With the Federal government shut down by back to back record breaking blizzards, members of Congress are huddled at home, wandering the internet, perhaps looking for a match made in heaven. Across town in the K Street frat houses, hoards of hungry lobbyists, unable to pursue their desired prey on foot, also resort to the internet, looking for love.
When you are a needy Senator, working tireless long hours to preserve and protect our Democracy and facing re-election, you don’t have much time to find true love. And you have to be careful who you are seen with these days with all the prying eyes in Washington.
Today PolluterHarmony, a new online matchmaking service was launched to help the lobbyists and politicians find each other from the privacy of their own homes. PolluterHarmony.com, a dating service dedicated to helping polluter industry lobbyists, CEO’s and propagandists match up with willing public officials, making it even easier to buy and sell influence, sabotage global warming solutions and derail our clean energy future.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the new website was launched alongside an online advertising campaign. In coming weeks, Greenpeace organizers will also take to Capitol Hill to help promote PolluterHarmony’s compatibility formula, which matches polluters and politicians based on their love of dirty energy, past environmental violations, and their ability to ignore the public health interests of real people.
Greenpeace launches PolluterHarmony at a time when dirty industry companies and their trade associations are spending record amounts on lobbyists and influence peddlers in an effort to undermine clean energy policy and global warming solutions. Serving these needy lobbyists and politicians is the least we can do.
The real life of lobbyists relationships with politicians made headlines last month when the news broke that dirty industry lobbyists helped Senator Lisa Murkowski write legislation aimed at stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of the authority to regulate greenhouse gasses. The lobbyists, former Bush officials Jeffrey Holmstead and Roger Martella, helped Murkowski craft the bill shortly after several of their clients made sizable donations to her campaign account. We are still awaiting a response from Senate Ethics Chairwoman Barbara Boxer to a letter sent requesting an immediate investigation into the matter.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court opened the floodgates (in President Obama’s words) with the Citizens United decision. Corporations are just like people, says the nation’s highest court, so why shouldn’t they have a matchmaking service to find their true love?
Here are some testimonials that PolluterHarmony is already working:
- Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas has found multiple matches with Dirty Coal loving electric utilities like Southern Company, Duke and AEP, and lots of love from Big Oil.
- Representative Joe Barton of Texas, who has long shared a bed with his home state pals from Big Oil is leading the pack on House oil contributions. Now Barton seems to be harvesting the fruit of his labors to derail global warming laws with newfound love from Dirty Coal.
- Senator Lisa Murkowski of Big Oil Alaska is spending her time in the lower 48 finding lots of Dirty Coal love. Murkowski is neck and neck with Senator Dorgan as the leading recipient of coal and utility campaign contributions.
And why not, she is spending her time trying to strangle the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act, a law that oil companies and utilities have violated over and over in recent years and punished with millions of dollars in fines. Murkowski’s suitors have million$ of rea$on$ to love her attack on the EPA and the Clean Air Act.
Corporate violators of the Clean Air Act
Duke Energy has been busted by the EPA for Clean Air Act violations.
ExxonMobil for instance was found guilty of over 2000 Clean Air Act violations and fined millions in penalties.
Chevron has violated the Clean Air Act on numerous occasions and is now being investigated in Alaska for knowingly violating air pollution permits.
ConocoPhillips has also been found guilty of violating the Clean Air Act and paid big fines.
If you are a politician looking for your very own lobbyist love affair or vice versa, check these handy field guides:
OpenSecrets Electric Utility campaign contributions
OpenSecrets has tracked 790 Big Oil lobbyists and over $160 million in lobbying cash for 2009
OpenSecrets Big Oil campaign contributions
OpenSecrets Coal Mining campaign cash
This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.
