Another year has brought another job for Gale Norton, the former Wichitan who resigned as President Bush’s interior secretary last March. This month Norton will become a general counsel in Royal Dutch Shell’s exploration and production business, which partly involves recovering oil from shale. Norton will work out of Colorado, where she served two terms as attorney general before her five years in the Bush Cabinet.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called the hiring an example of the “hand-in-glove relationship between Big Oil and the Bush administration’s top Interior officials.” Anybody who has observed the revolving door between Washington, D.C., and industry would call it nothing new.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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12 Comments
Gale has the job of trying to convince Congresspeople that lead really isn’t that bad. Sure it causes brain damage but what more can we expect from someone picked by Bush to head the EPA?
Great.We pay taxes to subsidize these greedy bastards too.Time for revolution?
“Anybody who has observed the revolving door between Washington, D.C., and industry would call it nothing new.”
Has been so for years, in both parties. Will continue to be so, in both parties.
The only thing that will really change, with the Dems in control of Congress, is who the lobbying dollars get showered on. Those who seek to get favors from gov’t will continue to do so; the dollars follow the power. The game rolls on.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Yeah, but the rub is the Republicans can’t stand it when they are not the ones getting ‘greased’.
GMC, you are correct (unfortunately). The game, indeed, does roll on.
There needs to be a serious look at a “revolving door” prohibition covering all governmental employees who work in an agency taking a position in the industry being regulated or doing business with that agency, for a period of time, say 4 years, after leaving the government. There is no “engraved in stone” about the idea above expressed, but is offered for discussion.
When I was a kid many decades ago, I saw an ad in Newsweek magazine from Shell or Exxon.
It showed a guy in a flameproof suit and gloves holding a rock that was on fire.
This was the magical promise of oil shale–more oil in shale than in all of the mideast and right here in the US!
Well, it’s some thirty years later, and guess what, oil shale still isn’t worth crap. In fact considering that dried cow dung burns quite well (as the pioneers knew well), crap probably has a higher energy density than oil shale does.
So, yeah it makes sense–Gail Norton goes from one job in which she LIES for a living to another one in which she does the same thing . . .
What’s the matter FYE – get fired and mad because you didn’t make the front page? Sounds like a eprsonal problem to me.
OK. If I read this story correctly, Gale will be employed by Royal Dutch at U.S. Corporate headquarters in Colorado as general counsel. Nowhere do i see that she will be employed as a Royal Dutch lobbyist in Washington, D.C. (Factually, almost all lobbyists are not employed directly by the companies they lobby for, are, in fact, independent contactors, as it were, lobbying for PACS and industries, as a whole.)
Using Markey’s (and apparently, Rhonda’s) logic, former Senator David Boren should have been barred from serving as president of the University of Oklahoma because he once served on the education committee?
Or does party affiliation raise its ugly head hear, friends? What’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for the gander? This is just more indirect incorrect Repubican bashing.
rm,
Where in Markey’s “hand-in-glove relationship between Big Oil and the Bush administration’s top Interior officials” do you see the word “lobbyist”?
Norton spun and lied trying to open the Arctic Refuge to “Big Oil” — 2,000 acre “footprint”, “technically” recoverable oil, caribou… Now, she has a job with “Big Oil”.
Phillip Cooney is another, and better example.* Lobbyist in charge of global warming disinformation for American Petroleum Institute, 1995 – Jan 2001.* Jan 2001, became Bush’s chief of staff, Council on Environmental Quality.* Resigned in June 2005, after the NY Times exposed his “editing” (cough), AND already had a PR job lined up with ExxonMobil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Cooney
Also here, in a very detailed report,’Scientists’ Report Documents ExxonMobil’s Tobacco-like Disinformation Campaign on Global Warming ScienceOil Company Spent Nearly $16 Million to Fund Skeptic Groups, Create Confusion’http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html
“crap probably has a higher energy density than oil shale does”
Rolling on the floor, laughing my ass off.
Before the big storm here, while it was still dry, I spent a couple of days picking up loads of cow pies in the pasture. by hand, (er glove) and hauling them to the garden compost pile.
Life in western kansas.
We spend a lotta time cleaning up the messes others make by picking up other’s crap and turning it into something useful. Maybe that is why we dominate the leadership of the ks legislature? Experience?
heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh
Norton needs to spend a couple of days with us and see how the real world works before she resumes shoveling crap for the oil companies…
I think like bush in iraq, norton is still looking for the pony that MUST be under all that crap…..
I am researching Virginia Indian Nation’s quest for federal recognition. In an Indian Country Article states Gale Norton was forced to quit position as Secretary of Interior under threats she had granted sovereignty to an indian tribe. I am attempting to understand why the Virginia tribes can not get sovereignty after all their efforts and years of trying.