Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Girls night with Kathryn Marshall and BC4P



This past February, Kathryn Marshall, former spokesy for Ethical Oil, and Brittany Allison, Interim Executive Director of British Columbians For Prosperity, had a "girls night" at a West Vancouver restaurant. 




You'll recall Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall, formerly of the Koch-funded Fraser Institute :
"Successfully recruited major prospects for donations and sponsorships and built and maintained relationships between the Fraser Institute and donors. May 2008 – July 2009 "
... and her hapless tv stints raving against "foreign special interests and their deep pockets" that secretly funded opposition to the tarsands' efforts to get its ethical bitumen to Chinese markets. 

"I'm just a student with a website," insisted Kathryn - wife of Hamish Marshall, former manager of strategic planning in Stephen Harper’s PMO, whose company Go Newclear Productions, created and hosted websites for Ethical Oil and Con MPs Joe Oliver, Pierre Poilievre and Jason Kenney.

She took over the job from former American Enterprise Institute intern Alykhan Velshi, who left Jason Kenney's employ in 2011 to head up the website based on Ezra Levant's book of the same name and returned to Harper's office afterwards as planning director
After her came Jamie Ellerton, executive assistant - first to Jason Kenney til September 2010 and then to teabaggin' Tim Hudak .

Ethical Oil's specialty was attack ads. 
Recently, climate change skeptic Ezra Levant, who interned with Koch 20 years ago, has pondered in the pages of the Edmonton Sun whether environmentalist groups in Canada are funded by Putin.

For all their concern about foreign funding, neither Velshi nor Marshall ever answered repeated media questions about whether Enbridge or any other Canadian corporate interest was backing Ethical Oil.  Ironically, at the timeEnbridge's chair and 5 out of 12 directors were American.


Kathryn's 'girls night' buddy, Brittany Allison, also maintains a focus on shadowy foreign funding from her perch at BC4P moneytrail.ca : 
FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL AND EXPLORE THE U.S. FOUNDATION FUNDING HYPOCRISY THAT'S IMPACTING CANADA'S SOVEREIGNTY
"Wealthy American Foundations pump millions of dollars into campaigns to halt Canadian oil sands production and pipelines."
According to BC4P, that would be the Foundations Rockefeller, Pew, and Tides, among 70 odd others.

BC4P Interim Policy Director Brittany Allison was previously :
"Policy Researcher in the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa and Research Officer in the B.C. Legislature in Victoria"
prior to being Public Affairs Advisor for Fraser Surrey Docks coal expansion project.

Like Ethical Oil, BC4P director and frequent CBC commentator Alise Mills also declines to reveal their sources of funding.

Foreign funding researcher Vivian Krause, who you would expect to be a natural political soul sister to these two, stated in a Kootenay Co-op radio interview in April that in addition to her objection to BC4P's flawed arguments - [transcript in comment #8 ] :
"I'm not involved with that group at all. They asked me to be involved but they wouldn't disclose their own funding sources so I wasn't willing to work with them."



Like Ethical Oil before them, BC4P has likely come to the end of its robocalling astroturfing usefulness, only to be replaced by yet another *grassroots org* of undisclosed funding - - like this one :


"Full Value for Canadian Resources - Support Northern Gateway"

Just two guys with a grassroots website ...

... and an op ed in the CAPP/Postmedia partnership world of the Vancouver Sun a month ago :
Pipeline fear factor is inappropriate

... and a *surprise* visit from Ezra Levant at the "No Enbridge!" Sunset Beach protest in Vancouver where their Canada Action counter-protest banners were big enough to block the view of the ocean.

... and an endorsement on their Support the Northern Gateway Pipeline pledge from Bruce Lounds of BC4P.



Two days ago, Olivia Ward had a piece in The Star : Billionaire Koch brothers are big oil players in Alberta as the largest foreign landholder. 
"During an ill-fated run for vice-president in 1980, David Koch campaigned on a platform that promoted destruction of the social welfare system, repeal of taxation and an end to public education, children’s services, government medical care, minimum wage laws and environmental regulation.
But through the Kochs’ persistence and lavish funding, their libertarian ideas are now part of the Republican Party’s agenda, and they have helped to change the face of America.

Founding or funding groups like the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the American Enterprise Institute and the State Policy Network — which acts as a seed bank for dozens of others — the Kochs gradually inched across the political landscape.
In Canada, Koch’s presence in the oil sands has set environmentalists’ teeth on edge as the brothers back U.S. climate skeptics, tout fossil fuels and oppose the Obama administration’s environmental agenda."
The Kochtopus with its unfettered free market oil-friendly political tentacles winding 
"into the mainstream through the tea party and "dark money" political coalitions that allow donors to shield their identity while funding attack ads "
In the same article, Ward interviews Kenneth Green, the Fraser Institute's Energy and Natural Resources director. Although she doesn't mention it, Green spent 3 years with the Fraser Institute and then seven with the Koch and Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute before cycling back to the Fraser Institute again last year. In 2007 while with AEI, Green offered $10,000 each to any scientists willing to refute the IPCC's climate change report. 

Ward :
"Fraser Institute president Niels Veldhuis says that although Koch contributed $115,000 to the Fraser Institute in the past year, “it is for our Economic Freedom of the World project

You know, the next time you two girls get together to talk 'foreign special interests and their deep pockets', you might want to have a look into that. 
.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Brittany introducing Entreprenuer Barbie on twitter:


https://twitter.com/BrittanyAllis0n/status/481554699582443520

Jennifer McMackon

Anonymous said...

from Hamish Marshall's Bio on Go New Clear:

"Marshall served as Manager of Strategic Planning in the Office of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, where he was involved in the strategy behind the famous "Not a Leader" campaign."

I just can't fathom these words are the way anyone would want to decorate their cv. And yet, there they are for all to see. *Involvement* in a very small minded, mean spirited, political attack ad campaign in the Banana Republic of Harper.

Another great bog post Alison.


Jennifer M again

Lorne said...

Exemplary work, as usual, Alison. You do the kind of work that journalists once held as a sacred trust.

Anonymous said...

Girls night out with Bitumen Barbie and Entrepreneur Barbie

Alison said...

Anon@9:24 : Ha! Obviously I should get you to write my post titles.

Lorne : You're very kind. Good thing this is just a hobby for us, eh?
;-)

Jennifer : Entrepreneur Barbie, oh my. Has anyone done a Rehab Rob doll yet?
Re Hamish : I guess when you're inside the circus sideshow, 'clown' is a pretty good job.

West End Bob said...

Stellar post, M'Lady!

Damn near as good as danglin' one's feet in a cee-ment pond-studded creek on The Island . . . . ;-)

e.a.f. said...

now that was what I call an interesting read.
wonder why I won't be seeing this in any MSM paper or on the t.v. news?

Anonymous said...

frank magazine is giving away rob ford bobblehead dolls with your paid subscription. I`m awaitin for mine.153

e.a.f. said...

"girls night out"??? where have they been? sound like a couple of "entitled" over the hill wanna bees spending on dinner why many in B.C. have has their monthly food budget.

yes lets all rout toot toot for prosperity. Let me know when it gets to B.C. because all I see is debt which makes B.C. look like Detroit North and poverty which isn't going away.

Right on girls, "rock On".

these women sound like those women who came out of the wood work back in the 70s and called themselves "Real Women". Their fight: other women and unions who were fighting for work of equal pay for equal work and equal pay for work of equal value, paid maternity leave. with a little investigation, back then, turned out those "real women" people were wives of insurance company executives who were scared women would organize and want increases in pay. these two sound just like them. Its just that nothing changes.

Alison said...

e.a.f. : Why isn't this on MSM? Because as RossK correctly points out, until we find a solid financial link between Koch and these Canadian *grassroots* groups, it ain't real news and looks too much like doxxing. However, given Koch's success funding similar groups in the US, its connections to the Fraser Institute and its extensive landholdings in Canada, I think it's only a matter of time.

I wouldn't characterize BA and KM as anti-feminist, even though the Real Women website reprints KM's articles, or 'over the hill', but re your 'wives' angle, see Anon's news link in the comment below yours.

The Con national council came down hard on the board of the Calgary West riding association in 2010 for wanting to hold candidate nominations and being insufficiently supportive of Anders :

"Board members for Calgary MP Rob Anders’s riding association are livid after the Conservative party seized control of its finances, annual meeting and membership list ...
Kathryn Marshall, wife of council member Hamish Marshall, applied for a board position using her maiden name and she didn’t tell the board she was Anders’s roommate last year."

Anon@9:03 : Here's my virtual trifecta one from last year.

Anon@10:46 : Ok, you just can't make me watch that again!.

Interesting though that in addition to being a paid heckler for James "The Bible proves global warming is a hoax" Inhofe in 1994, news reports from the time quote Inhofe's comm director saying : "Anders was hired to organize Oklahoma college campuses."

Hamish Marsall said...

Good job figuring out that conservatives are friends with other conservatives. We are everywhere.

And in other news Kathryn has a degree in Women's Studies, but gets called "barbie" based on her appearance. Once again the sexist left shows itself.

Jon Pertwee said...

Hamish makes his opinion based on anonymous commenters? Jeez talk about overqualified and sensitive

Blog Archive