Niger Innis

Back in the summer of 2008, we produced a series of posts about an effort called "Stop the War on the Poor" that was led by Harry Jackson and Niger Innis, claiming to be a campaign to claim that "extreme environmentalists" who oppose increased domestic oil drilling are enemies of the poor.

In essence, the group's message was that high energy prices disproportionately impact the poor and that domestic oil drilling was solution to keeping energy prices low. Not surprisingly, the effort was heavily supported by pro-drilling and other energy business interests. 

Now Jackson and Innis are back with a similar message, but with a new group called the Affordable Power Alliance:

The mission of the Alliance is heart a humanitarian one. Thousands of Americans become sick and die each year because high energy costs that prevent them from adequately heating or cooling their homes; buying the medicines they need; and practicing better health prevention measures. Millions more lose opportunities to better themselves and their families because rising energy costs eat away at a large portion of their disposable income.

That is why we consider public policies that raise energy costs to be dangerous and immoral -– especially given that higher energy prices hit middle-income families the working poor the hardest.

Last week, Jackson and Innis took their pro-drilling energy front-group message to a Tea Party in Colorado:

Last Wednesday on “tax day,” I had the privilege of attending my first Tea Party event. Standing on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol building in Denver, I addressed several thousand people concerning the impact of wrong-headed energy policies on all Americans – especially the minority community ... Scores of people thanked Mr. Innis and I for both the information we shared and our presence at the rally.

They recognized that the findings of a new report on the economic and employment impact of current CO2 restrictions endorsed by the EPA will be detrimental to all Americans. The study I am referencing estimates that the US GDP will be reduced by at least $500 billion over the next two decades by this one factor alone. This translates into the loss millions of jobs over the next 10 years. Third, there will also be a significant reduction in the average household income but it will regressively affect poor and lower middle class families the most.

Jackson's "findings" come out of this study prepared for his Affordable Energy Alliance by an organization called Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI) which "provides economic, financial, energy, and environmental research services and litigation support to clients in private industry."

And who might some of those private industry clients be, you ask:

American Electric Power Company
Bruce Power, LP
Chesapeake Energy
Commonwealth Edison
Energy Corporation of America
Energy Resources International, Inc.
ExxonMobil
Ontario Power Generation, Inc.
Peabody Energy
The Southern Company
Washington Gas Company
World Oil Magazine

So MISI produced a report on behalf of the Affordable Energy Alliance finding that carbon dioxide restrictions and other environmental regulations would be detrimental to the nation's poor. 

Presumably, the fact that MISI also just so happens to provide research and litigation services to several energy companies is purely coincidental.

Last year we wrote a series of posts about the pro-drilling Americans for American Energy's bogus grassroots "Stop the War on the Poor" campaign being fronted by Niger Innis and Harry Jackson.

Over the last six months, we haven't seen anything about them and assumed that they had disbanded ... but we were wrong.  Apparently, they are still hard at work and are now targeting Robert Redford for hating the poor:

Hollywood's Sundance Kid is hurting poor people.

So say some East Coast ministers and conservative activists, who took to the streets in front of a downtown Salt Lake City theater on the eve of Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival to accuse the actor of holding down low-income Americans with his opposition to oil and gas drilling near national parks in Utah.

The protesters, led by the Congress of Racial Equality's national spokesman Niger Innis, suggested Redford should "relinquish his wealth" and live like a poor person. They complained that the filmmaker's anti-drilling stance could lead to higher energy prices for inner-city residents, forcing them to accept a lower standard of living.

The clergymen prayed for Redford "to see the light" and linked his environmental activism with racism.

"The high energy prices we're going to see this winter are essentially discriminatory," said Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. of the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Md., chairman of the High-Impact Leadership Coalition, a petroleum industry advocate.

This whole thing is laughable, but some good has come of it - like the fact that, from this point forward, whenever I mention Harry Jackson, I will be able to follow it with the phrase "petroleum industry advocate."