Here's the quick take on what it took to get in to see Cheney and his National Energy Policy Task Force:
Here's the slightly longer take, from Eric Alterman and Mark Green's The Book on Bush:
The Bush energy plan was developed in closed-door sessions by Vice President Cheney and his National Energy Policy Task Force [...]. During that process, scientists and environmentalists were kept on the sidelines while energy companies threw a nonstop party. Of the 400 organizations that sought meetings with the vice president or the task force in that period, 194 were granted access--158 energy companies, 22 labor unions, 13 environmental groups, and a lone consumer organization. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, one of the key officials responsible for drafting the final document, turned down a request for a meeting with environmental groups in February 2001, citing his "busy schedule". In a sense that statement was true: during that period, documents released later under judicial order show, he met with 109 industry representatives.
[...]
From the email trail, it isn't hard to discern the identity of the "industry representatives" who had access to Secretary Abraham and Vice President Cheney during the formation of the Energy Plan. Indeed, their calendars during the spring of 2001 read like a list of the largest contributors to the Republican Party. [...] When the Energy Task Force made its list of people it would see, it apparently remembered well who had given (and how much) and who had not. Among the repeat visitors-cum-campaign contributors were
Nuclear Energy Institute (19 visits, $437,404)
Edison Electric Institute (14 visits, $598,169)
National Mining Association (9 visits, $575,496)
American Gas Association (8 visits, $480, 478)
Southern Company (7 visits, $1,626,507)
Exelon Corporation (6 visits, $910,886)One energy company stands above the rest in terms of its political influence. That company met with task force members six times and with Vice President Cheney at least three times. Its name: Enron, a donator of $1.1 million to the GOP in 2000 and another $300,000 for the Bush inauguration. According to Secret Service logs, Cheney had two additional meetings with Enron chairman Ken Lay in the spring of 2001. What resulted from all these get-togethers? An independent evaluation of the Bush energy bill by American Family Voices, an advocacy group for middle- and low-income families, showed that seventeen differen policy initiatives included in the plan directly benefited the rogue corporation. [...]
And what came out of these backroom deals? Just what you'd expect.
According to a detailed report published by Taxpayers for Common Sense, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Friends of the Earth, Bush's energy bill would lavish $28 billion in subsidies and tax breaks on the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries. [...] The $28 billion provided for by the Bush Energy Plan, when added to the $33 billion in subsidies those industries were already scheduled to receive, amounted to a grand total of $61 billion--or a cost of $220 for every American.
And you thought the U.S. was a capitalist country. Even the right-leaning Cato Institute thinks the Energy Bill that emerged from this plan (which is thankfully stalled in the Senate) is a terrible idea.
Oh, and speaking of backroom deals with energy executives, guess who Cheney and Scalia were guests of during their duck-hunting trip? Wallace Carline, President of Diamond Services Corporation, a major oil industry construction company.
