{"id":7401,"date":"2015-04-18T07:18:08","date_gmt":"2015-04-18T12:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7401"},"modified":"2015-04-18T07:18:08","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T12:18:08","slug":"carbon-copy-how-big-oil-and-king-coal-ghost-write-letters-for-public-officials-business-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7401","title":{"rendered":"“Carbon Copy”: How Big Oil and King Coal Ghost Write Letters for Public Officials, Business Groups"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Carbon Copy”: How Big Oil and King Coal Ghost Write Letters for Public Officials, Business Groups<\/a><\/h3>\n

The Billings Gazette has revealed that coal mining company\u00a0Cloudpeak Energy ghost wrote protest letters<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0U.S.<\/span>Department of Interior (DOI<\/span>) on behalf of allied policymakers and business\u00a0groups.<\/p>\n

Reporter Tom Lutey examined numerous letters written to\u00a0DOI<\/span>\u00a0from Montana-based stakeholders and noticed something unusual: the language in every single letter was exactly the same. That is, the same except for a parenthetical note in one of them instructing the supposed writer of it to \u201cinsert\u00a0name\/group\/entity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201ccarbon copied\u201d (pun credit goes to Lutey) letters requested for theDOI<\/span>\u00a0to give states a time extension to begin implementing new rules dictating the coal industry give states a \u201cfair return\u201d on mining leases granted to industry by the states.\u00a0DOI<\/span>\u00a0ended up giving King Coal the 60-day\u00a0extension.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast month, coal proponents scored a major victory by convincing the Department of Interior to hold off on its rule making for 60 days so that more people could respond,\u201d Lutey wrote. \u201cMembers of the Montana Legislature, along with county commissioners and mayors from Montana and Wyoming communities put the weight of their political offices behind letters asking the\u00a0DOI<\/span>\u00a0for more time. What they didn\u2019t offer were their own\u00a0words.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those who submitted a \u201ccarbon copied\u201d letter originally written by Cloudpeak Energy include the\u00a0Montana Chamber of Commerce<\/a>,\u00a0Billings Chamber of Commerce<\/a>,\u00a0Montana Coal Council<\/a>,\u00a0Montana Sen. Debby Barrett<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Yellowstone County Board of Commissioners<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unlike others, the Montana Chamber of Commerce embarassingly forgot to take out the boilerplate \u201cinsert name\/group\/entity\u201d\u00a0language.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Carbon Copy”: How Big Oil and King Coal Ghost Write Letters for Public Officials, Business Groups The Billings Gazette has revealed that coal mining company\u00a0Cloudpeak Energy ghost wrote protest letters\u00a0to the\u00a0U.S.Department of Interior (DOI) on behalf of allied policymakers and business\u00a0groups. Reporter Tom Lutey examined numerous letters written to\u00a0DOI\u00a0from Montana-based stakeholders and noticed something unusual: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4816,4819,4820,4817,4821,4818],"class_list":["post-7401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-cloudpeak-energy","tag-doi","tag-environmental-policy","tag-ghost-writing","tag-legislation","tag-us-department-of-interior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7402,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7401\/revisions\/7402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}