Gingrich Raked In Oil Money After Flip-Flopping On Cap And Trade
2012 GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich executed a high-profile flip-flop on cap and trade, saying in 2007 that “mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system” were something he “would strongly support,” before disavowing that position this year. “I never favored cap and trade,” he claimed during a Fox News interview earlier this month.
It turns out that this move was more than politically convenient for Gingrich. As the Washington Post noted today, Gingrich’s climate flip-flop was also quite lucrative, with millions of oil dollars pouring into his now defunct energy non-profit after he announced it:
Within weeks, the money began pouring in from major U.S. energy firms, which eventually contributed more than $2 million to American Solutions’ pro-drilling and anti-cap-and-trade campaign for the next two years, according to a review of disclosure reports and other records by The Washington Post.
The top contributors included Peabody Energy of St. Louis, which gave $825,000, and Devon Energy of Oklahoma City, which contributed $500,000.
Gingrich also has a complicated relationship with oil subsidies, deriding Congress for not cutting them, but also mocking progressives for wanting to cut them.
Gingrich, of course, has been quote cozy with corporate interests in the last few years, making and taking millions from various corporations for work in a variety of areas. And those corporations have seen their investment pay off, as Gingrich has peddled his influence to secure earmarks and push for deregulation. His cap and trade flip-flop is simply part of a larger pattern of Gingrich saying what he needs to say to keep corporate dollars flowing.
By: Pat Garofalo, U. S. News and World Report, December 29, 2011
Social Conservatism: How Newt Gingrich Saved Porn
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 is not a subject that Newt Gingrich likes to talk about on the campaign trail. For the new GOP front-runner, the episode also marks a notable exception to his record as a social conservative: the time when Gingrich took on his own base to keep the web open for pornography. Here’s how it happened.
With a few exceptions, the web was something of a foreign concept to Congress in 1995. (Gingrich, the lower chamber’s biggest web booster, didn’t even use email.) But the internet was quickly earning a reputation, especially on the right, as a den of immorality, awash in smut and sexual predators. Congressional leaders decided they needed the Communications Decency Act, which was folded into a must-pass Telecommunications bill.
Sen. Jim Exon compiled an album of images he’d found on the web—including one of a man engaging in intercourse with a German shepherd—and invited his colleagues to take a look.
“Barbarian pornographers are at the gate and they are using the internet to gain access to the youth of America,” warned Sen. Jim Exon (D-Neb.).
To fend off the barbarians, Exon introduced an amendment to the Communications Decency Act criminalizing the transmission of “indecent” materials over the internet. In case any stone remained unturned, it went after internet service providers as well: Email or distribute nude photos—or even just type one of the “seven words you can’t say on television”—and you could face a $100,000 fine or up to two years in prison.
To illustrate the danger of internet porn, Exon compiled an album of graphic images he’d found on the web—including one of a man engaging in intercourse with a German shepherd—in a blue binder with a red “caution” sticker, and invited his colleagues to take a look.
Exon’s measure passed the Senate with 86 votes. The appeal was clear: No elected official wanted to be seen as voting for smut. The Contract With America—Republicans’ promise to voters in advance of their landslide win in the 1994 elections—had even contained a provision vowing to crack down on child pornography.
That’s where Gingrich came in.
To the House speaker, the debate presented a clash between his desire to prepare America for the 21st century and his conservative values. Gingrich, by his own description, was a “conservative futurist.” He envisioned honeymoons in space and laptops in every classroom; the Exon amendment, by casting such a wide net, threatened that future.
Newt’s preferred web-surfing policy: Don’t ask, don’t tell. Newt Gingrich/FacebookGingrich was right that Exon’s bill was extremely broad. As Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) pointed out in a particularly inspired floor speech, the law could even have criminalized the online distribution of Gingrich’s first novel, 1945, in which a “pouting sex kitten”—who is also a Nazi—seduces a White House aide in order to extract classified information. It would also have prohibited most non-Will Smith forms of hip-hop.
“[The amendment] is clearly a violation of free speech and it’s a violation of the right of adults to communicate with each other,” Gingrich said at the time. “I don’t agree with it…” In an interview with British journalist David Frost, he elaborated on his position. “I think there you have a perfect right on a noncensorship basis to intervene decisively against somebody who would prey upon children. And that I would support very intensely. It’s very different than trying to censor willing adults.”
With Gingrich’s support, Rep. Chris Cox (R-Calif.) and Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) crafted an alternative proposal that eschewed punitive measures for online wardrobe malfunctions and expletives, and instead emphasized private, parental education initiatives. The bill passed the House overwhelmingly.
Gingrich “talked out both sides of his mouth,” says Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt.
Although the Senate’s version was part of the law that eventually passed, it was overturned by the Supreme Court the next year in Reno v. ACLU. What remained was Gingrich’s language, a piece of legislation sufficiently ahead of its time that Jerry Berman, founder of the Center for Democracy and Technology, says it should be called the “Communications Democracy Act.”
Gingrich’s support for a hands-off approach set a precedent. Under his watch, the federal government opted against creating the equivalent of an FCC for the internet, helping it grow into what it is today. According to a report published last year by the IT security company Optenet, 37 percent of the internet consists of porn.
It also wasn’t the last time that Gingrich stood up for the internet’s biggest business: In 2009, his organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, briefly named adult-film titan Pink Visual the “entrepreneur of the year” and invited the company’s CEO to a reception at DC’s Capitol Hill Club. Gingrich’s spokesman said at the time that Pink Visual had been honored “inadvertently.”
The speaker may have been an ally in the fight against the Exon amendment, but that hardly makes him a free speech icon. Gingrich “talked out both sides of his mouth,” says Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. The free-speech activist (who currently has a $1 million reward for dirt on Rick Perry’s sex life) took on Gingrich at length in his book Sex, Lies, & Politics and hasn’t changed his views in the ensuing decade. “I wouldn’t vote for him for dogcatcher.”
By: Tim Murphy, Mother Jones, December 2, 2011
Newt, Inc: “Historical Entrepreneur Of The Year”
Voters haven’t heard much about it, but Newt Gingrich hasn’t exactly held a real job in a very long time. He has, however, overseen a very lucrative enterprise often called “Newt Inc.”
Gingrich, you’ll recall, was forced to resign from Congress in disgrace way back in 1998, after his fellow Republicans decided they no longer had use for his kind of “leadership.” In the 13 years since, the former House Speaker hasn’t held or sought public office at any level.
What’s he been doing? Karen Tumulty and Dan Eggen take a look today at the “business conglomerate” Gingrich put together after his political career was left in shambles.
The power of the Gingrich brand fueled a for-profit collection of enterprises that generated close to $100 million in revenue over the past decade, said his longtime attorney Randy Evans.
Among Gingrich’s moneymaking ventures: a health-care think tank financed by six-figure dues from corporations; a consulting business; a communications firm that handled his speeches of up to $60,000 a pop, media appearances and books; a historical documentary production company; a separate operation to administer the royalties for the historical fiction that Gingrich writes with two co-authors; even an in-house literary agency that has counted among its clients a presidential campaign rival, former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).
Separate from all of that was his nonprofit political operation, American Solutions for Winning the Future. Before it disintegrated this summer in Gingrich’s absence, American Solutions generated another $52 million and provided some of the money that allowed the former speaker to travel by private jet and hired limousine.
Along the way, Gingrich has become a wealthy man, earning $2.5 million in personal income last year, according to his financial disclosure form.
It’s not altogether clear what, exactly, Gingrich has done with his days. He’s been paid handsomely for his “strategic advice,” which the disgraced former Speaker insists was not technically lobbying. Gingrich has also given plenty of speeches, made near-constant appearances on television, and adopted a rather luxurious personal lifestyle, but in terms of actual work, the record appears to be pretty thin.
In any case, while the Post’s piece is a good one, the one thing it doesn’t fully convey is just how sketchy — and at times, even sleazy — Gingrich’s operation has been.
As part of his shady financial empire, for example, Gingrich ran a dubious direct-mail scheme, offering to name random businesspeople as “entrepreneur of the year” in exchange for a $5,000 “membership fee” to Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future.
In one rather amusing example, Gingrich offered to name a strip-club owner as “entrepreneur of the year” for $5,000. When the nude-dancing entrepreneur accepted, Gingrich’s embarrassed staff canceled the 2009 award and returned the money — only to hit the exact same strip-club owner up for more cash two years later.
It wasn’t an isolated incident. Gingrich has overseen all kinds of entities, all of which have raised a lot of money over the last several years, without much to show for it. Not surprisingly, the whole operation has drawn some quizzical looks.
[C]onsumer advocates and some disgruntled donors have raised questions over the years about Gingrich’s seeming penchant for aggressive tactics, including the heavy use of fundraising polls, blast-faxes and other techniques considered unsavory or even predatory by philanthropy groups. […]
According to complaints on consumer-focused Web sites, some American Solutions calls begin with slanted polling questions before proceeding to a request for money. The tactic, known as “fundraising under the guise of research,” or frugging, is discouraged as unethical by trade groups such as the Marketing Research Association.
American Solutions also has drawn criticism because it spends nearly $2 on fundraising for every $3 it brings in — about twice the figure for many nonprofit groups, experts said.
Given the fact that Gingrich was plagued by ethics scandals during his congressional tenure, coupled with his business ventures over the last 13 years, it’s hard to have much confidence in this guy’s sense of propriety.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly, November 27, 2011
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