Head of Industry-funded “Environmental” Group Charged
The president of an industry-funded front group with an environmental-friendly sounding name was charged Wednesday with tax evasion and obstruction of justice as part of the continuing federal criminal investigation into lobbying practices in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal. Italia Federici, president of the “Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA)”, “plans to plead guilty to charges of obstructing Senate proceedings and tax evasion.”
If there is anything that should have been a tip-off as to the true bona fides of this supposed environmental group it would have been that text of this article from the Washington Post in 2001.
On a June evening in 1998, in the big ballroom of the J.W. Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue, Gale A. Norton hosted the national kickoff for an organization she founded that is now called, after several name changes, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy.
The guest of honor was Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.). The keynote address was delivered by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.). The sponsors for the gala that night included the National Coal Council, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the National Mining Association, the Chlorine Chemical Council and the political consulting firm of Karl Rove, one of Bush’s closest advisers.
True to form, the Bush administration and special interests aligned with it have been masters at creating “initiatives” and “non-profit” organizations that certainly sound to be environmental or consumer conscious but, in fact, have been supported morally and/or financially by major corporate interests. The implementation of President Bush’s “Clear Skies Initiative” actually would have resulted in the weakening of the Clean Air Act. Mr. Bush’s “Healthy Forest Initiative” was anything but healthy but rather an effort give free reign to the timber industry across National Forests under the guise of “fuel reduction. And Mr. Bush’s recently announced new “climate initiative” appears to me to have been suspiciously timed to successfully preempt and delay the implementation of a more proactive proposal to manage greenhouse emissions that had been put forth by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G8 Summit this week.
Many industry-funded front-groups like the CREA exist today. Sourcewatch calls them “the quintessential tool of deceptive propaganda.” The idea of such groups was the brain-child of Edward Bernays who is generally regarded as the “father of public relations.” On its website, Sourcewatch lists a number of other front-groups with environmental-friendly or consumer-friendly sounding names which, in fact, work primarily to block any honest-to-goodness attempts to protect the environment, preserve human health, or support the best interests of consumers and the public.