THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 62, March 28, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
TIME TO CLEAN HOUSE AT GOLDMAN SACHS
By Paul K. Driessen
CORPORATE TIES TO THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT -- GOLDMAN SACHS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
HENRY PAULSON: HIS & HIS FAMILY'S CONNECTIONS WITH ENVIRONMENTALIST ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE BEING
ALLOWED TO INFLUENCE & SHAPE COMPANY DECISIONS ON THE FINANCING OF ENERGY, MINERAL, & OTHER ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS -- PERVASIVE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST BETWEEN GOLDMAN SACHS SHAREHOLDERS & THE
RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS WHO CONTROL THE CORPORATION
FULL STORY:
Activist shareholder resolutions are now common at annual corporate meetings. When Goldman Sachs gathers in New York
City on March 31, 2006, however, the fireworks will come from an atypical source: the National Legal and Policy Center (a
free-market public interest group) and Free Enterprise Action Fund (the first free market shareholder activist mutual fund).
The organizations are asking shareholders to support efforts to determine whether the company and Chairman/CEO Henry
Paulson have violated company policies and fundamental principles governing ethics, corporate social responsibility, and
conflicts of interest. By any fair and objective standard, recent actions raise serious questions.
How the shareholders respond will test whether supposed reforms – like Sarbanes-Oxley and the vaunted CSR movement –
are more than merely air freshener to hide ugly odors.
The pervasive conflicts of interest arise out of Paulson’s family and organizational ties. In addition to his duties to the
company and its shareholders, he is Chairman of the Board of The Nature Conservancy, the world’s wealthiest
environmentalist activist group. His wife is a former TNC Board member, and his daughter is on the Board of the Wildlife
Conservation Society, another environmental activist group that works closely with TNC on programs outside the United
States.
TNC was implicated by the Washington Post in questionable deals whereby the tax-exempt nonprofit acquired
ecologically sensitive land -- at times aided by government condemnation threats – then transferred tracts at fire-sale
prices to trustees and supporters. Other deals involved suspect tax write-offs and friendly arrangements with companies
whose executives sat on the TNC board.
In early 2005, the radical Rainforest Action Network targeted Goldman Sachs as part of its campaign to pressure large banks
not to finance energy, mineral, and other economic development projects that don’t conform to RAN’s self-serving
definition of “the public interest.” Having also browbeaten the World Bank, Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan
Chase to do likewise, RAN and its ecologically sensitive allies are doing their best to keep the Third World indigenous,
energy-poor, and impoverished for generations to come.
Paulson has long been sympathetic to these unelected radicals’ vision of environmental ethics. By November, 2005, he’d
engineered an arrangement whereby the global investment banking and securities giant adopted a new “Environmental
Policy” very similar to theirs.
The TNC, RAN, and GS policies all assert that: human emissions cause catastrophic climate change and must be reduced
immediately; indigenous people must approve any development project; and logging must be conducted only in accord with
criteria developed by eco-activists. Enshrining these assertions as Goldman Sachs policies is the antipathy of good
stewardship.
Contrary to shrill headlines, climate chaos theory is not supported by empirical evidence or even the vast majority of
computer models. Moreover, the Kyoto Protocol will at best keep global temperatures from rising 0.2 degrees less by 2050
than if we merely proceed with business and technological progress as usual. But this illusory solution will cost hundreds of
billions of dollars a year, send energy and consumer prices soaring, and have especially heavy impacts on jobs and living
standards in poor and minority communities. One study put the U.S.A. price at 1.3 million minority jobs and $2,000 a year per
black family.
Worse, misplaced climate concerns are used to justify activist and bank policies against funding fossil fuel electrical
generating plants in developing countries where 2 billion people still have no electricity. Green opposition to hydroelectric
and nuclear power stymies those options, as well. What the radical environmentalists are willing to accept – a few wind
turbines and little solar panels on huts – are completely inadequate for modern hospitals, schools, shops, offices, factories
or wastewater treatment facilities.
The indigenous people formula invites Oxfam and other activists to stir up opposition within villages, as they have with oil
and mining projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America – giving Goldman an excuse to deny project financing.
However, when Paulson’s inner circle acquired a Rhode Island-sized tract of land in Chile – and promptly donated it to his
daughter’s organization – it made no effort to seek the advice or consent of local people who were about to have a
NO-development conservation easement forced on them. Nor did anyone assess the vast area’s potential value for timber,
oil or metals, so that locals and shareholders would at least know the true cost of the giveaway.
The logging criteria serve as a cash cow for environmental activists, who insist that all lumber be certified only by their
Forest Stewardship Council – and condemn alternative corporate or professional certifications. This often torpedoes
operations that might benefit local communities and poor families – and forces many into illegal logging, to put food on the
table. It’s also fosters corruption and the defamation of U.S. companies -- like Newman Lumber of Mississippi -- which are
falsely accused of illegal activities in order to promote shakedowns and fund-raising campaigns by the Natural Resource
Defense Council and other organizations adhering to the ideology of political environmemntalism and actively pursuing
the agenda of radical environmentalists.
All this might be just fine for the WCS, TNC, and their rich supporters. It’s not so wonderful for disenfranchised
shareholders who have to wonder how all these shenanigans affect their stock values.
It’s far worse for the world’s poor. In what might be called an “all-natural final solution” to the over-population “problem,”
they are denied technologies like electricity, biotech crops, insecticides and drugs, and die young by the millions from lung
and intestinal diseases, malnutrition, malaria, and other afflictions that today are unheard of in modern societies.
“Hank Paulson has cast his lot with radical Greens and their crusade against the global economy,” said Free Enterprise
Action Fund advisor Steven Milloy. “If he’s not careful, he’s going to match Rachel Carson’s record for spreading death
and destruction in the developing world.”
Goldman Sachs shareholders should pass the resolution, demand a full examination and audit, and insist that Paulson pay
restitution and resign either his GS or TNC post. They should also seek revocation of the deal with RAN and
implementation of environmental rules that foster policy and financial decisions based on full and open discussion with all
parties, especially with the real stakeholders: those who must live with the consequences of the bank’s decisions.
After all, basic principles of corporate social responsibility, ethics, fairness, honesty, transparency, and accountability
ought to apply to the CEOs and Directors of for-profit and not-for-profit corporations alike.
© 2006 Paul K. Driessen
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Science, Ethics, & Human Health
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow, and the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Driessen is author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, which can be
obtained at www.Eco-Imperialism.com. Email: pdriessen@cox.net --- Telephone:
(703) 698-6171
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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