Pool, Politics and War By Other Means

Since 1993 when the NAFTA agreement was signed into law, followed by the legislation agreeing to the Uruguay Round of Trade that resulted in the creation of the World Trade Organization, there has been a massive extraction of wealth from this country.  

The extraction began more as a push than a pull.   The incentives to take the money and run began at least in 1992, if not before.  But 1992 is a good starting point because one can always traverse the timeline once a point on the line has been established.   Specifically this starting point begins with the Energy Policy Act of 1992.   Energy is the lifeblood of any economy.  The 1992 legislation was the beginning of a national policy for choking the life out of it.  

Energy Policy Act of 1992

H.R. 776 Became Public Law 102-486 on 10/24/1992, signed by Pres. George H. W. Bush
 

Isn’t it interesting that a former oil man would sign legislation to choke off the country’s energy supply in the name of energy efficiency?    After looking at this, it seems to me that American education should include one full semester in the study of billiards as an intellectual as well as a skillful pursuit.

On December 1, 1988, there was an article in the New York Times regarding President-Elect George H. W. Bush's meeting with representatives of the leading environmental groups.  Bush was reading their lips - "protect the environment".   But, there was another group of environmentalists that Bush was to meet with for their ideas on protecting the environment.  The other group had "a slightly different approach to attacking environment problems". The following are excerpts from the article - and it's worth noting that there is a lot of text in between these paragraphs (emphasis added):

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. Message to Bush.

The Project 88 report of Senators Wirth and Heinz will make 36 recommendations for using market forces to tackle specific environmental problems. For example, the report calls for a system of marketable pollution permits for reducing urban smog and other air pollution.

The Environmental Defense Fund, one of the few national environmental groups that did not take part in the blueprint effort, chose to contribute to Project 88 instead. Frederic D. Krupp, executive director of the fund, said his group had chosen to work with Senators Wirth and Heinz because ''the problems are getting worse so the solutions have to be better - more powerful.

The Energy Policy Act of 1992 was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Philip R. Sharp (IN) on February 2, 1991.   It's 462 pages long which means that it was probably written between the 1988 to 1991 timeframe.  Which probably means it's the product of Project 88.

The Making of a Market-Minded Environmentalist, by Fred Krupp

Project 88 - Harnessing Market Forces to protect the environment     See Page 5, Frederick Krupp

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

Crossing the Aisle to Cleaner Air:  How the Bipartisan "Project 88" Transformed Environmental Policy

 ...Enron’s energy traders also expected to make juicy commissions on the purchase and sale of carbon credits and profits from creating the trading markets for those credits. According to an internal Enron memo, Kyoto would “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.”

In addition to all its political lobbying and contributions, Enron became a founding member of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change’s Business Environmental Leadership Council, a leading industry group pushing the Kyoto agenda. Enron chairman Ken Lay, along with Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense, served on the President’s Business Council for Sustainable Development, during the Clinton Administration. They also served on the board of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, along with former Alcoa CEO and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. The sort of rent-seeking we see now is nothing new. Yet we should recognize that, had Enron’s lobbying efforts succeeded, the United States would have ended up with a costly regulatory scheme designed to redistribute wealth from the American people to politically powerful special interests like Enron.

Ken Lay's Biography posted on the Encylopedia of Business

The Kyoto Conspiracy (Gore, Enron, Carbon Trading, Global Warming)

What about Fred?

              Fred Krupp
  Environmental Defense Fund

Charlie Rose Interview with Fred Krupp

Or World War II:  The Sequel?

Alfred Krupp

The Infrastructure Conspiracy

Vicky Davis
December 7, 2011