NOVEMBER 1997 · VOLUME 18 · NUMBER 11
T H E I R M A S T E R S ' V O I C E
NOVEMBER 1997 · VOLUME 18 · NUMBER 11
T H E I R M A S T E R S ' V O I C E
A LOOMING ISSUE on the congressional horizon is the proposed deregulation of
the energy industry, notably the utilities that provide electricity to every
business and household in the country. At stake is the structure of an industry
with hundreds of billions of dollars of annual sales.
Utility deregulation is not an issue about which it is easy to choose sides.
Proponents of deregulation -- led by natural gas giant Enron, which is buying
up electric companies as fast as it can -- want Congress to break up utility
monopolies and let consumers and businesses pick their power provider the way
they now select their phone company. But with deregulation, there will be no
regulatory oversight and hence no guaranteed service for the poor or control
over prices.
Opposing the deregulators are big utility companies hoping to protect their monopoly position. These same companies have for years refused to invest in solar or renewable energy sources, while dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into nuclear plants.
Though neither side has consumers' best interests in mind, each claims to speak for the little guy and gal. The public face of the deregulators is the Electricity Consumers Resource Council -- with the "consumers" being big corporate electricity users such as Amoco, DuPont, Ford, Monsanto and Shell.
Opponents of deregulation are led by a group called the Electric Utility Shareholders Alliance (EUSA). Though depicting itself as a humble, folksy outfit that represents "individual investors holding millions of shares of utility company stock," EUSA is dominated by big utility companies, including Commonwealth Edison, Carolina Power & Light and Hawaiian Electric Industries.
EUSA is largely controlled by Bonner & Associates, a leading practitioner of fake corporate "grassroots" lobbying, better known as Astroturf. Headed by Jack Bonner, a one-time legislative aide and press secretary to the late Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania, the firm has previously worked for bankers, drug manufacturers, the steel industry, the tobacco barons, arms makers, insurance companies and the auto industry.
EUSA's four-member "national advisory committee" includes Edward Rissing, a Bonner & Associates vice president and a former lobbyist for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group for utility companies. Two other members of the advisory committee also have links to utilities, as does EUSA's chairman, William Steinmeier, a former Missouri utility regulator and consultant whose clients included Edison Electric.
The heart of Bonner & Associates is its sophisticated telemarketing operation, which Bonner once termed a "yuppie sweatshop." At any given time, Bonner may have several hundred people working the phones on behalf of a handful of different clients. "Bonner & Associates isn't a firm, it's a glorified phone bank," says one Washington lobbyist familiar with its operations.
Bonner once helped the American Bankers Association defeat an amendment which would have lowered astronomical interest rates charged by credit card companies. Bonner, who was reportedly paid $400,000 by the Bankers for his efforts, received a passionate "thank you" note from the group's executive vice president, Donald Ogilvie.
"As you say in your ads: 'We help you win,'" the letter said. "Well, speaking for the banking industry, you helped us win a big one. It was hard in several days to gain support for an issue that at first blush looked like a good idea to most people. After all, paying less interest on your credit cards sounds great. Nevertheless, Bonner & Assoc. achieved all of our goals."
Bonner, who declined to respond to requests for comment on his work for EUSA, began working for the Electric Utility Shareholders Alliance in 1997. His sweatshop operators phone carefully selected citizen leaders around the country -- never, of course, revealing that they are phoning from a beltway lobby shop -- and seek to win them over to EUSA's cause. If they succeed, they send their target citizens a letter -- on EUSA letterhead and with the words "Grassroots Effort" prominently displayed in the upper left hand corner -- which burns with populist fervor. It urges their targets to "stand up to the big corporations" pushing utility deregulation, and warns that, if they do not act, the "big boys in Washington" will determine electric deregulatory policy, instead of "the folks in your state."
The letter is signed by Randal Joyner, who is identified as EUSA's "Regional Grassroots Coordinator." As a phone call revealed, Joyner works at Bonner & Associates beltway headquarters.
Recipients are asked to sign a second letter that accompanies the dispatch from Joyner. Addressed to "Members of Congress," the letter describes proponents of deregulation as "powerful, well-connected special interests" and urges Congress to "stand up to the giant corporations" who are promoting deregulatory legislation.
The citizen recipients fax the letter back to a toll-free number at Bonner's Washington, D.C. office. There, Bonner's team scans the signature into a computer and transposes it onto a petition to send to lawmakers -- with the hope of deluding them into thinking that it came from a constituent who stood out on a street corner collecting signatures.
Bonner and other "grassroots" lobbyists claim that all they do is mobilize the citizenry to take part in the political process. But as one Washington lobbyist who formerly worked for the AFL-CIO says of Bonner, "It's easy to manipulate people and his [phoners] know exactly what buttons to push. By the time they're done you're saying, 'Yeah, that's an effort I want to be a part of!' Jack's not informing people to strengthen democracy. He just uses them and discards them after they've served their purpose."
-- Ken Silverstein