S6, Part2 | Ep3: Anatomy of a Front Group

Drilled

Critical Frequency

True Crime, Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Science

4.8 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 May 2022

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A year after San Luis Obispo took the lead in Southern California on a gas ban, the coastal town of Santa Barbara was evaluating a similar proposal, and residents were being spammed with texts encouraging opposition to the ban and offering information through a new "grassroots" group: Citizens for Balanced Energy Solutions. Except it wasn't a citizens group at all, it was a front group started by the country's largest gas utility.

Transcript

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0:00.0	At the end of 2020, residents in the coastal California town of Santa Barbara were getting
0:15.4	a bunch of weird notifications on their phones.
0:22.8	That's Katie Davis, who runs the local chapter of the Sierra Club, talking to the podcast
0:43.9	a matter of degrees last year.
0:46.4	The show is co-hosted by Lea Stokes, an energy policy expert and author of a book about corrupt
0:52.5	utilities called Short-circoding Policy, who we heard from last episode.
0:58.2	Stokes also happens to be a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, and lives in town.
1:04.7	When these robo calls and texts about a proposed gas ban for new buildings in Santa Barbara
1:10.2	started to make the rounds, Stokes and Davis got in touch.
1:15.2	Here they are talking about it on a matter of degrees.
1:18.4	One thing Katie and I both noticed is that the first round of text messages were totally
1:23.2	anonymous.
1:24.2	There was nothing saying this is from such and such group.
1:26.6	It was really sketchy.
1:28.2	They seemed to have hit everyone in Santa Barbara because a lot of people we know got
1:31.7	them.
1:32.7	Even the City Council members got them.
1:33.8	A lot of people were misinformed by it.
1:35.5	It was really misleading.
1:37.5	The text message is directed recipients to go to the website of something called Californians
1:42.5	for Balanced Energy Solutions or C4BES, where they could write to the Santa Barbara City
1:49.3	Council to oppose the measure.
	...

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