PR Firm To Promote Drilling In ANWR

This is amazing. In a time when we are trying to reduce our "addiction" to oil, the Alaskan government is going to pay $3 million to an Oregon PR firm to try to get ANWR opened for drilling.

(ADN.com)Pac/West Communications, an Oregon firm the Alaska Legislature is about to hire to promote oil drilling in the Arctic, has run political campaigns for hunting and resource development that have been marked by two qualities: aggressiveness and success.

However some think the owner of the firm, Paul Phillips who served in the Oregon House and Senate, may be trying to spend the $3 million in other states campaigns. He has been known to push the limits of the law.

As a state senator, Phillips became known for springing legislative maneuvers on Friday afternoons, when his colleagues were focused on the weekend, according to an Oregonian article from 1995, his last year in office. His legislative career was clouded by accusations that he used his position as a lawmaker to further his simultaneous work as a political consultant, charges Oregon's ethics commission sustained in 1990 with a record $17,000 fine. A hearing officer concluded that, among other things, Phillips wrote a letter to shoe company Nike on his state House letterhead saying that if Nike extended his consulting contract, or gave him a full-time job, "he would use his efforts as a Representative during the next session of the legislature" to defeat tax bills Nike didn't like.

Another $3 million that could have gone to alternative fuel.