He
also spoke with senior researchers and staff from the Regional Australia Institute about the role of the regions on the national policy
agenda and where core issues like labour force demands and decentralisation
fit into the overall economic picture.
The mechanisms such interests use are many — influencing election outcomes by injecting huge sums of money into them (see the NYT editorial on the KOch Brothers and AB32, for example), installing fossil fuel employees in government bureaucracies (BP's ex-chief scientist is currently Head of Science at the DOE, one Steve Koonin,
also of Caltech — welcome to the fossil fuel - academic complex), and distorting science to
fit their
agenda (witness the endless fraudulent claims about zero - emission combustion, despite the persistent absence of any stand - alone prototypes.)