Task Force Majeure

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17430

 

 

Task Force Majeure

 

By Amanda Griscom, Grist Magazine

December 19, 2003

 

On Monday, the Supreme Court offered Vice President Dick Cheney a possible

escape hatch from the great energy task force imbroglio. The high court agreed

to hear an appeal from Cheney, who for more than a year has been defying a

federal judge's order to pony up documents about his infamous 2001 task force.

Those behind the lawsuit against the veep are certain the documents will reveal

that the White House was canoodling with industrial interests behind closed

doors as it worked to establish national energy policy.

 

 

 

The legal saga began in December 2001, when a funny bipartisan duo, the Sierra

Club and Judicial Watch, a D.C.-based conservative ethics watchdog group, teamed

up to file a lawsuit against the White House. The goal of the suit: to find out

if Cheney's clandestine task force negotiations were illegally influenced by

energy industry kingpins from companies like Enron, The Southern Company, and

Cheney's own pride and joy, Halliburton. Cheney's Justice Department lawyers,

who declined to speak with Muckraker, have repeatedly insisted that Cheney is

immune to the court order to release the papers on grounds of a constitutional

separation of powers.

 

 

 

What exactly does that mean? Not much, according to Sierra Club lawyer David

Bookbinder. " The White House is claiming that simply by virtue of his executive

status, the vice president is fundamentally immune from having to appear in

front of any federal court and give any information or account of his

activities. Period. It's that preposterous, " he said

 

 

 

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, is equally appalled: " This is a

completely unprecedented attempt to overextend executive privilege, " he said.

" It calls into question the integrity of the court system in this country –

particularly because we're 3-and-0 right now. " In other words, first the U.S.

District Court for D.C., where the lawsuit was originally filed, ordered Cheney

to release the documents; second, he appealed the case to a federal appellate

court three-judge panel, which again ordered the vice president to show his

cards; and third, he steamrolled on to the full nine-judge appellate court,

which refused to even reconsider the matter. With this track record, it's

difficult to understand why the Supreme Court would agree to hear the case.

 

 

 

For some, it's an ominous sign. " We're totally screwed, " said one lawyer close

to the case against Cheney who asked to remain anonymous. " The Supreme Court

took the case to kill it. They did not take the case for any other reason then

to drive a big spike through it. " The lawyer went on to explain that if the

Supreme Court agrees to take a case, it means that at least four of the justices

believe that the original D.C. circuit court got its ruling wrong. " The outcome

of this case is all but predetermined, " said the lawyer.

 

 

 

Fitton is more hopeful, calling the Supreme Court's consent to hear the case a

professional courtesy: " There is traditionally deference to the executive branch

when the high court is asked to take on cases like this. " Moreover, there are

several Supreme Court rulings that suggest that the kind of executive immunity

Cheney is requesting is flat-out unconstitutional – among them, United States

vs. Nixon and Clinton vs. [Paula] Jones, which respectively forced presidents

Nixon and Clinton to be treated in the judicial system like any other American.

" If the Supreme Court upholds the letter of the law, " said Fitton, " then we will

very clearly win. "

 

 

 

And if the Supreme Court forces Cheney to come clean, it's almost a given that

the evidence would be damning: The media has already reported that Kenneth Lay

and other energy honchos not only met with Cheney on task force-related matters

but also, in the case of Lay, submitted an eight-item wish list for the

administration's new energy policy.

 

 

 

But in the end it may not matter that much, because the Bush team will likely

get exactly what it is looking for: extra time. According to Bookbinder, this

whole strategy comes right out of the Karl Rove playbook. " The Bush

administration is basically trying to stall the whole process for another year, "

said Bookbinder, " so that when the ruling comes out – if it does – it won't

interfere with the November elections. "

 

 

 

Campbell's Swoop

 

 

 

There's a certain poetic justice in the fact that former U.S. EPA Administrator

Christie Todd Whitman's home state of New Jersey – maligned by some as the

" armpit of America " because of its heavy industry – is leading a defiant

counterassault on the Bush administration's mercury rollback. On Dec. 10, New

Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell

proposed new rules that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants, iron

and steel smelters, and municipal solid waste incinerators by between 75 and 95

percent by 2007. By contrast, a Bush administration proposal officially unveiled

this week only calls for a 70 percent mercury reduction overall by 2018.

 

 

 

" The Bush administration's proposed mercury rules ignore science and will damage

public health, " said Campbell. " The [EPA has] very clearly chosen to neglect the

environmental and human problems caused by mercury, leaving it to states alone

to shoulder the responsibility of protecting its citizens. " The states that are

doing so include not only New Jersey but also Connecticut, Massachusetts, and

Wisconsin, all of which have proposed tough new standards for emissions of

mercury, a dangerous neurotoxin that can cause developmental problems. And

dozens more states have good reason to follow suit, given that more than 40

states issue fish-consumption advisories warning their citizens about dangerous

mercury levels in fish caught in state waterways.

 

 

 

If New Jersey's rules were enacted nationally, annual mercury emissions from

coal-fired power plants would decline from approximately 48 tons to about five

tons in the next three years. That, Campbell says, is one reason the federal

government should follow his state's lead. " No matter what we do at a state

level, a patchwork of local programs distributed all over the country is no

substitute for an aggressive federal plan, " he said. " This is a problem that by

definition must be addressed at a federal level because air emissions travel

between states. " Indeed, more than a third of New Jersey's mercury pollution

creeps in from neighboring states.

 

 

 

The EPA, however, insists on the virtues of its mercury plan, calling it far

more economically feasible than the Maximum Achievable Control Technology

standards put forward by the Clinton administration, which would have required

plants to install the best available pollution filters and resulted in a 90

percent drop in mercury emissions by 2008. " The MACT standards don't have the

flexibility that our cap-and-trade program has, " said EPA spokesperson Cynthia

Bergman. " We're proposing instead a 70 percent cut in mercury emissions over

time, which will achieve steep reductions without hitting consumers with spikes

in electricity prices. "

 

 

 

But Campbell counters that of the 10 coal-fired power plants in his state, three

have already been retrofitted with technologies to achieve 90 percent mercury

reductions, and the average rise in electricity bills related to those plants

was negligible. And anyway, he notes, money isn't always the bottom line: " Even

if the costs were higher, which in our case, I repeat, they are not, it's

reckless to be dickering about consumer prices when the alternative is brain

damage! "

 

 

 

Swimming Against the Tides

 

 

 

The archconservatives are up in arms about liberal foundations – the type whose

philanthropic dollars help keep environmental organizations (including Grist)

afloat. The object of the most recent attack was the new Pittsburgh-based branch

of the Tides Foundation, which is partly funded by the Vira Heinz Endowment and

the Howard Heinz Endowment, chaired by Teresa Heinz Kerry. (That's the wife of

Democratic presidential contender John Kerry, in case you missed the

connection.) The new Tides branch was lambasted in an " Issue Alert " entitled

" Secretive left-wing group has ties to Heinz Endowments, " which, strangely, was

sent out this week to everybody on the email list of the House Resources

Committee press office.

 

 

 

" We just forwarded it on [to] our press release

as an informational

piece, " said Matthew Streit, who works in the press office. The Resources

Committee is chaired by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), who is so notorious for

berating environmentalists in press releases that his announcements are known in

environmental circles as " Pomblasts. "

 

 

 

This particular Pomblast was written by Gretchen Randall, a researcher at the

right-wing consulting firm Winningreen LLC, which claims to be " dedicated to the

development and promotion of sound environmental public policy. " It was derived

from an op-ed%20Randall' where from p s husband Tom published in Pittsburgh

Tribune-Review report couple wrote jointly for the right-wing D.C.-based

organization Capital Research Center. (Download a

 

 

Tom Randall's op-ed attacks the Tides Foundation's " secretive funneling of cash

from private foundations " to " extreme left-wing activist groups whose interests

include exclusion of humans from both public and private land. " Those " extreme

left-wing activist groups " include the Union of Concerned Scientists and the

Natural Resources Defense Council. According to the report, other worrisome

causes supported by the Tides Foundation include anti-war protests, gun control,

abolition of the death penalty, pro-choice activism, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and

transgender advocacy, and opposition to free trade.

 

 

 

Christopher Herrera, the spokesperson for Tides Foundation, was nothing but

amused by the attack: " Essentially they are describing the substance of what we

do to a tee – only in strident, arch-conservative language [and] completely

inventing this notion that we're engaged in secretive, illegitimate financial

schemes. "

 

 

 

Indeed, the fiscal operations of the Tides Foundation are secretive, but they

are all done by the books – the same books and financial mechanisms used by the

vast majority of some 600 or more community foundations across the country, such

as the New York Community Trust, as well as for-profit entities that have

philanthropic arms, including Charles Schwab and Fidelity. The mechanism used by

all of these institutions, including Tides, is called the " donor-advised fund, "

meaning the organization receives money from people who want to give to

charitable organizations anonymously. " This is standard accounting, " says

Herrera. " Our books are impeccably kept – what more likely concerns these

[critics] is that our books are so full. "

 

 

 

In the end, the conservatives might just be unhappy that the left is learning

how to play the right's own games. " While Tides may deplore the free market, "

the report snaps, " it certainly knows how to maneuver within it. "

 

 

 

Amanda Griscom writes for Grist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos - Get your photo on the big screen in Times Square