Two massive points dogged Hillary Clinton in the course of the Democratic main: the Trans-Pacific Partnership commerce settlement (TPP) and fracking. She had an extended historical past of supporting each.
Under hearth from Bernie Sanders, she came out against the TPP and took a more critical position on fracking. But critics questioned if this was a honest conversion or just marketing campaign rhetoric.
Now, in two of probably the most vital personnel strikes she is going to ever make, she has signaled a scarcity of sincerity.
She selected as her vice presidential operating mate Tim Kaine, who voted to authorize quick-monitor powers for the TPP and praised the settlement simply two days earlier than he was chosen.
And now she has named former Colorado Democratic Senator and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to be the chair of her presidential transition group — the group tasked with serving to arrange the brand new administration ought to she win in November. That consists of identifying, selecting, and vetting candidates for over four,000 presidential appointments.
As a senator, Salazar was extensively thought-about a dependable good friend to the oil, fuel, ranching and mining industries. As inside secretary, he opened the Arctic Ocean for oil drilling, and oversaw the botched response to the BP oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico. Since returning to the personal sector, he has been an ardent supporter of the TPP, whereas pushing again towards curbs on fracking.
The TPP would improve the power of firms to sue to overturn environmental regulations, however Salazar helped a pro-TPP front group, the “Progressive Coalition for American Jobs,” argue the other.
In a November 2015 USA Today op-ed that Salazar co-wrote with Bruce Babbitt, the 2 males argued that the TPP can be the “the greenest trade deal ever” by selling sustainable power. Both Salazar and Babbitt cited their former positions as inside secretaries to spice up their credibility.
The following month, Salazar authored a Denver Post op-ed with two former Colorado governors additionally affiliated with PCAJ, arguing that the settlement would shield the state’s scenic magnificence: “And as a state rich with natural wonder and a long history of conservation, Colorado can be proud that the TPP includes the highest environmental standards of any trade agreement in history.”
Shortly after leaving his publish on the Obama administration, Salazar appeared at an oil and fuel business convention to argue in favor of fracking.
“We know that, from everything we’ve seen, there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone,” Salazar told the attendees, who included the vice chairman of BP America, one other keynote speaker on the convention. “We need to make sure that story is told.”
The EPA acknowledged in 2015 that fracking has contaminated consuming water wells. And methane, a fuel with a local weather influence 86 occasions that of carbon dioxide, is understood to leak from fracked fuel infrastructure.
Salazar is on the leadership team of a enterprise group in Colorado preventing towards a pair of ballot initiatives that would restrict fracking. The Denver Post referred to the group because the “political equivalent of a tested military reserve unit that the [Denver Chamber of Commerce] calls into action when it believes business interests in the state face a serious threat.”
Environmentalists are alarmed. “If Clinton plans to effectively tackle climate change, the last thing her team needs is an industry insider like Ken Salazar. Salazar’s track record illustrates time and again that he is on the side of big industry, and not of the people,” Greenpeace USA Democracy Campaign Director Molly Dorozenski stated in a press release.
Salazar presently works as associate at WilmerHale, a D.C.-based law and lobbying agency. His shoppers are usually not public, however his agency lists his job as giving “policy advice to national and international clients, particularly on matters at the intersection of law, business and public policy.” Staff on the agency have been involved in TPP negotiations.
Members of the presidential transition group are usually not required to reveal their funds — which means we might by no means know if and how a lot Salazar is paid for all the advocacy outdoors his wage at WilmerHale.
Salazar has lengthy been criticized for his connections to the industries he regulates. For instance, in a 2010 Salon post, Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald highlighted Salazar’s connections to BP, noting that “even as BP continues to spew oil in unfathomable quantities into the Gulf,” Salazar was waiving environmental evaluations and approving new wells within the Gulf of Mexico.
Top photograph: Then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Capitol Hill in 2010.
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