Your intrepid friends at Public Citizen tried to attend the astroturf “Energy Citizens” rally yesterday in Houston. We’re busy pulling together our bloggings and all the footage we shot, but keep checking back here for updates throughout the day.
We were not allowed in the meeting, as we did not work for an energy company, but we managed to sneak some great footage before being escorted out and being told to leave the premises.
We have:
Footage of the 34 busses used to bring people into the rally from different energy companies.
Normal Citizens who weren”t good enough to be “Energy Citizens”– people who weren’t allowed in the meeting, as this was for energy company employees only! Interviews include lots of crazy conservative teabaggers who hate cap and trade (I understand why Public Citizen and Sierra Club might not be allowed in– why weren’t even they allowed?), nice ladies who were escorted out of the building because they dared to bring American flags to the rally (why does Big Oil hate America?), and lots of people angry at oil companies because they’re hiding this from the public.
“Energy Company Employees Say the Darndest Things” — watch as your friends in the oil and gas industry display ignorance as to the salient details of the ACES bill and spout misinformation about it, or, the people who do know a lot about the bill talk about how it’s a bad piece of legislation because of corporate giveaways to the coal industry! Here’s one quick tidbit:
Want more? Read my full press statement after the jump:
From http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2946
PUBLIC CITIZEN PRESS RELEASE
Aug. 18, 2009 Contact: Andy Wilson (512) 477-1155
Industry Astroturf Rally Against Climate Change Bill Shows Big Oil Can’t Organize Real Grassroots Movement – API Throws Company Picnic, Not Town Hall Meeting, on Climate Change
Statement of Andy Wilson, Global Warming Program Director for
Public Citizen’s Texas Office
Don’t be fooled if you see news stories about a rally in Houston today opposing federal climate change legislation. It’s just an industry-organized ploy designed to scuttle lawmakers’ attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, the industry just wants to protect its profits.
The rally, attended by approximately 2,500 people, was organized by Energy Citizens, an astroturf alliance funded primarily by the American Petroleum Institute (API). We know this is a fake grassroots group because on Friday, Greenpeace uncovered an internal memo in which API asked member companies and groups to help recruit employees, retirees, vendors and contractors to attend this and 21 other rallies in key congressional districts. Today’s event was the first of these orchestrated events, more company picnic than town hall meeting, and gives us a glimpse into what future events will look like.
Average citizens were barred from entering today’s rally. The only people allowed in were energy company employees, who were bused in and who had to show company ID to attend. Unable to organize a legitimate grassroots campaign, Big Oil and its corporate allies have bought one.
API and its partners, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, have bought a fake grassroots campaign because they don’t have the facts or public opinion on their side. The most recent Texas Lyceum poll shows that more Texans support limits on greenhouse gases emitted by corporations than oppose them. Respondents to the Houston Area Survey held the same opinion, even if it meant that electricity rates would rise.
We have our concerns about the current version of federal climate legislation, which we believe gives far too much to the fossil fuel industries. For example, oil companies receive $2 billion worth of free allowances under the Waxman-Markey climate change bill and are asking for even more.
But contrary to the complaints of “Energy Citizens” that climate legislation will be a job killer, studies done by the Natural Resources Defense Council have shown that Waxman-Markey, even in its current, weakened form, would still create 1.7 million green jobs, 153,000 of which would be in Texas. A more robust climate bill could be even more transformative.
Houston has always been an energy city, but it doesn’t have to remain a polluting city. Houston can maintain its place as the energy capital of America while simultaneously creating new clean energy industries and jobs.
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Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., with an office in Austin, Texas. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org.
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[...] Sarah’s take and Andy’s take at our sister blog, [...]
Andy,
You have been taken over by the ruling oligarchs. Do you find it embarrassing and a bit humiliating that you have been serving the very masters that have created the global warming scam?
Get your head out of the sand and do some real investigating work. It is time for everyone in America to climb down that rabbit hole.
The environment debate is the biggest ruse created by a few elite intellectuals to serve even fewer ruling elites. First of all the climate is always changing, that is the universe’s plan. It cools, it warms, the icecap expands, it contracts and melts, the trade winds shift up, shift down. The impact of man is negligible as recently confirmed by the CBO figures of the cap and trade bill recently discussed. All that money raised would make no impact whatsoever on reducing carbon. The monies would serve only the elites running the charade. Let’s keep going….
You, like 95% of Americans have been taken over and controlled through the “Hegelian Dialectic” or Problem, Reaction, Solution. It was created in the 1830′s by Georg W.F. Hegel and was the fundamental philosophy used by one Karl Marx to create his idea of nirvana. Lenin used Marx’s idealism to control and manipulate the peasant class to throw off their oppression at the hands of ruling oligarchy. This technique of creating the problem, the reaction, and then the solution was the main instrument behind the societal purging of land owning, educated middle classes. Its success realized many times throughout the 20th century, not only by the Leninist communists in Russia but also during the People’s Revolution which put Mao into power in China, the Nazis in Germany as well as being used by tyrant Pol Pot in Cambodia. This past century alone some 200 million humans were “culled” by elitist sanctioned and backed governments. DO THE RESEARCH – WAKE UP!
Flash! Another mandatory wake up moment America— the environmental movement is now revealing their next intention, elevating environmentalism to the highest of high – the new religion of the globe, the ancient true GOD of the earth! – Even Al Gore is spewing this in his upcoming sequel.
But now with the CLIMATEGATE’S damning evidence through 3000, again I repeat, 3000 internal emails perpetuating at all costs of personal and professional INTEGRITY the creation of the CONSENSUS OF LIES that is the GLOBAL WARMING SCAM and its MANIPULATION OF SCIENTIFICT FACTS AND OPINION.
You surely now face a decision – do you continue under the mind control of the multi-nationalists (remember Mr. Gore himself owns an oil company called Occidental Oil), beating the left wing of this bird called America? Do you continue beating against the right wing which is the only way the bird can and will continue its deliberated path towards the globalist goal of the DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA through REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH TO THIRD WORLD LEVELS?
Or do you make a truly morale decision to save the bird, turn it around, whereby both sides stop beating against each other and using their immense and truly overwhelming strength find their universal power in the middle, united. Only then by yanking in the reigns will the EAGLE be taken off its errant course of anti-humanist globalism. Only then will the bird be redirected towards its revolutionary principles of endowed personal freedoms of universal life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
[...] when, way back in August, your intrepid friends at Texas Vox boogied down to Houston to crash the American Petroleum Institute’s astroturf “Energy Citizens” rally? [...]