People send me stuff…this is from the Wall Street Journal editorial board. It will appear in the Friday January 12, 2018, print edition.
Climate of Unaccountability
Are foundations running state energy policy without transparency?
With President Trump putting economic growth above climate alarums, green activists are turning to progressive states to press their regulatory agenda. Governors from 15 states have formed the U.S. Climate Alliance, for example, to enforce the Paris Climate Agreement despite Mr. Trump’s withdrawal. Fair enough if it’s all above board, but records we’ve obtained suggest that foundations are steering policy behind the scenes without transparency or clear public accountability.
A leading example is Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s office, which seems to have subcontracted some of its work and budget to two foundations pushing an activist climate agenda. An environmental nonprofit, the World Resources Institute, actually hired Washington’s state government as a contractor last July.
Under this remarkable arrangement, the state agreed to perform a “scope of work” for the nonprofit that includes “activities and deliverables” to advance a green agenda. The special-interest tail is officially wagging the democratic dog, given that the contract provides the job framework for Mr. Inslee’s senior policy adviser for climate and sustainability, Reed Schuler.
…
In other words, he holds an influential policy position. And it’s funded through a grant from the World Resources Institute, which reimburses Washington for Mr. Schuler’s salary, benefits and expenses. Under its contract, Washington State sends progress reports alongside its $33,210 quarterly invoices to the nonprofit.
Tara Lee, the Governor’s spokeswoman, says Mr. Schuler is “a Washington state employee with the same scope of work, review process and accountability as any other state employee. The only difference is the funding source.” She adds the World Resources Institute’s largesse amounts to “general support for expanding the Inslee Administration’s work to combat climate exchange,” but that “they do not decide or dictate the details of this work, nor do they have input on any employee’s work plan.” And she says such arrangements are “not unusual.”
World Resources Institute spokesman Michael Oko says that “public-private partnerships enable governments to hire experts to advise them on policies that benefit their constituents,” adding that they are “common across the political spectrum.” Oh?
If this is common practice, Washingtonians deserve more details about which outside groups fund Mr. Inslee’s policy team. Substitute the Koch brothers for the World Resources Institute, and the outrage would be predictable. This setup creates real concerns about accountability and interest-peddling. Mr. Schuler knows who pays him, and it’s not Washington taxpayers.
The money trail also extends to the Hewlett Foundation, which pledged in December to devote $600 million to climate advocacy in the U.S. and abroad between 2018 and 2023. Hewlett calls this its “single largest commitment to date in any area of its philanthropic work,” and it is overseen by Jonathan Pershing, Mr. Schuler’s former colleague at Barack Obama’s State Department.
In one of many emails obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Chris Horner, Mr. Inslee’s Morocco-based climate adviser, Chris Davis, called Mr. Schuler “our refugee from Kerry’s office at State” and said that “Pershing at Hewlett is paying him to work in our shop for 12 months.” In another email, Mr. Davis said that Mr. Schuler is “here through support from the Hewlett Foundation.”
Read the whole story here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-of-unaccountability-1515717585
Readers might remember that just two days ago Washington Governor Inslee took the “batshit crazy over climate” standard bearer title away from California governor Jerry Brown with this proclamation on Twitter:
We have just 59 days to do our part to save our children from an endless cycle of crop-killing droughts one year, and rivers spilling their banks the next. To save salmon from dying in ever warming rivers, and our forests from being reduced to plumes of ash.
— Governor Jay Inslee (@GovInslee) January 9, 2018
And some people think President Trump’s tweets are crazy…
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule. – H. L. Mencken
What is it about the Left Coast? Has always been regressive in many ways, it turns out, that their ideology has the potential to turn into a theology like Pol Pot.
And now I hear on the China News Netwok no less, that Twitter plans to investigate all thought content and start banning people who do not tow some official line in the line of official Twitter philosophy. And Twitter already regulates what you can actually see on your feed. If Twitter bans WUWT, then not only do I sell all my stock in them, but will probably short them too. When did Twitter and Google become the gatekeeper of our free thought?
When did that happen? When you let them do it. Try offering to sue them for violating the 1st amendment to the US Constitution. I’m not sure they’re worth the effort, because I don’t do such social media, but giving them a good scare is a real good idea.
Sara,
the 1st Amendment precludes the government from regulaing speech content.
Twitter is a private company. it can regulate speech on its social media platform. That does not mean it should, it’s just not un-constitutional.
Sara,
the 1st Amendment precludes the government from regulaing speech content.
Twitter is a private company. it can regulate speech on its social media platform. That does not mean it should, it’s just not un-constitutional.
+1 joelobryan
It is not unconstitutional for sure. It may be illegal nonetheless, depending on laws.
A company may fire an employee for what he told, like google did, but they face discrimination charge, as google do
Most states have laws forbidding companies to turn down a customer just because you don’t like his face, his race, or his political opinions (openly stated or not). This forbid companies like twitter to regulate speech on its social media platform more than the law DEMANDS (where the law forbid some speeches, like, for instance, death threats). Then enters the sheer might in the legal arm-wrestle match: I guess ISIS or affiliates will never win a trial against twitter for turning them down, but I won’t bet twitter would win if sued for not providing the same service to US customers depending on their side in the political spectrum…
There seems to be a double-standard when the baker who won’t bake the gay cake gets bankrupted and ripped through judicial hell for several years. But Twitter doesn’t have to provide an unobstructed platform for opposing views. It’s also mind-boggling the vulgar language and obscene subject matter that is allowed in tsunami fashion, but not debate on legitimate viewpoints.
The US confuses me. Progressives are regressive. Democrats aren’t. Liberals have redefined what the word meant.
It’s just like the old GDR. German Democratic Republic, where the only correct word there is German.
Democrats are opposed to real democracy (see what they did to Bernie Sanders in the primaries), and “AntiFa” are the fascists clamming to be anti-fascists. It’s all so Orwellian anymore…
Conservatives are still conservative. 🙂
The Progressives/Democrats/Liberals have lost touch with reality. Barack Obama said the other day that the conservatives live on another planet. He’s right. Conservatives live on the Planet Reality, and the Left/Socialists/Communists live on the Planet Delusion.
Of course, Obama thinks he lives on the Planet Reality, as do all those on the Left, but unfortunately for them and us, they are deluded. Deluded people don’t know they are deluded.
Could it be that Mr. Inslee made an attempt to be sarcastic with his comment? Lately I have seen similar exaggerated statements from few politicians in Europe and I have a feeling not every swamp member believes AGW story, but are forced to follow rules of The Party “Together we stand, divided we fall”. Anything else would be political suicide.
Yesterday there was encouraging news from Germany where Ms. Merkel might have to ease her aggressive energy policies to get government formed into the country. They are still running without one after almost 3 months since election.
Merkel is losing a lot of support.
Maybe enough of the German people are finally waking up to the harm her energy and immigration policies are causing to make a change in leadership. One can always hope.
Maybe this is related. to the whole AGM farce.
I was looking at some ACORN data for Bourke in NSW, and though I would do a simple plot of missing data.
Now the Bourke Airport ASW data is made up of Bourke PO data back only to 1910 (even though the PO data goes back to 1871) and then AWS data since 1998.
Here is the graph of missing data.
Actual data is here.. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn/sat/data/acorn.sat.maxT.048245.daily.txt
How is even possible to have SO MUCH missing data from modern equipment after 1998 ?????
Can anyone say if this is prevalent for other places using modern temperature equipment?
Tony Heller has been saying that as much as 40-45% of data is now “estimated”.
It certainly seems to be the case with Bourke AWS. !!!
You just need to look at the board members: http://www.wri.org/about/board
Includes, amongst many others with similar pedigree:
Frances Beinecke NRDC, Yale Environment
David Blood, of Blood and Gore, has taken Gore’s place on the board.
Christiana Figueres, former UNFCCC chief, former carbon trader with Lord Stern
Ciao Koch-Weser, Deutsche Bank, European Climate Foundation
Jonathan Lash former WRI President,
Joaquim Levy,World Bank Chief Financial Officer
Bill Ruckelshaus, first EPA head, long time actor behind the scenes
Gustav Speth, founder of WRI, 1982, with funding from McArthur Foundation, another long time actor pushing for global governance, former Yale Environment, strong UN history, advisory board McKibbens’ 350.org.
Andrew Steer, WRI president, another World Bank implant, ex UK International Development mandarin
And a “cast of thousands” http://www.wri.org/about/experts-staff. This is one massive organisation with major international reach and considerable UN input from World Bank.
And now consider together, the WRI, Board, funding and the “America’s Pledge”.
Christiana Figueres, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rocky Mountain Institute – Carbon War Room organisation based in Colorado.
You all know quite well that the entire CAGW/climate change thing is a scam and nothing but a scam. I have said repeatedly ‘follow the money’. This Washington state story is another ‘heads up!’ about what a scam is being foisted on people in general. Scammers and con artists count on the ignorance and naivete of their audience, demanding faith, lack of free will and obedience while lightening their bank accounts and trying to hide it by labeling it ‘for the common good’.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a shell game, no matter how much the scammers, including Nye, Mann, this WA governor, and others of their ilk want to make it that way. It’s always about power, control, ruling the roost, and taking YOUR money unless you’re smart enough to see through the nonsense.
As long as these con artists are running this con game, it’s imperative that we know what they are doing and when. You can’t turn your head away from it and pretend it isn’t there. If you ignore it, the fraud and the fraudster will win the day.
I don’t think any of us want that.
the CAGW cabal is the SWAMP that needs to be drained. no-one knows this better than the CAGW sceptics. trillions of dollars are at stake.
All climate activism converges to socialism. Climate is just the excuse this time.
In the time of Marx, it was worker’s wages that were being “stolen” by the capitalists under the labor theory of value. This is the specious theory that there was gross social injustice because the worker sweeping the floors at the yacht builder could not afford to buy a yacht himself, just like today’s mechanic on the 777 assembly line at Boeing has so much of his wages stolen from him by the evil capitalists that he cannot afford a 777 for his own.
Jawdropping.
So now a government “works” for private entities, a work “that includes activities and deliverables to advance an agenda”, get paid for this work, and this is all OK ???
Whether the agenda is green, red, black, white or whatever is irrelevant, This scheme is “law for sell”, that is, plain old corruption.
Wow.
‘Ever warming rivers’?
limbering up for the plausible deniability / we were all mislead excuse. when climate change collapses they will be able to claim that they were lied to….
The editorial presentation is still too obtuse.
The World Resource Institute is funded (in part) by the wealth from Rockefeller and Soros.
(Copy the text at the end of this sentence into Google, do a search, and see for yourselves: rockefeller site:wri.org)
It seems then that billionaires have their ‘hands’ in US state policy via the 15 state Climate Alliance since they are funding the WRI.
Go to wri.org and check out the bios of the environmental ‘experts’ who run it. Lots of people from financial backgrounds high up in their food chain. Wonder why?…
Anybody ever wonder why rich people seem more concerned with over-population than us average folk?
Foundations are just a scam for the ultra wealthy to not pay taxes while still controlling the vast amount of wealth. They fund textbooks so the textbooks say what they want, etc, etc.
So lets all pool our saving and form a WUWT foundation and never pay taxes on our investment incomes again. Great scam if we can get away with it.
Jan 12th: We are now down to 56 days per Gov Inslee. Surely the asteroid must be visible by now.
Might as well be Cthulhu.
And don’t call me Shirley. 🙂
Look what ClimateChange™ is doing to animals!!!
The state government is no longer accountable to its citizens, but to mighty good-intentioned outside interests. What a welcome gust of fresh air. Taxpayers don’t even have to pay the decision makers.
Resist the will of voters!
Jay also thinks global warming deniers should be banned from running for office. See: http://appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/Inslee.htm
Are foundations running state energy policy without transparency?
In my opinion, it’s with impunity.
Between Inslee, Brown, and Brown, I think there’s a nice conspiracy/corruption charge just waiting to happen.
And it extends to most of the urban localities as well.
Since when can a government employee be paid by a private entity, non-profit, for-profit, foundation or otherwise. This reminds of the Teapot Dome scandal.
It seems like green politicians are trying to promise us “perfect weather” all the time! Let’s hold their feet to the fire.
Similar to Oregon’s ex-governors girlfriend/hustler. A non-profit non-state entity received grant from another entity to pay for a communications secretary for the girlfriend/hustler.
This wasn’t illegal. But the other crap that went along with was; she used her quasi-pubic position in government to benefit from the green blob money. Kitzhaber had to quit. The ethics commission fines will soon be levied against bother ex-governor and against the poor green-conslutant girlfriend.
I’ve seen somewhat similar behavior here in New Mexico. Some state scientists are largely funded by “green” private non profits to explore drought and water resources on those green terms. They then travel around the state and elsewhere making unsubstantiated claims about drought. Basically propoganda. I’ve been paying attention to those funding threads because as you point out from this article private parties are not supposed to have this kind of leverage over public employees.
Governor Inslee must be guilty of something. I suggest malfeasance, which is “the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law; wrongdoing (used especially of an act in violation of a public trust).” For malfeasance, the Governor can and should be removed from office, sooner rather than later, before he does more harm. Certainly, there is an advocacy group somewhere that has the resources and willingness to take on this issue.
What happens when the 59 days pass? I’ll be checking to see if any of those predictions come to pass.