Spreading across the United States is a screaming mass threatening the very underpinnings of American democracy. As put elsewhere,
In a democracy, power comes from the ability to persuade. You win because people like your ideas.
The Republicans are admitting they can’t win a fair fight. They are cowards.
While the attention is focused on the mobs storming Democratic politicians’ town halls and highlighted are the depraved (mal-informed) rages about health care, the reality is that anti-clean energy interests are sponsoring their own variations of outright deception and fostered screaming outrage. To a large extent, one thing shared among the “outraged” voices: a deep (and proud) embrace of know-nothingness.
But this outraged know-nothingness isn’t targeted solely at Democratic Party politicians seeking to communicate with their constituents, also targeted are Republican politicians who show any signs of seeking to link their policy concepts with reality.
August 7th, 2009 · Comments Off on Screaming Deniers are Getting What They Deserve: Victory
An impassioned guest post from Max Gottlieb about the pace and nature of public discussion, and how serious money and serious distortion are helping prevent movement toward a more sensible, more prosperous, more sustainable future.
Impassioned screaming, even from ill-formed anti-science syndrome sufferers can have an impact …
We have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb… Changes needed to preserve creation, the planet on which civilization developed, are… barely, still possible. It requires a transformative change of direction in Washington in the next year.
I have heard from multiple sources that many U.S. Senators are now getting 100 to 200 calls a day opposing a climate and clean energy bill — and bupkes in favor.
I have this private mantra: it’s all about energy, it’s all about climate.
Somewhat like six degrees of separation, no matter the issue area, I can (I will …) bring any and all conversation items back to our energy and climate challenges.
But, when it comes to health (and health care) and energy, we’re not talking about six degrees of separation but, in fact, at least six ways they’re intertwined …
A Fish Out of Water struggles to survive, finding a path toward a safer environment. FishOutofWater is a thoughtful, engaged scientist, passionately struggling to help us find our way toward a prosperous, climate-friendly future. Here is a guest post laying out how, with just two renewable sources, the United States could power its way out of our climate challenges — making legislation like Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act simply unnecessary.
“The reality is [the health reform bill] is going to happen before cap and trade,” said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Collin Peterson, who’s been working with farm-state senators on the climate legislation. “Who knows if it will ever come out of the Senate?”
The climate bill didn’t do what is needed to save the climate: transition from dirty coal to cheap and abundant wind power. The death of this bill gives us a chance to get it right: transition to renewable energy. Wind Resources in the contiguous United States, specifically in the central plain states, could accommodate as much as 16 times total current demand for electricity in the United States.
Two quick examples of patterns that suggest some laughter could be in order.
ACCCE aggressively stated, in their public comment after this was reported in the press (six weeks after they knew about it), that
We are outraged at the conduct of Bonner and Associates
Okay, outraged? Yet another excellent piece by Sue Sturgis at Facing South is worth reading but, perhaps the title tells you all: ““Clean coal” group behind forged anti-climate bill letters tied to deceptive tactics before“. As discussed there, when fighting against the Lieberman-Warner Coal-Subsidy Act, an ACCCE (actually, ABEC — just before ABEC transformed into ACCCE) employee represented ACCCE as an environmental group and denied that the group had any connection to utilities.
After publishing our story about the deceptive call, we heard from Steve Gates, ACCCE’s communication director. He blamed a new staff member who decided to “wing it” when asked some off-the-script questions and said the person was “no longer working on this project,”
Does that sound eerily familiar to the ‘it was a rogue employee’ excuse from Bonner & Associates this time around?
Okay, as to Bonner & Associates, there is a raft of good reporting going around as to this group’s tradition of questionable practices. As per Zachary Roth at TPM,
a closer look suggests a culture at Bonner and Associates that makes such deception all but inevitable. As one former employee put it, at Bonner, distortion “was the norm rather than the exception.”
There is the issue of the ‘temporary employee’, given as the smokescreen excuse from Bonner to emphasize that the firm has no real responsibility in the matter:
all employees who make calls to solicit “grassroots” support for campaigns — the bread and butter of Bonner’s business — are defined as temporary, rendering essentially meaningless Jack Bonner’s assertion last week that the forged letters were sent by a “temporary employee.”
After the group was hired by PhRMA to kill Maryland legislation that would have affected prescription drug legislation, they faxed dozens of community leaders with a petition that was meant to appear grassroots, “including grammatical errors and a handwritten cover letter.”
Now, research tools can quickly yield interesting results. From 20 years ago,
In 1986, the firm was caught defrauding the U.S. government in order to retain a contract. Bonner & Associates was fraudulently submitting names from phone books, yearbooks, agency employee books, and other sources. The firm claimed to fire the offending employee: “We fired the people we determined were involved in it…what they did was in direct violation of the written policy of the firm.”
In summary … well-worn excuses
In the past, when caught in misrepresentation, ACCCE quickly points out that it was someone acting outside instructions, “no longer working on [the] project”.
In the past, when caught in fraud, Bonner & Associates fired the offending employee because “what they did was in direct violation of the written policy of the firm”.
These comments are eerily similar to what we’ve heard from Bonner & Associates in relation to the fraudulent letters re the American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act.
Dahlkemper’s office also declined to identify the groups. Her spokesman, Zac Petkanas, called it “an unfortunate incident involving several out of thousands of letters that Rep. Dahlkemper received regarding this important issue.”
Carney’s office did not respond to messages Wednesday.
Bonner & Associates assures us that it was some rogue employee (temp, contractor, part timer, not quite sure what status) acting outside their normal procedures.
The latest of excuses? The Hawthorn Group, an ACCCE contractor who served as the middleman between ACCCE and Bonner. From Michael Coe, Hawthorn’s CEO “regarding falsified constituent letters sent to Congressional offices by Bonner & Associates”:
“Since 2000, The Hawthorn Group has had the privilege of working with the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) on its public outreach programs.
“In September 2007, on the key measurement question—Do you support/oppose the use of coal to generate electricity?—we found 46 percent support and 50 percent oppose. In a 2008 year-end survey that result had shifted to 72 percent support and 22 percent oppose. Not only did we see significantly increased support, opposition was cut by more than half. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain addresses a crowd wearing “Clean Coal hats” in Pennsylvania.”
Why does ACCCE use Hawthorne? Well, if they’re to be believed, they’re effective at using false grassroots to impact political perspectives.
“As part of our outreach efforts during the House debate on H.R. 2454, Hawthorn engaged Bonner & Associates to reach out to organizations to explain ACCCE’s position on the issue, and, if the organization’s position aligned with ACCCE’s, to request that they send a letter to their respective U.S. Representative.
Translation: Ah, let’s spend lots of money to see if we can find organizations that can be conned into signing a letter contrary to their interests and contrary to the interests of their members.
“After completion of the project, Mr. Bonner informed Hawthorn that in addition to the legitimate letters resulting from their work, some falsified letters had been delivered to a few legislators.
There is a Congressional investigation under way. And, there quite likely will be a Department of Justic look at this. So, question, Bonner & Associates’ work truly was judged complete prior to the House ACES vote? There wasn’t consideration of using them to influence the Senate? Hmmm … we know that Hawthorne and ACCCE knew about this by 24 June. When was the “completion of the project”?
This violated Bonner’s own quality control and verification process that we understood was in place before we hired him.
Do you see that ‘out’. It is the ‘quality control and verification process’ that Hawthorne “understood was in place”.
Hawthorn immediately terminated our work with Bonner and promptly advised ACCCE of the identified falsified letters and informed ACCCE that Mr. Bonner had agreed to follow up with the congressional offices and organizations to inform them and to apologize on behalf of Bonner & Associates. Only subsequently did Hawthorn learn that Bonner had failed to reach the congressional offices to properly advise them.
Jeez … we didn’t know that Bonner didn’t do what we say that he promised to do. Hmmm … no reason for ACCCE to make calls, it seems.
“The Hawthorn Group deeply regrets that Bonner & Associates caused the fabricated letters to be sent to the congressional offices and its failure to follow up appropriately when they discovered the error. We maintain the highest ethical and quality control standards for our work, and nothing like this has happened in our 17 years in business. We are taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
It is good to learn that every organization involved has a clear reason as to why this isn’t their fault, that this violates their own procedures, and please go back to watching America’s Got Talent since this will never happen again.
Nothing to be interest in here.
Never … happen … again …
In any event, clearly, these organizations don’t wear Nikes.
August 4th, 2009 · Comments Off on Robbing from Peter to Pay (a lesser) Paul: CFC’s funding stream
While the Cash for Clunkers (CARS Program) should be extended, we have to be clear here: this is an economic stimulus and jobs program which happens to have some energy security and environmental benefits. Yet, the Obama Administration (Office of Management and Budget?) was the power behind the scenes in seeing that the funding stream for the CARS Program extension came out of a renewable energy pot of money. While there has been quite a bit of rhetoric about the CARS Program’s environmental impacts, it isn’t $3 billion worth: we can’t justify this program’s expenditures on the basis of its oil demand reductions and CO2 reductions. If it were for those reasons, alone, it would not be a good use of taxpayer funds. It was (and is) principally about economic stimulus — and there it is a far more effective use of taxpayer funding.
Now, the money was taken out a pot of money for helping renewable energy projects get quality loans. Considering that tightness in the financing market is a critical barrier, at the moment, for moving forward with many renewable energy deployment projects, taking $2 billion out of a fund to help solve that program seems quite counterproductive. Especially since there is ample TARP funding authority available, including $1 billion that Goldman Sachs just returned to the Treasury.
Now, lets be clear, there are many members of Congress that, truly, are not happy with this approach. For example, Senator Bingaman
“If Congress decides to extend this initiative, I believe we must not rob from the loan guarantees we provided through the recovery package that, in the long-term, will shift our country to home-grown, renewable energy while creating good ‘green collar’ jobs,”
Representative Ed Markey specifically discussed this issue and the need for getting back the funding when he spoke on the floor.
In essence, when it comes to fostering a clean energy future, the Obama Administration and Congress are choosing to rob from the Peter of renewable energy financing to fund the lesser Paul environmental benefits of the CARS Program. While they could have, they should have found other sources of funding, restoring (and, well, increasing) that funding should be on the agenda.
As discussed yesterday, the pro-coal astroturf American Coalition for Clean-Coal Electricity (ACCCE) stated that it was “outraged” that its contractor, Donner & Associates had forged (oops, that an intern or temp or contract employee, no longer with the group had forged) letters from two minority organizations to Representative Tom Perriello trying to create a (false) appearance of minority opposition to a clean energy future.
In expressing their outrage, ACCCE leadership emphasized that
ACCCE has always maintained high ethical and professional standards.
Well, it turned out that those “high ethical and professional standards” include deciding to sit on the information about the fraud for over a month. In fact, ACCCE internal documents show that they had learned of Donner & Associates’ highly questionable (if not directly illegal) activities no later than 24 June 2009, two days before the House vote on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy & Security (ACES) Act.
And, ACCCE made a public statement Donner & Associates activities only on 3 August, Charlottesville Daily Progress broke this story on 3 August.
Now, as for “high ethical and professional standards …”
Don’t know about you, but now I’m the one who is outraged.
