About a year ago, the biggest political headache Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber faced was explaining why there wasn’t a single enrollee in Covered Oregon ,after spending over $300 Million on the state health insurance exchange.
This year, however, Kitzhaber is Oregon’s former chief executive after resigning in response to reports indicating his finacee, Clivia Lynne Hayes, advised the governor and state employees on energy policy while getting paid by a group advocating on the issue.
In the wake of that resignation, officials have started digging into Kitzhaber’s other advisors…including the self-designated “Princess of Darkness”, who was tasked with fixing Covered Oregon.
…Kitzhaber handed oversight of the Cover Oregon mess to a secretive campaign consultant who liked to call herself the Princess of Darkness.By her own admission, Patricia McCaig knew virtually nothing about health care reform or the reasons Cover Oregon had crashed. Her primary mission was not to save a beleaguered state program but to get Kitzhaber re-elected.Emails that Kitzhaber’s office tried to delete from state computers show McCaig was effectively in charge of all decision making for Cover Oregon beginning in February 2014. …By March 2014, emails show, McCaig was in full control of Cover Oregon. She routinely advocated keeping key details concealed from the public. For example, when the state was preparing responses to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, McCaig argued against sharing information with Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum.“Why is the AG reviewing?” McCaig wrote in a March 20 email to Kitzhaber and Bonetto. “Sending it to the AG could produce questions and allow speculation there is criminal behavior. It escalates the concern, gives the press another place to keep/promote a negative narrative, and expands external reviews.” (Disclosure: Rosenblum is married to WW publisher and co-owner Richard Meeker.)Kitzhaber continually expressed his appreciation for McCaig’s help. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS!!!” he wrote her March 30, 2014. “Your Faithful Friend and Fan. I am glad you are in my Life.”
Kitzhaber’s emails may be the Rosetta Stone of political corruption along the West Coast. Exchanges indicate that California Governor Jerry Brown’s administration is tied to the developing green scandal that led to the Oregon governor’s resignation in the first place. Katy Grimes of The Flash Report has this analysis:
….Washington D.C. attorney Chris Horner discovered ingrained collusion with top level staff in Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office who enlisted other top level staff in California and Washington State governors’ offices to “spread climate coordination and collaboration to a larger group of governors across the U.S.” Emails from 2013 and 2014 reveal Kitzhaber agreed to a deal with the governors of California and Washington, to implement low-carbon fuel standards and develop a scheme to foist green-energy agendas on multiple states.Oregon’s “first lady” Cylvia Hayes played a key role in pushing the progressive climate policies of her fiance, Kitzhaber, in exchange for consulting contracts and funding from people involved in energy and environmental policy….In October 2013, California Gov. Jerry Brown, together with the Governors of Oregon and Washington and the British Columbia Premier, signed the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy, “to align climate change policies and promote clean energy.” The Pacific Coast Collaborative links with the West Coast Infrastructure Exchange (WCX), a compact between California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, formed in 2013 to promote “the type of new thinking necessary to solve the West Coast’s infrastructure crisis.” And the WCX is linked to the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative.“California isn’t waiting for the rest of the world before it takes action on climate change,” said Gov. Brown. “Today, California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia are all joining together to reduce greenhouse gases.”The real Kitzhaber plan revealed high level appointees in the California governor’s office, other “engaged governors,” and the White House, engrossed in a scheme to define “a nationally coordinated, multi-year states strategy’ focused on driving outcomes contemplated by the President’s climate action plan, 111d, resilient infrastructure and international treaty objectives at scale.”
I once noted that Brown was a “Green Dog Democrat”, as much for his promoting green policy as it was for how those rules made his bank account greener.
It will be interesting to see how investigators untangle the complex web of collaborative association on environmental and climate change policy between high level administrators and those who might profit from their rule-making. So far, the emails have uncovered some fascinating details on back-room interactions involving high-level Democrats.
(Featured Image, via Youtube)
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