24 Feb 2010 Why is John Deere Lobbying for Cap-and-Trade?
Tom Borelli, director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project, and his wife Deneen Borelli, Project 21’s full-time fellow, are spending the day at the John Deere headquarters, attending the stockholder meeting and asking company executives: Why are you members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership? Why are you part of an organization that exists to lobby for cap-and-trade, which will hurt your customers and the American people?
In an article published today by FoxNews.com, Tom sets out the issues in more detail:
Big business support of President Obama’s health care and energy policy has put CEOs on the front lines of the nation’s biggest political battles. Big PhRMA – the drug industry trade group – is credited with bringing Obama’s health care plan to the precipice of passage and the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) – a coalition of business and environmental special interest groups – played a key role in passing the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the House of Representatives last year.
Clearly, CEOs see big bucks in big government.
Beyond dreams of fortune, chief executives also proved to be a national risk when their mismanagement drove our nation into greater debt through taxpayer-funded bailouts.
While liberty-minded citizens can seek to elect politicians that support limited government, big government CEOs (or, perhaps, progressive CEOs) remain largely beyond our reach.
Because CEOs can represent as much of a risk to liberty as elected officials, limited government advocates need a voice in the boardroom.
For this reason, my wife Deneen and I are attending the John Deere annual shareholder meeting today in Moline, Illinois on behalf of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a free-market think-tank that owns shares in John Deere.
Our goal is to press management to justify why John Deere remains a member of USCAP and why these executives believe a cap-and-trade scheme is in the company’s best interest. These questions are especially timely, as BP, Caterpillar and ConocoPhillips made national news this month, after they abandoned USCAP…
You can read the rest of the FoxNews.com article here.
We’ll have more updates later.
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Labels: Business, Climate, Congress, FreeEnterpriseProject, Project 21, Race, Regulation