Environmental groups have not been pleased with Obama Administration decisions they see as being too lenient on big business. An author writing in the New Yorker details how business and environmental groups have competed with each other in influencing the administration's decision about a proposed pipeline (by TransCanada) to carry tar sand from Canada to Port Arthur. The conflict between the two groups illustrates the "outsider" and "insider' tactics interest groups adopt whether they consider themselves to have or not have inside connections with decision makers.
Pro-pipeline groups were the White House and could adopt insider tactics: "The lineup promoting TransCanada’s interests was a textbook study in
modern, bipartisan corporate influence peddling. Lobbyists ranged from
the arch-conservative Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform to
TransCanada’s in-house lobbyist Paul Elliott, who worked on both Hillary
and Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns. President Clinton’s former
Ambassador to Canada, Gordon Giffin, a major contributor to Hillary
Clinton’s Presidential and Senate campaigns, was on TransCanada’s
payroll, too."
Environmental groups had few internal connections with the administration so they adopted an outsider tactic to draw attention to their complaints: "On November 6th, exactly a year before the election, the protest
returned to Washington. This time, twelve thousand people encircled the
White House. President Obama was reportedly out, playing golf, but the
message evidently got through to him. Four days later, he issued a
statement saying that the decision on the pipeline permit would be
delayed until at least 2013, pending further environmental review. In
addition, in response to claims of conflict of interest, the State
Department’s inspector general launched an investigation into the permit
process. Since then, TransCanada, which previously insisted that no
other pipeline route was feasible, has announced a new route through
Nebraska."
The author concludes by comparing the focused agenda driven tactics employed by the environmnetal grousp here to the "the free-form, leaderless one waged by" the Occupy Wall Street movement.
