Revolving Door

Environmental Group Sues FERC Over Conflict Of Interest

March 4, 2016 Tom Johnson, www.njspotlight.com Resist! Environment, FERC, Oil and Gas, Revolving Door

By Tom Johnson of NJ Spotlight. Ratcheting up a fight against the expansion of natural-gas pipelines, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network yesterday filed a lawsuit against the federal agency that oversees construction of such projects. In a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the group claimed that the review and approval process for pipeline projects by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is infected by structural bias. The lawsuit is seeking fundamental changes to the agency that -- the group asserts --would make it accountable and consistent with democratic governance. The lawsuit alleges the bias is based on the agency’s financial structure, which recovers the full cost of its operations through the charges and fees assessed on the industries it regulates.

The Corrupt Revolving Door Of Fracked Gas Energy

January 28, 2015 Marie Cusick, www.cetology.org Educate! Corruption, Energy, Environment, Pennsylvania, Revolving Door

Less than a week after Governor Corbett left office, his top energy adviser has accepted a new job with Pennsylvania’s largest gas industry trade group, the Marcellus Shale Coalition. Patrick Henderson, who made $145,000 a year as Corbett’s Energy Executive, will now become the MSC’s Director of Regulatory Affairs. “These are truly exciting times within the energy industry,” Henderson wrote in an email to StateImpact Pennsylvania. “I very much look forward to partnering with the coalition and its members to advance what is a shared commitment to developing our energy resources in a safe and responsible way.”

Human Rights Watch’s Revolving Door

June 10, 2014 Belén Fernández, www.jacobinmag.com Educate! Foreign Relations, Human Rights, Revolving Door

Let’s pretend that we want to start an organization to defend the rights of people across the globe that has no affiliation to any government or corporate interest. Which of the following characters should we therefore exclude from intimate roles in our organization’s operation? (You may choose more than one answer.) An individual who presided over a NATO bombing, including various civilian targets. An individual who was formerly a special assistant to President Bill Clinton, a speechwriter for Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright and a member of the State Department’s policy planning staff who in 2009 declared that, under “limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for the illegal CIA rendition program that has seen an untold number of innocent people kidnapped and tortured. A former US Ambassador to Colombia, who later lobbied on behalf of Newmont Mining and J.P. Morgan — two US firms whose track records of environmental destruction would suggest that human wellbeing falls below elite profit on their list of priorities. A former CIA analyst. If you answered “all of the above,” you’re one step ahead of Human Rights Watch, which has played institutional host not only to persons matching descriptions A–D but to many others with similar backgrounds.

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