Dept of Interior's Long Relationship with ALEC

This article is getting a lot of re-posts the last couple of days across the web.

The “shock” of the announcement  - the horror of it all - chills to the bone.

Obama Admin. Approves ALEC Model Bill for Fracking Chemical Fluid Disclosure on Public Lands

On May 16, the Obama Interior Department announced its long-awaited rules governing hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") on federal lands.

I sit back and shake my head!

What fools these mortals be.

People want to think that lowly - state legislators from ho-bunk nowhere are the only ALEC threat - but it goes much bigger than that.  

ALEC doesn't scare people so much if they believe that it is only dim-witted conservatives from state legislatures that are connected to ALEC.

Au contraire my funny little friends.

1983    ALEC meeting

Participants were briefed during the two day

conference by Cabinet Members, Administration

policy officials and Congressional

leaders Including Interior Secretary James

Watt;

1984    ALEC Annual Meeting

Federal Land and Resource Policy: The Impact on

the States—Sponsored by Texaco, Inc

Introduction: The Honorable Lee L Verstandig. Assistant

to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs

Keynote Speaker The Honorable William Clark. Secretary

of the Interior

1983    “ALEC PERSONNEL DIRECTORY”
The ALEC Personnel Directory is designed to provide State Legislators and other members of ALEC access to information and important contacts for a broad range of public policy issues .
Department of the Interior 202/343-110 0 Hon . Donald P .Hodel 18t h & C Streets , N W Room 615 1 Washington , D.C . 2024 0 202/343-735 1

1989    ALEC Annual Meeting

LUNCHEON

Honorable Manuel Lujan

U.S. Secretary of the Interior

Serra Ballroom (Conference Center)

Our country did not become the single greatest

power on earth by some freak accident of

history. We got to where we are today because

we have a system that values individual rights

and individual freedom. Our economy has become

the largest in the world, larger than the

second and third combined, because it has

been allowed to grow naturally, in relative

freedom from government interference.

-Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan

1994 ALEC Annual Meeting

Garrey Carruthers

Garrey Carruthers, Chairman of the Advancement of

Sound Science Coalition, served as the Governor of New

Mexico from 1987-1990 and Assistant Secretary of the

Interior from 1981-1984.

1997 Annual Meeting

KENNETH LAY has been called by Business Week

magazine "The Quiet Man Who is Jolting Utilities." As

Chief Executive Officer of ENRON Corp.,

ENRON is now the largest

player in the wholesale market. Lay is an economist

with a doctorate from the University of Houston, was a

Deputy Under Secretary for the Interior Department and

chaired the 1996 Presidential campaign finance committee

of Texas Senator Phil Gramm.

1998 Annual Meeting

Becky Norton Dunlop serves as Vice President for External

Relations at The Heritage Foundation . She was also Senior Special

Assistant in 1985 and 1986 to then-Attomey General Edwin

Meese, and served as Deputy Undersecretary at the Interior

Department with then-Secretary Don Hodel from 1987-1989.

Dunlop earned her bachelor's degree from Miami University

in Oxford, Ohio

2001 Annual Meeting Speaker

Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Lynn Scarlett

2001 Award Winners
Former Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne (R), later Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award [9] 

This guy has the ALEC logo on his LinkedIn Page
Justin Kintz
Special Assistant - External and Intergovernmental Affairs
U.S. Department of the Interior
May 2007 – January 2009 (1 year 9 months)
Outreach and communications with constituency, stakeholders, public, federal, state, and local governments.

I'm pretty sure if I wanted to spend endless hours on this - I could connect so many dots that people  ...  well - - - it's all about who you know - where, that spells success.

But - in the end - - - it's all about who you know - and who they know and how you can get what you need done - through the relationships you build and the strings you can pull.

2010 Inside ALEC article

A 2008 Department of the Interior (DOI) inventory of federal energy resources found that 163 million acres of public lands are off limits to oil and gas leasing. The land withdrawals make 62% of the oil and 41% of the natural gas in our nation’s onshore public lands unavailable. Another 65 million acres are severely restricted, affecting an additional 30% of U.S. onshore federal oil and 49% of our gas.17

In other words, an area the size of Texas and Oklahoma, 92% of our onshore publicly owned oil potential, 90% of our onshore natural gas prospects, and all the jobs and revenues associated with developing those vital resources are off limits to the American families that own them.

And ALEC Corporate members want it all and they will use their contacts to get what they want.

I wouldn't doubt it if someone at the American Legislative Exchange Council has a red phone with a direct line to someone in the Department of the Interior.