A government that does an end-run around the spirit of its own laws? And by exploiting green activists in the process? Impossible, you say? Then perhaps you believe that there was no gambling a Rick’s Café Americain?

A recent opinion column, titled “The Multinationals’ Dilemma — Gratify the Greens or Protect the Poor?” and written by James M. Roberts of The Heritage Foundation, made these very assertions, but without the tongue-in-cheek suggestion of disbelief. In his article, Mr. Roberts discusses many different issues, perhaps too many for the space allotted him, the foremost of which is the issue of how multinational corporations may actually damage economic progress when they acquiesce to the protest demands of various activist groups. This is a complicated and controversial issue, one which I have often discussed on this blog. But, this issue is not the topic of today’s post.

Rather, the topic of today’s posts is one of the minor issues as raised by Mr. Roberts in his opinion article. That issue is the financing of activist groups by governments and the reason for such financing. I previously dealt with this topic in my April 2010 post “Nice Work . . . If You Can Get It? Friends of the Earth Does.”

In that post, I noted that in 2008 Friends of the Earth Europe received over 50% of its annual income from a European government grant. Of their €1.5 million budget for that year, Friends of the Earth Europe received €790,000 in the form of a grant from the Directorate General Environmental, the environmental commission of the European government. (Figures per the International Policy Network (IPN). Please see my previous post for full citation.) As I said in the title of that previous post, nice work if you can get it, eh? For sure. But what’s even more interesting is the reason for the awarding of such financing.