Saturday, May 18, 2013

Just who is Thomas 'Mack' McLarty, and why should you really care!


Prior to his tenure in the White House, Mr. McLarty served as Chairman of Arkla, a Fortune 500 natural gas company.  During his tenure Arkla grew into the nation’s largest natural gas distributor, with customers in 11 states and significant exploration and pipeline operations.  The company was recognized by Forbes and Wall Street Transcript for management excellence, and by other national organizations for environmental initiatives and minority enterprise development.  Mr. McLarty began his business career as a third generation participant in McLarty Companies, where he helped build the business his grandfather founded into one of the nation’s largest transportation companies.

Mr. McLarty serves on the boards of a number of corporate and non-profit institutions including Union Pacific, the Acxiom Corporation, the Bush Clinton Katrina Fund, the Council of the Americas, the Inter-American Dialogue, Ford’s Theatre, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency.  In addition, he is senior counselor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Senior International Fellow at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  more


John Brummett: Mack McLarty and amnesty

Published Thursday, September 06, 2001

In case you wondered what became of Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty, the former Arkla chairman and the first White House chief of staff and later Latin American liaison for his boyhood friend, Bill Clinton, I need only refer you to international political news.

The article revealed that the man who now is Mexico's foreign minister, Andres Rozental, buttonholed McLarty at a black-tie affair at Tavern on the Green in New York City in the winter of 2000. The Mexican diplomat persuaded McLarty, now an international consultant in partnership with Henry Kissinger, to become the American chairman of a bilateral commission of political, educational and business leaders to study American-Mexican migration under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation.

The commission's report, delivered in February by McLarty to Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, recommended a policy commonly referred to, and probably over-stated, as amnesty -- meaning a process for legalizing at least some of the millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants gainfully employed in the United States and free of criminal complications except for the basic illegality of their presence. The report became a factor in Bush's decision to float the idea of amnesty.

On Tuesday, as I tracked down McLarty to talk with him about his intimate involvement in the timely issue, I learned that he was detained at a meeting of the U.S.-Mexico Binational Council, a separate group and an offshoot of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and that the council was preparing to release its report that afternoon to coincide with Fox's arrival in Washington on Wednesday.

This second commission could not reach consensus on amnesty. Some, like McLarty, found it humane and practical. Others found it ill-advised in that it might open flood gates and reward illegals over others who have followed proper channels.

McLarty got back with me that evening. He said narcotics trafficking was probably the most destructive issue between the United States and Mexico, but that immigration was "the most complicated and the most emotional."
Famously cautious, even euphemistic, in his phrasing, McLarty said he didn't like or use the word "amnesty."
He preferred to talk about "a path to citizenship for many of the undocumented workers, mostly Mexicans, that matches our policies with the realities." By that he meant that the American economy now relies on migrant labor and that responsible illegals with jobs and families deserve services for the taxes they pay. He said that when Japan curbed immigration, its thriving economy began to suffer.

He said this "path to citizenship" must be "incremental," and that Fox, whom he admires, got ahead of himself talking about free labor movement across the border. That's a couple of decades away, at least, he said.

Fracking the life out of Arkansas and beyond

The last four months of 2010, nearly 500 earthquakes rattled Guy, Arkansas. [1]  The entire state experienced 38 quakes in 2009. [2] The spike in quake frequency precedes and coincides with the 100,000 dead fish on a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River that included Roseville Township on December 30. The next night, 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings dropped dead out of the sky in Beebe. [3]  Hydraulic fracturing is the most likely culprit for all three events, as it causes earthquakes with a resultant release of toxins into the environment. [4]

ARKANSAS EARTHQUAKE AND DRILLING HISTORY

When comparing Arkansas’ earthquake history with its drilling history, a causative correlation becomes obvious.

The entire 19th century saw 15 recorded earthquakes and none in the first decade of the new century.  A total of 694 quakes rocked Arkansas in the 20th century.  That number was surpassed in 2009-2010, with the bulk (483) occurring the last three months of 2010. Table 1 was prepared using complete quake data thru 2009 [15], complete data from August thru December, 2010 [1], and just North Central Arkansas quake data from January thru July, 2010. [16]
Arkla, Inc., through its many morphs, mergers and acquisitions,  is and has been a key gas driller in Arkansas.  Between 1975 and the early 1980s, the company found more gas than it produced. By 1982, Arkla was able to sell Central Louisiana Electric Company more than 100 million cubic feet of gas daily. By the early 1990s, it operated the sixth-largest pipeline system in the United States and was among the ten largest operators of natural gas reserves. [17] Its production timeline coincides with the massive jump in earthquakes in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, 37 companies drill for gas and oil in Arkansas. [18]





RLJ Companies » RLJ McLarty Landers Management Team
THOMAS “MACK” McLARTY
Clinton’s kindergarten palThomas “Mack” McLartyserved as White House chief of staff before being appointed the president’s special envoy for the Americas, playing a key part in advancing NAFTA. McLarty later formed a consulting firm, which merged with Kissinger Associates in 1999 only to break from it in 2008. More recently he has been chosen by the outgoing Bush administration as an adviser to the team aiding Barack Obama’s transition to the Oval Office.



Thomas F. McLarty, III         

RLJ Companies » RLJ McLarty Landers Management Team
Vice Chairman
Thomas F. McLarty has a distinguished record of business leadership and public service, including various roles advising three U.S. Presidents: Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Mr. McLarty worked with President Carter as a member of the Democratic National Committee, was appointed to two commissions by President Bush and served President Clinton in several key positions: Chief of Staff, Counselor to the President and Special Envoy for the Americas, with over five years of service in the President’s Cabinet and on the National Economic Council. Upon leaving the White House in July 1998, Mr. McLarty became President of Kissinger McLarty Associates, an international advisory firm formed in partnership with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

He is also Chairman of McLarty Companies, a fourth-generation family transportation business, including a major automotive retail endeavor — RLJ-McLarty-Landers — a partnership with Robert Johnson and Steve Landers. Additionally, Mr. McLarty serves as Senior Adviser to The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, as Senior Adviser to the law firm Covington & Burling and as Chairman of Randall & Dewey, a leading global energy industry advisory firm.

As White House Chief of Staff, Mr. McLarty helped enact the historic 1993 deficit reduction package, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Family and Medical Leave law and the landmark welfare reform legislation that enabled more than 6.8 million people to move from welfare to work. He also organized the successful 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami, which ultimately led to his appointment as Special Envoy for the Americas in 1997.

As Counselor to the President, Mr. McLarty advised on a broad range of international and domestic issues. He traveled to the Persian Gulf on the President’s behalf to build financial support for the Bosnian peace process, led the U.S. delegation to the inauguration of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and signed the peace accords that brought peace to Guatemala for the first time in three decades. Mr. McLarty planned U.S. participation in the 1998 “Summit of the Americas” in Santiago, and participated in several G-7 and APEC Summits. He also served as White House Coordinator for the Centennial Games in Atlanta, a role for which he was honored with the Olympic Torch from the Atlanta Organizing Committee and the Olympic Shield from the U.S. Olympic Committee — that organization’s highest award.



Waste Technologies Industries (WTI)East Liverpool, Ohio toxic waste incineratorVice President Gore's first broken campaign promise


Hillary Clinton helped incorporate WTI while at the Rose Law Firm and served on the board of LaFarge Cement, which operates a cement kiln in Alpena, Michigan on Lake Huron that switched from natural gas to burning hazardous wastes (used motor oil, solvents) in the mid-1980s.
Clinton's Region 3 [mid-atlantic] EPA Administrator - Peter Kostmayer, a democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania who lost his seat in 1992 (he'd introduced legislation to ban new incinerators) - was fired for opposing the Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed $1.5 billion 118 mile "Corridor H" superhighway through the mountains of West Virginia and the water discharge permit for the Parsons & Whittemore paper pulp mill in Apple Grove, WV, on the Ohio River (the mill would be the largest in the country, and would dump dioxin into the river). West Virginia Governor Gaston Caperton and Senators Byrd and Rockefeller complained to Clinton (the paper mill contributed to West Virginia politicians and to the Democratic National Committee), who complained to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, who fired Kostmayer.  Perhaps Bill Clinton could have urged neighbors of the WTI incinerator not to inhale.

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