My fact sheet was headlined crude oil in grand canyon national park. It had a nice picture of the Grand Canyon on it. I was going to be Matthew Taibbi, Government Relations adviser for Dosko, a fictional Russian firm representing various energy interests, including a fictional oil company called PerDuNefteGaz that wanted to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon. My friend ratified the plan as the perfect lobbyist’s pitch: shady foreign company seeking to violate, with a long metal phallus, America’s most sacred natural landmark. I’d be welcomed with open arms, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As it turns out, “PerDuNefteGaz” translates roughly as “FartOilGas.” Regardless, one might think, given Taibbi’s preposterous (and fictional) idea, even at a Conrad Burns party, he’d be laughed out of the room. One would be wrong.<\/p>\n
Taibbi talked to one Burns staffer about his “project,” who then introduced him to the senator’s aide who handles issues involving energy and the “environment.”<\/p>\n
“We’re pursuing a number of projects,” I said. “Including one that would involve some exploratory drilling in Grand Canyon National Park. Now, obviously this is complicated but . . . at some point in time I was hoping we could sit down and I could tell you a little more about our company and our energy-independent project.”<\/p>\n
“OK,” she said. She gave me her information and told me to call her anytime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Another lobbyist in attendance told him his plan to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon would be considered reasonable. As he put it, “[A]s long as you’ve got the environmental-impact research, that won’t be too bad.”<\/p>\n
Tell me, how is parody even possible when events like this are commonplace in DC?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve all heard about the high-priced, lobbyist-only meetings at which senators like Conrad Burns (R-Montana) spends so much of their time, but have you ever wondered what it was really like inside? Not just for the average schmoe, but for the lobbyists themselves? Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi snagged an invitation to a Burns birthday party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6952","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}