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Deniers Failing To Manufacture Scandal Out Of Biden Admin Emails [1]

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Date: 2023-05-22

During the Trump administration, everyday Americans became familiar with the concept of "regulatory capture," as Trump handed government agencies regulating industry over to representatives of the industries. The most glaring example was giving the State Department to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, whereas the EPA and other agencies were run by people whose careers were spent in service of the industries the government should be regulating.

Now, Republicans are desperate to turn the tables and accuse Biden administration staff of having the same sorts of conflicts of interest as the Trump's administration . For example, professional climate disinfo propagandist and Fox News reporter Thomas Catenacci has often written stories based on email requests to or disclosures from the Biden administration , covering them as though they're scandals.

Catenacci’s latest hit piece is about Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who met with philanthropic interests to talk about " transforming food systems ." The story just dresses up snippets of emails to portray banal chatter about meetings as something seemingly sinister.

Fox "News" somehow forgot to actually report on what's wrong with someone in the government meeting with private philanthropic interests working for the public good, which is because there isn't anything wrong with that! In fact, that's exactly what the government should be doing. The irony is that conservatives are usually the ones who argue that the government should do less and just let private charities handle improving the world, and that’s not far from what this is!

The same level of intellectual consistency and integrity can be found over at RealClearEnergy , where another professional propagandist, Kevin Mooney, published a right-wing hit piece about a recent Senate hearing. Specifically, the article covers Sen. Josh Hawley's accusations that FERC commissioner Allison Clements did something wrong when talking to a group of philanthropic donors and advocacy groups like the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and NRDC.

Hawley said he was "concerned" because in saying she met with foundations working in the energy space, Clements was supposedly admitting to "a pattern, practice of speaking to donor groups that have financial interests in the industry you are regulating."

Apparently Hawley thinks donors are making money on the energy industry? As opposed to giving it away to others??

Or more realistically, he knows it's a trumped-up charge and is leveling it anyway for purely partisan political purposes. And sure enough, Mooney quoted Chris Horner , a longtime coal-funded attorney representing the fossil-fueled group behind the FOIA lawsuits, and former Big Tobacco lawyer . According to Horner, "it was only a few short years ago that an official’s vastly more incidental interaction with former clients in the previous administration was deemed grounds not only for dismissal, but justified congressional intimidation of his former employer and clients. It’s almost as if there are two standards.”

Mooney explains that Horner described "the example of Bill Wehrum, who served as the EPA’s chief air quality administrator under President Trump. Wehrum was hounded for months by green groups and congressional committees for having addressed a room in which two former clients were in attendance."

We’ll go ahead and spell out why it's actually still just one standard: Wehrum was a lobbyist for coal and oil companies, who the Trump administration put in charge of regulating coal and oil companies, and who, with his deputy, another former lobbyist , "may have loosened air pollution rules to help their former clients in the energy sector."

Clements and Vilsack aren't changing the rules to let their former employers make more money! Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and NRDC aren't energy companies making money; they are NON-profit organizations!

Over and over again, Republicans are portraying government officials doing exactly what they should be doing (meeting with constituents about relevant topics to advance the public good) as though it's on par with the exact opposite behavior (catering to polluters they're supposed to regulate)!

And one can be fairly certain it's not because they simply don't know the difference between for-profit and non-profit…

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/22/2170674/-Deniers-Failing-To-Manufacture-Scandal-Out-Of-Biden-Admin-Emails

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