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GOP Team At American Energy Alliance Runs ‘Energy Town Hall’ Oil Bus Tour

By Brad Johnson on Aug 22, 2009 at 10:06 am

AEA Team
American Energy Alliance staffers Kevin Kennedy, Patrick Creighton, and Laura Henderson on tour in Pennsylvania. All are former House GOP staff.

The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading the conservative lies that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will “cripple our sluggish economy.” AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus tour pictures workers in hard hats:

The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.

In fact, by attacking legislation that addresses climate change and our national dependence on fossil fuels, AEA is preventing a clean-energy economic boom. Laughably, AEA claims it has “no ties to any political party“:

AEA has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party.

AEA may be telling the truth that it has “no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party” — its only interest seems to be blocking progressive reform by spreading lies and distortions. However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative. Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

Patrick Creighton, AEA Communications Director, Worked For Bush And Pennsylvania Republicans. Patrick Creighton was the special assistant to Samuel T. Mok, the chief financial officer at the Department of Labor from 2004 to 2006. He then worked as a spokesman for oil and natural gas advocate Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) from 2006 to 2009, worked to elect Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), then joined Thompson’s office until May 2009. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Kevin Kennedy, AEA Federal Affairs Director, Promoted Alaska Drilling Under Don Young. After graduating from Union College in 2004, Kevin Kennedy worked for the Astroturf organization Arctic Power, which advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2007, Kennedy became a legislative assistant for the corrupt Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He joined the Institute for Energy Research and American Energy Alliance in 2009. [Institute for Energy Research]

Laura Henderson, AEA Spokesperson, Served Shelby, Dole, And Tiberi. Laura Henderson was a former press secretary for offshore drilling advocate Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) from 2005-2009. Previously, she worked for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH). [Institute for Energy Research]

Daniel R. Simmons, AEA State Affairs Director, Is A Koch-Funded GOP Staffer. Simmons was the Director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing network funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and other corporate and right-wing organizations. Previously, Simmons was a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, also funded by Koch. From 2001 to 2005, Simmons served on the staff of Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA) on the House Natural Resources Committee. Simmons holds a B.A. in Economics from Utah State University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law, also supported by Koch Industries. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Furthermore, AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org website is run by yet another former GOP House staffer:

GOP.gov Webmaster Nathan Imperiale Runs EnergyTownHall.Org. AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org was designed by NJI Media Group, part of Endeavour Global Strategies. Endeavour’s head, Sean Spicer, is a long-time GOP operative, including communications work for the House Republican Conference and the Bush White House. NJI Media Group’s president, Nathan Imperiale, served as Director of New Media for the House Republican Conference, building its GOP.gov website. [Twitter, 2/13/09; Endeavour Global Strategies]

AEA’s “American Energy Express” joins a field crowded by conservative oil and coal propaganda — the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s “Factuality” bus tour, the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” oil rallies, and the Americans For Prosperity “Hot Air” balloon tour.

Update

At Free Advice, Institute for Energy Research economist Bob Murphy writes that Paul Krugman doesn’t understand tea party protesters because he doesn’t care about checks on government power like they do, and continues:

So, by symmetry, I think people on “our side” should realize that the great masses of Americans who are for health care reform and climate legislation (and it pains me to not put scare quotes around those phrases) aren’t actually closet socialists who want to bring America to its knees.

Yglesias

Adventures in Malaportionment

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 22, 2009 at 9:58 am

Raegan Miller’s CAP paper on “Secret Recipes Revealed: Demystifying the Title I, Part A Funding Formulas” is very interesting but quite complicated and I’m having some trouble fully understanding the whole thing. The main point, however, is that the actual allocation of Title I education money (meant to help with schooling for poor kids) is handing out according to four separate formulae, each of which is pretty opaque, and the overall effect does a bad job of targeting money in needed ways. One source of perversity that I understand perfectly well is this one:

Second, recognizing the special funding challenges faced by small states, the formulas provide for minimum allocations.25 In other words, small states are guaranteed a non-trivial slice of the pie. Since small states tend not to serve concentrations of children in poverty, this adjustment provision detracts from the proper targeting of funds.

When people look at the data and don’t see a clear ideological skew to the Senate’s over-representation of low-population states, it’s important to recognize that the demographic characteristics of low-population states actually do create certain systematic quasi-ideological biases in the political system. In theory, you could have a low-population state featuring high levels of poverty, high levels of urbanization, many minority students, or some combination of the above. The Bronx, for example, has more than enough people to be a state. But it’s not a state, it’s just a part of a city that’s a part of a state.

Instead in the real world the low-population states are disproportionately rural, have very few non-white students, and few high-poverty school districts. Thanks to these states’ over-representation in the senate, however, federal education funding is distorted away from what ought to be high-priority districts in need of help and toward places that don’t really need it. This doesn’t show up as a partisan or ideological bias since many low-population states are represented by Democrats (Kent Conrad) and even very liberal Democrats (Pat Leahy). But the fact of the matter remains that this winds up systematically disadvantaging minority students and even left-wing Vermont Democrats aren’t so high-minded as to be inclined to vote for a change that would direct money away from their state and toward others that objectively need it more.

Yglesias

Supply-Side Weirdness From Greg Mankiw

By Matthew Yglesias on Aug 22, 2009 at 8:28 am

David Leonhardt and Geraldine Fabrikant write:

In the three decades after World War II, when the incomes of the rich grew more slowly than those of the middle class, the top marginal rate ranged from 70 to 91 percent. Mr. Piketty, one of the economists who analyzed the I.R.S. data, argues that these high rates did not affect merely post-tax income. They also helped hold down the pretax incomes of the wealthy, he says, by giving them less incentive to make many millions of dollars.

Greg Mankiw links to this approvingly under the banner “We Are All Supply-Siders Now.” And it’s true that this is Piketty pointing to a “supply side” effect. On the other hand, the distinctive contention of the supply-siders is that lower taxes on the rich are the key to economic growth. In reality, economic growth was much stronger in the 30 postwar years than in the past 30 years of the low-tax era.

Climate Progress

NYT Editorial: “One would think that by now most people would have figured out that climate change represents a grave threat to the planet.”

By Joe Romm on Aug 22, 2009 at 7:12 am

One would think that by now most people would have figured out that climate change represents a grave threat to the planet. One would also have expected from Congress a plausible strategy for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that lie at the root of the problem.

That has not happened. The House has passed a climate bill that is not as strong as needed, but is a start. There are doubts about whether the Senate will pass any bill, given the reflexive opposition of most Republicans and unfounded fears among many Democrats that rising energy costs will cripple local industries.

So begins a very good New York Times editorial, “The Climate and National Security.”  The piece goes on to explain one reason why we are in this political mess and one message that may have some traction in the Senate:

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