Hillary Clinton’s pattern of earmarking federal funds to benefit her campaign contributors is well-documented, but she also uses environmental regulations to reward — and prod — corporate donors. Particularly, she and her husband have championed environmental regulations that narrowly help Corning Inc., which in turn has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to her campaigns.

Corning Inc., a manufacturer in upstate New York, famous as a glassmaker, is the lead maker of two technologies that help reduce harmful emissions from diesel trucks. Bill and Hillary Clinton have made these technologies profitable — at the expense of taxpayers and consumers.

Bill Clinton’s Environmental Protection Agency, in the final days of his administration, issued a regulation requiring new diesel trucks and buses to come equipped with emissions scrubbers that would reduce tailpipe pollution.

The two technologies that can satisfy this regulation are filters or catalysts (which convert the harmful chemicals into harmless ones). The leading manufacturer of both filters and catalytic converters for diesel engines is Corning Inc.

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Larry Wilson, a local reporter in Elmira, N.Y., put it this way: “Only a month before he is scheduled to leave office, President Clinton has dropped a big Christmas present in the lap of Corning Inc.” Clinton’s regulation, in effect, mandated the purchase of Corning products. This regulation adds a few thousand dollars to the cost of every new truck, and the higher-end fuel the regulation requires also increases shipping costs, thus making goods more expensive.

Corning was a traditionally Republican company: Republican Rep. Amo Houghton, great-grandson of the company’s founder and a former chief executive officer of Corning, represented the area in Congress until 2005. Throughout most of the 2000 campaign, the company’s employees were supporting Republican Rick Lazio in the U.S. Senate contest, with minimal support to Hillary Clinton.

Then something happened just days before the election. From Oct. 20 through Oct. 27, the company’s stock dropped from about $106 per share to $76 — a 28 percent drop in one week. Corning had retooled itself as a tech stock, relying on its fiber-optics business. The dot-com bubble was bursting, and Corning was falling with it.

In the midst of this free fall, on Oct. 23, Corning’s political action committee cut a $3,000 check to Hillary’s campaign. Eight days later, 17 Corning employees, including the firm’s Washington lobbyist, Debra Waggoner, contributed $11,750 to Hillary’s campaign.

Corning’s stock price was cut in half by the time President Clinton delivered his “Christmas present” to the company’s more old-fashioned (but still very high-tech) business of building catalysts and filters for diesel trucks and buses.

Sen. Clinton has piled the pork onto Corning’s platter, as The New York Times and Amanda Carpenter of Human Events have reported. Specifically, she has earmarked hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize retrofitting old diesel vehicles — especially old school buses — with the catalysts and filters.

As important as the earmarks are the regulations Clinton has co-sponsored. The 2004 federal highway bill included a Clinton amendment pushing states, when granting highway construction contracts, to favor companies using emission-reducing technologies. In her press release touting this measure, Clinton bragged of the “market opportunities” her measure provided Corning.

In 2005, she co-sponsored the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act, mandating the filters or catalysts for heavy-duty diesel vehicles owned by state governments or used to carry out state projects. No unfunded-mandate, this measure — incorporated into the famously pork-laden 2005 energy bill — included $1 billion for states to buy these emissions reducers.

Currently, Clinton has co-sponsored a bill allowing companies found guilty of environmental laws to atone for their sins by installing diesel-emission-reduction technologies.

Corning Chief Financial Officer James Flaws has said, “The Clinton-Corning partnership is very rewarding for both of us.” Campaign finance data bears that out. Corning employees have given her campaigns about $200,000 since her election, and Corning’s PAC has added $20,000. Also, she is the only presidential candidate supported by Corning’s PAC.

Candidate Clinton promises to clean up politics and to clean the air. At the very least, Clinton and Corning seem to be cleaning up nicely.

Examiner Columnist Timothy P. Carney is senior reporter for the Evans-Novak Political Report. His Examiner column appears on Fridays.