Ellington

In a long piece Sunday, The New York Times examined Haley Barbour's role in Bush energy/environmental policies: "Just six weeks into the Bush administration, Haley Barbour, a former Republican party chairman who was a lobbyist for electric power companies, sent a memorandum to Vice President Dick Cheney laying down a challenge. 'The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore,' Mr. Barbour wrote, and called for measures to show that environmental concerns would no longer 'trump good energy policy.'"

"Mr. Barbour's memo was an opening shot in a two-year fight inside the Bush administration for dominance between environmental protection and energy production on clean air policy. One camp included officials, like Mr. Cheney, who came from the energy industry. In another were enforcers of environmental policy, led by Christie Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey."

"The battle engaged some of the nation's largest power companies, which were also among the largest donors to President Bush and other Republicans. They were represented by Mr. Barbour and another influential lobbyist, Marc Racicot, who also would later become chairman of the Republican National Committee."

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ID

137566

Comment

As a friend points out, this article in the Times and the recent oil and gas bill stuff seems to fit together nicely. See the following link which contains the quote excerpted below. http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/8110465.htm "We quite frankly have not had opposition from anybody but tree huggers and Democrats," said Marvin L. Oxley, an oil and gas geologist who's helping lobby for the law changes. "Don't use that, say, 'environmentalists.' By Democrats, I mean the blacks. Don't write blacks. Were you in the Judiciary hearing? That's most of who had questions about this." As Josh Marshall has written, "no rules, just power" for those people who are running the show right now.

Author

md75

Date

2004-03-08T13:21:22-06:00