Author Archive

WASHINGTON D.C. – The American Tradition Institute (ATI) joined the American Energy Alliance (AEA) and 12 other free market organizations in sending a letter today to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources which called on committee members to oppose the confirmation of Ron Binz as Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Citing “grave concerns” with the nominee, the letter stated, “We are very concerned that Commissioner Binz would not be constrained by Congressional-mandated boundaries, but would act to carry out President Obama’s plan to make electricity prices ‘necessarily skyrocket.’ Just like in Colorado under Commissioner Binz’s watch, electricity prices will increase if he is confirmed as FERC chairman, which will be a hidden tax on your constituents.”

The other signatories of the letter are:

• 60 Plus Association
• American Commitment
• Americans for Prosperity
• Caesar Rodney Institute
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Family Business Defense Council
• Freedom Action
• Frontiers of Freedom
• Independence Institute
• National Center for Public Policy Research
• National Taxpayers Union
• Positive Growth Alliance

EPA manipulates the FOIA to help Big Green

Ron Arnold, Washington Examiner, Sept. 6, 2013

There they go again.

“The Environmental Protection Agency has been caught placing hurdles in the path of groups it views as hostile or inconvenient to its agenda,” veteran Freedom of Information Act hurdle-jumping attorney Chris Horner told me this week.

On Friday, September 6th, the American Tradition Institute (ATI), a non-profit public policy organization, along with counsel from the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FMELC), filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the University of Arizona (U of A) to produce public records relating to what the London Telegraph’s Christopher Booker called “the worst scientific scandal of our generation”. These records are emails relating to the notorious global warming “Hockey Stick”, and the group that made it famous, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). IPCC is presently in the news for its latest in a running series of proclamations of looming climate catastrophe, and a now ritual proclamation of even greater certainty that economic activity is to blame.

“The public are increasingly aware that they have funded the effort to impose an all-pain, no-gain energy-scarcity agenda on them, from activists in federal bureaucracies and the green pressure groups they love, down to activists ensconced in state universities,’” says Chris Horner, ATI Senior Fellow, FMELC attorney and author of The Liberal War On Transparency, who managed the initial request and productions. “As such, we continue to seek copies of records the public paid for, to help bring about the oft-promised, yet rarely voluntary governmental transparency. Too often public institutions require that we engage in protracted battles under open records laws to allow the public a glimpse at the enormous apparatus they are underwriting,” he added.

ATI sought these records in December 2011.[1] After the University acknowledged resistance from the professors involved — both of whom, ATI points out to the court, were improperly allowed to decide what emails were responsive to the request, and which ones they would allow the University to produce — U of A ultimately produced several hundred responsive emails.

Included in U of A’s production was a first-ever, 213-page roadmap of several hundred emails the academics insisted could not be released about either the “Hockey Stick” or IPCC. Unfortunately the indexes were also deliberately and uncharacteristically scarce on details, though they do lay out correspondence between the Hockey Stick and IPCC authors (they also identify, e.g., emails about Professor and IPCC coordinating lead author Jonathan Overpeck’s work at the University for the environmentalist pressure group Union of Concerned Scientists, and emails to or from Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, home to ClimateGate).

ATI filed suit under Arizona’s Public Records Law after the University declined ATI’s request to provide sufficient detail in these indexes about withheld records, or produce the responsive records. The Goldwater Institute is serving as ATI’s local counsel.

ATI’s complaint explains how these emails, produced and held on taxpayer time and assets, involve two academics with:

• …a history of using University (public) resources — including to send and receive the emails at issue in this case — for work-related participation in related organizations including the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”), which was the subject of many of the most controversial emails produced, sent, received and/or held on publicly funded computer assets in the “Climategate” leaks. Through these leaks, and releases under various freedom of information laws, the public learned of troubling practices by a network of publicly funded academics involving, inter alia, questionable use of statistics, organized efforts to subvert transparency laws in the United States and United Kingdom, campaigns to keep dissenting work from publication, recruiting journalists to target opponents and retaliation against scientists and editors involved in publishing dissenting work.

As part of ATI’s transparency project, it has been requesting and obtaining information held by publicly funded agencies and universities related to the important public policy issue of alleged catastrophic man-made global warming, and related policy demands.

ATI is also involved in litigation seeking related records from the University of Virginia, and has had numerous requests satisfied by, and has other requests pending at, various agencies and universities. The Supreme Court of Virginia recently heard argument from ATI explaining why that court should consider the UVA request.

American Tradition Institute (ATI) is a 501 (c) (3) public policy research and public interest litigation foundation advocating restoration of science and free-market principles on environmental issues, including air and water quality and regulation, responsible land use, natural resource management, energy development, property rights, and principles of stewardship. The organization, through its transparency initiative, obtains public information under open records and freedom of information laws, relating to environmental and energy policy and how policymakers use public resources.

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[1] U of A acknowledges that “The University of Arizona is governed by Arizona public records law. The purpose of the law is to allow the general public, whose tax dollars support the University, to scrutinize the way we do business. Upon request, inspection of or copies of most records must be provided except for two categories which are not open to the public.” http://hoy.r.mailjet.com/redirect/7hxzhv3on4cjtoxl15hbdg/www.hr.arizona.edu/03_hire/AZPSOrientation/main.php?sel=hi, p. 5 (these two categories are student records and personnel records, which are not involved in ATI’s request).

On the same webpage, U of A informs new employees, under “Arizona Public Service Orientation”, “Within your first 30 days of employment, read the information in this orientation. At the conclusion, print the checklist, verifying that you have completed the section, and deliver it to your department representative for placement in your departmental file.” http://hoy.r.mailjet.com/redirect/mz05h8s4yyvzg8wlbbvtc3/www.hr.arizona.edu/03_hire/AZPSOrientation/main.php?sel=hi, p. 4.

ATI’s Board Member and Senior Fellow Greg Walcher, author of a new book, Smoking them Out, wrote a guest commentary for the Denver Post on September 9th titled, Seeing the Forest through the Trees. In the piece, he points out that the wild fires in the west are preventable and are actually caused by the mismanagement of our forests.

Ron Binz Doesn’t Seem to Like Most Power Producers

Today’s Wall Street Journal ran a Letter to the Editor signed by ATI’s Senior Fellows Chris Horner, and Amy Oliver Cooke, and Executive Director, Craig Richardson, along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s William Yeatman. The letter was titled: “Ron Binz Doesn’t Seem to Like Most Power Producers: The President’s nominee to chair the FERC, Ron Binz, has shown himself hostile to coal, gas and nuclear electricity generation.” Click here to view the letter.

Today’s Wall Street Journal ran a Letter to the Editor signed by ATI’s Senior Fellows Chris Horner, and Amy Oliver Cooke, and Executive Director, Craig Richardson, along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s William Yeatman. The letter was titled: “Ron Binz Doesn’t Seem to Like Most Power Producers: The President’s nominee to chair the FERC, Ron Binz, has shown himself hostile to coal, gas and nuclear electricity generation.” Click here to view the letter.

On Thursday, August 1, Tom Tanton, ATI’s Director of Science & Technology Assessment, wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Washington Times. His piece discusses the coordinated “war on coal” by opposition groups, and the serious negative impacts it is having on poorer nations.

TANTON: Casualties of the war on coal

Tom Tanton, ATI’s Director of Science & Technology Assessment, Washington Times, August 1, 2013

A war on coal is underway, instigated by a few opposition groups with powerful voices. The World Bank’s announcement to oppose the financing of coal plants overseas is only the latest development in the ongoing debate… Unfortunately, coal opponents regularly overlook the bigger economic picture: Coal provides a reliable energy resource for developing countries that is essential for public health and economic development.

Washington, D.C. - The American Tradition Institute (ATI) yesterday joined eight other free market groups, including the American Energy Institute (AEI), in support of Rep. Tim Murphy’s (R-Pa.) amendment to H.R. 1582, The Energy Consumers Relief Act of 2013. The organizations, in a letter to Members of the 113th Congress, asked Congress to strongly consider the Murphy amendment which, as the letter stated, “furthers the interests of Americans and the purposes of the underlying legislation by ensuring that the Environmental Protection Agency does not use a ‘social cost of carbon’ (SCC) metric to justify any significant regulation until they follow procedures which are public and transparent.”

The letter cited an example of why the Murphy Amendment is necessary to protect Americans from potential abuse of the SCC as justification for onerous, costly, and unnecessary regulation:

In May, in a little-noticed rule regulating the energy efficiency of microwaves in standby mode, the Department of Energy mentioned that they were dramatically increasing their earlier estimates of the ‘social cost of carbon.’ They did so without public comment, without public participation, and in violation of Office and Management and Budget guidelines. The effect of this unprecedented move was to make it easier to justify ever-more-costly energy regulations and potentially, to provide a baseline level for a carbon tax. All of this is being done without the consent of Congress or public input.

In addition to ATI and AEI, other organizations signing the letter included:

• 60 Plus Association
• American Commitment
• George C. Marshall Institute
• Independent Women’s Voice
• National Center for Public Policy Research
• National Taxpayer’s Union
• Positive Growth Alliance

Obama admin may have interfered with fracking studies

Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, July 29, 2013

Two sources within the Environmental Protection Agency have told government watchdog groups that the Obama administration interfered with investigations of hydraulic fracturing during the 2012 presidential campaign.