Trump's Choice To Dismantle EPA: Competetive Enterprise Institutre Hack Myron Ebell

[hatrack]

EDIT

If you are wondering how Trump will dismantle EPA regulations and staff, meet Myron Ebell, the man Trump has picked to lead his EPA transition team . Ebell is Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the industry-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Ebell’s official bio is here. DeSmogBlog, which tracks PR experts who are funded by polluters, has an alternative rundown here.

Polluter-Funded Attacks on EPA and Climate Science
Ebell’s work has been funded by some of America’s biggest polluters. CEI jealously guards the sources of its $7 million annual budget, but research from records of Exxon Mobil and others show a long track record of taking money from polluters (ExxonMobil said they halted funding to CEI in 2006). In 2013, the Washington Post obtained a list of donors for CEI’s annual dinner, providing a rare window into the companies funding CEI’s operations. Energy companies gave more than $110,000 for the event, including money from Marathon Petroleum, Koch Industries, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.

EDIT

If you think that Ebell’s work to create doubt about climate mislead the public, it is not a coincidence. In researching this blog, I uncovered some new information about Myron Ebell’s start in the world of corporate-funded advocacy. As part of the tobacco lawsuits, a trove of documents have become publicly available, and an online search revealed the tobacco-funded roots of Ebell’s past.

The tobacco archives inlcude a 1996 letter from Ebell’s early employer, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, to Samuel Chilcote Jr., president of the Tobacco Institute, the lobbying arm of the tobacco industry and a Frontiers funder. The letter spells out how funding from the Tobacco Institute helped Frontiers both in “protecting the first amendment rights of the tobacco industry” and in “hiring Mr. Myron Ebell as our policy director.” In another document sent to Philip Morris in 1998, Frontiers requests more funding from Phillip Morris for several staff, including Policy Director Myron Ebell, as part of a broad campaign to make regulating the tobacco industry “politically unpalatable.”

“Frontiers will achieve this goal by changing the debate from one about teenage smoking and industry practices to one about massive tax increases, bigger government and loss of individual freedom.” - Frontiers of Freedom funding proposal to Philip Morris, 1998

EDIT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-symons/meet-trumps-pick-to-disma_b_12832350.html