{"id":1715,"date":"2004-05-06T12:06:49","date_gmt":"2004-05-06T17:06:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1715.html"},"modified":"2004-05-06T12:06:49","modified_gmt":"2004-05-06T17:06:49","slug":"polluters-for-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/polluters-for-bush\/","title":{"rendered":"Polluters for Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stories like this one<\/a> are so routine — and so predictable — they hardly register the outrage that they should anymore.<\/p>\n

The 30 companies that own most of the dirtiest power plants in the country, and their trade association, have raised $6.6 million for President Bush and the Republican National Committee since 1999, and were given relief from pollution regulations that would have cost them billions of dollars, according to a new analysis.<\/p>\n

Ten utility industry officials were so good at fundraising for the president that his campaign named them Rangers for bringing in at least $200,000 or Pioneers for bringing in at least $100,000, according to the analysis by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, and the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental watchdog organization.<\/p>\n

Collectively these 10 people have raised more than $1.5 million since 1999.<\/p>\n

“It is no coincidence that a wholesale assault on the Clean Air Act is taking place today,” said Environmental Integrity Project Director Eric Schaeffer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The White House denies any quid pro quo, of course, but stories like this one are awfully hard to spin.
\n
\nThe Clinton administration was enforcing environmental standards aggressively and required the industry officials to install expensive pollution controls at coal-fired power plants.<\/p>\n

So, as Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, explained, these industries had a choice: help protect the environment or help change political directions. Guess which one they chose?<\/p>\n

Clemente said he thought the officials’ strategy was to “help elect an industry-friendly president, fill federal regulatory posts with former utility executives and lobbyists, and hire a small army of lobbyists and lawyers connected to the new president to engineer regulatory changes.”<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Once in office, the Bush administration overhauled a key Clean Air Act rule, making it much easier for power plants to make major renovations and increase pollution without installing modern pollution controls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Raise your hand if you’re surprised. I didn’t think so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stories like this one are so routine — and so predictable — they hardly register the outrage that they should anymore. The 30 companies that own most of the dirtiest power plants in the country, and their trade association, have raised $6.6 million for President Bush and the Republican National Committee since 1999, and were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}