Arizona Republic Columnist Lends A Hand To Koch Brothers' Campaign Against EPA Climate Plan

Arizona Republic columnist Doug MacEachern clearly didn't like former Arizona Corporation Commission chair Kris Mayes' April 7 op-ed, which alerted the Republic's readers to the Koch brothers' deceptive multi-state campaign against the EPA's Clean Power Plan.  But MacEachern's complaints, as detailed in an April 8 column, don't stand up to basic scrutiny.

In her op-ed, Mayes addressed a March 22 Republic op-ed by Tom Jenney, the Arizona state director of Americans for Prosperity and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Mayes pointed out that Jenney was peddling “baseless” attacks on the EPA's plan to address climate change by reducing carbon pollution from power plants, and that Jenney cited an industry-funded study that has been “thoroughly debunked.”

MacEachern began his response by smearing Mayes as an “EPA propagandist.” With that out of the way, MacEachern proceeded to admit to his ignorance about the fossil fuel interests behind Jenney's op-ed, writing:

I don't know this for a fact, but I am going to go ahead and guess that in one way or another Jenney's organization, Americans for Prosperity, gets some money from the Koch brothers. Whether it's true or not, what the heck. Let's just put that on the table.

MacEachern may not know that Americans for Prosperity has been funded by the oil billionaire Koch brothers, but it's an easily verifiable fact. He could even have learned it from David Koch himself, who once boasted that “my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start the Americans for Prosperity.” More to the point, the Koch brothers not only funded but co-founded the organization that later became the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, as David Koch alluded to, and it's been well-documented in the media that AFP is, in Politico's words, “the Koch brothers' main political arm.”

Next, MacEachern attempted to dismiss Mayes' “obsessive Koch-loathing,” alleging that AFP's relationship with the Kochs is no different than the money that “green-minded philanthropic groups” give to “green causes.” The crucial difference, of course, is that MacEachern failed to provide a shred of evidence that any of the environmental donors he mentioned have a personal financial stake in promoting the environmental policies they are supporting. By contrast, the Center for Public Integrity has documented that oil is the “core of the Koch business empire,” and that it is in the Koch brothers' “commercial interest” to oppose policies -- such as the Clean Power Plan -- that would reduce America's dependence on carbon-based energy sources.

MacEachern also mischaracterized Mayes' op-ed by suggesting “the sum of Mayes' argument” is that Jenney's sources are “discredited and false” solely because they are funded by the fossil fuel industry. He conveniently ignored the portion of Mayes' op-ed in which she explained that The Washington Post's “Fact Checker” blog said it is “misleading” to cite the NERA Economic Consulting study that Jenney relied on. Nor did he mention that the Union of Concerned Scientists similarly found the NERA study “falsely inflates the cost” of the Clean Power Plan by denying savings from the energy efficiency policies that are included in it.

Further, MacEachern distorted the Clean Power Plan itself by claiming that it is an “energy-industry takeover” that is “being forced on the states by the Environmental Protection Agency.” The truth, as George W. Bush administration EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman has explained, is that the Clean Power Plan “would give significant flexibility to states” to achieve their emission reduction targets, which Whitman lauded as an “unusual” and “positive” feature of the proposal.

MacEachern concluded his column by taking issue with Mayes' claim that the Clean Power Plan will create “tens of thousands of jobs” because she was citing statistics from the EPA. Despite viewing debunked anti-environmental studies bankrolled by fossil fuel interests as perfectly legitimate, MacEachern apparently draws the line at people like Mayes who cite figures from the EPA's detailed analysis of their own plan.

According to MacEachern, it's beyond the pale to believe anything from the EPA and its “propaganda-spewing, say-anything” administrator, Gina McCarthy. Perhaps he should think twice before calling the kettle black.

Image at the top from Flickr/Truthout.org via Creative Commons