Koch's Brand of Bozos
[I'm archiving MB's work sent elsewhere, since otherwise I'd have to ask where I left the car keys or something equally clue-challenged. ebw]
Twice a day, as part of my developing routine of Gore-watching, I surf through Google news looking for anything new on my now favorite subject. I was thus quite intrigued to see this small blurb emanating from TownHall.com:
CEI to Launch Ads Exposing Truth about Gore's Movie
May 16 2006 01:32 PM
By Lisa DePasquale
The Competitive Enterprise Institute will launch TV ads focusing on global warming and Al Gore's cinematic self-love, An Inconvenient Truth. The ads will be aired at a press conference tomorrow, May 17, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The ads will air in a dozen cities beginning on May 18. Gore's An Inconcenient Truth premieres in DC on May 17 and will be in select theaters nationwide next week. Gore, narrates and stars in this vanity piece. Who sees Gore on TV and thinks, "That kid should be in movies!"
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a Washington, DC-based think tank founded by Fred White in 1984. According to Sourcewatch, CEI calls itself "a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy institute dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government." But CEI is perhaps best known for its near rabid campaign against wider public acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, aka, global warming.
Beginning in June 1992 with its assault on the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, CEI began to focus most of its energy and cash on its anti-environmental efforts. Ironically, this was the same time period that Bill Clinton named published environmental author and Senator Al Gore as his running mate. It does make one wonder, though, that in CEI's own accounting of its history, the only Democratic politician attacked is none other than Al Gore. Neither Clinton nor Kerry's names even appear in the history.
While much of CEI's current revenues of nearly $3 million derive from an array of natural resource industries, one of its biggest supporters is David Koch, of fossil-fuel giant Koch Industries. With his multi-billion dollar personal fortune, Koch has bankrolled many of the best known "green-scam" groups which popped during the 1990s, but one in particular became his favorite. Founded on Koch donations in 1997, Grover Norquist and Gale Norton, with active input from Newt Gingrich, Trent Lott and Governor George W. Bush, put together the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates (later switched to Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy) or CREA. Norton and Koch were both hired by the Bush Campaign in 1999 as environmental policy advisors, and later, as President-elect, Bush rewarded Norton with Secretary of Interior.
Throughout its short but controversial existence (CREA was highly implicated in the Abramoff scandal, which is how I discovered it), CREA's central mission, despite purportedly being a 501(c)3, was to undermine the environmental credentials of high-profile Democrats, particularly Al Gore, and later, John Kerry. It accomplished this mostly through paid media, ads buys in major newspapers and on TV. How it paid for those high-priced ads is still a mystery, as CREA consistently claimed on its filings with the IRS that, outside of a three month period in the summer of 2000 where it raked in $121K+, including $10,000 from Koch, it claimed it had no income. The half-million dollars from Abramoff tribal clients has yet to be declared as well as any proceeds from the numerous fundraisers hosted by Julie Finley, the queen bee of Republican Washington society.
Groups like CEI, CREA, the Cato Institute (also Koch funded) and the National Center for Public Policy Research (also a laundry for Abramoff money) all began a non-stop brutal campaign, managed by Grover Norquist and Karl Rove, on VP Al Gore, a campaign aimed at cementing public doubt regarding Gore's superb environmental credentials. The effort worked so well, that Gore's own campaign advisors purportedly urged him not to focus on his green record.
And now these same green-scam groups are doing it again.
CEI's official press release from yesterday:
CEI to Launch National Global Warming Ad Campaign; Ads Countering Global Warming Alarmism to be Unveiled at May 17 News Conference5/15/2006 11:18:00 AM
To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor
Contact: Jody Clarke of the Competitive Enterprise Institute,
202-331-2252 or jclarke@cei.orgNews Advisory:
The Competitive Enterprise Institute will unveil a national global warming ad campaign at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at noon.
CEI has produced two 60-second television ads focusing on global warming alarmism and the call by some environmental groups and politicians to reduce fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions. The ads will air in more than a dozen cities around the country beginning May 18, 2006.
"The campaign to limit carbon dioxide emissions is the single most important regulatory issue today," says Marlo Lewis, a CEI senior fellow in environmental policy. "It is nothing short of an attempt to suppress energy use, which in turn would be economically devastating-all to avert an alleged catastrophe whose scientific basis is dubious."
In CEI's view, claims of looming climate disaster due to energy use are unfounded. One of the ads focuses on the extent to which the public has received only one side of the glacial melting issue. CEI's national ad campaign, produced with Washington, DC-based Next Generation Advertising, is the first to counter the flood of scare stories on global warming.
NEWS CONFERENCE: NATIONAL GLOBAL WARMING AD CAMPAIGN
WHEN: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at noon
WHERE: National Press Club (First Amendment Lounge), 529 14th Street
NW, Washington, DCWHO: Sam Kazman, campaign script developer Marlo Lewis, CEI global warming policy expert
VISUALS: Two 60-second television spots will be shown at the news conference. Copies will be available to the media afterwards.
While I'm not surprised that CEI, being, at least ostensibly, a 501(c)3, doesn't mention Al Gore or An Inconvenient Truth in their press release, I find it intriguing that TownHall's DePasquale advertised it as such. Has DePasquale already pre-screened the two spots, or was she informed of their true content by someone in the know at CEI?
In addition, I am not a media consultant, so I don't know how much a 60 second ad in a major media market runs (times 12 markets times at least 5-7 runs for exposure), but I imagine it's more than $23,000. That's CEI's total "Issue Marketing and News Release" expenditures in 2004, according to its 990 form filed with the IRS. 2004 was also the year CEI went over budget by $10,000, leaving the organization with a surplus of $1.6 million, built up over the past twenty years (with a $2.9 million annual revenue stream.)
The fact that CEI is taking this so seriously, as well as the fact CREA, despite being under investigation by the Justice Department and IRS, has crawled out from under their Abramoff-induced rock and is once again lobbying Congress, indicates that the Energy lobby, led by Norquist, is very, very concerned about a resurgent Gore and are on the offensive.
What can be done?
All of these groups are 501(c)3s and are able to hide their donors identities due to weak enforcement by the IRS and FEC. Both governmental entities, however, will respond to hard evidence. Therefore, if any dKos readers with film capability are able to attend tomorrow's press conference in DC, we should do so. We also need to determine which stations in which markets will be playing the ads, and pressure station executives. In addition, these groups are currently deathly afraid of lobbying legislation making its way through Congress, legislation which could force them to either stop their under-the-radar lobbying, or disclose their donors (see LobbySense). But possibly the most important thing is publicly calling out these groups, reminding the public and the press of their fiendish histories and direct ties to the current culture of Republican corruption, that their goals are purely political, not educational or for the public welfare. They are corporate lackeys, willing to sell our future for a few oil and gas company bucks. They fear Al Gore because of his message, his integrity and his growing popularity, at least among the activist Left.