Corporations Have Bought Public Interest Groups
Round and round and around we go, where the world’s headed nobody knows.
Great googa mooga, can’t you hear me talkin’ to you, just a
Ball of Confusion that’s what the world is today. ~~~ Ball of Confusion (The Temptations, 1971)
Chris Hedges has a must watch interview with Russ Mokhiber:
How Corporations Have Taken Over Government, Nonprofit and Regulatory Agencies (Video)
“All the checks and balances—from press to public interest groups to criminal prosecutors—are slowly being cut back,” investigative journalist Russell Mokhiber tells Chris Hedges in a discussion about corporate crime.
Watch the whole thing, especially my NJ friends who know exactly how this corruption works.
Because I’ve witnessed this first hand many times over the span of a 30 year career in a State environmental regulatory agency and non-profit environmental groups, and have been documenting, speaking, and writing about this same corruption for years – and have paid a huge price for doing so – I felt compelled to submit this comment below. Who knows, maybe some intrepid journalist out there will break a sweat and do the research or just Google the work I’ve done already (and I can’t even escape it on the road – see this Trust For Public Land scam):
Dear Chris – right in your own backyard, the State of NJ, corporations (and corporate dominated Foundations) basically created the model of funding “legitimate” conservation and environmental groups to control their agenda and advocacy over 2 decades ago.
The cancer has proliferated today to such a degree that it is brazen – openly celebrated as “partnership” and “stewardship” and “sustainable development” and “watershed management” (all these slogan are frauds designed to mask the corruption).
Take a look at the funding and boards of NJ Audubon Society, Sustainable NJ, Trust For Public Land, Nature Conservancy, NJ Future and Rethink Energy NJ. Look also at The Dodge Foundation (Chris Daggett), PSEG, NJ Natural Gas, WalMart, and the Wm. Penn Foundation.
Even individual billionaire’s, like Peter Kellogg, have bought NJ Audubon to promote commercial logging on public lands and land management to promote hunting (“young forests” and “forest stewardship”).
NJ Audubon even has a “Partnership” with Donald Trump!!!!!!
A guy named Mike Catania, previously with an NGO land conservation group, even formed his own corporate consulting group to institutionalize this corruption. When I outed and criticized him, he took down his own 10 year report that documented all the corrupt deals.
The same financial corruption has infiltrated Rutgers and other NJ universities. Take a look at who is speaking and leading the next “Climate Change” conference at Rutgers, for example. Note especially where it is being held, at corporate Duke Foundation led by “entrepreneur” Mike Catania.
I’ve been documenting and writing about this corruption for years.
As a result, my Foundation funding was zeroed and I was basically driven out of the state and am blackballed. I’m living in a van.
Do a word search on my blog, Wolfenotes.com for links to all the documentation.
BTW, using State DEP funds to muzzle critics is rampant as well – check out “conservation” groups that get grants or funding from NJ DEP or US EPA, including American Littoral Society, Clean Ocean Action, all the local “watershed” and land preservation groups and NY/NJ Baykeeper,, NJCF, PPA, etc