Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westerveldt. In our last episode,
Speaker 1: we mentioned the appearance of the Republican Attorneys General Association
Speaker 1: or RAGA in the big US youth climate case Juliana
Speaker 1: versus United States. Today, I want to dig into that
Speaker 1: organization a bit more and some other organizations that like
Speaker 1: to party with it, with one of the foremost experts
Speaker 1: on this topic, Lisa Graves.
Speaker 2: My name is Lisa Graves, and I'm the executive director
Speaker 2: of True North Research, which is a watchdog group that
Speaker 2: focuses on corporate distortion of American democracy, and I previously
Speaker 2: led the Center for Media Democracy.
Speaker 3: I'm still the president of the board over there.
Speaker 2: And I've previously been Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the
Speaker 2: Office of Legal Policy at the US Department of Justice,
Speaker 2: and the Chief Counsel Denominations for the US Senate Judiciary Committee,
Speaker 2: the Chief of the Article three Division of the US Courts,
Speaker 2: the Admistry off the US Courts, and I was the
Speaker 2: senior legislative strategist for the ACLU on national security issues.
Speaker 2: So I am a researcher and a writer and someone
Speaker 2: who has looked deeply into some of these front groups
Speaker 2: or right wing groups that have been advancing pretty extreme
Speaker 2: agenda in a lot of different ways, both federally and
Speaker 2: in the States.
Speaker 1: Lisa connects the dots on a right wing extremism and
Speaker 1: climate better than pretty much anyone I've ever talked to,
Speaker 1: So I'm really excited to bring you this interview today.
Speaker 1: I talked to Lisa last year in the process of
Speaker 1: working on the second season of the show This Land,
Speaker 1: which I highly recommend you check out if you haven't already.
Speaker 1: It follows a series of constitutional challenges to the Indian
Speaker 1: Child Welfare Act, which has some surprising backers, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there is an oil and gas connection at any rate.
Speaker 1: Lisa has spent a lot of time looking at some
Speaker 1: of the specific lawyers and right wing fi involved in that,
Speaker 1: many of whom are the very same folks fighting against
Speaker 1: climate action. That includes not just RAGA, but also the
Speaker 1: various Coke funded organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the
Speaker 1: Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute, as well as a
Speaker 1: lesser known but equally powerful family foundation, the Bradley Foundation.
Speaker 1: It's a lot to unpack, and Lisa blew my mind
Speaker 1: in ways that I'm still thinking about a year later.
Speaker 1: That conversation is coming up right after this quick break,
Speaker 1: So I'm curious to hear a little bit about your
Speaker 1: work on Goldwater in particular and what their big kind
Speaker 1: of driving force has seemed to be in recent years.
Speaker 2: I had done a significant report about the Goldwater Institute
Speaker 2: in two thousand and thirty team to examine its activities,
Speaker 2: its funding, its influence on Arizona law, how it was
Speaker 2: able to use Arizona's weak laws on lobby disclosure to
Speaker 2: have an enormous effect on the legislature that was not
Speaker 2: entirely visible to ordinary people, in how it was advancing
Speaker 2: Charles Cooke's agenda. Charles Cooke in many ways has used
Speaker 2: ALEC to operationalize his ideas at the state level, and
Speaker 2: Goldwater work to advance those ideas in the state legislature
Speaker 2: to push those proposals in addition to expand with litigation
Speaker 2: operations under Bullock, who's obviously now on the state Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: That would be Clint Bullock. He's in Arizona Supreme Court
Speaker 1: justice today, but he built his reputation for decades as
Speaker 1: a public interest litigator for various conservative causes, particularly against
Speaker 1: affirmative action and for school choice.
Speaker 2: So I've looked at them and I think it's it's
Speaker 2: interesting because there appears to be a confluence of interests.
Speaker 1: Lisa said she saw this confluence of interest in the
Speaker 1: Indian Child Welfare Act cases that Goldwater started to bring
Speaker 1: beginning in twenty fifteen. Again, go and listen to this
Speaker 1: land for that whole wild story. But to sum it up,
Speaker 1: the primary argument being used in those cases is that
Speaker 1: the definition of Indian is race based and therefore violates
Speaker 1: the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That sort
Speaker 1: of argument has been a key part of the quote
Speaker 1: unquote reverse discrimination argument for conservative lawyers arguing against various
Speaker 1: civil rights laws for decades, and Clint Bullock, an early
Speaker 1: acolyte of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been pushing
Speaker 1: that argument for decades.
Speaker 2: There is this component, obviously on the surface of the
Speaker 2: cases is involving claims about protection or about race specific remedies,
Speaker 2: and obviously Clarence Thomas, you know, has made assertions about
Speaker 2: that in his opinions related to this area of the law.
Speaker 2: But I think it's about more than race. I think
Speaker 2: it's about possibly reshaping the law surrounding the relationship between
Speaker 2: the United States and tribes and sort of using this
Speaker 2: particular law as a way to perhaps change dramatically other
Speaker 2: laws that may well be implicated, and the ones that
Speaker 2: are most concerned to me of those other legal areas are,
Speaker 2: you know, the relationship between the federal government and the
Speaker 2: tribes and sovereignty issues involving oil and leasing and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. I just wonder, although I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I wonder whether, given some of the players, there
Speaker 2: is ultimately an oil, oil and gas angle here.
Speaker 1: That's something that we've been looking at to The first
Speaker 1: Attorney general to sign on was in Texas, and the
Speaker 1: Texas AG's office has been very friendly to oil and
Speaker 1: gas for a long time. And then you know the
Speaker 1: fact that Gibson Doune is involved too, and the Koch
Speaker 1: brothers kind of tangentially, it seems like there's this financial
Speaker 1: motive from the oil and gas folks that dovetails with
Speaker 1: some like weird racial ideology.
Speaker 2: So you have this Attorney general in a state that is,
Speaker 2: you know, particularly friendly and warm to coke and to
Speaker 2: the other oil and refinery industries, and it has very
Speaker 2: very few tribal holdings in the state. But Also it's
Speaker 2: the case that you know, something has happened over the
Speaker 2: last twenty years, and I had looked at this back
Speaker 2: when I was working on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In
Speaker 2: terms of this the rise of RAGA, the Republican Attorney's
Speaker 2: General Association, where we know that it's a pay to
Speaker 2: play operation, we know that it has had enormously distorting
Speaker 2: effect on US law. It provides a mechanism for corporations
Speaker 2: to pass money through to help attorneys general in ways
Speaker 2: that they would not be able to individually solicit for
Speaker 2: their own campaigns given their role, their regulatory role over
Speaker 2: those very industries. And that's been going on since RAGA
Speaker 2: was created back more than twenty years ago now, and
Speaker 2: it has accelerated under some of the attorneys general who
Speaker 2: have led it, like Scott Crewe was who was, you know,
Speaker 2: in my view, another corrupt individual, someone who was selaxed
Speaker 2: on ethical rules to say the least, and who was
Speaker 2: willing to do the bidding of the oil industry and
Speaker 2: attacking climate legislation and climate rules, even the very modest
Speaker 2: cpp the Clean Power Plan rules to advance the of
Speaker 2: the funders of RAGA. And I say that knowing that
Speaker 2: Oklahoma obviously has you know, a huge amount of industry
Speaker 2: involved or you know, has has long relationships with these
Speaker 2: The oil industry even has an oil you know, a
Speaker 2: replica I think of a of an oil well on
Speaker 2: the Capitol grounds, and so I know that it's it's
Speaker 2: a part of that state's history. But we do know
Speaker 2: that RAGA is a pay to play operation these Republican
Speaker 2: Attorneys General behave in general, they are operating most often
Speaker 2: we've seen at the behest of the industries that they're
Speaker 2: soliciting funds for to fund RAGA.
Speaker 3: That's interesting Beyond RAGA.
Speaker 2: Is funding the corporate funders of RAGA, we know that
Speaker 2: it now is receiving a substantial amount of money from
Speaker 2: one of the emerging big dark money operations, which is
Speaker 2: Leonard Leo's operation, which was funded through a group that's
Speaker 2: now defunct that has subsequently you know, basically been re
Speaker 2: ran and are renamed as Leo has re launched his
Speaker 2: operations after it was exposed by The Washington Post last year.
Speaker 2: So RAGA now is not just a recipient of donations
Speaker 2: from big oil and big huge corporations, but it's also
Speaker 2: a major recipient of funds in which the source is
Speaker 2: completely unknown to anyone other than the person raising the money,
Speaker 2: Leonard Leo and his group of operatives.
Speaker 1: That would be former head of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo.
Speaker 1: The Federalist Society is credited with getting hundreds of conservative
Speaker 1: judges appointed over the past couple of decades and picking
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court choices of any Republican president in that
Speaker 1: same timeframe. Leo left the Federalist Society and started a
Speaker 1: new organization, CRC Advisors in twenty twenty. They have continued
Speaker 1: that work. One of the first projects he andnnounced under
Speaker 1: CRC was ten million dollars in funding for issue advocacy
Speaker 1: campaigning around you guessed it judge ships in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: And they've particularly targeted states and state AG's offices to
Speaker 2: advance Leonard's longer term agenda, which he described to the
Speaker 2: Council of National Policy and a speech to CNP last year,
Speaker 2: that America stands at the precipice of what he called
Speaker 2: the revival of what he described as the quote structural constitution.
Speaker 2: And he told the CNP audience that no one alive
Speaker 2: in that room had seen the type of legal revolution
Speaker 2: that America was about to see based on the appointments
Speaker 2: to the Supreme Court and other courts to revive this
Speaker 2: so called structural constitution to the law as it existed
Speaker 2: pre New Deal. And you know, that affects a whole
Speaker 2: host of laws. It affects civil rights laws, that it
Speaker 2: will affect labor laws and labor rightsenvironmental regulation and more.
Speaker 2: And it's an attempt in my view, to really limit
Speaker 2: the ability of Congress to pass laws, to limit the
Speaker 2: ability of agencies to regulate corporations, and to you know,
Speaker 2: sort of change the whole modern structure of government, basically
Speaker 2: in terms of the administrative agencies, but also the rights
Speaker 2: of citizens and the relationships between the United States as
Speaker 2: a as a government and other governments, which obviously would
Speaker 2: include tribal governments tribes in that speech, but it's an
Speaker 2: attempt by Leo and an assortment of lawyers who are
Speaker 2: elite lawyers like Paul Clement and others who have been,
Speaker 2: you know, advancing some of these ideas.
Speaker 1: Paul Clement is another lawyer involved in the Indian Child
Speaker 1: Welfare Act cases, but he's also been involved in a
Speaker 1: variety of pipeline disputes, and he was the Solicitor General
Speaker 1: of the United States under Bush. He's also a Supreme
Speaker 1: Court regular, with more Supreme Court appearances under his belt
Speaker 1: than any attorney currently practicing.
Speaker 2: And now they have a Supreme Court that's increasingly receptive
Speaker 2: to what I considered be an extreme, radical, reactionary agenda
Speaker 2: to change our rights and limit our powers and our
Speaker 2: democracy through our representatives in ways that serve a very
Speaker 2: elite agenda, the agenda of the people who fund Leonard
Speaker 2: Leo and Leo's operations and fund the RAGA, the Republicantturney
Speaker 2: General's Association, and have been really attempting to work a
Speaker 2: legal revolution through offices that we would otherwise consider to
Speaker 2: be independent. It would be nice to have attorneys general
Speaker 2: of states who were not so captive to advancing the
Speaker 2: interest of Charles Cooke, But unfortunately we are in an
Speaker 2: era in which those interests have been dominating these many
Speaker 2: of these state ags, including the Attorney General Texas, who's
Speaker 2: embroiled in other serious I mean, they've declared, you know,
Speaker 2: this war on the so called administrative state. Obviously, there's
Speaker 2: roots of that in Reagan and some of the lawyers
Speaker 2: who were active then, who became judges and some of
Speaker 2: the people who are in the judiciary, like Silverman, who
Speaker 2: Paul Clement worked for, and who Amy Comingey Barrett clerked for.
Speaker 2: People who are in the judiciary who have been, you know,
Speaker 2: in my view, very partisan, very right wing, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of politicians and rogues who are attempting to restructure
Speaker 2: the modern American state through judicial rulings. And so Paul,
Speaker 2: Paul and I overlapped a bit. When I was at
Speaker 2: the Justice Department. I was a career deputy Assistant Attorney
Speaker 2: General in the Office of Legal Policy. Although I didn't
Speaker 2: work with him in the sg's office when he was
Speaker 2: coming in to take over that operation, but I was
Speaker 2: there for those first couple of months, and obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: observed his litigation as a citizen, but also when I
Speaker 2: was on the Senate Judiciary Committee to see his efforts
Speaker 2: and the way he was trying to change, you know,
Speaker 2: the laws. And then you know his work since the
Speaker 2: end of that administration through the Obama administration in the
Speaker 2: private sector and the types of cases he's been involved in,
Speaker 2: including the attacks on the Affordable Care Act and this
Speaker 2: advance of sort of the supremacy of freedom of religion
Speaker 2: as a sword to strike down legislation and protections for
Speaker 2: you know, people's health and equal protection.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think about his kind of driving
Speaker 1: force as a person. What is his ideology?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean he to my in my view, he's
Speaker 2: he's one of the you know, doctrinaire ideologues on the right.
Speaker 2: You know, he's part of sort of that movement, the
Speaker 2: Federal Society movement. Although I think that gives it some
Speaker 2: sort of populous veneer that's not real. It's an effort
Speaker 2: to basically roll back most of the modern precedents. And
Speaker 2: you know, the presidents that are Brown, Post and Post
Speaker 2: Brown that a lot of the sort of the Leo
Speaker 2: contingent dislikes. They now, I guess, have refashioned themselves as
Speaker 2: originalists in asserting that Amy Cony Bird is the most
Speaker 2: recent real originalists, when in fact, the reality is is
Speaker 2: that in my lifetime, if you look at the US
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, there have only been four appointees by Democratic
Speaker 2: presidents and sixteen appointees that by Republican presidents, and that
Speaker 2: includes renquists twice because there's two different seats. But you know,
Speaker 2: eighty percent of the Supreme Court has been appointed by Republicans,
Speaker 2: and they just haven't been doctrinaire enough for these you know,
Speaker 2: very elite reactionaries like Leonard Leo and Clement and others,
Speaker 2: many of whom were named on Trump's list or shortlist
Speaker 2: for the Supreme Court, as Clement was. So I don't
Speaker 2: know him personally. I don't know what he's like personally.
Speaker 2: My personal view is, you know, everyone has a mom
Speaker 2: who loves them and friends who like them. It's beside
Speaker 2: the point about whether or fair or whether they have
Speaker 2: an agenda that actually would hurt the interests of most people.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I think that the lawyers who are part of RAGA,
Speaker 2: the Attorney's General like Pruitt, who are advancing these sorts
Speaker 2: of attacks on you know, really reasonable legislation, legislation that's
Speaker 2: certainly within the power of Congress, like the CPP. These individuals,
Speaker 2: they dress in suits and ties, but they represent a
Speaker 2: pretty extreme ideology.
Speaker 1: Lisa says that in recent years that extreme ideology always
Speaker 1: seems to come back to carbon and whether or not
Speaker 1: to regulate it.
Speaker 2: One of my primary concerns about Leo's Structural Revolution is
Speaker 2: that it will be an attempt to use this so
Speaker 2: called structural constitution to take away the power of Congress
Speaker 2: to regulate carbon. You know, they have a longer standing
Speaker 2: attack on the existence of the EPA. We've documented, I
Speaker 2: helped document how on Charles Kocapo even the creation of
Speaker 2: an energy Department in the United States. There shouldn't be
Speaker 2: any federal energy department. Some of these Hope type groups
Speaker 2: and LEO groups, you know, have a hostility to the
Speaker 2: idea of there being these sorts of agencies, and they're
Speaker 2: they're i think mounting a structural attack on them as
Speaker 2: well as you know, ultimately a question of whether we're
Speaker 2: going to even have some of these agencies. As you know,
Speaker 2: there's been an attempt in a number of these presidential
Speaker 2: campaigns for Republicans to claim these are the five or
Speaker 2: four or three agencies they're going to eliminate, which you
Speaker 2: know inevitably include energy, the Energy Department, and perhaps the EPA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's super interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, So in terms of some of the other players, Bradley,
Speaker 1: you know, has been a big funder of Goldwater for
Speaker 1: a long time. Paul Clement's now on their board.
Speaker 2: When I wrote the report on Goldwater in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: they were in the process of basically expanding their litigation
Speaker 2: and they were marketing and I think that these documents
Speaker 2: are in the Bradley files, but they were you know,
Speaker 2: at the time, basically trying to become the litigation force
Speaker 2: for the State Policy Network groups across the country.
Speaker 1: The State Policy Network is a group of organizations funded
Speaker 1: by the Coke Network that takes pro corporate sample legislation
Speaker 1: from the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC and works
Speaker 1: to get it passed in state legislatures. Several years ago,
Speaker 1: Goldwater launched its litigation center in Arizona under Clint Bullocks leadership,
Speaker 1: with the idea of being the litigator for all of
Speaker 1: these state policy initiatives.
Speaker 2: They were trying to do that and then had that
Speaker 2: be a you know, a fundraising basis for them, and
Speaker 2: they would help coordinate with these other places. And obviously
Speaker 2: Clint you know, had a long standing record as a
Speaker 2: litigator you know, in attacking affirmative action and from my
Speaker 2: perspectives of rights laws, and so they had a team
Speaker 2: that they put in place. It felt that they could
Speaker 2: you know, market beyond Arizona. But their real objective is
Speaker 2: structural litigation, Like they're not just taking pro bono cases
Speaker 2: for the sake of taking promono cases.
Speaker 3: Their objective is structural change.
Speaker 1: Structural change meaning fundamentally changing the law or government and
Speaker 1: how it works and what it's allowed to do.
Speaker 2: I think, even though we may not know definitively the
Speaker 2: objective of either Clint Bullock and his successors at Goldwater
Speaker 2: or Paul Clement, one thing that is clear in their
Speaker 2: pattern of the litigation that they've engaged in is that
Speaker 2: they do it to advance structural change. They're using litigation
Speaker 2: as part of a strategy for changing the law, Like
Speaker 2: for example, with the Goldwater litigation on licensure, it's actually
Speaker 2: a much broader attack on the idea that government should
Speaker 2: be having licenses for people in a whole host of
Speaker 2: areas where people would be demonstrably unsafe if these issues
Speaker 2: weren't regulated from a health and safety standpoint. And we
Speaker 2: can see that in the way some of these groups,
Speaker 2: although I don't know that what Clement's position has been
Speaker 2: on COVID, but what we've seen through the ALE groups
Speaker 2: and the SPN groups has been this you know, push
Speaker 2: for improvident reopening, this attack on you know, closed and
Speaker 2: closing businesses to protect public health, in this pandemic. So
Speaker 2: they're not actually that interested in public health, you know,
Speaker 2: in money and the economy, and that is a persistent
Speaker 2: driver of their agenda. Certainly is a driver of the
Speaker 2: Goldwater Institute's litigation agenda overall. Is this notion that regulation
Speaker 2: is somehow incompatible with what they describe as this pre market,
Speaker 2: which is this sort of in their fantasy ideal world,
Speaker 2: one in which we don't have these regulations and companies
Speaker 2: can do that they want and the rich can do
Speaker 2: what they want. Bradley is interesting obviously, it's it's sort
Speaker 2: of zombie money in the sense that there's no family
Speaker 2: member left on that board and the super wealthy people,
Speaker 2: uh like Pope Art Pope and uh Diane Hendricks, who
Speaker 2: are major GOP donors, and you know Pope has long
Speaker 2: saning ties to you know, he's been on a FP's
Speaker 2: board for a long long time or one of the
Speaker 2: FP operations board. So you have these billionaires who are
Speaker 2: basically directing the the hundreds of millions of dollars of
Speaker 2: other you know, industrialists to advance uh these you know,
Speaker 2: some of these pretty extreme, uh, extremely reactionary groups. But Cearle,
Speaker 2: so the Bradley Brothers were super anti labor. You know,
Speaker 2: they were you know, sort of in my view, bad
Speaker 2: guys uh in a lot of ways. And now their
Speaker 2: money is continuing to do that bad That badness. Searle,
Speaker 2: you know is the is that pharmaceutical fortune right? Uh?
Speaker 3: That I think? I think? Uh.
Speaker 2: I don't know that they made as much money on Ascertain,
Speaker 2: but ascertain was one of.
Speaker 3: Their products opiately.
Speaker 2: But Searle, you know, Searle is deeply embedded in sort
Speaker 2: of that right wing infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Searle is the Seerle Freedom Trust. It's president and CEO,
Speaker 1: Kim Dennis, also heads up a giant pot of dark
Speaker 1: money that the Kochs put together. After the twenty ten
Speaker 1: Supreme Court case, Citizens United made anonymous political donations legal
Speaker 1: for corporations.
Speaker 2: At one point, I actually wondered whether they were operating
Speaker 2: out of the American Enterprise Institute just qua AEI. But
Speaker 2: they have an address obviously that's in Chicago or something
Speaker 2: for Searle Freedom Press. But they're fully embedded in advancing
Speaker 2: this pretty extreme, extremely reactionary set of legal goals to
Speaker 2: you know, turn back the clock a century.
Speaker 3: In the words of Leonard Leo Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: It's like, yes, I mean that seems so clear that
Speaker 1: it's like they really really do want to live in
Speaker 1: like the night, you know, yeah, pre new Deal.
Speaker 2: Basically we're of Robert Barren is their glory era, and
Speaker 2: so I mean, I think it does raise that question about,
Speaker 2: you know, a rise of the sort of a Lockner,
Speaker 2: a new Lockner twenty first century.
Speaker 1: Lockner Court Lockner was a really important early labor case.
Speaker 1: It happened in nineteen oh five. It's called Lockner versus
Speaker 1: New York and basically what happened was that New York
Speaker 1: State had passed a law limiting the amount of hours
Speaker 1: that bakers could work every week. So it was capped
Speaker 1: at sixty hours a week, and a guy named Lockner,
Speaker 1: who owned a bakery got caught allowing an employee to
Speaker 1: work additional hours. He was fined and actually thrown in
Speaker 1: jail over this, and so he sued and said that
Speaker 1: this law was totally unfair and ridiculous and that it
Speaker 1: was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court agreed, and that decision ushered
Speaker 1: in what's called the Lockner Era, which effectively rolled back
Speaker 1: a lot of the progressive reforms around both labor and
Speaker 1: various environmental issues, which you know, it was really only
Speaker 1: twenty thirty years after the very first regulations had even
Speaker 1: been passed on industry, so it was sort of the
Speaker 1: first attempt to roll back regulation. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: other folks who've been watching the slow and steady corporate
Speaker 1: capture of the US judiciary over the years, Lisa Graves
Speaker 1: thinks the goal right now is to usher in another
Speaker 1: Lockner era, to take us back to the days when
Speaker 1: industry wasn't regulated at all.
Speaker 2: That's going to be inventing theories that they claim our structurally,
Speaker 2: you know, structural constitutionalism, to strike down our power as
Speaker 2: a people through our representatives to regulate these corporations time
Speaker 2: when regulating carbon corporations is vital to our survival as
Speaker 2: a you know, people, human beings on this planet. And
Speaker 2: so I know that there are a lot of regulations
Speaker 2: and roles that would fall if they're successful in implementing
Speaker 2: this so called structural constitution. But I think that it's
Speaker 2: clear to me that since some of the driving funders
Speaker 2: of some of the main groups are funded by oil
Speaker 2: and gas, that that's got to be part of the
Speaker 2: objective our ability to regulate those industries.
Speaker 3: And particularly carbon.
Speaker 2: Carbon is job one for coke industries and for the
Speaker 2: coke operations, and when they're involved in something, it's you
Speaker 2: know a lot of it ultimately involves making sure carbon
Speaker 2: is protected from regulation and limiting regulation of carbon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know it's funny too. I think people don't
Speaker 1: necessarily understand. And this is like the thing I loved
Speaker 1: about Cokeland too, is like just that there it's almost
Speaker 1: like there's nothing too small or petty or seemingly unrelated
Speaker 1: for the cokes to go after. It's like it can
Speaker 1: be like the smallest little wind project in like rural Ohio,
Speaker 1: and they will like scorched earth burn it down, you.
Speaker 3: Know, like what happened in it was at Tennessee.
Speaker 2: When they attack the like the mass transit, it's like
Speaker 2: they're involved in trying to stop mass transit in a town,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean that was a major coke operation
Speaker 2: to block to block expanded mass transit, and you just
Speaker 2: you know, it just it just seems so petty and
Speaker 2: crazy in a way, like how much money do they
Speaker 2: actually lose? Does the does the coke board actually lose
Speaker 2: when there's a bus system, you know, or you know,
Speaker 2: even like like it just but they claim it's all
Speaker 2: a matter of principle. But I think Chris's book showed
Speaker 2: how it's like quote just principle, it really is about
Speaker 2: about their like basically endless revenue. And there's never enough
Speaker 2: of their endless revenue basically right, Yeah, you know, there's
Speaker 2: never like anything that limits them is somehow an attack
Speaker 2: or it limits like regulates the industry, amout an attack
Speaker 2: on them, when it's actually you know, good public policy
Speaker 2: that advances the public good and that allows people you
Speaker 2: know to commute or you know, like it's just absurd
Speaker 2: type the number of things they've tried to do, including
Speaker 2: you know, in Colorado, those efforts to take over those
Speaker 2: school districts as AFP try to push through these candidates
Speaker 2: who were advancing this attack. And the thing for me
Speaker 2: in looking at the coachs and having looked at them
Speaker 2: for so long now and Charles you know, in particular,
Speaker 2: who's who was the real driver even you know, with
Speaker 2: David around is how much of his ideology from the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties and early seventies is just so fixed. He's
Speaker 2: you know, he's been very flexible in a sense in
Speaker 2: terms of trying new things like you know, he's really
Speaker 2: someone who has re engineered America just to try to
Speaker 2: remake it in his own image. Uh, in ways that
Speaker 2: have you know, deeply harmed our democracy and our economy
Speaker 2: and equality and the opportunity for you know, equal you know,
Speaker 2: equal opportunity in the US. But he his ideas like
Speaker 2: the hostility of the public schools, the idea of public schools,
Speaker 2: like that's an early idea of his, This that he
Speaker 2: just embraced. And he's never given up on the idea
Speaker 2: of hostility to there being energy regulation. That's like he's
Speaker 2: in his early thirties and now he's you know, much older,
Speaker 2: and he's.
Speaker 3: You know, still pushing that agenda.
Speaker 2: He's someone who in some ways hasn't changed very much
Speaker 2: at all in terms of this very unyielding view of
Speaker 2: the world, which you know, that Freedom School operation that
Speaker 2: that really shaped him, that Bob La Fevra operation in
Speaker 2: the early sixties. You know, that guy was an an
Speaker 2: archo capitalist. He described inself as an anarchist because they
Speaker 2: didn't want to say anarchists, but that was a view
Speaker 2: that the role of government should is limited to protecting
Speaker 2: property really right, and that government should get out of
Speaker 2: the way of corporations, and that freedom means that corporations
Speaker 2: and individuals can do whatever they want, and that included
Speaker 2: an attack on the very notion of public schools.
Speaker 1: This is why I'll see all the same organizations that
Speaker 1: attack climate policy attacking the public school system as well.
Speaker 1: It's part of a broader move to privatize everything, to
Speaker 1: really bake in this idea that everybody gets to choose
Speaker 1: everything for themselves and there's no government involvement in any
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Publication was one of the great innovations of America that
Speaker 2: other countries, you know, not everyone, but you know, sought
Speaker 2: to aspire toward.
Speaker 3: And that's not to say that schools are perfect.
Speaker 2: You know, schools face a lot of challenges because our
Speaker 2: society faces a lot of challenges, and people face a
Speaker 2: lot of economic challenges that then affect you know, your
Speaker 2: your chances in school in terms of you know, do
Speaker 2: you have a place you can do homework, do you
Speaker 2: have a computer, do you have the Internet? Like there's
Speaker 2: like the economy affects our education. But the fact is
Speaker 2: that I've just been one of the things that has
Speaker 2: so stunned me h is the level of hostility to
Speaker 2: the idea of public education and public highways. I did
Speaker 2: a deep dive. We never published it because it didn't
Speaker 2: it didn't end up happening. But like I did a
Speaker 2: deep dive into one of the main Coke guys who
Speaker 2: was in the Trump administration on on highways and infrastructure,
Speaker 2: and that guy was basically saying, you know, we shouldn't
Speaker 2: have public roads at all. And and they, you know,
Speaker 2: the course, have been behind a lot of the pulling efforts,
Speaker 2: you know, pushing toll highways and in fact they profit
Speaker 2: from total highways. We just we just haven't just I
Speaker 2: just never published this research ship. But they, you know,
Speaker 2: they they they they are one of the culprits behind this.
Speaker 2: Other obviously other companies have benefited enormously, like CenTra and
Speaker 2: and one of the companies in Australia. But the fact
Speaker 2: is that they've been behind this. And their main Coke
Speaker 2: operative who landed in the Trump administration in charge of infrastructure, Royal,
Speaker 2: is on record we found saying, you know, his ideal
Speaker 2: the ideal world is that basically you're told on every
Speaker 2: street corner electronically.
Speaker 3: Wow, you know, so, I mean their view.
Speaker 2: Of America is like, is really a dystopia. You know,
Speaker 2: no public schools. Every road is private, basically in your
Speaker 2: taxed by a corporation, a corporate tax, basically a toll
Speaker 2: every time you drive your car. But damn it, we're
Speaker 2: not going to regulate those industries. We're not gonna you know,
Speaker 2: we're not going to limit the polluters, Like how dare we?
Speaker 2: But they want to basically have corporate tax.
Speaker 1: If they want to tax the shit out of individuals,
Speaker 1: and it won't be called the tax.
Speaker 2: It's a toll, right, it's not a tax, it's a tool.
Speaker 2: But that and that toll is completely set by them
Speaker 2: with no democratic accountability. And their claim is, well, the
Speaker 2: democratic accountability is you just use it, you don't, which,
Speaker 2: you know, suggests that everyone has some sort of you know,
Speaker 2: cash reservoir to be told to death by corporations.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: But like that was a shocking quote, Like who has
Speaker 2: that as their fantasy?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: The cooperative at the White House in charge of infrastructure,
Speaker 2: that's his fantasy. We're told we our cars are toll
Speaker 2: on every corner we passed, And for a while they
Speaker 2: couldn't even achieve it, right, because we didn't have the
Speaker 2: electronic capacity. So the tolls were these you know, clunky
Speaker 2: tolls where everyone complains when they go through a toll
Speaker 2: in Illinois or whatever, they're paying money to the to
Speaker 2: the state. No, that money is going to private corporations.
Speaker 2: The state is just administering it. But you know, so
Speaker 2: they couldn't achieve their objective because they didn't have the
Speaker 2: Internet that we have now. But that guy literally was like, hey,
Speaker 2: the great The ideal scenario is, yeah, wherever you drive,
Speaker 2: we're collecting a toll and it's not the government connecting
Speaker 2: that toll to fund schools, it's corporations.
Speaker 3: Wow. Anyway, they have.
Speaker 2: Great silk suits and great silk ties and they look like,
Speaker 2: you know, upstanding normal individuals. But their agenda of many
Speaker 2: of these guys, including Charles Cooke, is truly extreme.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine me sitting in front of a
Speaker 1: giant murder wall pinning threads together. After this conversation, go
Speaker 1: check out Lisa online. Her research firm is True North Research,
Speaker 1: and she's still on the board of the Center for
Speaker 1: Media and Democracy, which does incredible work. A lot of
Speaker 1: the Bradley documents that were leaked a few years ago
Speaker 1: have been analyzed and organized by CMD and you can
Speaker 1: find that work online at exposed by cmd dot org.
Speaker 1: I also want to give a shout out to Documented
Speaker 1: and the reporters there, Nick Sergei and Jamie Corey who've
Speaker 1: done some absolutely phenomenal work on RAGA and coc network
Speaker 1: and Alec and Bradley. Go check them out. They're online
Speaker 1: at documented dot net. We've put together a tremendous resource there.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend checking that out. Okay, that's it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Next time you hear from me it will be for
Speaker 1: a new season. We're going to take Drilled back to
Speaker 1: being a seasonal show. If you would like to continue
Speaker 1: to get weekly episodes and bonus content, please sign up
Speaker 1: for our Patreon at patreon dot com slash Drilled. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: we'll be back March forth with part two of our
Speaker 1: season on the gas industry. This one is called the
Speaker 1: New Climate Villains, and we're teckning how the gas industry
Speaker 1: is adjusting to its new role as part of the
Speaker 1: climate problem after pretty successfully marketing itself as part of
Speaker 1: the solution for decades. Come back for that, Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you soon.