Governor Kasich’s administration met with the Ohio regulatory agency that is paid to regulate oil and gas to outline how to promote an industry plan to drill in state parks and also target critics of their plan to drill in state parks.
Then they all lied about it:
On Friday, Gov. John Kasich’s spokesman said the governor’s office knew nothing about an August 2012 state marketing plan for fracking in state parks and forests.
But after an email about the plan involving most of Kasich’s top officials was disclosed yesterday, spokesman Rob Nichols said: “Of course, the administration is going to coordinate and plan ahead on an important issue like gas production on state land.”
The turnaround came after an email became public. It was from Kasich senior adviser Wayne Struble, who sought a meeting about the public-relations campaign with top Kasich officials. Those invited included Beth Hansen, the governor’s chief of staff; Scott Milburn, top communications manager; Matt Carle, his legislative liaison (who is now his re-election campaign manager); Jai Chabria, a senior adviser; Tracy Intihar, who was cabinet secretary at the time; Craig Butler, a policy adviser who is now head of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency; and leaders of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Nichols told The Dispatch on Friday night that the governor’s office had no knowledge of the marketing plan because it had never left the Natural Resources department.
“Clearly, that’s not the case,” Brian Rothenberg, head of the liberal nonprofit organization ProgressOhio, said in a news conference yesterday in which the email was divulged. “The fact that people at the highest level of the governor’s office were involved in this is pretty unsavory.”
Brian Kunkemoeller, conservation-program coordinator with the Sierra Club’s Ohio chapter — which obtained the material through a public-records request — said, “This is not only a sad day for our parks and forests, it’s also a sad day for our democracy.”
Rothenberg and Kunkemoeller expressed outrage that a state agency given the statutory duty to regulate the oil and gas industry actually was partnering with the industry to promote it.
We’re paying every single person who was sitting at that meeting. Industry interests don’t even bother hiring lobbyists anymore. It’s much cheaper to just buy the governor and the regulators outright, and have the public pick up the tab for their continued employment.
The memo itself recognized that the public-relations initiative “could blur public perception of ODNR’s regulatory role in oil and gas.”
“Blur”? The regulator is completely captured by the industry they’re supposed to be regulating. That’s what the memo shows, and that’s why they all lied about who was at the meeting.
Watching how West Virginia water was poisoned the last couple of weeks, it occurred to me that our elected leaders are so captured, so completely corrupt and compromised, that they cannot even protect basic public health. They can’t fulfill even that bedrock governmental duty. The best they can do is advise pregnant women not to drink the water. Let the buyer beware on drinking water. That’s their role, I guess. They’re advisors to us, the consumers.
I’m disappointed that just two state lawmakers were targeted by the oil and gas industry representatives currently working for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. That’s two that aren’t captured, I guess.
Rep. Robert Hagan
Rep. Nickie Antonio
Cervantes
Hmm … Struble and Kasich go back twenty years together, at least.
Baud
FWIW, I think the line between regulator and “promoter” is kind of a fuzzy one, since to be a good regulator, you have to at least understand and appreciate the economics of the industry and what regulations can and cannot work. But I don’t think that takes away from what you’ve said here about the situation in Ohio.
Hunter Gathers
Left to their own devices, White voters would vote for their own executions at this point, as long as the black family down the street suffered an extremely painful death. I’m really running out of patience and sympathy with my former tribe. If White voters want to cut off their noses to spite Obama, so be it. I just wish they weren’t fucking up the country so much in their zeal to prove their Caucasian Street Cred.
Gene108
What bothers me about this sort of corruption is how fucking cheap our politicians are.
I mean, if you are basically asking to be bribed for a businesses to work in your state the politicians should be demanding seven figures from the oil and gas lobby, but business can buy its way into a politicians heart with jus a couple thousands here and there.
If you are going to be corrupt do it right and get paid.
Chris T.
Conservatives, running government like a business. Or is that “running government as a subsidiary of a business”?
Amir Khalid
@Gene108:
Are the bribes going directly into the politicians’ pockets, or only into their campaign funds?
Kay
@Baud:
I disagree. It is the job of the industry to explain to the regulator why the regulations cannot work. I don’t think it’s adversarial enough. By putting an industry person on the regulator side you’re stacking the deck. They have a side. They don’t get both sides.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t disagree, but the regulator must be able to appreciate the explanation and, if the explanation is persuasive, particularly in a close case, that regulator could be seen as being a promoter of the industry,
No, it’s too often not.
Bill E Pilgrim
Just another example of how government is corrupt and useless, it clearly needs to be privatized.
Kay
@Baud:
I would also say, Baud, that the “cooperative” approach isn’t working. I know you’re not going that far, so I don’t want to misrepresent what you wrote, but at some point you have to ask “is this working, or should we be more adversarial?”
You really can’t run around saying you have a functioning government when you’re throwing your hands up at water-poisoning and mass shootings and any number of deregulatory failures (the list gets longer and longer).
We might want to try less cooperation? The “we’re all on the same team” approach might not be such a hot idea?
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: I don’t know about the EPA but whatever SEC is doing is not working, another problem for Wall Street regulators is that they are grossly understaffed.
C.V. Danes
My advice is to enjoy the parks while you still can, because they will be sacrificed.
Tommy
@Gene108: I am so with you.You might be able to buy me, but it would take a far amount of money. I see all these folks take a few thousands in money and I wonder how that could “buy” me. I need a lot more then a few bucks to get more money.To buy me.
C.V. Danes
@schrodinger’s cat:
All the regulating industries are understaffed, to the point that they are heavily reliant on the industries they supposedly regulate. They are all merely enablers for their industries, now.
celcus
Not much sympathy for the moochers who are dependent on the Government for clean water.
Baud
@Kay:
From what I’ve seen, regulatory theory has become somewhat like economics — otherwise worthwhile intellectual pursuits have become dominated by conservative ideology and pro-business money (often creating “false science” to support their position). So much of the literature I’ve seen in the regulatory arena is focused on controlling the power of regulatory agencies, rather than exploring how we can make them more effective in carrying out their responsibilities. I’m not sure I’d frame it as “cooperative” vs. “adversarial” per se, because I think different problems call for different approaches. But I think what is lost is that regulators need to be able to act confidently (and be held accountable for their actions) rather than be asked to be insecure and deferential towards the industry they are regulating.
Suffern ACE
@C.V. Danes: I did find it interesting that when Georgia decided to issue their “Sons of the Confederacy” confederate flag bumper sticker (all proceeds go to saving Southern Culture, don’tyaknow), that they originally wanted to use the image from Stone Mountain, but couldn’t because the state had leased the park to a private operator who held the trademark on the image. My guess is that that is what Ohio will try to do – lease its state parks who will then magically decide that 9/10th of the land should be used for fracking while the visitors to the park are penned in.
David Hunt
Kay, I hope you don’t find it too depressing that you make it seem less awful that Rick Perry is my governor.
Tommy
@C.V. Danes: How about a happy topic. I am a huge hiker/camper. Almost every two weeks I spend a week or two with a friend. We were at a National Park. A guy with us to the far right of like Rush. We went to pay our tab for the day. He handed me like a hundred dollars in $20s. I was like dude it is only like $12 a day for a permit to camp. He was confused. I was like America is kind of neat isn’t it! You’re tax dollars at work.
C.V. Danes
@Baud:
I think the line between regulator and promoter only gets fuzzy when there is a lot of career transitioning back and forth between a regulating agency and the industry it regulates. In my opinion, there should be no back and forth allowed. You either work for one side or the other. And, yes, you can fully understand and appreciate the economics of an industry as a regulating industry without working in it.
Governments make the rules that markets, and their participants, operate by. The first duty of the government is to protect the people. Once you set the rules, private industry is pretty good at figuring out how to make money while making them work. When they cry about regulation, it is merely laziness on their part.
AliceBlue
I read things like this and God, it just makes me so tired. I don’t even have the energy to be angry anymore.
I’m thankful I’m in my sixties. By the time America becomes a total hellscape, I won’t have too much longer to live.
C.V. Danes
@Suffern ACE: Jeez, it just boggles the mind that the state could allow a private company to trademark something residing on public land.
C.V. Danes
@Tommy:
Indeed! And there’s plenty of places to go hiking where it doesn’t even cost that :-)
I just don’t think people are going to realize what they are losing until it is gone. And when it is gone, it will be gone for generations. You can’t just magically roll back the damage done by fracking, mountain top removal, pipeline breaks, etc.
Chris
@Bill E Pilgrim:
You beat me to it.
Really, the corporate dudes wouldn’t even NEED to bribe the government if it wasn’t so damn pushy, and since this isn’t working anyway, you might as well give them free rein and hope they’ll be merciful.
/wingnut
Baud
@C.V. Danes:
I’ve never been as worked up about the revolving door issue as others, but I agree that one does not have to work in industry to be a good regulator. I also generally don’t disagree with this:
Many rules change over time, however, which is where you often see the fights.
Gretchen
Is someone running against Kasich? It should make their job earier to run against the guy who wants to frack in your state parks.
C.V. Danes
@AliceBlue:
I’m with you. I don’t even want to contemplate the kind of world my grandkids are going to inherit.
Neutron Flux
@Kay:
The model already exists. As a result of the TMI accident, President Carters Blue Ribbon Task force recommended that the Atomic Energy Commission be retired. In it’s place, the DOE promotes, funds new technology, and facilitates government/industry relations. The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) was established to regulate. They do some independent research, but the vast majority of what they do is regulate. And it is mostly paid for by the licensee (which is ultimately, you). Works pretty well.
boatboy_srq
@C.V. Danes: I have a saying about this: “Kuala Lumpur looks better every year.” I’m not sure how much of a joke it is anymore.
When the party that gets (s)elected running on a platform that government doesn’t work, and only The Great and Powerful Private Sector can save us, it’s hardly surprising to find them bought and paid for. Disappointing, but not surprising.
Cervantes
@Gretchen:
Two Democrats and a libertarian.
There was talk of a Tea Party challenge as well but I don’t think it will materialize.
Kay
@Gretchen:
Kasich switched sides on fracking in state parks after the emails were released.
Fracking in state parks was wildly unpopular. His plan to divert massive amounts of water from Lake Erie was also wildly unpopular. I don’t think it’s true that people don’t value public lands and waterways. I think they do value those things. I think they value the idea of them even if they never go near a state park or Lake Erie.
srv
You hippies still think the word regulate means to stop and National Forests aren’t managed by the Ag Department.
Amir Khalid
@boatboy_srq:
Come on over. The Barisan government isn’t necessarily the best we could have, but even the right-wing nutjobs here believe in governing.
Then maybe I could finally, finally attend a Balloon Juice meet-up.
C.V. Danes
@boatboy_srq:
My wife and I have a similar saying about New Zealand, but then you have the whole circle of fire to deal with, and it would be just my luck that the whole place would blow up once I moved there :-)
C.V. Danes
@Baud:
True, that. But safety and science should speak for themselves when it come to a rule change, with error on the side of caution. It always makes me nervous when industry say “government should just get out of the way” so they can just do whatever they want to do.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid: There’s an obvious conflict of interest in your response.
slippytoad
My advice is we start skimming these toxic chemicals off our rivers and lakes and start pouring them into the food and water of the 1%, into their swimming pools and lawns and gardens and fucking golf courses, get that shit EVERYWHERE.
I am not kidding anymore.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@AliceBlue:
Agreed. I’m in my mid-sixties and although I’m certain that there’s always been corruption it didn’t seem to me in past years that the whole effing works was for sale. Now it’s not just being sold, it’s being sold for pennies on the dollar.
Baud
@C.V. Danes:
As I noted above, there is often a lot of “false science” that’s generated to muddy the waters. And it’s hard to avoid talking about the cost of a particular approach. For example, super safe cars may be really expensive, or you can make cars safer by making them heavier, which reduces gas mileage and hurts the environment. One of the reasons regulatory capture works well is that this stuff really is complicated and hard for non-experts to understand.
Goblue72
@slippytoad: Sounds like a good start.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes:
Kasich at news conference: “I very seldom met or talked to Struble, he was a nerd in HS, I was a jock…”
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Cervantes:
They should spend the next twenty years together in prison.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Progress Ohio immediately made the Kasich/Christie connection, attenuated as it may be :)
Good! Let’s talk about corruption. Fine with me. Let’s have a corruption referendum.
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est: Kasich was a self-professed budgeteer in Gingrich’s Congress; Struble was on one or the other committee staff; they worked together.
We have pictures and compromising memos, so they can’t deny it.
danielx
@Gene108:
They’re not even bothering to hide it any more.
And yup, that’s a thought that I’ve pondered many a time – the wonder is not that our solons at the state and national levels can be bought, but that they can be bought so cheaply. I mean, fellas, criminals have known this forever – if you’re going to risk your career and reputation (I know, I just kill myself sometimes), at least make it worthwhile.
On the other hand, judging by the likes of say Billy Tauzin, in-office corruption is just an income supplement to state or federal salaries anyway – they have to wait until they leave office to REALLY cash in as lobbyists and/or fixers*.
*A distinction without a difference.
Lurking Canadian
@Baud: The argument they make in finance is that anybody “smart enough” to understand whatever bullshit collateralized debt instrument Goldman Sachs is peddling this week is already working for Goldman Sachs, where they can make >$10M a year, instead of $50K working as a regulator. I imagine this generalizes.
There’s also the argument made in Fast Food Nation that the entire budget of the government agency responsible for encouraging healthy eating habits is something like 0.1% of the marketing budget of McDonald’s.
Legalizing bribery was a bad idea, but the financial incentives are way, way out of whack, too.
bupalos
What the industry did that was so smart in Ohio was to VASTLY reduce the number of elected officials that have any say on any issue even tangentially related to fracking, long before it became a contentious issue. So really they only have to control a couple offices to totally override every single safety and zoning and transportation protection that is on the books or avenue by which it could be put on the books.
It’s amazing to see the numb paralysis this creates. I was at a township meeting with residents who wanted the trustees simply to hold the trucking companies to the road use agreements they have signed (but are ignoring) limiting their hauling to an injection well to weekday business hours. There was a guy who lived right across from it who had obviously been fighting for months, and he had the actual bond agreement and proof that they weren’t abiding by it and wanted to know where he was supposed to go with this because the county engineers didn’t respond and could they do something, and they were pretty much all like “sorry sir, you have no local elected officials to represent you because OIL AND GAS.”
Then our group spoke asking them to just send a letter to the county engineer who will be negotiating a road use agreement with the trucking companies for next year, stating we’re not happy with the current arrangements and asking that specific terms and better enforcement be negotiated. That is, asking our township trustees to just write a letter documenting the problems and asking the county engineer if they can consider our needs pretty please with a cherry on top. 2 of the 3 don’t even want to do that because WE’RE POWERLESS and OIL AND GAS.
The real problem is because everyone is just rolling over because it’s a fait accompli ultimately controlled by one man in Columbus, there ends up not even being a stink and the perception is that everything is hunky dory. It starts to look like a pretty sweet model for industry. Folks need to start shouting “local control” at the top of their lungs now, because this model is sure to be extended.
boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: What does it take for a Windows/VMware guy to get a work permit?
Kay
@bupalos:
About ten years ago, I did volunteer legal research for an environmental group here on whether we could keep a factory farm out. Now, this isn’t my area but we were naive in the beginning. We thought it was just a matter of finding the statute that applied and looking to a regulatory agency and then we’d follow that process.
I was just amazed at how completely agribusiness had done the deregulatory job. It didn’t matter where I went, which part of the code, which agency, I’d hit a brick wall. They thought of everything. They had even trumped longstanding case law on “nuisance” and overwritten it with a statute and administrative rules.
Anyway, the environmentalists went on without me, they got help from a national group with lawyers who knew what the hell they were doing, but I’ll never forget realizing “they bought the whole thing-there’s no possible way ordinary, local people of average means and resources can stop this”.
Bort
I used to work with Wayne Struble. I worked for Congressman John Miller back in the 90’s, and Wayne was our Legislative Director. John was on the budget committee with Kasich, so I do know that he dealt with him quite a bit. Wayne was an odd guy. His background was as an engineer at McDonnell Douglas I think. He was a nice guy. I used to argue politics all the time with him. He was really really smart.
C.V. Danes
@Baud:
Yup!
C.V. Danes
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I think they just want to cash out before the whole thing collapses.
Kay
@C.V. Danes:
There’s an activist in Chicago who says “they burned their own f’ing house down, and now they’re coming for yours”.
Their house being the private sector and your house being the public sector and public commons.
I tend to agree.
SuzieC
The whole thing is just appalling. What’s even more appalling is that the Columbus Dispatch will continue to try to bury the story and lick Kasich’s jackboots.
burnspbesq
The people of Ohio are getting exactly what they want. They voted Kasich into office with their eyes open.
StringOnAStick
@C.V. Danes:
I used to do that too, and last fall I looked seriously into immigration to NZ. Once you are past age 55 it is basically impossible; which made me panicky since we were both about to hit 56; sent me into a funk for weeks. You can go for an extended time after age 55 but you have to have your own health insurance, and housing costs are very high.
slippytoad
@bupalos:
This is why we just start dumping crude oil and gas into the lawns of the 1%. Again, I am not really kidding. If this stuff is untouchable, let’s prove it. Let’s see what they do when we pollute their homes.
Roger Moore
@Chris T.:
The key thing is that they’re doing it the way inherited wealth does it: they run the business into the ground because they inherited the name and the business but not the skill needed to do a good job.
slippytoad
@Roger Moore:
To most of the 1%, the actual “running a business” seems to consist of firing people and golfing, and taking giant bonuses out of the company’s resources so that it can’t pay the employees anymore.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
It’s not the money they’re getting today that’s the real payment; it’s just a promise of things to come. The real payoff is the prospect of a cushy gig in the industry whenever they leave government service. For elected officials and their appointees who have no outside career to fall back on if the next election goes against them, that kind of soft landing has to be extremely attractive. Even non-appointed civil servants who want to cash out once their pension vests are going to want that kind of offer.
Cervantes
@Bort:
Hey, thanks for checking in.
Yes, Wayne has an engineering degree from Notre Dame (early ’70s, judging by his age).
By the way, what is John Miller doing these days? Still pushing intelligent design?
Cervantes
@burnspbesq:
Considering Kasich did not even win a majority of votes cast, that seems unduly harsh.
Jebediah, RBG
@Roger Moore:
@Gene108:
Which is why I have always assumed that the campaign contributions are the “out in the open” bribe, and that the rest is delivered as literal bags of cash.
johnn aquitard
@Suffern ACE: I know you probably know this, but for those B-Juicers unfamiliar with Stone Mountain and it’s significance in Southern culture, Stone Mountain is where the Klan historically held its cross burnings and rallies.
It is also a “Racists’ Mt. Rushmore” because it depicts, in probably the largest bas relief in the world, the leaders of the Confederacy, Jeff Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
In context with the historic Klan activities such an image cannot be claimed to merely memorialize those who fought the War of Northern Aggression over differing economic systems. Though of course they insist publicly one has nothing to do with the other. Privately, of course they know. They know it on one side of their mind while the other side will insist, angrily as it often has to, that it doesn’t know what the other side already knows.
For the South, it’s always been about the ni-Clang and White Supremacy. Always.
The manifestation that everyone calls southern culture is nothing more than so many strategies to rationalize that fact.
EthylEster
Well, you went a bit overboard with the tags (Meth Laboratories of Democracy was my fav), but I feel your outrage.
So why aren’t the citizens of Ohio in the streets?
When are the proles gonna put a stop to the BS?
boatboy_srq
@Jebediah, RBG: Literal bags of cash, indeed. See Randy “Duke” Cunningham for details on how it’s done below the radar (at least until the MSM catches on and starts some actual digging). The Duke-Stir was an especially choice bit of lucre to get caught with – especially since she was a cheap-looking tri-cabin and not the megayacht everyone who read the stories sans photographe assumed.
Cervantes
@johnn aquitard:
Actually, Mount Rushmore is itself a Racists’ Mount Rushmore.
debbie
Of course Kasich had no idea this was going on. He was too busy trying to grab Christie’s bridge.
bualos
@Kay: Exactly how it feels. Everywhere you look you say, oh, they were already here 5 years ago rigging this thing. It feels creepy.