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The Political Project of MCRC v. EPA, 4

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Fourth In A Series

A still from a Tom Casperson campaign spot, in which Casperson (left) says the UP is “truly someplace special…now facing truly special challenges,” among them, “standing against the EPA and the unreasonable overreach of other agencies.”

Demagoguery

Michigan State Senator Tom Casperson is the most visible political figure associated with the MCRC v. EPA lawsuit, the agent if not the author of its political project. We don’t know exactly what or how much he did to encourage members of the Marquette County Road Commission to take the EPA to court, what assurances were given and what expectations were put in place, as at least some of those meetings appear to have been conducted on the down low (and in violation of the Open Meetings Act). But the Escanaba Republican has never been shy about his support for CR 595 or his hostility toward the EPA.

Brian Cabell is stating what seems obvious when he links Casperson’s support for CR 595 to his business associations with timber and trucking in the Upper Peninsula, and it’s reasonable to believe that timber interests are among the donors to Stand U.P., the 501c4 dark money association funding the Road Commission’s lawsuit against the EPA. Before entering public life, Casperson succeeded his father as owner and operator of Casperson & Son Trucking, a log-trucking business started by his grandfather and based in Escanaba, Michigan. Associations like the Michigan Forest Products Council, the Great Lakes Timber Professionals and the Michigan Association of Timbermen support and celebrate the Senator’s achievements.

But those relatively direct and straightforward business associations are probably not the only ones in play here, and in supporting CR 595 and encouraging the CR 595 lawsuit, Casperson appears to be doing more than a little favor for himself and his friends back home in the timber and trucking industries. While a 2013 tally of Casperson’s supporters shows — not surprisingly for a Republican politician in the UP — that Michigan mining, timber and fossil-fuel PACs have been among his biggest backers, I suspect the MCRC lawsuit will serve an even deeper and more shadowy entanglement of alliances and alignments.

In parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series, I’ve described the formation of a political authority, or power bloc, that now pretends to direct economic development in the UP and decide what’s in the region’s best interests. That project is closely bound up with Casperson’s own political ambitions, and those ambitions are hardly limited to advocating for this haul road. Tom Casperson covets a seat above his current station, a role on the national stage; or at least he once coveted that bigger role, and politicians don’t often reconcile themselves to less power than they think they deserve. In 2008, Casperson ran against Bart Stupak to represent Michigan’s first district in the U.S. Congress. He made a pretty good showing, with nearly 33% of the vote against the incumbent’s 65%. With Stupak’s successor Dan Benishek announcing in March that in 2016 he’s running for a fourth term (after pledging to serve only three terms), Casperson will have to cool his heels until 2018. In the meantime, however Senator Casperson has a constructive role to play.

Casperson gained a certain notoriety in 2013 when he expressed doubts during a radio interview about whether President Obama was born in the United States, but he never found his footing as a birther, at least not in public. He’s spent most of his political career fighting the EPA and the regulation of industry in Michigan. That’s apparently where his heart is. Back in 2008, when he ran against Stupak, Casperson represented oil drilling as “lining up with my core beliefs.” At the time, he also claimed that the National Environmental Protection Act (passed in 1970) has regulators “walking around looking for amoebae on the ground so that they can find something to block timber sales,” and whined that environmentalism was “bringing the country to its knees.”

In 2011, Senator Casperson introduced a resolution (SR-10) “to impose a moratorium on greenhouse gas, air quality, and other regulatory actions by the Environmental Protection Agency” and require the EPA to account for the cumulative economic effect of “all regulatory activity” on climate change, air quality, water use, and coal ash. He recently joined Dan Benishek in opposing the Obama administration’s modifications of the Clean Water Act as “regulatory overreach” — echoing the point urged by other conservative opponents of the rule, who lined up obediently behind mining, fossil-fuel and energy producers, big agriculture and fertilizer companies like Koch.

Blaming the “war on coal” — the phrase itself is borrowed from the lexicon of climate change denial — for the closing of Marquette’s Presque Isle coal plant, Casperson warns that “there is no bigger threat to affordable, reliable electrical service to our districts than the EPA.” He grandstands about the EPA at every opportunity: “At some point,” he said back in March, “somebody’s got to take a stand here or they will take our way of life away from us. Clearly, they don’t like mining, clearly they don’t like timbering and quite frankly it appears they don’t really care much for us using the great outdoors unless they give us their permission and I think that’s unacceptable.”  

For Tom Casperson, any and every environmental regulation poses an existential threat. Against this ever present danger, he is out to protect what he frequently calls the UP “way of life” and force a David and Goliath standoff with the federal government. “The burdensome regulations proposed by the EPA,” he said when introducing a bill calling for a halt to the regulation of wood-burning stoves, “are an overreach of government and need to be stopped to protect our way of life.” “If we don’t pay attention,” he warned in a recent interview, “we’re going to get run over here.” On that occasion, he wasn’t talking about the danger of ore trucks barreling through downtown Marquette; he was rising to the defense of barbecue grills.

The barbecue resolution Casperson introduced this year with State Senator Phil Pavlov (and which passed the Michigan legislature unanimously) is an unabashed exercise in demagoguery. “Barbecues are an American tradition enjoyed by families from all walks of life across the country,” it begins, “whether tailgating for a football game, hosting a backyard get-together, or just grilling a summer meal, barbecues are a quintessentially American experience and an opportunity to eat and socialize with family and friends.” What prompted this noble defense of American tradition and the quintessentially American experience of barbecue? Of football, get togethers, and families from all walks of life across the country? Nothing much.  

In an EPA-sponsored competition, students at the University of California, Riverside were awarded a grant of $15,000 for proposing “to perform research and develop preventative technology that will reduce fine particulate emissions from residential barbecues.” That’s all there was to it. But those prize-winning students and their particulate emission preventing technology posed enough danger for Casperson — along with Missouri State Senator Eric Schmitt, Richard Hudson of North Carolina, Allen West and others of their ilk — to start hyperventilating about Obama and the EPA “coming after” our backyard barbecues. It looks like a loosely coordinated effort, with all the shills singing from the same sheet.

It’s a common tactic used to stir up popular sentiment against the regulation of polluters: when big pesticide users don’t like a new rule clarifying which waters are protected by the Clean Water Act, the demagogues tell small farmers that even a little ditch on their property will be counted among the “Waters of the US”; when regulators take aim at the fossil-fuel industry, the demagogues make dark predictions about the end of s’mores and campfires.

This is, by the way, the second time the Michigan legislature has fallen for this particular barbecue canard; the last time was back in 1997, when the Michigan House unanimously approved a resolution protecting barbecue grills against over-reaching federal bureaucrats. Casperson’s resolution was a reboot. Back in the 90s, and again in 2014 when Texas Senator Pete Olson demanded the Clean Air Act had to be amended if Texas-style barbecue were to be saved, the phony patriotism around Americans and their barbecue grills was a flag-waving effort to thwart the EPA’s proposal of stricter ozone limits. This time? Maybe rallying the troops around their barbecues helped to galvanize anti-EPA sentiment in the fight against the new Clean Water Act rule, or capitalize on the Pyrrhic victory the Supreme Court handed to industry in Michigan v. EPA.

A watchdog blog notes that Casperson’s “legislative record directly reflects the money trail,” but the equally important point — the one that I want to emphasize here — is that Tom Casperson’s efforts in the Michigan legislature appear to be connected and aligned with other legislative and extra-legislative efforts to ease environmental regulation and advance extractive projects and industrial development. The MCRC complaint presents a sterling opportunity for Casperson to strengthen these connections and forge new alliances. He would be a fool to pass it up.

Clark Hill, the attorneys who prepared and filed the complaint, already support Dan Benishek through their federal PAC; so Casperson may be able to jockey for a position in line behind him. But the law firm also gave more to Michigan Democrats than Republicans, and their real power and political influence does not depend on the nominal contributions they make to various political campaigns. Those are just goodwill gestures. Their political law practice, on the other hand, is a true nexus of political power, and at the head of it sits none other than Charles R. Spies. In 2012, Spies was Chief Financial Officer and Counsel for Restore our Future, the largest super PAC in history, formed to elect the unelectable Mitt Romney. Nowadays, Spies is supporting Jeb Bush, with a new Super PAC called Right to Rise.

These are the big leagues — much bigger than Casperson could ever dream of playing in. But the national success of Right to Rise will depend on thousands of coordinated local and regional efforts. If the MCRC lawsuit continues to go forward, it could easily have a place in that scheme, while raising Casperson’s profile and burnishing his conservative credentials. For its part, Stand U.P. can continue to raise all the money the MCRC needs for its lawsuit and whatever other political projects Tom Casperson and his cronies may be planning, and never have to disclose the sources of those funds. Its 501c4 “public welfare” status affords that protection.

Our Stake in Afghan Mining

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At the time, our meeting seemed like nothing more than a strange coincidence.

The scene was a restaurant patio in Moss Beach, California. The sun had set. People clustered around firepits to keep warm. (It was, after all, July in northern California.) We pulled up two chairs and after a few minutes fell into conversation with the couple sitting to our right. The usual preliminaries: he traveled frequently to India and Asia on business, we learned, and she had some kind of corporate job in the Valley. I can’t remember if I ever found out what it was.

Nobody was really interested in talking about work anyway. Almost immediately our conversation veered – I can’t remember how; I think it had to do with an appreciative remark about the lack of humidity on the West Coast — away from polite chatter about their lives in California to their daughter’s life in Florida. She had just moved there, close to the military base where her fiancé was now stationed. He was suffering from PTSD, which his mother-in-law-to-be attributed to an incident in Afghanistan not too long ago, when he inadvertently directed a combat unit into the line of fire.

Just a few minutes after the conversation had taken this grim turn, another couple pulled up chairs. They had moved to Silicon Valley from India years ago. The husband was some kind of engineer. They had come to Moss Beach that evening with their two adult sons, one of whom was getting ready to leave the next day – for Afghanistan. He wasn’t going there to fight, but to work for a food relief effort. He seemed confident and courageous. His mother could not disguise her worry.

And so it turned out that everyone in our little group had had their lives touched by the US war in Afghanistan: the six Americans who gathered to warm themselves around the firepit might make a good study in diminishing degrees of separation. We shared a connection to the war; we talked about wounded soldiers, hungry villagers and Bagram prison (where Daphne had gone in February of 2011 to chronicle human rights abuses, leaving me and the dog at home to worry for her safety). We remarked on how uncanny it seemed that all of us should have some connection to the war in Afghanistan. Nearly ten years after September 11th, 2001, it was one thing we all had in common.

Everybody put a brave face on. We talked about how Kabul is fascinating and what an adventure the young relief worker was about to have; we all tried to say some reassuring things about how resilient the young couple in Florida would turn out to be.

When this morning I remembered our accidental meeting around the firepit, I wasn’t thinking about the upcoming anniversary of September 11th and our disastrous conduct of the War on Terror there and around the world. I was, instead, reading a story by Graham Bowley on the front page of today’s Times about plans to extract a “trillion” in mineral wealth from underneath the soil of Afghanistan.

Judging from Bowley’s report, it would seem there’s big trouble ahead: the Taliban and tribal chieftains are trying to expand and claim new territories, so the mining will take place on their lands; this factionalism and corruption at all levels of government means it is unlikely that contracts (for mineral rights or infrastructure upgrades) will be awarded without bribery or criminal involvement. It also seems uncertain that the environment will be protected, human rights will be respected, or that “ordinary people” will benefit from the boom.

Ordinary people in Afghanistan have good reason to worry that criminals and corrupt officials along with global mining giants will rob them of their chances at a better life. But ordinary people in America – like the people who gathered around that firepit in Moss Beach in July – have reason to worry about Afghan mining as well. Why? It has to do with where our money goes – not just the billions of federal dollars that have already been squandered in Afghanistan, but billions in private funds (like pension funds) invested with and managed by America’s big banks.

Big banks already have a stake in mining Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. For example, Bowley mentions an “investment consortium organized by JP Morgan Chase” involved in gold mining. It’s odd that in that same paragraph he fails to note that Chase is also involved in the oil fields of Amu Darya. That operation is being conducted by China National Petroleum Corporation, and China National Petroleum Corporation is a subsidiary of PetroChina –a company in which JP Morgan Chase is heavily invested, and whose involvement in the genocide in Sudan has been the focus of shareholder resolutions and human rights campaigns.

In another post about JP Morgan and PetroChina, written in the wake of London Whale scandal, I asked whether JP Morgan was capable of managing its human rights risk. Bowley’s article raises a similar question for me. It’s unclear what credible assurances about risk management or environmental and human rights monitoring the bank can give shareholders and customers regarding its involvement in Afghanistan’s mining and oil industries. JP Morgan shareholders may find themselves unwittingly entangled in the plunder of Afghanistan’s buried treasures, and the civil conflicts, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation their extraction seems bound to entail.

One wonders whether we have learned anything at all in the past eleven years.