The Back Door Man

The Back Door Man is an apt description for the people who got the ball rolling for the small 't' technocratic agenda of energy reductionism in the name of environmentalism.  Without energy, you have no economy.  It's that simple.  But we are being told that the economic plan of the United States is "growth through reductionism".  LOGIC CHECK.   

The quintessential Back Door Man is Ralph Nader.  Nader is a Harvard educated lawyer who successfully sued GM over the design of the Corvair.  He was right about the design of the vehicle.  It was unsafe.  But what he did with that lawsuit was to demonstrate the method by which America could be destroyed.  But this is not about Ralph Nader.  Nader was just first Back Door Man to achieve the kind of success to draw the sharks to join the feeding frenzy.   Ralph Nader's genius was to define the method by which America could be reverse engineered.  The method is really quite simple.  Examine the business process, find the flaw (there is always a flaw - even if innocuous) and sue the living sh*t out the hapless business owner and use the courts to steal as many of his assets as you can grab.   But it isn't the lawsuit itself that does the damage to the rest of the country.  It's the Congressional "reform" that follows.  Back when Nader sued GM, you could buy a car for $4,000.   Today, a low end car is around $20,000.   Thanks Ralph.  Cars are so safe now, they are nearly unaffordable. 

Back Door Men of Energy

Only Ralph Nader knows who funded his lawsuit against GM.  For all we know, it could have been funded by Ford or Chrysler because the strategy of the Back Door Men is a game of asset stripping and destruction.  It can be played by the competitors as well as the customers.  And in some cases, it can even be useful for the business that is being sued itself.  And I believe such was the case with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)  in California in the 1970s.  A lawsuit was used to break the regulated monopoly, financial model of the utilities.  And before you jump on the word 'monopoly', think about power generation, transmission and delivery to your home.  It's a high investment business with a long term recovery on the investment.  But more importantly than that, the energy to your homes and businesses is the first in the list of inputs that are needed to drive the rest of the economy.  As an essential service, deregulation was a license to steal.  In fact, Enron gave us a demonstration of it.   And the new model for the economy is to bleed you dry - their growth through your reduction in the ability to live and work. 

From what I've been able to discern, this began in California in the 1960's and was the result of PG&E battling the environmentalists to be able to supply the power needs of Californians.  It's a long and ugly history but essentially, it appears that the objective of the environmentalists was to break up the utility monopoly which clearly benefits the utility - not the consumers of power.   Apparently somebody put up a windmill or a generator or something, there was a lawsuit and PG&E was forced to pay an exorbitant amount of money for in-feeding low amounts of power to PG&E's transmission system.  In isolation, without consideration for the rest of the facilities required to run the power system, it makes sense that a power in-feeder should get paid for the power generated.  But transmission is the least costly part of running a utility.  There is no way for the in-feeders to replace a power generation facility and the utility still had the costs of delivery to the point of service so what the court did was to effectively enable parasites to drain profits from the utility - to skim the cream so to speak.  

If you believe that everybody involved in that lawsuit was honest in their representations and the court was honest in it's decision, then what followed is the result of bad outcomes from good intentions.  But Back Door Men are very clever people and because deregulation was of more benefit to the utility than it was to the consumer, it's hard for me to believe that the case was honest because what happened next was that the Back Door Men of the environmental movement got together with PG&E and worked out a scheme for the utilities to promote conservation in exchange for deregulation and "market pricing".  In plain language, the deal was essentially, that the utilities would cooperate with environmentalists to use their resources and influence with the government to regulate  consumers and deregulate themselves.  It was a win-win for the utilities and the environmentalists - and lose-lose for the consumers of power, the business and home owners and ultimately for our country.  This lawsuit set the stage for reverse engineering and dismantling the free enterprise system - replacing it with central planners, control systems, propaganda and manipulation - all leading to the ultimate enslavement of mankind by a technocratic tyranny controlled by people who hate the fact that you exist. 

Environmental Defense Fund

Fred Krupp, CEO of the Environmental Defense Fund tells the story of the collusion and conspiracy between PG&E and the Environmental Defense Fund in a article titled, "The Making of a Market-Minded Environmentalist".  No doubt he would dispute my characterization of it, but with the benefit of hindsight I stand by that characterization.  The following are excerpts from the article:

 The Making of a Market-Minded Environmentalist

By Fred Krupp

"I became the green community's chief advocate for using economic incentives to solve environmental problems.  The Wall Street Journal has cheered me on, crediting me with a "singular style that serves business and the environment well".  The New Republic is not so sure, labeling me "The Devil's Advocate: He'll work with the GOP, oil men obdurate polluters, and any other stock environmental bête noire open to sitting down and negotiating. And, unlike most environmentalists, he shares their reverence for the marketplace". 

"When an opportunity arose in 1984 to serve as executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund, I took it.  A big part of the appeal was that people at EDF were beginning to put market mechanisms into play.  The head of our California office, Tom Graff, who has degrees from Harvard Law and the London School of Economics, had hired Zach Willey, the first Ph.D economist ever to work full-time at the an environmental organization....At the same time, EDF software engineer Dan Kirshner was developing a computer model that demonstrated that conservation was the cheapest way to meet California's projected electricity needs.  An EDF staff attorney, David Roe, took a case before the regulators and ultimately Pacific Gas & Electric was persuaded to cancel plans for 10 new power plants, which lowered utility rates and increased shareholder returns even as it spared the atmosphere all that pollution."

...I was able to hire one new person: an economist and natural resources professor named Dan Dudek... Dan painted an amazing, brilliant, comprehensive vision of a robust market in pollution reduction and the legal regime needed to make it work.  Instead of having government trying to figure out the best technology, which either missed the best approach entirely or froze in place technologies that were becoming obsolete, this regime would get everybody across the economy working to invent new ways to reduce pollution... I took a chance and hired him.  Right away, he began working on a rudimentary trading mechanism for phasing out chlorofluorocarbons.  The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, an international treaty incorporating that trading mechanism, was written and ratified during the next few years; it would ultimately take effect in 1989. Meanwhile, to further develop the intellectual foundations for market-based environmentalism, we organized a conference with Richard Stewart, an environmental law professor then at Harvard, who was an enthusiastic and profound thinker on using market for environmental goals.

...But we pressed on, and began working with a young Harvard professor named Rob Stavins, who had been an EDF intern in California.  With Senators Tim Wirth (D-CO) and John Heinz (R-PA) cosponsoring the effort, we wrote a report called "Project 88," intended for the winner of that year's presidential race, describing how market mechanisms could solve environmental problems.

"Market" As a Con Game

In Anchorage, Alaska, there was a bar named Chillkoot Charlie's,  Their  motto was "we cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you".  That's the motto of the energy companies - and they pass a skim off the top of the booty to the fake environmentalist groups led by Back Door Men. 

The guys who are being cheated are the consumers of energy.  They are having to pay more for energy for getting less.  All of the "renewable energy" programs are scams.  None of them can replace the utility companies.  They serve only as a fronts for the money extorted from the ratepayers and taxpayers as you can see for yourself in this presentation by Zack Willey.  He's telling landowners the way they can get something for nothing in the con game of cap and trade. 

Vapor Market Sweep

It takes Harvard lawyers and economists to come up with scams this big and sophisticated.  Robert Stavins went from the Environmental Defense Fund to Harvard and then he led the project to write out the con game in academic language.  Clever fellow this Stavins guy.  In 2003, Stavins wrote a paper titled,  What Can We Learn from U.S. Experience (And Related Research)?  In the second paragraph, he said the following:

"For the purposes of this paper, I define market-based instruments to be aspects of laws or regulations that encourage behavior through market signals, rather than through explicit directives regarding pollution control levels or methods. These policy instruments, such as tradable permits or pollution charges, can reasonably be described as “harnessing market forces,”³ because if they are well designed and properly implemented, they encourage firms or individuals to undertake pollution control efforts that are in their own interests and that collectively meet policy goals.

Clearly, the intent is to regulate and rob "consumers" using a gaming strategy behind the mask of environmentalism.  Backing up to 1988 we can see the development of "The Game"

Project 88

 From a report titled, "Crossing the Aisle to Cleaner Air:  How the Bipartisan "Project 88" Transformed Environmental Policy:

"In May 1988, a group of friends strolled through Central Park in New York City, talking about the upcoming presidential elections and expressing doubt that the candidates would tackle the nation's serious environmental issues.  This small group included Teresa Heinz, a board member of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF); fellow board member Wren Wirth and her husband, newly elected U.S. Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO); and EDF staff member David Roe.

Mrs. Heinz's husband, Senator John Heinz (R-PA), joined the group for coffee and they continued their discussion, noting how difficult it was to focus political attention on environmental problems.  They decided to launch what became known as "Project 88", intending to clearly frame the most pressing environmental issues and innovative solutions so that the presidential candidates, Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush, would feel compelled to discuss these proposals during their debates."

Financial support for Project 88 was provided by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New
York, the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Family and Associates, and Keystone Center/Madison Associates. The Environmental Policy Institute served as fiscal agent for the project as part of an effort to stimulate diverse points of view about environmental problems.

 P. 12

Where mechanisms can be developed to make environmental goals part of economic decisions,
the strong forces of the marketplace can work to reduce the costs of compliance and enlist the innovative capacity of American entrepreneurs in our environmental enterprise. The study does not suggest that less regulation, freer markets, or privatization of government assets automatically result in a better environment. Instead, this report proposes new ways of thinking about how regulations could work, and new ways in which we can apply economic common sense to some of our most vexing environmental problems. The report's recommendations are designed to increase environmental protection and economic productivity by providing incentives for business and individuals to go beyond what regulators can require. This same focus on economic forces also calls for recognizing and reforming ongoing government programs that impose market barriers or provide direct or indirect subsidies which create market forces that contribute to environmental problems.

Pretty good huh?    All they have to do is to price you out of the market.  And implement onerous regulations like you can't sell your house until you "make it green".   And to force you to buy 3-gallon 3-flush toilets and mercury-laden light bulbs for $3.00 each.   And best of all, to force you to pay for a new computerized energy control grid so that they can control the thermostat in your home and the time of day that you can use your clothes dryer and dishwasher.  In other words, tax you for new infrastructure and squeeze you through regulations... and let the utility companies and their parasites charge what the "market" will bear.

P. 14 & 15 - emphasis added

A basic underpinning of Project 88 is the notion that a key to reducing inefficient natural resource
use and environmental degradation is to ensure that consumers and producers face the true costs of their decisions -- not just their direct costs, but the full social costs of the consequences of their actions.

Charge systems impose a fee or tax on pollution, while tradeable permit systems set a total
allowable level of pollution and authorize firms to buy, sell, and trade permits within that overall limit. The workings of a pollution charge are simple -- when the polluter pays, it is to the polluter's advantage to clean up. With fees, however, it is necessary to guess how large a fee will result in how much clean-up.

The inclusion of social costs is a blank check for environmentalists and other whack jobs to extort money from the public.  "Polluter Pays" might sound fair except that ultimately, you are the polluter and are responsible for every bad thing in the world simply because you live.  What these clever Harvard types did was to change the philosophy of government to "Polluter Pays" which is why you can't buy health insurance if you're ill which of course negates the value of having insurance.  Recently, there was a story in the newspaper about somebody who didn't pay fees to the fire department - so the fire department let their house burn.  No doubt that police services will become a fee-based service - never mind that you pay property taxes and about a zillion other taxes for these services.  Carried to "market" extremes, "Polluter Pays" is a cannibalizing force against a civilized society because on a "fee for service basis", none of the public services are affordable to the average person.  But then that suits the Back Door Men just fine.  They're happy to take your assets down to the laces in your shoes.  And when you can't pay anymore, they'll be even happier to have you thrown into the "prisons for fun and profit" system of slave labor under the theory of "Violator Pays". 

Bush - the Republicrat

November 30, 1988, President-elect Bush told a group of leading environmentalists that he would carefully consider their recommendations for fighting pollution and protecting natural resources.  Excerpts from the New York Times article:

The report also proposed ways to reduce expenses - by eliminating some subsidies for nuclear
power, coal and oil, for example - and to increase revenue - such as by increasing taxes on
gasoline. They said these actions would more than offset the spending increases they
recommended.

Prepared with private funds under the sponsorship of Senator Timothy E. Wirth, Democrat of
Colorado and Senator John Heinz, Republican of Pennsylvania, the report being readied for
presentation to the President-elect, Project 88, will focus on ways to use market forces to
protect the environment. Project 88 will argue that using private efforts to supplement and, in
some cases, substitute for the current regulatory process will keep Federal costs down, the
sponsors say.

And Bush kept his promise despite what you hear in the liberal media - and don't hear in the conservative media.  He signed legislation to put the Back Door Men in power but out of sight.

If for some reason, you think I'm being a little hard on the Back Door Men of Harvard, Yale, Stanford et al, then consider this - found in the Congressional Record a few years ago ("We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you") :

PARTNERSHIP FOR WETLANDS CONSERVATION (Senate - June 06, 1990)

[Page: S7417]

Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, on May 23, 1990, the Dow Chemical Co. announced a new 4-year partnership for wetlands conservation with Ducks Unlimited, Inc., the Nature Conservancy, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to preserve and protect North America's endangered wetlands.

During a press conference, which was held in my Capitol office, Dow presented the first installment of a $3 million contribution for wetlands protection and restoration. This donation represents the largest corporate financial donation ever to benefit the North American Waterfowl Management Plan [NAWMP] and demonstrates Dow's dedication to environmental conservation and protection.

Click HERE for the entire statement plus several other statements inserted into the record. 

By 1991, the Back Door Men had the "market-based strategies" worked out well enough to write part two of Project 88.  

Project 88 - Round II - Incentives for Action:  Designing Market-Based Environmental Strategies

1991 - Newsweek, "Adam Smith Turns Green"

"Back in the days when environmentalism meant saving whales and wearing Earth Shoes, activists rarely met a regulation they didn't like...  Enter an unusual coalition of free marketeers, politicians and environmentalists who believe there's a way to break the logjam. It goes by the name "market-based environmental incentives," and it means reforming markets so that it pays to clean up. It's "an attempt to put a green thumb on Adam Smith's invisible hand," says Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado. Or as economists say, the goal is to make prices reflect the full social cost of goods, from a can of soda to a kilowatt of electricity. Today that is emphatically not the case. A homeowner who generates six bags of garbage pays the same fee for collection as someone who generates two; the amount of taxes someone pays for cleaning urban smog has nothing to do with whether she bicycles to work or steers her soot-belching station wagon down the freeway. Market-based environmentalism aims to correct these inequities."

And while the pagans were doing their rain dances at the Rio Summit, the Back Door Men were busy writing the legislation that would begin our descent into the fascist/communist control grid of Hell on earth. 

Energy Policy Act of 1992 -  Became Public Law No: 102-486 10/24/1992

Vicky Davis
October 22, 2010