President Obama's choice of an energy industry leader and founder of an environmental group active on fishing issues as his next U.S. Commerce Secretary was made without any consultation with fishing industry advocates, Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank say.
And the two congressmen - who represent the core Massachusetts fishing ports of Gloucester and New Bedford, respectively - have urged Sens. John Kerry, Scott Brown and others not to confirm Bryson's appointment "without ... getting commitments that the fishing industry has a right to expect that they will be treated fairly if he is the secretary."
In a statement released jointly last week, after Obama named John Bryson to succeed Gary Locke as head of Commerce Department, Democrats Tierney and Frank said they found the process disappointing. And they said citing Bryson's background as a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council as a qualification is "troubling."
Tierney and Frank have been leaders in the industry's resistance to administration fisheries policies, drawing a Cabinet level apology and limited reparations from Locke last month for excessive and unwarranted overregulation that has proven financially debilitating for the fishing industry and its related businesses.
The Commerce Department, which includes the embattled National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also sent teams through Gloucester, New Bedford and other New England ports last month to evaluate the harm done by administration policies - notably privatization and commodification through NOAA's catch share management system, which has triggered intense consolidation.
"We had hoped that we were in the midst of a process to make significant improvements," Tierney and Frank said, "but to our knowledge, no one concerned with the fishing industry was given any chance to have input on the (Bryson) nomination..."
"We were especially troubled to see that the No. 1 credential listed for him outside of his business experience was membership in the NRDC," the congressmen wrote.
'Radical' green group
They described NRDC - which is associated with the campaign to expand and extend marine protected areas (or no fishing zones) - as one of "those environmental organizations that has reflexively attacked the fishing industry inaccurately and without any real environmental basis."
Ad targeting Brown
NRDC, in partnership with Conservation Law Foundation, has also begun a radio advertising campaign against Sen. Scott Brown, who is co-sponsoring a Senate subcommittee hearing in Boston later this month to investigate the mispractice of federal fisheries law enforcement and the catch share program.
The ad accuses Brown of voting to continue oil subsidies and open New England's offshore waters to drilling.
Senate Republicans signaled the possibility of blocking Bryson's confirmation to replace Locke, who is yet to be confirmed by the Senate to become ambassador to China.
Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, described NRDC as a "radical environmental organization."
NRDC and the Environmental Defense Fund, with which it is often allied, are among a small number of environmental non-government giants committed to having impact through partnership and engagement with the corporate and political establishment.
EDF, which also developed the so-called "cap-and-trade" air pollution policy, has been the leading advocate pushing "catch share" in fishery management. And NOAA chief administrator Jane Lubchenco served as an EDF board vice-chair before being picked by President Obama to head the federal oceans agency in 2009.
Lubchenco's catch share policies, predicated on trading and investment that data shows is steering more of the fishery catch toward larger companies and investors at the expense of the smaller, traditional independent boats that make up most of Gloucester's fleet, has spurred enough resistance for Congress, in March, to approve halting and fund to expand the policy during the current federal budget cycle.
Because of their size and willingness to partner with big corporations, NRDC and EDF are viewed with suspicion by smaller, grassroots environmental interests.
Corporate 'compromising'
"Many of these large and wealthy environmental groups have a long history of compromising on issues which other environmentalists are working hard not to compromise on," according to NonprofitWatch. "They've held back-door meetings with polluters. They take money from some of the most anti-environmental corporations."
In introducing Bryson last Tuesday as his choice to head the Commerce Department, President Obama described Bryson as "a fierce proponent of alternative energy."
Bryson has been an active advocate of carbon control policies to counter climate change, preferring taxes to commodifying carbon via "cap and trade" incentives
But, as the longtime CEO - 18 years through mid-2008 - of Edison International, he also oversaw holdings that include many polluting power plants.
Two in Chicago - the Crawford and Fisk generating plants - have been notorious for polluting Latino and black residential areas where they were built in the 1960s, according to according to the Center for Media and Democracy.
A number of groups, including NRDC, have protested that the continued use of Crawford and Fisk plants raises concerns about "environmental justice and coal," according to the center.
Leveraged buyouts
Bryson also served from 1979-1982 in California Gov. Jerry Brown's first administration as head of the state utilities commission. And at the time of his choice last week to head Commerce, he was listed as an advisor to the Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts & Co., the leveraged buyout giant.
Among KKR's notable acquisitions was the $45 billion purchase of a Texas utility. EDF and NRDC were part of the arrangement, providing support in exchange for an agreement to scale back the number of new coal-fired plants in the pipeline. It was the largest leveraged buyout in history, and out of it EDF formed a permanent partnership with the KKR firm.
U.S. Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, who was hired by KKR to lobby the deal through the Texas legislature, had been a leading candidate to replace Locke as Obama's commerce secretary, as the Times reported last month.
But Texas utility deal has proved sour due to the crushing debt load assumed by KKR, the recession, and the precipitous drop in natural gas prices that the dealmakers hadn't factored into their calculations.
EDF had opposed the buyout before partnering with KKR in the mitigation agreement. Out of the deal, they formed a permanent subdivision of KKR.
"The Green Portfolio Program marries the private equity model of revitalizing companies over the long run with EDF's environmental expertise," KKR's promotional copy reads.
Last winter, amid the extreme cold that enveloped the south and west for long periods, Texans suffered through rolling blackouts that were attributed by some observers to the diversion of infrastructure maintenance allocations into debt service.
"The company formerly known as TXU - reborn in 2007, after the largest leveraged buyout in history, as Energy Future Holding Corp. - appears to be slowly collapsing under its own weight," wrote Forrest Wilder, the primary chronicler of the saga, in the Aug. 25, 2010 Texas Observer. "It seems that the Masters of the Universe have screwed up again..."
Oppose confirmation
Tierney and Frank noted pointedly that Sens. John Kerry and Brown, "as well as many others along the East Coast, share our concerns with the flawed fishing industry regulation...
"We are confident," Tierney and Frank wrote, "they will not confirm Mr. Bryson to this post - which is so important to our fishing industry - without looking deeply into his views on this industry and without getting commitments that the fishing industry has a right to expect that they will be treated fairly if he is the secretary."
Kerry personally lobbied current Commerce Secretary Locke to approve emergency relief to the industry just before the announced tour of Commerce Department teams to evaluate the impact of fisheries policy.
Link to Statement by Congressmen Tierney and Frank regarding the Nomination of John Bryson as Commerce Secretary
Link to Mass Market Article: Congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney lash out at Obama's pick for commerce secretary
Link to Inhofe EPW Press Blog 
