http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2002Mar25.html

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Energy Contacts Disclosed
Consumer Groups Left Out, Data Show

By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 26, 2002; Page A01

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham met with 36 representatives of business interests and many campaign contributors while developing President Bush's energy policy, and he held no meetings with conservation or consumer groups, documents released last night show.

The information was released by the Energy Department just a few hours before a court-ordered deadline, and after 11 months of resistance by the administration to lawsuits by public interest groups seeking to determine who influenced the writing of the administration's energy plan.

A first review of the 11,000 pages of documents bolsters the contention of Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups that the Bush administration relied almost exclusively on the advice of executives from utilities and producers of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy while a White House task force drafted recommendations that would vastly increase energy production.

Of the corporations that met with Abraham, all but a few were large contributors of unregulated soft money to the Republican Party during the 2000 election cycle. A dozen of the companies that had meetings with Abraham contributed $1.2 million to the GOP, mainly for Bush's election. Ten of the 12 gave more soft money to Republicans than Democrats.

Large portions had been deleted from the documents released last night by the Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agriculture Department and the White House Office of Management and Budget. Most attachments were missing and in many cases documents were withheld except for the subject line. Thousands of other documents were withheld entirely, and the groups that won release of the documents through lawsuits said they may return to court.
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Among those suing for the release of the documents is Larry Klayman's Judicial Watch, hardly a leftist outfit.

http://judicialwatch.org/

Who is surprised by this? The energy and nuclear lobbies wrote the law for this administration, plain and simple! These people are worse even than than Dan Quayle's "Council on Competitiveness," which met in secret to gut laws. They are now talking about removing environmental protections for endangered species in California to help developers; drilling in Alaska; building more nuclear power plants using flawed Germany technology; forcing TAXPAYERS, rather than polluters, to fund the cost of cleaning up toxic waste sites (this is utterly disgusting); and pushing through trade policies that would negatively impact both the U.S. and our Latin American neighbors. This is just the beginning....

Government to the highest bidder! (Where is William Proxmire when you NEED him?)