Political Influence
AEP's political action committee, the American Electric Power Committee for Responsible Government, has increased spending since the 1998 election cycle, reaching $1.4 million in contributions in 2007-2008, 57 percent to Republicans. Also in 2008, American Electric Power significantly increased lobbying expenditures from less than $2 million a year to over $11 million, as climate legislation became a key issue in Washington. As of December 2011, lobbying expenses remained between $6 million and $10 million per year.
In 2009, AEP CEO Michael Morris contributed $100,000 to Newt Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future, which supports increased oil drilling and opposes mandatory limits on greenhouse gas pollution. American Electric Power is also a member of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a lobbying and marketing organization which opposes President Obama's climate and clean energy legislation.
Read more about this topic: American Electric Power
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or influence:
“Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called “self-interestedness.” This was not a portrait of man “warts and all.” It was all wart.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“If the contemplation, even of inanimate beauty, is so delightful; if it ravishes the senses, even when the fair form is foreign to us: What must be the effects of moral beauty? And what influence must it have, when it embellishes our own mind, and is the result of our own reflection and industry?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)