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The Dirty Money Dozen

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 - posted by Madison

According to both the Center for Responsive Politics and Oil Change International, contributions from oil, gas and other energy industries skyrocketed in the past five years, with the coal industry alone contributing more than $8 million in 2009-2010 — more than twice what the industry had contributed in any previous election cycle. And during 2011, an unprecedented amount of legislation was introduced to undermine environmental protections and undo existing laws (see “The Dirtiest Congress Money Could Buy” on page 13). We took a look at Appalachian legislators from Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina to see where they stacked up on the energy contribution spectrum. Here are the top three senators and nine representatives who received the highest contributions from the fossil fuel industry thus far in the 112th Congress.

Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY)
Rep. Davis received $38,500 from fossil fuel industries in the 112th Congress, which is just a fraction of the $427,500 energy companies have contributed to his coffers since 2005. He’s held a firm position against environmental interests, siding with industry on the majority of bills to weaken clean air and water protections this Congress. Davis’ anti-regulation stance isn’t limited to environmental issues — he introduced the REINS Act, which would require Congress to pass any major regulation. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index ranked Davis’ district as one of the bottom 5 percent nationally for physical and emotional well-being.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)
A self-described “constitutional conservative,” Paul is ideologically opposed to government regulation of business; the freshman senator has also received over $226,500 from the energy industry. During his 2010 campaign, Paul notoriously said of mountaintop removal, “I don’t think anyone’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there.” He recently introduced a bill to significantly restrict the EPA’s ability to stop even the most egregious mountaintop removal mines from moving forward, and shows no signs of changing his ardent anti-regulation stance through the remaining four years of his term.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
The current U.S. Senate Minority Leader and the longest-serving U.S. senator in Kentucky history, McConnell has received $1.6 million dollars in fossil fuel industry donations since 1999, including large contributions from energy giants such as Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries. According to Oil Change International, during his tenure McConnell has sided with fossil fuel interests and against the environment on nearly every occasion. In 2011, along with fellow Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, McConnell introduced S. 468, a bill that would amend the Clean Water Act to ensure that coal mines and some of the nation’s largest polluters are immune to meaningful regulatory scrutiny.

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY)
There is more mountaintop removal mining in Kentucky Congressman Hal Rogers’ district than any other district in the United States. Unfortunately, his district also has the seventh highest poverty rate in the nation, with more than 37 percent of the children living below the poverty line, and his constituents ranked dead last in physical and emotional well-being in Gallup’s 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 well-being surveys of all 435 congressional districts in the country. Since 1999, Rogers has received more than $430,000 of industry contributions, including significant sums from some of the nation’s largest polluters such as Alpha Natural Resources and Arch Coal. In 2010, he sponsored a bill to defund the EPA’s efforts to protect Appalachian citizens from the toxic valley fills associated with mountaintop removal.

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN)
Fleischmann gained the support of a number of coal and oil companies during his freshman run for the 112th Congress, to the tune of $46,900. He represents Tennessee’s 3rd district, which made national headlines when the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant spilled more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash into the Emory and Clinch rivers. Fleischmann took an uncharacteristically pro-environment stance on an amendment to the House budget bill that would prohibit the EPA from spending money on regulations that identify fossil fuel combustion waste (like coal ash) as hazardous. Yet Fleischmann sided in favor of another anti-environmental coal ash bill introduced by West Virginia Rep. David McKinley and sponsored his own bill to repeal weatherization assistance that improves the energy-efficiency of low-income residents’ homes.

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN)
In terms of political contributions from the fossil fuel industry, Tennessee Representative Scott DesJarlais is last on our list of top recipients. Including pre-term contributions before the 2010 election, DesJarlais brought in $29,000, including $16,000 from Pilot Oil Corp. However, when it comes to anti-environmental votes, DesJarlais fits right in. According to Oil Change International, Rep. DesJarlais has voted against the environment 100 percent of the time, including key votes that would undermine the EPA’s authority to enforce the Clean Water Act and deny the science related to global warming.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV)
Congressman Nick Rahall has represented southern West Virginia in Congress since 1977. Although he has received more than $250,000 in industry donations, he casts pro-environment votes nearly half the time, according to Oil Change International. As a freshman, he helped draft and pass the 1977 Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act, and rose through the ranks to become chairman of the Natural Resources Committee. Additionally, Rahall is the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Clean Water Act. But, during the 112th session, Rahall sided against clean water legislation more than a dozen times, including attempts to defund citizen protection programs, weaken
mountaintop removal regulations and block meaningful legislation on coal ash.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)
A self-described “friend of coal,” the former West Virginia governor has received more than $740,000 from the energy industry since he took office in 2009 — second only to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell in total amount of fossil fuel contributions received by senators in Southern Appalachian states. At his first congressional committee hearing, Senator Manchin erroneously claimed that the coal industry receives “not one penny of taxpayer subsidies,” and shortly after the 112th began he sponsored S. 272, a bill that would amend the Clean Water Act and remove the authority of the EPA to prohibit discharges of materials into U.S. waters at sites designated for waste disposal.

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
Representing West Virginia’s 2nd District, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito has received more than $850,000 over her congressional career from energy giants such as Dominion Resources, Chesapeake Energy and CONSOL Energy. Capito sided with polluters on nearly every piece of legislation during the first session of the 112th Congress, voting significantly worse on environmental legislation than in previous terms. At the beginning of 2011, she joined Reps. Nick Rahall and David McKinley in sponsoring H.R. 199, a bill that would have suspended any action taken by the EPA under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide for two additional years.

Rep. David McKinley (R-WV)
Freshman Rep. McKinley has received more fossil fuel money than almost any other representative or senator from Central and Southern Appalachia, accepting nearly $400,000 from fossil fuel industries. In McKinley’s district, Little Blue Run, the nation’s largest coal ash pond, has been leaking for years. While McKinley has announced plans to visit the site with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, he introduced a bill last fall to prevent the EPA from regulating coal ash. McKinley also introduced an amendment to another bill that would have prevented the EPA from using its Clean Water Act authority to prohibit or restrict projects that would have an “unacceptable adverse effect” on water, fish and wildlife. But environmental advocates might have reason for hope — McKinley sponsored bipartisan legislation to provide rebates to homeowners who invest in energy efficiency improvements.

Rep. Robert Hurt (R-VA)
A freshman representative in Virginia’s 5th congressional district, Hurt received $78,600 from the energy sector before he was even elected, including substantial contributions from utilities such as Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Resources. In 2011, the House of Representatives passed a bill co-sponsored by Hurt to prevent the EPA from regulating farm dust, a pollution the agency had not intended to regulate in the first place. Including his pre-term contributions, Hurt has received $102,300 from fossil fuel industries during the 112th Congress.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA)
This freshman representative from southwest Virginia is well-known in energy industry circles, receiving the second-highest amount ($152,300) of fossil fuel money of any Appalachian representative. Griffith has also made a name for himself as one of the EPA’s most aggressive foes — he introduced a bill to shelter polluters by stalling the EPA’s proposed limits on the amount of mercury and other pollutants released by boilers and incinerators. Griffith also sponsored an amendment to the 2011 budget bill to block the EPA and other agencies from protecting navigable waters from mountaintop removal coal mining waste. A member of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, he took an anti-environmental stance on 100 percent of bills evaluated by Oil Change International.

Additional Mentions

Although North Carolina does not have the environmental issues that mountaintop removal coal mining and other resource extraction brings to the other four Appalachian states profiled here, congressional representatives from the Tarheel State still receive substantial contributions from the fossil fuel industry and energy corporations — with two Congressmen coming in just below the top 12 energy money earners from coal-bearing states to earn a mention on the Dirty Money Dozen list.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)
Coming in at 13th on the list, Representative Patrick McHenry represents North Carolina’s 10th district in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He ranks first in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry for federal representatives in North Carolina during the 112th Congress, receiving $17,500, including $10,000 from Koch Industries.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)
While Burr, a member of the Senate Subcommittee on Energy, received only $1,000 in fossil fuel money in the 112th Congress (less than almost all of his peers), he received an estimated $452,000 during the 111th Congress — second only to Senator Manchin of West Virginia — and has collected a total of $1.1 million in contributions since 1999 from sources like Duke Energy and Dominion Resources. An opponent of offshore drilling regulation, Burr pushed to reopen the Gulf to oil drilling only months after the Deepwater Horizon spill, and in 2011 introduced a bill that sought to eliminate the EPA by folding it into the Department of Energy.

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The Dirtiest Congress Money Could Buy

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 - posted by Madison

By Matt Wasson

According to a report released at the end of 2011, the 112th Congress had achieved, in just its first year, the dubious distinction of running the most anti-environmental legislative session in history.

The report, conducted by Representatives Henry Waxman, Edward Markey and Howard Berman, showed that, in 2011, the House voted 191 times to weaken environmental protections, averaging more than one anti-environmental vote for every day the House was in session.

All told, more than one in five of the legislative roll call votes in 2011 were on bills to undermine environmental protections, including 27 attempts to block action on climate change, 77 votes to undermine Clean Air Act protections, eight efforts to undermine Clean Water Act protections and 47 attempts to weaken protection of public lands and coastal waters.

A look at campaign contributions to members of Congress elected in 2010 paints a fairly clear portrait of how that came to pass — oil, gas and other energy industries contributed record amounts of money to congressional campaigns in the run-up to the 2010 elections. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, contributions from the coal industry alone skyrocketed to more than $8 million in 2009-2010 — more than twice what the industry had contributed in any previous election cycle. One of the top recipients of coal mining industry dollars — receiving $228,000 during that time period — was Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who took a rifle and famously shot a hole through a cap-and-trade climate bill in a campaign ad.

Based on the most recent data for the 2012 cycle, the coal industry appears set to surpass the record it set in 2010. The biggest recipient to date has been freshman Representative David McKinley of West Virginia, who has introduced some of the highest-profile bills to roll back the EPA’s authority to enforce clean water laws that impact the coal industry — and has received $186,878 in money from fossil fuel sources.

Rep. McKinley’s contributions are closely followed by contributions to House Speaker John Boehner ($171,505), with likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney rounding out the top three ($135,500). Not surprisingly, the majority of the increase in dirty energy contributions are being funneled through outside groups called Super PACs, a new type of political action committee made possible by the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling, a controversial decision that President Obama presciently warned at the time would, “… open the floodgates for special interests to spend without limit in our elections.” (see “The ‘Art’ of Influence” on p.16).

But polluting industries’ surge in political spending is not limited to political fundraising — expenditures on lobbying for anti-environmental legislation are also reaching record highs. Lobbying expenditures by the coal mining industry grew from less than $3 million per year in 2004 to more than $18 million in 2011 — with the two largest mountaintop removal coal mining companies, Alpha Natural Resources and Patriot Coal Corporation, spending more than $3.3 million lobbying Congress in 2011. By comparison, these two companies reported no lobbying expenses in 2007 and 2008.

Research shows that money spent on lobbying can have a significant return on investment. A study published by three researchers in Kansas in 2009, examining the return on lobbying investments relating to a tax holiday on certain repatriated earnings, found that, “Firms lobbying for this provision have a return in excess of $220 for every $1 spent on lobbying, or 22,000 percent.”

Although it is difficult to prove a direct connection between lobbying, campaign contributions and the actions of legislators, the correlation between the unprecedented number of anti-environmental bills pushed by the 112th Congress and the unparalleled political spending by the fossil fuel industry is hard to ignore.

Some Things Money Can’t Buy

Given the increasingly powerful and unregulated influence of money in politics, the question is raised — how does the average person’s voice or vote even matter?

Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts provided a compelling answer to that question in a recent episode of the National Public Radio program, “This American Life,” that focused on the role of money in campaigns. According to Frank, “If the voters have a position, the votes will kick money’s rear end every time.”

In his 40 years in politics, Frank says, “I’ve never met a politician who, choosing between a significant opinion in his or her district and the number of campaign contributors, doesn’t go with the district.”

That’s not to say that all of the special interest money has no effect. The defensive view of campaign finance offered by some lobbyists and politicians — that money has no effect because both sides are giving — is equally inaccurate, according to Frank. “If that were the case, we would be the only human beings in the history of the world who, on a regular basis, took significant amounts of money from perfect strangers and make sure it had no effect on our behavior — that is not human nature.”

One of the primary problems is that a large portion of constituents either don’t know, or don’t care about most legislation passing through government — resulting in the bottom line that the majority of members of Congress aren’t hearing from their constituents on important issues that affect them. But what donor money does do is buy access for special interests to tell their side of the story; it doesn’t guarantee a vote, but if constituents are silent, then special interests will be the only voices that legislators hear.

There are only two ways for citizens to truly counter the influence of special interest money on politics — shining a light on who is giving the money, and holding their recipients accountable.

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The “Art” of Influence: A Story of Strategy in the Post-Citizens United Political Terrain

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012 - posted by Madison

By Brian Sewell

On March 15, when a campaign called N.C. Real Solutions launched, it came with a 30 second television spot aimed at North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue. The ad claimed that the new state legislature’s budget, which Perdue vetoed out of concern for its effect on education before being overridden, actually added funding for 2,000 more teachers.

Progressives took to the blogs, where they lashed out claiming the ad and the campaign distort the facts. Gov. Perdue, a first-term Democrat, publicly asked for the ad to be taken off the air, calling it “misleading.” When the state’s second-largest newspaper, The News & Observer, fact-checked the ad, they found it to be half-true. What N.C. Real Solutions failed to mention is that North Carolina lost 915 teachers in 2011.

Created by a partnership between the Raleigh, N.C.-based John William Pope Civitas Institute and the North Carolina chapter of the national group Americans for Prosperity, N.C. Real Solutions represents the latest strategic move by a network of think tanks, nonprofits and foundations advocating for low taxes and limited government. What binds them is that they are all either funded, founded or otherwise supported by one man, James Arthur “Art” Pope. The multimillionaire CEO and board chairman of Variety Wholesalers Inc., Pope has been dubbed the “Knight of the Right” by The News & Observer for his support of conservative principles and candidates.

It’s no secret that the influence of money has altered the political playing field. Running for political office is more expensive than ever and in many races, no matter how small, establishing a war chest is practically a prerequisite. Two years after Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that equated money with speech, Pope and his peers are more than just wealthy individuals resolute in their ideals. They’ve emerged as trailblazers of the post-Citizens United political terrain.

Raleigh, N.C., businessman Art Pope emerged as a key political figure during the 2010 midterm elections. Ever since, he has been a lightning rod in the debate of money's role in politics and the consequences of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. Illustration by V.C. Rogers, originally appeared in the Independent Weekly on March 9, 2011. (vcrogers.com)


Off to the Races

With the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Citizens United, the floodgates regulating campaign finance were opened. Two months later in the less dramatic Speechnow. org v. FEC, the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Federal Elections Campaign Act — the same law amended by Citizens United — could not restrict individuals’ freedom of speech by limiting the amount that an individual can contribute and thus the amount an organization may spend.

In the lead-up to the 2010 midterm election, Pope and groups he supports poured $2.2 million selectively into small races across North Carolina, using methods made possible by changes to the state’s constitution to reflect the Citizens United ruling. Much of those dollars ended up as attack ads and incendiary mailers. In one, Margaret Dickson, who ran for reelection in the State Senate, is portrayed as prostituting herself. Another, accused Chris Heagarty, a lawyer running in Wake County, of voting to “raise taxes over a billion dollars,” even though he had not yet served in the legislature. Of the 22 races that Pope and these groups contributed to, they won 18. For the first time in more than a century, Republicans gained control of both chambers of the state General Assembly.

“Who gets elected and who makes decisions affects all of us,” says Bob Hall, the executive director of Democracy North Carolina, a group focused on money’s influence in politics. “Too often the money in campaigns is a determining factor in who gets to win and who gets to even run.”

Since Citizens United, a new breed of political action committee, known as the super PAC, has set the standard for political fundraising. So far during this year’s presidential primary, $159 million has been raised by super PACs on both sides, most of that coming from a small number of wealthy individuals — a troubling precedent to Hall, who says, even after policymakers are elected, they’re constantly looking over their shoulder and wondering where the next buck will come from.

Looking back on the numbers from 2010 is even more revealing. Altogether, the midterm election cost nearly $4 billion, passing the previous midterm election record, set in 2006, by more than a billion dollars. About $500 million was spent by outside groups to influence the election.

Without spending limits, super PACs are waging a political war where no one is safe. When President Obama recently gave the green light to PACs supporting his reelection, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi expressed her relief. Not accepting PAC donations, according to Pelosi, would be to “unilaterally disarm and leave the field to the Koch brothers to decide who would be president of the United States and who would control the Congress.”

Officially known as “independent-expenditure only committees,” super PACs are technically prohibited from coordinating with campaigns, and instead focus their efforts on electioneering communication for and against candidates. The tsunami of television ads unleashed by super PACs this year alone is expected to reach $3 billion, making the $2.2 million linked to Pope in 2010 seem like spare change, and his strategy all the more deft.

Although Pope has been politically active in North Carolina for decades — he served four terms in the state House of Representatives and ran for lieutenant governor in 1992 — many were exposed to the 55-year-old’s influence for the first time by an October 2011 investigative feature in The New Yorker. In “State for Sale,” writer Jane Mayer navigates the web of Pope’s influence and the donations during the 2010 election cycle that led back to the mogul — 75 percent of all contributions to far-right candidates. In an NPR interview, Mayer said that “[Pope] sees this whole operation as beneficial to voters.

“It gives them more choices and it helps them understand the records of the officeholders,” she says. “He has many rationales for why more money is just better.”

Engaged in their own battles, North Carolina media organizations on the left and right have used Pope as either the exemplar of everything wrong with the state of campaign finance or a fighter for first amendment rights.

In the Independent Weekly, the executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, Chris Kromm, described how the Pope strategy — much like that of his friends and political allies, the billionaire Koch brothers — is not to just see his side win, but to “shift public opinion and the entire political debate toward a pro-business, anti-government agenda.” He accomplishes this, Kromm says, by sustaining the network of groups that make up the backbone of North Carolina’s conservative movement, including the Civitas Institute, the John Locke Foundation and Americans for Prosperity.

The John Locke Foundation, a far-right conservative think-tank, and Americans for Prosperity N.C., founded by Pope, advocate for the repeal of modest legislation promoting clean energy and promote school privatization among other positions that Kromm says “are really outside where the public stands on the issues.”

Pope hasn’t backed away from his critics and publicly maintains that he supports first amendment rights to freedom of speech, for individuals and corporations, and seeks only to educate voters on the issues. Responding to Mayer’s story in The National Review, Pope called The New Yorker story “bilge” and an attempt at character assassination, and asked, “What makes me different from George Soros or George Clooney?” He pointed out — as he has on numerous occasions — that, unknown to most who demonize his role in the 2010 election, Democrats in North Carolina actually outspent Republicans by more than $3 million.

N.C. Senator Richard Burr (left) and Art Pope attend an Americans for Prosperity anti-union rally in Raleigh, N.C. Pope funded the North Carolina chapter and is one of four national directors of the political advocacy group that was instrumental in the 2010 election on the state and national level.

The New Map

Even as the shared policy goals of North Carolina’s conservative network and its donating power were raising eyebrows, a project of the Republican State Legislature Committee, the Redistricting Majority Project, or REDMAP, had much larger aspirations.

Shortly after Barack Obama won the presidency by running on the theme of “change,” conservative strategists decided it was time to rethink their own approach. REDMAP was created to take control of state legislatures in time to steer the redistricting process that occurs each decade. Deemed a massive success, not only did Republicans win big in North Carolina, they gained
majorities in 21 state Houses and Senates. The GOP gained 680 seats overall in state legislative races, breaking the Democrats’ record of 628 during the post-Watergate 1974 election and making 2010 one of the party’s most successful elections in history.

When asked if the Democrats would have an answer to REDMAP in 2012, Mayer said she is “sure the Democrats are watching and trying to learn.”

On Nov. 1, 2011, redrawn maps created primarily by the new majority in the North Carolina state legislature, that likely would not have been possible without Pope’s backing, were approved by the U.S. Department of Justice. Lawsuits from the NAACP and the N.C. League of Women voters were filed almost simultaneously, accusing conservatives of gerrymandering for a decade of partisan advantage. In the fallout, several state Democrats — including Gov. Perdue — and Republicans have bowed out of the upcoming primaries.

When money equals speech, people as wealthy as Art Pope, the Koch brothers and even George Clooney have loud voices. To remedy this, groups like Democracy North Carolina propose voter-owned, publicly-funded elections and grassroots voter education. On the other side, the John Locke Foundation and Americans for Prosperity advocate for protecting “free and political speech rights by deregulating campaign finance.”

As opposition to Citizens United grows, there is a push for campaign reform. The DISCLOSE act, introduced in April 2010, would prohibit foreign corporations from influencing elections and given the public access to information regarding corporate donors and their campaign expenditures. More recently, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to overturn Citizens United, which he called “one of the worst decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court.”

As the nation catches its breath after the 2010 elections, another wave is reaching its crest. And even if Pope’s purchasing power changes in the future, he’ll remain the “Knight of the Right,” having contributed to a political conquest that changed the way races are run — and won.

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Posted in 2012 - Issue 2 (Apr/May), The Appalachian Voice | No Comments »