BY GARY EDMONDSON
Along with buying the Republican Party with campaign contributions, American corporations use a variety of subterfuges to push a “small government/fewer regulations” agenda that amounts to fighting any efforts at protecting the public from their polluting perfidy.
Do none of these peseteras have children or grandchildren? Or do they just don’t give a hoot about the world their heirs will inhabit?
In June, Common Dreams detailed how. “An international so-called science institute has for years embedded itself on public health panels run by the European Union and United Nations, only to work against the goals of such bodies by pushing the profit-focused agendas of the tobacco, pesticide, and other industries, according to a new study.”
Oops, seems the International Life Science Institute has been outed, “showing that the group has received millions of dollars from the industries it’s meant to protect consumers from.”
In August, Huffington Post reported that a guest column by a state senator and county commissioner in the Boulder Daily Camera “celebrating the growing ‘momentum’ for an initiative to export Colorado and Utah natural gas to markets in Asia” was actually the work of “the Consumer Energy Alliance, a Houston-based industry trade group whose members include oil giants like BP, Shell and ExxonMobil. Emails HuffPost has obtained via the fossil fuel watchdog Energy and Policy Institute show that while the Colorado officials wrote a first draft of the piece, CEA heavily revised it before publication.”
Well, you don’t want your mouthpieces to misspeak. And with ALEC writing their legislation, it makes a certain sense for others to put words into the mouths of their ventriloquist dummies.
In mid-September Huffington Post reported that a “reporter,” allegedly covering the Monsanto pesticide trial in California, was actually an employee of “FTI Consulting, a global business advisory firm that Monsanto and Bayer, Monsanto’s parent company, had engaged for consulting.”
Real reporters became suspicious by the slanted tone of her conversations and her persistence in trying to promote the Monsanto position.
And, of course, Koch Industries can be counted on for pro-pollution propaganda. In June, Common Dreams reported, “a report released Monday detailed how George Washington University’s ostensibly neutral Regulatory Studies Center is in fact a ‘key cog’ in the Koch family’s fight to slash government regulations designed to protect workers and the planet.”
The influence of Koch Industries often reaches right into government itself. Huffington Post reported that, “David Dunlap, a deputy in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, worked for chemical giant Koch Industries for more than eight years.”
And why is that significant? He was working on the EPA response on toxic chemicals.
In March, Huffington Post reported how “oil industry executives and lobbyists can be heard laughing uproariously at boasts related to ‘unprecedented access’ to key Trump Administration officials in a secretly recorded tape obtained by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.” Dirty birds of a feather stick together.
Did anyone notice a moving van transporting David Koch’s wealth to the cemetery with him last month?
There is a climate-killing conspiracy afoot. It is funded by corporations who put profits above public safety. They are abetted by Dirty Donald Trump, the Republican Party and everyone who votes for weakening life-protecting regulations.
