roadless areas in forests,the prohibition of snowmobiles in Mational Parks, and rules controlling coal-burning power plants.

Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. Funding comes from Monsanto, Dow Chemicals, Exxon, General Electric, Union Carbide, Boise Cascade, The American Petroleum Institute, and the American Chemistry Institute. No consumer or environmental groups are represented.

The American Petroleum Institute

American Chemistry Council

Christine Todd Whitman

James Connaughton

West Virginia Coal Association

William D. Raney

Quin Shea

Elaine Chao

Sen. Mitch McConnel

Dave Laurisky

John Caylor

John Cornell

Tim Thompson

Jeffery Holmstead

American Farm Bureau Federation

Alliance for Constructive Air Policy

Citizens For the Environment This front group actually has no citizen membership and gets it's support from a long lilst of corporate sponsors who use the organization to lobby against the Clean Air Act and other environmental regulations.

Mike Leavitt

Jim Sims

Billy Tauzin

Pete Domenici

James Conrad

Fred Webber

National Propane Gas Association

Amy Ridenour

National Center for Public Policy Research

 

Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy The advisory board is stacked with powerhouse corporate crusaders like Newt Gingrich. It's funding comes from Coors, Amoca, ARCO, the American Forest and Paper Association, and the Chemical Manufacturers Association.

Massey Energy Owns Martin County Coal, Kentucky, where in 2000, the largest environmental disaster in the history of the eastern United States occurred because of poor maintenance of their slurry pits which caused a breach of 300 million gallons of slurry into subsurface mine shafts, flooding downstream communities.

 

 

More to come...