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Big Green: They’re the green gorillas of American politics (Special Report)
Washington Examiner ^ | 9/27/2010 | Mark Tapscott

Posted on 09/27/2010 7:46:38 AM PDT by markomalley

When former Clinton White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes convened six of the most powerful special interest leaders within the Democratic Party at a posh Washington restaurant in 2003 to plot strategy for the 2004 campaign, the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope was a prominent participant.

Five key members of Obama’s green team

» Who: Carol Browner

What: White House “energy czar”

The details: EPA administrator during the Clinton administration, Browner also worked for Al Gore and reportedly helped write much of his book “Earth in the Balance.” Her tenure as EPA head was controversial, particularly after tightening National Ambient Air Quality Standards in 1997, the cost of which were found by the Office of Management and Budget to outweigh benefits of slight air quality gains.

» Who: Ken Salazar

What: Interior Department secretary

The details: Initially, the former Democratic senator was opposed by some environmentalists because of industry ties. However, since taking over the Interior Department, Salazar has moved aggressively to slow or stop entirely fossil fuel exploration and development on federal lands and offshore. He is also moving to designate up to 17 new national monuments throughout the West, effectively closing off huge swaths of land to all development.

» Who: Steven Chu

What: Secretary of Energy

The details: The Nobel Prize-winning physicist was widely lauded by environmentalists when he was tapped by the administration. Chu is a big proponent of cap-and-trade schemes to combat global warming, and has said of America’s No. 1 energy source: “Coal is my worst nightmare.”

Who: Nancy Sutley

What: Head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality

The details: Formerly a regional EPA administrator, Sutley was the deputy mayor for energy and environment in Los Angeles. There, she pushed the Department of Water and Power to rely on far more expensive wind and solar power sources. Earlier this year, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa threatened to shut down city government after the Department of Water and Power refused to reimburse the city for $73.5 million extra in costs for alternative energy sources.

Who: Lisa Jackson

What: Environmental Protection Agency administrator

The details: Jackson’s tenure at the EPA has been marked by controversy. The agency has sought authority to regulate carbon emissions, which would give unelected bureaucrats unprecedented economic controls. She drew heavy criticism for rejecting dispersants and other biotech methods for removing Gulf oil. The most recent criticism was for considering a petition to ban lead from ammunition.

Besides Ickes and Pope, the diners included Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern, AFL-CIO political director Steven Rosenthal, EMILY’S List President Ellen Malcolm, and Gina Glantz, Stern’s senior political adviser.

They met at BeDuCi, a quiet spot with an expensive menu, a select clientele and just the right ambiance “for six left-wing Democrats to plot the little guy’s revolution in American politics,” according to Ron Arnold, who chronicled their gathering in his book “Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics and the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.”

Pope was there because he’d been an environmental leader and heavyweight Democratic operative for three decades, his organization had a mailing list with three-quarters of a million names on it, and he represented a pillar of Big Green environmentalism with the power and influence to set the tone for the rest of the movement.

Democrats lost in 2004, just barely, but the Ickes group went on to be instrumental in forging the tactics, funding, organizational muscle, media smarts and sheer, dogged will that led to their party’s regaining Senate and House majorities in 2006 and the White House in 2008.

Today’s environmental movement includes hundreds of environmental nonprofits in Washington, D.C., that employ thousands of political activists, community organizers, media strategists, policy analysts, legislative tacticians, fundraisers, think tank managers, computer programmers, and experts with every other important skill imaginable.

The movement receives billions of dollars in annual funding from government grants and contracts, activist liberal foundations, individual billionaires like George Soros, and legions of smaller donors around the country responding to direct mail and Internet appeals for money.

They’ve been at it since Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” started the movement in 1962, and they’ve acquired positions of influence and decision-making power everywhere in Washington where national policy is determined and influenced.

They marshal thousands of volunteers during political campaigns and direct millions of dollars to favored candidates and incumbents at all levels of government.

They help train journalists in covering environmental issues, teach millions of elementary, secondary, and post-secondary public and private school students, and occupy posts throughout government wherever decisions are made on where people can live, what they drive, how they earn a living, and virtually every other aspect of daily American life.

They are, in short, Big Green, the green gorillas of American politics and public policy, allied within the Democratic Party with Big Labor, trial lawyers, college professors, government dependents and abortion-at-any-cost extremists.

But there is one key difference that makes Big Green more powerful than all of the other special interests that control the Democratic Party. Big Labor can’t tell you where you can and cannot live. The trial lawyers didn’t turn your daily commute to work into a nightmare of congestion and delay.

Similarly, college professors have no power to transform your  once-fertile farm fields into a wasteland. Government dependants will never tell you when you can cut your grass. And abortion fanatics have no power to scare your kids in school with apocalyptic visions of environmental disaster.

Only Big Green can do those things to you. And so much more.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: democrats; examiner; palin

1 posted on 09/27/2010 7:46:43 AM PDT by markomalley
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To: markomalley

Green is the new red and it is killing us.


2 posted on 09/27/2010 7:47:50 AM PDT by WAW (Which enumerated power?)
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To: WAW

Environmentalists have far more affinity with National Socialism than they do with Communism, contrary to conservative opinion these days when they charge enviros with being red. The green movement is an appendage of progressive fascism rather progressive communism or socialism. In other words, when Gorbachev later said that “Nature is my god” - this is certainly not the talk of an atheist communist. This is pantheism through and through and goes direcly back to Ernst Haeckel’s Monistic pantheism (German Social Darwinism) of the early German green movement (by 1935, Nazi Germany was the greenest regime on the planet - for a good summary of all this please see www.rmarkmusser.com). Even Hitler called the commies atheists because of his own Haeckelian pantheism. That Gorbachev is now heavily involved in the Green Cross International actually shows how much he has moved away from communist ideology.

When communists become green, they are showing themselves moving over to fascism, even if they wave red flags around in Copenhagen. The Nazi Party flag was red too as Hitler chose that color to identify the party as a form of socialism. Yet it was a ‘local only’ socialism. The Green socialists of Germany followed the same path in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. More and more left socialism for fascism, yet they still called themselves National Socialists in the end. In short, it is perhaps far better to say that when you mix green with red, you get brown.


3 posted on 09/27/2010 8:23:52 AM PDT by Olympiad Fisherman (Olympiad Fisherman)
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To: markomalley

A large proportion of the green movement gets their inspiration from smoking the green. It is easier to believe the lies of environmentalism when impaired by drugs.


4 posted on 09/27/2010 8:36:27 AM PDT by epithermal
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To: markomalley

John Holdren is the evil genius who leads all of these collectivists in their destruction of civilization.


5 posted on 09/27/2010 11:10:56 AM PDT by rogue yam
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