Front Group

Most people have never heard of the DC lobbying and public relations firm DCI Group. When DCI Group does it’s job right, most people never do. That’s because DCI is a prime example what a highly effective, professional, and well-funded Public Relations firm can do. Are you a cigarette company that wants grassroots support for cigarette smoking? DCI can do that. Are you an Indonesian timber conglomerate that wants the “freedom” to sell illegal rainforest pulp? DCI can enlist thousands of liberty-lovin Americans to protect that freedom. Do you want people mobilized, in the streets, demanding that the government relax pollution laws and other regulations on your coal or oil corporation? DCI actually did that. It was called the Tea party.

CASE STUDIES

1 DCI Group and Tobacco

Addictive, deadly, and rich, the tobacco industry is the perfect client for a crack PR team like DCI Group.

During the early days of tobacco regulation in the 1980’s, tobacco corporations were spending millions of dollars to convince Americans that tobacco really wasn’t that bad for them, and regulating tobacco was an infringement on the god given rights of every American.

Masterminding that message was DCI Groups founders, Doug Goodyear and Tom Synhorst, who were two of the tobacco PR men involved in the early days of “tobacco control opposition.”

Using a strategy DCI Group would repeat and hone in the coming decades, PR admen like Goodyear and Synhorst pioneered couching a pro-corporate agenda, in this case tobacco’s, in terms of rights, liberties and freedoms. They started “smokers rights groups,” whose anti-regulatory, pro-business bent is right at home in today’s Tea Party messaging. DCI Group has maintained those close ties through the years, and currently lobby for Altria (Philip Morris).

2 DCI Group and the start of the Tea Party

A recently released academic study has traced the origins of the Tea Party back to its roots. The popular creation myth of the Tea Party, in which a news anchor, fed up with the federal governments creeping socialism demands an uprising - a la Network - is only part of the story. In fact, PR agencies working for tobacco, and oil, and coal corporations had been pushing for a Tea Party for decades, and had even registered the websites and domain names under the name Tea Party, 6 years before president Obama’s election.

From the study:

“Rather than being a grassroots movement that spontaneously developed in 2009, the Tea Party organizations have had connections to the tobacco companies since the 1980s. The cigarette companies funded and worked through Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), the predecessor of Tea Party organizations, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, to accomplish their economic and political agenda.”

With the help of the oil billionaire Koch Brothers, DCI Group partner Dan Combs built “Citizens for a Sound Economy,”(CSE) during the 1990’s, right as the tobacco industry was busted for lying about the dangers of smoking. CSE’s self-described mission was "to fight for less government, lower taxes, and less regulation," which included opposing tobacco laws and pollution regulation on the oil industry.

3 DCI Group and Americans For Prosperity/ Freedomworks

In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) split like a procreative amoebae into Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, the two largest and most powerful Tea Party organizations. AfP and Freedomworks employ hundreds of Tea Party organizers all over the country, and pay for rallies, promotional materials, and conventions.

DCI Group, and it’s alias FLS Connect, are currently the highest paid consultants for AFP and Freedomworks. DCI carefully crafts messaging for the Tea Party behemoths, and does extensive polling to make sure their pro-corporate, free-market PR is hitting the mark. Just as they directed anti-tax advocates to do big-tobacco and big-oil’s work through Citizens for a Sound Economy, DCI Group is using the Tea Party in the service of corporate America.

4 DCI Group and Climate Change Denial

DCI Group was a pioneer of brazen denial of scientific evidence while working for tobacco giants. They applied the same technique of creating fake science, misrepresenting impacts, and attacking legitimate scientists to their campaign denying the existence of climate change.

At the behest of major oil corporation and DCI Group client ExxonMobil, DCI became a hotbed of climate change science attacks, training and funding outspoken climate change deniers. DCI Group created and ran Tech Central Station, a platform for climate science denial. Tech Central Station was so egregiously disingenuous about climate science that a Senatorial committee asked ExxonMobil to stop funding it, which Exxon did in 2006.

However, a slap from the Senate did not stop DCI Group from continuing to specialize in anti-climate science messaging. DCI Group continues to hire and train professional climate change deniers. One such DCI Group alumnus, Andrea Saul, became candidate Mitt Romney’s press secretary during the 2012 presidential election, and helped push Romney’s anti-climate science positions. While at DCI, she wrote and distributed pres releases attacking legitimate climate science. Another DCI Group alumnus, Bob Paduchik, is now a Vice President of the coal front group called Americans for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

5 DCI Group and Foreign Criminal Entities

DCI specializes in manipulating America’s white, conservative class, using loaded buzzwords like “freedom,” and “liberty,” and couching a corporate agenda of reduced regulation as “small government.” As it turns out, this type of manipulation is an old shtick, predating the Tea Party.

And DCI Group does this for many clients, including an Indonesian timber company responsible for illegal deforestation of rainforests in southeast Asia. DCI helped create a front group for Asia Pulp and Paper, which has destroyed millions of miles of endangered rainforest in Indonesia. They found a self described “tea party patriot” to lead the effort, who made tea party themed speeches that advocated for the Indonesian paper corporation, APP.

Chart Source: New York Times

Science education is a problem in the United States. Studies consistently show the U.S. ranking poor in science education testing in industrialized countries.

Exxon, Koch Industries, Duke Energy and other profiteers of global warming inaction are not helping. Through the American Legislative Exchange Council, these companies are working to ensure that in certain states, children and young adults will be taught that certain myths are scientifically credible. Steve Horn at DeSmogBlog broke the ALEC connection:

January hasn't even ended, yet ALEC has already planted its "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act" - which mandates a "balanced" teaching of climate science in K-12 classrooms - in the state legislatures of Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona so far this year. 

In the past five years since 2008, among the hottest years in U.S. history, ALEC has introduced its "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act" in 11 states, or over one-fifth of the statehouses nationwide. The bill has passed in four states, an undeniable form of "big government" this "free market" organization decries in its own literature.

Each of the three new bills were sponsored by paying ALEC-member legislators - the Arizona bill was exclusively co-sponsored by six ALEC politicians.

The three states considering ALEC's climate denial law are already struggling to teach quality science. While Colorado scores an "average" ranking among states in science education, both Arizona and Oklahoma score "far below average," according to a 2011 ranking by the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics.

Unfortunately, as this attack on science education is considered in Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona, there at least four states that already passed the ALEC bill. From DeSmogBlog last March:

First it was Louisiana, back in 2009, then Texas in 2009, South Dakota in 2010 and now Tennessee has joined the club, bringing the total to four U.S. states that have mandated climate change denial in K-12 "science" education. 

It's unfortunate that these students won't be told how much scientific literature concludes that human-induced global warming is occurring:

ALEC and the Heartland Institute: Selling Doubt to Students

The Heartland Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council have long been buddy-buddy on rejecting climate science. Heartland is driving much of ALEC's interference policies on climate change with support from other members of ALEC's Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force. An oil industry apologist with ties to both ALEC and Heartland named Sandy Liddy Bourne facilitated the creation of the "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act." DeSmogBlog refreshes our memories:

ALEC's Natural Resources Task Force, now known as its Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force, adopted this model at a time when the Task Force was headed by Sandy Liddy Bourne. Bourne, who served in this capacity from 1999-2004, would eventually ascend to the role of Director of Legislation and Policy for ALEC in 2004. 

Upon leaving ALEC in 2006, Bourne become Heartland's Vice President for Policy Strategy. Today she serves as Executive Director of the American Energy Freedom Center, an outfit she co-heads with Arthur G. Randol. Randol is a longtime lobbyist and PR flack for ExxonMobil, a corporation which endowed the climate change denial machine for years.

Heartland's website still lists Bourne as one of its "experts," stating that "Under her leadership, 20 percent of ALEC model bills were enacted by one state or more, up from 11 percent." 

ALEC and Heartland's focus on injecting fossil fuel public relations into science curriculum is picking up where another front group left off. A disbanded organization called the Environmental Literacy Council, set up by the Koch- and Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute, was established to be a resource for any teachers willing to misinform their students on climate science.

Unfortunately, Koch, Exxon and ALEC's other supporters seems less interested in maintaining a habitable planet for the upcoming generation and more interested in profiting from their ignorance.

You're probably familiar with the old "fox in the hen house" story, but what about when a hen joins the fox den?

This is the case with the recent American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in Washington, DC. Leaked documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal that ALEC's anti-environmental jamboree was inundated with coal money and featured an Indiana regulator advising coal utilities on delaying US Environmental Protection Agency rules to control greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous air pollution.

At ALEC's coal-sponsored meeting, where state legislators and corporate representatives meet to create template state laws ranging from attacks on clean energy to privatization of public schools, Indiana's Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Management Tom Easterly laid out a plan to stall the US EPA global warming action in a power point clearly addressed to coal industry representatives at ALEC's meeting.

In a USB drive branded with the logo of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a folder labeled "Easterly" contains a presentation titled "Easterly ALEC presentation 11 28 12" explaining current EPA air pollution rules and how Tom Easterly has worked to obstruct them. The power points is branded with the Indiana Department of Environmental Protection seal. In the latter presentation, Easterly ended his briefing to ALEC's dirty energy members with suggestions for delaying EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions at coal plants.

Easterly's presentation, which is posted on his Indiana Dept. of Environmental Mgmt commissioner webpage, even offered a template state resolution that would burden EPA with conducting a number of unnecessary cost benefit analyses (which the federal government has done through the Social Cost of Carbon analysis) in the process of controlling GHG emissions.

The template resolution Easterly presented to ALEC was created by the Environmental Council of States (ECOS), a group of state regulators that create template state resolutions similar to ALEC, often with overlapping agendas that benefit coal companies. ECOS has some questionable template state resolutions for an "Environmental" organization, including a resolution urging EPA not to classify coal ash as "hazardous." Although its less regulated than household trash, coal ash contains neurotoxins, carcinogens and radioactive elements and is stored in dangerous slurry "ponds" that can leak these dangerous toxins into our waterways.

Almost too predictably, ECOS' work is sponsored by the coal fronts like ACCCE and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), both sponsors of the ALEC meeting where Easterly presented the ECOS model resolution. See clean air watchdog Frank O'Donnell's blog on ECOS for more.

Easterly's work, including his presentation to ALEC, is also promoted by the Midwest Ozone Group, a group whose members include ACCCE, American Electric Power and Duke Energy.

Commissioner Tom Easterly's suggestion of burdening EPA with tasks beyond its responsibility is concerning, as is his ongoing campaign to discredit the science of global warming--something he doesn't have the scientific qualifications to do. To this end, the Indiana regulator fits nicely into the coal industry's long history of denying problems they don't want to be held accountable for and delaying solutions to those problems. The same processes applied to acid rain, a problem the coal industry also denied for years--check out Greenpeace's collection of Coal Ads: Decades of Deception.

Climate Science Denial at Indiana's Department of Environmental Management

Even before Indiana's top enforcer of federal and state environmental regulations was advising coal companies on how to continuing polluting our air and water, it appears that denial of basic climate science is the state's official position on global warming--Indiana's 2011 "State of the Environment" report rehashes tired climate denier arguments such as global temperature records having "no appreciable change since about 1998." (see why this is a lie) and referencing the "medieval warm period" as false proof that current temperature anomalies are normal (they aren't, see Skeptical Science for a proper debunking). Similar arguments have apparently been presented by the Indiana government to ALEC since 2008--the ACCCE USB drive contains another Indiana power point created in 2008 full of junk climate "science." This level of scientific illiteracy is concerning, especially for the regulatory body responsible for overseeing pollution controls for the coal industry.

Remember, this isn't the Heartland Institute. It's the State of Indiana....working with the Heartland Institute, a member of ALEC's anti-environmental task force that has been central in coordinating campaigns to deny global warming. See Commissioner Easterly's full presentation to ALEC on climate "science."

ALEC States & Nation Policy Summit 2012: brought to you by King Coal

ALEC's brochure for last week's meeting shows a disproportionately large presence of coal sponsors. The brochure lists 14 sponsors, five of which are coal interests:

• American Electric Power (AEP): the second largest coal utility in the U.S. now that Duke Energy and Progress Energy have merged.
  • Political spending since 2007: AEP has spent over $46.2 million on federal lobbying and $3.9 million on federal politicians and political committees.

• Peabody Energy: the world's largest private-sector coal mining company, known for its legacy of pollution and aggressive finance of climate change denial.
  • Political spending since 2007: Peabody has spent over $37.9 million on federal lobbying and $690,769 on federal politicians and political committees.

• American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE): a coal public relations front whose members include AEP, Peabody and other ALEC-member coal interests. ACCCE's new president is Mike Duncan, former Republican National Committee chairman and founding chairman of Karl Rove's American Crossroads. ACCCE spent over $12 million on advertising during the 2012 election to promote the fantasy of "clean coal." ACCCE reportedly spent $40 million on TV and radio ads during the 2008 election and over $16 million around the 2010 election. ACCCE was caught up in a scandal when a subcontractor forged letters on behalf of senior and civil rights groups urging members of Congress to oppose national climate legislation. For more, see ACCCE on PolluterWatch.
  • Political spending since 2007: ACCCE spent over $22.3 million on federal lobbying, $10 million of which was spent in 2008 alone.

• Edison Electric Institute (EEI): the primary trade association for electric utility companies, whose members include AEP, Duke Energy and numerous other members of ALEC's energy/environment task force.
  • Political spending since 2007: EEI has spent over $63.7 million on federal lobbying and over $2.1 million on federal politicians and political committees.

• National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA): NRECA is the top dirty energy money contributor to federal politicians, above heavyweights like Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. Composed of over 900 rural coal interests, NRECA is known for its staunch opposition to climate change policy.
  • Political spending since 2007: NRECA has spent over $23.9 million on federal lobbying and over $8.6 million on federal politicians and political committees.

$15.3 million: total federal politicians and committees spending from these groups since 2007

$194 million: total federal lobbying expenditures from these groups since 2007

The collective millions spent on federal lobbying and politicians went a long way for these five coal interest groups. Their lobbying goals included weakening 2009 climate legislation and working to interfere with US EPA rules to reduce coal pollution or greenhouse gases.

All five of these groups have recently lobbied to prevent US EPA from controlling greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. These five interests only represent a slice of the coal interests spending money in politics, and just a few players among many in the coal, oil, gas and chemical industries that dump millions of dollars into public relations campaigns telling us that climate change is not a problem.

Earlier this year internal documents from the Heartland Institute, a major hub of climate change denial and right-wing extremism, were publicly leaked. The documents exposed the Heartland Institute's funders and strategies for attacking climate science, and led to a mass exodus of Heartland's corporate funders.

Today, a newly updated report based in large part on Heartland's internal documents has revealed two new insights into the way in which the anti-climate science movement has been supported and financed over the last decade.

1. A billionaire named Barre Seid is the Heartland Institute's main sugar daddy. He is the "Anonymous Donor" listed in Heartland's fundraising plan who finances climate science denial operations to confuse children, the general public and policymakers over global warming. Seid has been the biggest booster behind Heartland's attacks on climate science, donating millions of dollars to keep the Heartland Institute's anti-science work afloat.
2. The Koch brothers and other ultra-wealthy industrial ideologues are now hiding much of their donations to conservative political outlets through an obscure group of foundations that specialize in secrecy.

In total over $311 million has been put through twin organizations known as Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund which share an address in Alexandria, Virginia. The people running these organizations are close to the Kochs and have numerous ties to the groups that the DONORS network funds, such as the Koch-founded Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Independent Women's Forum and the Manhattan Institute. The Kochs have a little-known foundation that only donates to these "DONORS" groups called the Knowledge & Progress Fund, according to the report detailing this network.

The report, written by a silicon Valley scientist turned public interest watchdog John Mashey, is titled "Fakexperts," and details how right-wing foundations associated with the Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife, the Bradley family, and others have been using a secret finance network to support extremist right-wing groups. Most of these groups are associated with the State Policy Network, a band of corporate apologists who have made careers denying everything from the dangers of smoking cigarettes to the existence of climate change.

Some of the sketchy groups that have received big chunks of their 2010 budgets through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, including top climate change science deniers:

• Americans For Prosperity Foundation got $7.6 million from DONORS groups in 2010, 43% of its budget. AFP Foundation is chaired by David Koch and has received millions in direct funding from Koch foundations since the Koch brothers founded it.
• Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) got $1.3 million from DONORS in 2010, 45% of its budget.
• Cornwall Alliance (through the James Partnership) got $339,500 from DONORS in 2010, 75% of its budget.
• Heartland Institute got $1.6 million from DONORS in 2010, 27% of it's budget, which came from Chicago billionaire Barre Seid (see p. 67).
• State Policy Network got 36% of its 2010 budget ($4.8 million) from DONORS. SPN members include just about every climate-denying organization and every conservative think tank in the country, including AFP and Heartland.

The twin DONORS organizations are advertised as a way for very wealthy people and corporations to remain hidden when "funding sensitive or controversial issues groups," which creates a lack of accountability that is troubling. DONORS also promises to only funnel money to groups with an extreme anti-environmental bend, so industrial billionaires need not worry about their money winding up here at Greenpeace, as Donor's Trust co-founder Whitney Ball explains:

"...if a donor names his child a successor advisor, and she wants to give to Greenpeace, we’re not going to be able to do that."

Expect to hear more about Donor's Trust and Donor's Capital Fund as we continue to track the dirty money of Koch Industries and their allies. For more, check out PBS FRONTLINE's recent dig on climate deniers in a special called Climate of Doubt, which includes descriptions of the DONORS groups from Drexel University's Robert Brulle.