George W. Bush forced Karl Rove to sell his direct-mail business in 1999, but don’t expect a similar move from Hillary. Her campaign pays Penn’s polling firm, which is part of B-M. “Senator Clinton is no different, frankly, from Mark’s other clients,” Howard Paster says. “Burson-Marsteller is a lot bigger firm than Senator Clinton. There’s a whole ‘nother life we live.”
Yet occasionally the work of Penn’s company spills onto Hillary’s political terrain. Penn’s polling firm has worked with the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition–a PR front group for the nuclear power industry–which purports to show “strong support among Americans for nuclear energy.” Coincidentally, one of B-M’s big projects is the Indian Point nuclear power plant, twenty-four miles north of Manhattan, dubbed by environmentalists “Chernobyl on the Hudson.” The plant received the lowest safety rating from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2000, and after 9/11 there were widespread calls from environmentalists, consumer groups and elected officials to shut it down. It has had nine unplanned shutdowns since 2005.
With the help of B-M, Indian Point’s owner, Entergy Corporation, struck back with a multipronged ad campaign. Its post-9/11 slogan, “Safe, secure, vital,” emphasized security, warning that if Indian Point were closed New York could face a California-style energy crisis. In 2003, after Westchester County legislators passed resolutions condemning Indian Point, B-M set up a classic astroturf group on Entergy’s behalf, the Campaign for Affordable Energy, Environmental and Economic Justice, which targeted Democratic incumbents in low-income sections of Westchester who supported closing the plant. If Indian Point were shuttered, the bilingual campaign informed residents, electricity bills would increase, power to public transportation would be jeopardized and dirty power plants would go up in low-income and minority neighborhoods. At the same time, B-M unveiled another organization also bankrolled by Entergy that promoted Indian Point. Following the ‘06 elections, Entergy unveiled a new slogan, “Right for New York,” citing Indian Point as an asset in the fight against global warming. Hillary has called for an “independent safety assessment” but has declined to join Governor Eliot Spitzer and twelve members of Congress in urging that the plant be shut down. Entergy, founded in Arkansas, was a major supporter of Bill Clinton in the 1990s and contributed generously to Hillary in 2000 and 2006.
Published on Friday, May 18, 2007 by The Nation
Hillary Inc.
by Ari Bermanhttp://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/18/1281/For example, one company, Entergy, owns a nuclear plant in New York called, Indian Point. They get to charge for nuclear power as if it were produced by oil -- that is, they charge New York City residents at a price effectively set by OPEC, prices boosted by the war in Iraq. Not surprisingly, Entergy today reported a record rake-in of profits from their nuclear business. No 9% limit for these good old boys. On top of that, the power company is relieved of all obligations to keep the lights on in New York City.
… And in New Orleans. The same company supplies all of the electricity in the City that Care Forgot. Under deregulation, they hadn't gold-plated the system; they hadn't even water-proofed it. Last year, when the levees burst and the city flooded, Entergy simply turned off the lights and declared their New Orleans subsidiary bankrupt. Leaving New Orleans in the dark was a profitable decision. The company reported a 23% leap in earnings for the third quarter of 2005, the period including Hurricane Katrina, a profit boost they attributed to "the weather." Hey, are these guys droll, or what?
This year, Entergy's profits have stayed up in the clouds, no doubt helped by the cash the company saved by not bothering to restore electricity to a large number of their customers in New Orleans --who remain in the dark even today.
By now, you've got to ask: after the profiteering from Katrina, after the California power scandal of 2000, after the Great Black-out of 2003, even after the hand-cuffing of Ken Lay, why are we still under a deregulation regime that Ken Lay seems to rule from the grave? Why is it that we're still at the mercy of power vampires?
The answer, in part, is that the bloodsucking is a bi-partisan feast. Entergy, the New Orleans nuclear company, is well defended in the US Senate by their former lawyer, Hillary Rodham, who now protects them under her new alias, Senator Clinton. Published on Thursday, July 20, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Ken Lay's Alive!
by Greg Palast http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0720-22.htm