2013 Press Releases
Washington, D.C. (9/10/13) - 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.
Washington, D.C. (7/29/13) — The American Traditional Institute (ATI), joined by the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic (FMELC), filed two requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after being provided with credible information, by two separate career employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), indicating electoral considerations and political intervention drove the Obama Administration’s decision to reverse its campaign against the current boom in hydraulic fracturing. As ATI wrote to EPA, this information suggests not only that the reprieve is thus only likely to last until other political needs arise, but also that it is politics that are driving other aspects of the administration’s campaign to suppress production of America’s most abundant domestic energy sources.
Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take it Back: by Greg Walcher
Washington, D.C. - July 12, 2013 – Greg Walcher has spent a lifetime working to conserve the environment, while providing the resources needed to sustain a prosperous economy today. His new book, Smoking Them Out: The Theft of the Environment and How to Take it Back, is an Olympic-level reality check to out-of-control environmental policies that are destroying the economy, costing jobs, and doing little to help the environment.
Washington, D.C. – As the fitting next-step after President Obama’s strident speech Tuesday reaffirming his war on abundant American energy sources, particularly coal, he nominated Ron Binz, a former chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities (PUC) and a well-known anti-coal crusader, to serve as the next chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC). As Colorado PUC chair, Binz was heavily involved in pushing through the state’s “Clean Air, Clean Jobs Act,” which sought to move the state away from coal power to natural gas, only to find himself tripped up by ethical missteps revealed by his state’s Open Records Act.
Washington, D.C. – On June 7th, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision in a suit involving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) against the state of Michigan regarding a FERC plan to apportion costs for new power lines to transport wind power around the Great Lakes area. Michigan’s 2008 Renewable Energy Standard (RES) law requires that only renewable energy derived from within Michigan are eligible to satisfy the state’s requirement to use 10% of renewable energy sources by 2015, and the state argued that the FERC plan would require them to pay for expensive power lines designed to carry out of state renewable energy, namely wind.
Washington, D.C. – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), rocked by documentary evidence — its own records — that it treats environmental groups favorably when it comes to granting waivers for public records fees while denying fee waiver requests for conservative organizations, attempted to cover-up the emerging scandal by calling for an internal “programatic audit.” The American Tradition Institute (ATI), one of the two organizations receiving serial, facially improper fee waiver denials as a hurdle to obtaining public records regarding EPA’s relationship with its group of favored green pressure groups, and which has cited specific, admitted instances of EPA’s bias in pending litigation, said today that a programatic audit is clearly not enough to get to the root of this scandal.
ATI Names Craig Richardson Executive Director (5/1/13)
Washington, D.C. - The American Tradition Institute (ATI), a nonprofit public policy organization dedicated to free market environmentalism, named longtime Washington veteran Craig Richardson as executive director. Richardson has nearly three decades of non-profit, communications, fundraising, and political experience at the national, state, and local levels.
Washington – Today, the American Tradition Institute (ATI) filed a Freedom of Information request with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeking all e-mails, instant messages (IMs), and texts from EPA’s Headquarters Office of Air and Radiation and/or Office of the Administrator that involve the Association of Air Pollution Control Agencies (AAPCA), and an EPA and AAPCA contractor, Battelle.
Washington – Yesterday, the American Tradition Institute (ATI) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) withdrew their lawsuit without prejudice that they jointly filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seeking to compel the Agency to respond to the groups’ requests for certain Instant Messages (IMs) to or from three senior current and former EPA officials. The groups dropped their suit after EPA provided an atypically specific response, openly acknowledging the availability of this previously unrevealed alternative to email it offers, asserting that no such records for the three officials ever existed, and that none of the three officials had ever used “the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s instant-message application.”
WASHINGTON - Stung by widespread publicity resulting from recent American Tradition Institute (ATI) and Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits seeking emails, and most troubling, instant messages (IM’s) filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), acting administrator Bob Perciasepe yesterday reminded EPA employees they are expected to comply with open-record laws. Notably, this all-staff memo promised to do better managing IMs — an alternative to email that we now know that EPA provides its employees, but which the Agency apparently has never provided to Congress or FOIA requesters.
Colorado Admits Certain Defeat In Renewable Energy Law Suit With Introduction Of New Bill (4/4/13).
DENVER - Facing certain defeat in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Colorado’s Renewable Energy Standard mandate, lawmakers attempted to “fix” major elements of the law with the introduction of Senate Bill 13-252 yesterday. In doing so, members of the Colorado Senate and House admitted that the state’s law imposing a renewable energy standard is unconstitutional.
This admission is of national significance and validates the lawsuit brought by the American Tradition Institute on behalf of Colorado ratepayers. In effect, Colorado is telling all states that have similar statutes that they are vulnerable to legal challenge and will have to change their laws to remove preferences for in-state producers. Among states with such discrimination in their laws, California is the biggest offender.
WASHINGTON – In what could be a landmark case, two free-market groups – the American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center and the Competitive Enterprise Institute – have filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Environmental Protection Agency seeking communications among senior EPA officials using instant messaging or IM technology.
ATI Applauds North Carolina Bill Aimed at Stopping Inhumane EPA Human Experimentation (03/07/2013)
WASHINGTON – Today, the public interest group American Tradition Institute (ATI) expressed strong support for a recently introduced North Carolina bill (S.B. 187) aimed at halting the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) unethical practice of using humans subjects to research the impact of fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5. If passed, the law would make any “person who violates this section… guilty of a Class F felony,” a serious crime which can carry a sentence of more than a year to nearly three years, according to the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission.
ATI Environmental Law Center Sues EPA to Compel Response to FOIA Request (1/28/2013) Today, the Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on behalf of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) in federal district court in Washington, DC. ATI seeks to compel EPA to end its eight-month stonewall of two requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding EPA’s close working relationship with two pressure groups with which EPA has uncomfortably close ties, at great taxpayer expense.
