Green Liberal Lies
We can’t drive our SUV’s and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.
—Senator Barack Obama, May 16, 2008
Energy plans put forth by the Obama administration are nothing short of a conspiracy. Chastising gas-guzzling cars and the way in which we heat our homes isn’t about the environment, it is about money. Plan A for the Obama administration to generate green money was cap-and-trade—an emissions tax that would have helped his friends in the business of new energy sources. The government actually had a lot of people duped on cap-and-trade. Newt Gingrich was even on board for doing a commercial with Nancy Pelosi. Obama’s friend General Electric’s Jeff Immelt was getting excited about his investment in wind and solar, so he was on board too, but that didn’t take much effort.
Before Obama took office, Immelt decided to make money on green initiatives despite resistance from both his senior team and his customers. Central to making money on GE’s high-profile ecomagination campaign was making carbon-based energy—fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) more expensive via legislation. A law was needed to force higher energy prices and cap-and-trade legislation was the chosen scheme. Obama was the right man for GE and others looking to get rich on new revenues from the green plot. After all, he’d talked up energy during the campaign.
Cap-and-trade got very close to becoming law, but it wasn’t because of the merits of the plan. It was simply due to the confluence of special-interest influence of big business, environmental activists, and progressive politicians in Congress and the administration. It was heavy-handed and manipulative and came close to working. But there is nothing free market about using legislation to create markets via taxing energy or mandating sales of products. Companies should profit and fail based on their business strategies, not on government backing and support. Period.
The proof of manipulation is in the words. Without laws in place and no new legislation GE can’t make money—Immelt once said, “The only way we’ll ever get a return on our investment in these technologies is if greenhouse gases have a monetary value.” That’s why Immelt and his venture capital pal John Doerr lobbied so hard for cap-and-trade. Immelt did not act alone: There was the U.S. Climate Action Partnership too—a coalition of big-business and environmental groups that lobbied for cap-and-trade. Banks got in on the action too—they wanted cap-and-trade so they could trade carbon credits and offsets on an exchange. Goldman Sachs, for example, took a 10 percent piece of the Chicago Climate Exchange in 2006 and cashed out along with the other investors when its parent company, the Climate Exchange, was sold to the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) for $600 million. The Chicago Carbon Exchange closed its carbon-trading effort in November 2010 after the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives. It recognized that the new power structure in Washington had eliminated any prospects of profiting from the cap-and-trade scheme. There must have been a lot of disappointment from the likes of Goldman Sachs since the carbon-trading market had been estimated to be in the trillion-dollar range.
The demise of mass-scale carbon trading happened just in time. If Wall Street firms could not manage the risk of mortgage securities, how could they handle trading carbon dioxide—a ubiquitous greenhouse gas whose only value is derived from government decree? Carbon dioxide is released from the burning of fossil fuels that currently provide 85 percent of our energy.1, 2
The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill passed the House of Representatives in May 2009. Big business got a nod from Congressman Edward Markey himself for pushing the bill through. Fortunately, it went nowhere beyond that because it would have increased the cost of using fossil fuels (as per design) that currently provide the majority of our energy. But the bill would have mandated that 20 percent of our electricity come from renewable energy and greater energy efficiency, which would have been a boon to GE and anyone else who makes renewable energy products.
That’s why in a company political-action committee letter to employees the moneymaking emphasis of Waxman-Markey was explained:
On climate change . . . we were able to work closely with key authors of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, recently passed by the House of Representatives. If this bill is enacted into law it would benefit many GE businesses.3
While cap-and-trade is dead—Obama and his allies will still push their renewable energy agenda any way they can. One strategy is for a national renewable energy mandate that requires a certain amount of electricity be generated from clean energy sources, but that option needs Congress, which with a Republican House will be a challenge. The other strategy is to drive fossil fuel prices higher by using the regulatory power of the executive branch to cut down on the supply of fossil fuels.
The plan is to cripple the coal industry and restrict the development of oil and natural gas resources by manipulating the free market system. Frustrate industry enough and they will give up on developing domestic fossil fuel resources—reducing supply is a great way to force traditional energy prices higher and make green options cost competitive.
Here’s how it works with electricity. There are two technologies and one is cheaper. To advance yours (Obama and friends) you have to break the leg of the other one—coal. You have to artificially raise the price of coal in order to make it economically competitive with solar and wind. The EPA is providing a great tool to execute the president’s plans. The agency is pulling out all the stops—using any regulation it can muster up to help prevent industry from getting mining permits by creating a regulatory environment that makes clear to utilities that coal is going to be very expensive to use in the future. Utilities will then plan on using other energy resources for electricity generation. Without construction of new coal-fired power plants, the playing field is opened for wind, solar, and other energy sources. Obama’s war on coal is being enforced from the cradle to the grave. From making it harder to mine, from making it expensive to use, and by making it expensive to get rid of coal ash after it’s burned. Here are some examples:
• EPA January 2011: Arch Coal had a permit revoked for a mine that was in operation. The EPA used the Clean Water Act to execute, in a rare step to cancel a permit already approved by the Army Corps of Engineers. Potential cost: 250 jobs and a $250 million investment. This was an unprecedented move that sent a shock wave through the coal industry. Why would an industry build a business when a government bureaucracy can walk in and shut down its operation? This arrogant display of power demonstrates the lengths government officials will go to meet their anti-coal agenda.
• The Sierra Club is on board and gearing up for a green fight. The environmental group is adding one hundred full-time jobs and the Environmental Defense Fund is hiring lawyers to battle coal. A Sierra Club representative said in a story in 2008 reported by the Los Angeles Times that their goal is simply to “clog up the system.”4 New York City Mayor Bloomberg added fuel to the anti-coal fire by donating $50 million from his foundation to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.5
• Coal ash is also facing new regulations and it’s still part of the battle. The left took steps to quash utilities’ ability to use coal ash when the EPA deemed it hazardous waste and therefore fair game for stringent regulation and tightened oversight. Republicans, now better able to speak up on the issue, argue it has tremendous uses in building other commercial products.6 The cost of calling this product hazardous? Well, jobs, for one—a study estimated that job losses could tally about 316,000. And then there is the cost—the price tag for the regulations could range between $23 billion up to $110 billion over twenty years.7
• The cumulative costs of EPA’s rules are staggering. An analysis by National Economic Research Associates (NERA) for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity reported the impact of the coal ash rule combined with several new regulations including the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) and the Cross-State Air Pollution rules during the 2012– 2020 time period was estimated to:
• Cost the power industry $21 billion per year;
• Cause an average loss of 183,000 jobs per year;
• Increase electricity costs by double digits in many regions of the United States;
• Cost consumers over $50 billion more for natural gas; and
• Reduce the disposable income of the average American family by $270 a year.8
The EPA is also working on lowering greenhouse gas emissions through regulation. Through its endangerment finding the EPA grabbed authority to control the amount of greenhouse gases that can be released into the atmosphere. This will require companies to obtain permits for new and existing facilities. Facing the uncertain regulatory maze and high costs to reduce emissions, utilities will be forced to look for alternative sources of power, otherwise no permits will be granted. The cost for utilities is too high, so businesses aren’t starting new ones.9
Keep in mind that even according to the EPA, as I mentioned earlier, the reductions in greenhouse gases will have no meaningful impact on reducing global carbon dioxide emissions. Gee, I thought we were trying to save the planet?
The effect of Obama’s war on coal:
• There was zero new construction of coal-fired power plants in 2009 and 2010.10
• American Electric Power, one of the country’s largest power generators, said new pollution rules to address air emissions and coal ash would force the company to close coal-fired power plants and invest at least $6 billion to update its plants to meet the EPA’s requirements.11
It seems the political, social, and business elite all decided to capitalize on global warming fears to work against coal and oil drilling too. Sadly, their goal isn’t to save the world. Nope, their goal is simply to advance the progressive agenda and make money by being fearmongers. They’re soaking the hardworking middle class with tales of global warming and the need for renewable energy, while the economic reality is just a transfer of wealth into the pockets of the likes of billionaires George Soros and Doerr (more to come on these characters), and a boost in the revenue of Immelt’s GE, whom I’ll get into more specifically below as well. In fact, Obama is even sending wealth to other countries, with encouragement and praise for drilling in Brazil while blocking it here in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s somewhat hypocritical, no?12
Bottom line, we’re rife with abundant natural resources for energy. The Congressional Research Service recently concluded we have more natural resources than any other country. But Obama is attacking the fossil fuel industry, especially coal, by manipulating the system to help his friends make cash. He’s using any law or regulation that will shut down or halt operations and instead is pushing for the development of renewable energy sources at great expense.
The campaign by President Obama aided by environmental activists and his crony capitalist allies to slam the fossil fuel industry in order to force Americans to use renewable energy such as wind and solar power is nothing short of a conspiracy. It’s a planned, deliberate, market-manipulating drive, not meant to save our planet, but to boost the bottom lines of crony capitalist corporations that use their political connections to rig government legislation and to subsidize their green initiatives in hopes of getting rich quick. Global warming scare tactics are meant only to generate profits and dupe the public into paying higher energy prices. Worse, executives have bought and paid for political help.
This scheme was orchestrated by Obama. It appeals to the animal instincts of his corporate political donors and the radical agenda of environmental activists allowing the president to achieve his anticolonial goals, while rewarding the profit motives of progressive billionaires. It’s a win-win-win for the progressive movement. Crony capitalists make money, progressive politicians get a bigger government and more control, environmental activists lock up land by blocking development of our natural resources, and President Obama reduces the standard of living of hardworking Americans, bringing us in line with the rest of the world. Why should we care what the world thinks about the liberty of Americans driving SUVs or heating our homes to seventy-two degrees?
By lowering the standard of living of Americans, Obama is driving us to the plantation, and equalizing us with other countries and one another. It’s a Karl Marx–esque approach to world order. And another thing: His climate initiative is just further evidence of his anticolonial views, which are in sympathy with those of progressive billionaires. I had to chuckle when I read Dinesh D’Souza’s characterization of Obama and his relationship with his corporate pals in the insurance industry. He calls him “Big Daddy Obama” and says these guys are quite willing to team up with Obama as long as they “succumb to the government leash.” We are getting the raw end of the deal.
A recent study by Dr. Roger Bezdek, a former Bureau of Economic Analysis researcher, showed that 2.5 million jobs would be lost by the time we reach 2030—lost to new rules surrounding none other than greenhouse gas emissions. That’s right, the rich will get richer selling green products and the rest of us will see our household incomes plunge by $1,200 a year. Guess which group will get hit hardest and sooner? Blacks. That’s right. Twenty percent more of the black community will be driven into poverty, and as soon as 2015, that group will have seen an income drop of $550 per year. In total by 2020, greenhouse gas emissions rules will have knocked out 1.7 million jobs for the black community.13
Also, EPA regulations, simply put, aren’t about global warming at all—greenhouse gas regulations will have little impact on world temperatures. Scientists have said more than the EPA’s 5 percent cut in emissions is needed to avoid climate dangers. The amount of reduction brought on by regulation is so tiny it can’t even be measured on a ground-based thermometer.14
All the green talk is simply bad energy policy and We the People are footing the bill for this flawed green movement in a long list of ways. We’re paying double or triple too—we’re on the hook for Obama’s clean energy stimulus, which contributed to the bulging debt, we will get dinged for taxes to pay for the debt, our tax dollars are subsidizing the implementation of renewable energy, and we’re hit with high energy costs when renewable energy is used—all of which are taking a major bite out of our household budgets.
The additional cost of renewable energy is clear when you look at the amount of subsidies we pay per energy produced. Wind and solar power cost us $23 per megawatt hour and $24 per megawatt hour, respectively, while coal and natural gas cost us only 44 cents and 25 cents, respectively.15
We’re financing the green initiatives through our tax dollars like it’s a venture capital company, and Americans are the principal investors. But one thing: We’re not the ones profiting. The return on our investment is that our money goes into someone else’s pockets—some very rich pockets, in fact! A handful of wealthy liberals are manipulating the energy market at the expense of hardworking Americans. Taxpayers are not only paying to subsidize renewable energy development, but Americans are going to pay higher prices for energy, with added costs going to Obama’s big-business allies like General Electric, Exelon, Duke Energy, and others that have built their business strategy on global warming fears. President Obama is aiding and abetting. The liberals who got President Obama elected are hypocrites and so is Obama, and their hypocrisy is costing the taxpayers money and economic liberty big-time. I guess we can’t complain too much: Obama promised he’d make energy prices “skyrocket,” and he has.16
Here’s what’s happening: Bureaucrats and big business are funneling hoards of cash and time into the next bubble—the green bubble—and guess what? It is about to burst. One high-profile example is the solar company Solyndra. It received hundreds of millions of dollars from Obama’s stimulus plan only to go bankrupt in 2011. Indeed, billionaire George Kaiser’s family foundation was the largest shareholder in Solyndra and he fits the classic description of a crony capitalist. Kaiser was an Obama political donor and campaign bundler and he visited the White House three times shortly before Solyndra received the $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. Solyndra was not the only solar company to receive taxpayer money to go bankrupt, but is one high-profile example of wasted money.
And so, now the hardworking Americans and fixed-and low-income households will be footing the cleanup bill, just as they did in the housing bubble. Obama’s big-business elites such as GE CEO Jeff Immelt and billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr will cash in and will be long gone and escape accountability for their role in inflating the bubble. There is a long list of these Obama green initiatives and some of them might sound to some really good on paper. But they are not good. They are simply based on self-interest, greed, and waste, to the tune of billions of dollars. Obama is the conspirator-in-chief, enacting policy that favors the bottom lines of those who have invested heavily in these green ambitions to seduce them to lobby for his agenda. Obama’s big-business strategy worked with ObamaCare when Big Pharma lobbied for its passage and he is employing the same technique with his green energy initiative. Evidently, the message circulating in some corporate boardrooms is if you can’t beat Obama’s government, join it. To make money off of these early green investments, the administration and a few business cronies must work hard to campaign against natural resources here like coal in an effort to boost renewable energy resources like wind. With electricity generation renewable sources can’t compete head to head with coal, so the cronies and Obama need to manipulate old-school pricing of cheap coal through government action to make it so expensive that the public and industry will be forced to use alternative sources to power their plants, their homes, and their businesses.
But Obama is only doing exactly what he said he’d do:
We need to get behind this [green] innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.
Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling. So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80 percent of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar.17
“Skyrocketing” prices, that was his goal, through one big green agenda item. Just another agenda pushed through at our expense.
Let’s look at the manipulation of the stimulus package: $787 billion lobbied for like parasites by big business.
A line from an article in Time magazine best identifies Obama’s real motivation for the stimulus package. “Some Republicans have called it an under-the-radar scramble to advance Obama’s agenda.”18 In that same report Time magazine calls the Recovery Act “the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund. It’s pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced bio-fuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet.”19
Let’s look at how Obama’s friends like Solyndra’s Kaiser and GE’s Immelt are making out in clean energy from the stimulus infusion:
• $2 billion to invest in solar companies;
• $2.4 billion toward electric transportation;
• $4.5 billion toward building smart grids;
• $5 billion dumped into the failed weatherization program;
• $3 billion toward jobs and innovation—claiming to create seven hundred thousand jobs by 2012.
Pretty good numbers if you’re profiting from this green stuff.
There are claims that this investment will generate $150 billion in returns through related projects.20 Hmmm . . . I don’t think we’ve seen much of that yet. In fact, one documented colossal failure from this “stimulus” thus far has been the revival of the weatherization program. It’s the $5 billion Obama dumped into trying to fix homes in need of energy adjustments, which of course the Congressional Black Caucus was strongly behind, because it promised training and jobs in the black community and promised to update the homes of lower-income, minority constituents through more government handouts. So far, it’s shown only signs of mess, not success.
Here’s what was supposed to happen: The $5 billion was to be used to infuse a decades-old program called the Energy Department’s Weatherization Assistance Program. It was promised that it would create jobs and help reduce people’s energy bills by updating their homes—sealing windows, fixing small energy-wasting items. Money was distributed to the states to be spent accordingly. Instead, the money was mismanaged and misspent, very few homes have been affected, and in some states, much of the money was used for corruptive behavior. The New York Times summarized the failure of the plan to deliver on its promises: “The weatherization program was initially delayed for seven months while the federal Department of Labor determined prevailing wage standards for the industry. Even after that issue was resolved, the program never really caught on.” The story commented that Obama’s promise to create five million green jobs over a decade was falling short of its goal and concluded, “the results so far suggest such numbers are a pipe dream.”21
In Delaware, the program was such a debacle that it was suspended not long after it was enacted. The Delaware News Journal reported that a lot of money went to contractors who went into a home to seal up windows and insulate attics and instead milked the system by replacing furnaces, windows, and doors, while jacking up the price. Similar problems turned up in Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, and Virginia.22
Illinois didn’t come up with great grades either. In late 2010 an audit was done on the state’s weatherization program by the Department of Energy’s inspector general. Illinois got $242 million of the $5 billion to put toward fixing a planned 27,000 homes. Many agencies were called up to distribute the funds, but the Community and Economic Development Association (CEDA) got a very large chunk—$91 million over three years for almost half of the total homes to be weatherized. But it seems, according to the report, this money wasn’t being used to its fullest potential. Here are the phrases that were used to describe the few homes that did get fitted:
• improperly performed heating systems . . . (that) emit carbon monoxide at higher than acceptable levels;
• inappropriate weatherization measures and overlooked key measures;
• contractors billed for labor charges . . . not incurred;
• billing issues pervasive . . . 7 of 10 sampled were cited;
• wasteful material costs.
The main conclusion from this Illinois-specific report:
Our testing revealed substandard performance in weatherization workmanship, initial home assessments, and contractor billing. These problems were of such significance that they put the integrity of the entire Program at risk, although Illinois and CEDA asserted during the audit that they were in the process of improving performance.
Weatherization is not the only waste of tax money in the clean energy stimulus. An October 25, 2010, memo from Obama’s senior advisors, including Larry Summers, Carol Browner, and Joe Biden’s chief of staff Ron Klain, recommended that the president cut funding for the federal loan-guarantee program. Its goal was to encourage construction of renewable energy projects like wind and solar farms.
Obama’s advisors singled out the Shepherds Flat wind project in Oregon as an example of an effort that was “double-dipping” because it was receiving multiple avenues of taxpayer support—in addition to the $300 million loan guarantee, the project was also getting $238 million in state aid, $500 million in federal grants, and $200 million in federal and state tax benefits.
They concluded, “The government would provide a significant subsidy (65+%), while the sponsor would provide little skin in the game (equity about 10%).” That’s a great deal for the business interests but a lousy deal for us taxpayers. Oh, and guess who was one of the sponsors of the project—none other than the corporate parasite GE!!23
In the end, however, politics dictated the day. Rather than admitting the failure of the loan program, which might have cast a negative light on the clean energy stimulus effort and anger congressional Democrats, Obama chose to keep the program: “The Administration is committed to the 1705 loan program and the role it plays in helping us bring about a clean energy economy and creating jobs in this burgeoning industry.”24
We wouldn’t want to antagonize powerful allies, now would we, even if it meant taking money out of the pockets of hardworking Americans?
If Obama and friends have their way, they’ll wipe coal production off the map. It’s obvious why Obama is so hyped up about clean energy—he wants to funnel government cash into the pockets of his cronies so they lobby for his anticolonialist progressive agenda. But why is he so set on doing it at the expense of an energy source that is cheap, provides good-paying jobs for 134,000 people25 in our country, and is bountiful? Coal is the center of his target. Obama wants to steer us away from using it by breaking the industry’s back. He wants it to collapse in order to force the use of the new energy resources. He’s using every possible regulation to shut coal down, jack up prices, and drive money to renewable, green projects. He is making the industry suffer and ensuring prices rise to essentially mandate his clean energy future.
We have an abundance of coal. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. In fact, about 45 percent of our electricity comes from coal.26 Some states, such as Indiana where electricity is less expensive, get more than 90 percent of their power from coal. In states like New York that get only about 10 percent of power from coal, electricity prices are two times higher than in Indiana.27
So who are these billionaires and CEOs who stand to rake it in if this green agenda makes it?
First there is Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, whose company plans to invest $10 billion in environmentally friendly products by 2015 with a revenue goal of $20 billion a year by 2010.28
You know our country is in serious trouble when special interests rule the day. Immelt is the special-interest king. He has a poor track record running a corporation and this desperation led him to partner with Obama in believing the government is the answer to boosting GE’s profits. GE lobbied hard for Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan and received tens of millions of dollars in government grants and contracts as a result.
Never mind the economic pain that will be felt by hardworking Americans from the Obama-Immelt scheme to raise the price of fossil fuels to make GE’s renewable energy products more competitive and save Immelt’s job.
During one weekly address in January 2011, Obama said Immelt is “one of the most imaginative and visionary business leaders in America.”29 But really, their relationship and Immelt’s appointment to the economic recovery board aren’t based on mutual respect. They’re based on their common goal: pushing renewable energy.
Obama wants to build a “green economy” where energy is derived from renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and solar panels, while Immelt has a vested interest in selling GE’s renewal energy technologies. He started down that road long before anybody knew Obama was seeking the Oval Office. GE is one of the largest producers of renewable energy products. Unfortunately, this connection proves very clearly that Obama and Immelt don’t want the free market to decide the fate of renewable energy—they prefer the strong arm of government to mandate the use of alternative energy. That’s why Immelt was one of the most aggressive supporters of Obama’s cap-and-trade energy policy. The conflict of interest here is simply overwhelming. Immelt was a member of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which was replaced by the new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and Immelt was appointed chairman. Immelt is also a frequent White House visitor and travel partner. Immelt even joined Obama on a recent trip to India. It’s so blatant, their teaming up on energy. Even in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy, Obama’s jobs panel interim report, “Taking Action, Building Confidence,” makes five recommendations, including an initiative to “Invest Aggressively and Efficiently in Cutting-Edge Infrastructure and Energy,” which calls for government support to improve the country’s energy infrastructure and a new federal financing institution funded with $1 to $2 billion per year to amplify clean energy investments.
It’s not just Immelt either. Obama is wasting political capital and gambling his political future on the likes of many billionaires and business leaders.
Billionaire investor George Soros and managing partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers John Doerr are two additional financiers whose pockets Obama is lining through these green initiatives.
Doerr, an internet-investing icon, placed a huge bet on renewable energy, but to cash in, he needs the perfect storm for fossil fuels. He needs prices to go up—cap-and-trade would have been nice for him. Now he needs the cradle-to-grave EPA regulations including a crackdown on greenhouse gas emissions to game the political system to his favor and as a backup mandate that the country use renewable energy. Apparently, Obama wants to help him achieve all of this.
Curiously, soaring gas prices impeding economic growth haven’t boded well in previous election years for incumbents. The public doesn’t warm up to losing that chunk of their monthly household budget to fill the tank of their cars. It’s curious, then, with that palpable risk on the table, that President Obama is doubling down on his war on fossil fuels, making himself very vulnerable to criticism and even public outrage.
On the surface it seems like Obama is letting billionaires such as Soros, Kaiser, and Doerr with evident self-interest pull his anti–fossil fuel strings to ensure a payoff for their huge investments in renewable energy and the green economy. More likely, however, Obama is willing to lose an election to advance his anticolonial passion.
Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner wrote about how Soros in early 2011 announced a green investment fund to cash in on clean energy technology, banking on liberal politicians and their big-government funding for green technologies to ensure a return on his investment.30 And it’s not the first time he gambled big on green. In 2009, Soros pledged to invest $1 billion in clean energy technologies and an additional $100 million in the Climate Policy Initiative, an organization “whose mission is to assess, diagnose, and support nations’ efforts to achieve low-carbon growth.”
It’s nothing short of bankrolling a return through public policy. As Glenn Beck reported in his Crime Inc. segment on Fox News Channel, Soros wants to get a return on his investments by leveraging his financial support for groups such as the Center for American Progress, groups that actively promote Obama’s energy agenda. And Obama doesn’t seem to mind being played one bit.
Obama’s buddy billionaire Doerr is using the same strategy to line his pockets. He went long on renewable energy sources but he needs to bank on public policy to make a return. He was an early investor in companies like Amazon and Google, so he’s reached the top of the venture capitalist ladder in Silicon Valley. But to reach the potential for green in a green bubble, Doerr and other investors like him are relentlessly securing their investments.
Ignoring free market capitalism, Doerr helped fund a campaign to defeat a voter initiative to halt California’s global warming law. He spent $2.1 million, in fact, to defeat the vote—called Proposition 23.
In addition to wanting to line his pockets even more, John Doerr has deep-seated progressive views and a clear distaste for the simple pleasures of everyday Americans. He apparently feels if left to their own choices, Americans in the flyover states will drive SUVs and—horror—drink bottled water from an exotic country. So those choices need to be eliminated through the force of government. The following are some of the elitist comments he made during a speech at the TED Conferences during March 7–10, 2007, in Monterey, California:31
• It does seem really hard to get consumers to do the right thing.
• It is stupid that we use two tons of steel, glass, and plastic to haul our sorry selves to the shopping mall.
• It’s stupid that we put water in plastic bottles in Fiji and ship it here.
• It’s hard to change consumer behavior because consumers don’t know how much this stuff costs.
• Do you know, do you know how much CO2 you generated to drive here or fly here?
But Doerr needed to team with the likes of Obama, because buying into green isn’t like buying the usual high tech. Clean energy requires political advocacy to survive. The Achilles’ heel of clean energy is that it can’t compete with fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—on a cost basis. That means he needs the government on board to jack up energy prices before people will fall for the new stuff like wind and solar.
A case could even be made that as an original investor in Google, and current board member, Doerr is behind the green energy initiatives Google is supporting—$350 million worth! It used to be that board members represented the interests of shareholders. How old-school. Doerr’s firm and Google have invested in the same renewable energy start-up company: AltaRock. This looks like a conflict of interest and also a possible violation of Google’s code-of-conduct policy. The National Center for Public Policy Research, the nonprofit that I work for, filed a shareholder proposal in 2011 to investigate this matter further.
Doerr’s company dumped $200 million into what they’re calling “greentech”—the term refers to all things green. The thing with greentech is, it does not have inherited demand. Doerr needs to milk political capital before the green bubble bursts. So he’s working with corporations and politicians he is supporting (reportedly he’s donated $31 million to back candidates he deems useful).32 Obama and Doerr are working with each other for their respective agendas.
Exelon—Obama’s energy company of choice—is another example of strange green and corporate bedfellows. Former Obama advisor David Axelrod was a consultant for Exelon. Newly elected mayor of Chicago and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel’s biggest deal while working at the investment firm Wasserstein Perella was the merger that created Exelon. In two years at the firm, Emanuel made $16.2 million. Guess what happened shortly after the two companies became one? Well, they sold off most of the coal operations they held,33 perhaps tipping its hand that the company was going to attack coal-fired power.
Not surprisingly, Exelon’s executives were big donors for Obama’s political career.
Like GE, Exelon bet big on cap-and-trade, trying to leverage its connections with the Obama administration. The company’s large nuclear power generation would have given the company a huge cost advantage over coal-burning utilities since nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide emissions. Exelon claimed that under one scenario of cap-and-trade the company could boost its revenue by $1.1 billion a year.
How important was cap-and-trade to Exelon?
According to stock analyst Angie Storozynski at Macquarie Capital Inc., “If carbon does not pass, it’s not going to be pretty (for Exelon). . . . Unless you have some indication of carbon caps being imminent, the stock is not going to perform well.”34
With dollars dancing in his head, Exelon CEO John Rowe pushed hard for cap-and-trade. It was reported that Emanuel asked Rowe to lobby for the bill the night before the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade vote. An Exelon lobbyist boasted, “We are proud to be the President’s utility.”35
The EPA’s reach and crackdown extends to oil drilling: Shell had planned to drill for oil off the coast of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean, but the EPA has forced the oil giant to put the brakes on by not granting air rights permits.36 The plan to proceed has been in place for years, and the company has invested $4 billion in planning already. At stake: 27 billion barrels of oil and an ability to keep production in this country and not drive it overseas. We’re seeing a decline in production to the tune of 7 percent per year in Alaska. An additional problem is that a group of companies are paying for the cost of an existing pipeline. If you don’t have enough material to pump through the pipeline, it really doesn’t pay for these companies to fund and maintain the pipeline. This pipeline is a pipeline to energy independence for the country.37
The Congressional Research Service is a branch of the Library of Congress. It issued a report in November 201038 that stated that the United States has more fossil fuel resources than any other country in the world. In other words, if we were to start developing our own, we could create jobs and potentially we could even become a net exporter. According to the study, there are an estimated 135 billion barrels of oil that is so far undiscovered but recoverable. In addition, our natural resources include an estimated 2,047 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves.
But the government is stopping everyone from letting that happen. It owns huge parts of land it doesn’t want to develop for exploration or drilling. Further, it’s tragic if you’re a businessperson. You can’t spend money investing in drilling and then have the government, on a whim, pull the permit or instill a policy that will kill your business plan.
There is no doubt how important low energy prices are to industry. That’s what is so maddening about Obama’s anti–fossil fuel agenda and the CEOs who joined the cap-and-trade bandwagon. The following interview raises serious issues—Why would a CEO who complained about the impact of high energy prices on his company turn around and then lobby for legislation that would bring about skyrocketing energy costs??
The CEO of Dow Chemical, Andrew Liveris, was quoted on NPR in 2008 about why he had to move his operations overseas. The main reason: affordable energy. He was asked if it was the labor that was cheaper.
No, no labor, energy. Interesting enough, countries that do have an energy policy, countries like the Middle East, countries like China, countries like Russia, it’s always fascinating when I give that list, you know, these are not necessarily democracies. But these are countries that are worked out that their natural resources need to be value added in their country to create meaningful high-paying jobs. That used to be the United States, but unfortunately, we’ve decided to restrict supply our own natural resources of this country, and of course, to increase demand with inefficiency. So, we’re inefficient, we weren’t in a supply ourselves, so we’re at the whim of a global market price.
He was clear it’s because they use their natural resources and the United States doesn’t. Dow is building plants in Saudi Arabia and so is Alcoa.
The government’s energy policy is very discouraging for companies, because it creates an uncertain environment, making companies ask, “Why make that bet when we can’t predict what the clowns in Washington will do with energy policy?”
Why would you build in the USA when you know the Obama agenda is to make energy prices more expensive? So Dow CEO Liveris just gave up on the United States, and since he is not a citizen it does not matter to him where his company builds plants.
There is little doubt of what happens to a company when it adopts progressive business strategies. Look what happened to British Petroleum. That company caved to pressure from the left to go green years ago. The mess in the Gulf with the BP spill reminds me of another problem with our energy policies. BP is a great example of a corporation being pushed by the left to progressive policies, then being ravaged after those policies explode.
BP tried to separate itself from the other oil companies when its former head John Browne joined the global warming bandwagon and adopted the beyond-petroleum PR campaign—remember those “What’s your carbon footprint?” ads? BP went left to avoid the pressure that other oil companies were getting.
Of course, when BP was in crisis, the left blamed capitalism, but of course, it should really have looked at the impact progressive policy has had on the way corporations are run. Instead of explaining the value of cheap fossil fuels to the economy BP was duped into apologizing for selling a product that was its core business.
What would have been a better use of BP’s time and money: environmental and safety compliance on its rigs or a fluffy ad campaign that caved to the pressures of global warming politics? I think, based on history in the Gulf, the answer is clear.39 At first BP was the darling of the media for advertising against its product. Soon after, however, the company had a series of environmental and safety disasters. Prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the company was responsible for an explosion at a refining facility in Texas City, Texas, and BP also had oil pipeline leaks in Alaska. Those earlier instances should have been a red flag to regulators that the company was an outlier in the industry. Post explosion, the company became the poster child for corporate demonization, when really some mainstream outlet should have raised the point about wasted public relations money used to appease the left.
Guess who paid for BP’s early appeasement? The other oil giants. At one point ExxonMobil was the most aggressive oil company to defend itself against the attacks from the left and what did they get in return? The company became a lightning rod for progressive activism and it buckled under the strain. Once BP jumped to the left, the rest of the companies were eventually neutered.
If I were running Exxon I’d promote the findings of a recent Congressional Research Service study that found our county is blessed with fossil fuel natural resources. The twenty-eight-page report states:
Using only proved reserve numbers for the United States and other nations shows that the United States remains among the top nations in proved reserves of all fossil fuels taken together.40
If we got off this renewable energy bandwagon and made use of recovering and using our own natural resources, we would stimulate the economy, pay down the debt, move us toward energy security, and achieve lower energy prices. We would keep manufacturing jobs here in the United States as well. It seems so obvious. Until then, we are trapped in the green place scenario.
President Obama said, “If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles per gallon . . . you might want to think about a trade-in.”
The irony in all this is that Obama’s own ride isn’t so green. Remember when all the auto execs flew to Washington on separate private jets to beg for a bailout, and then drove the second time because of the political heat? Well, the president isn’t zipping around in a Prius, though he claims he asked for a green car. The U.S. Secret Service said his limo is exempt from the directive that federal cars be subjected to the green standards laid out when Obama took office.
Still, he’s ramming electricity from renewable energy down our throats and now it seems he’s willing to drive up gas prices to force us into buying electric cars. He wants the government and U.S. companies to switch to electric cars too—again at the taxpayers’ expense, of course. He’s initiated the Clean Fleets Partnership, which will give companies assistance as a swap for lowering oil usage.
There is no question that energy policy will be a major driver in the next election. The GOP already knocked a bit of wind out of the president’s plan by gaining power in the 2010 midterms. Alternative energy is appealing because the American public doesn’t fully understand how intentionally the wool is being pulled over their eyes with regard to coal. But soaring utility and gas prices will shine a spotlight on energy, overseas drilling, and our need to be energy self-sufficient. Unpopularity and energy prices are a team in an election fight.
Either way, President Obama should end his war on fossil fuels. He should change course and demand that the EPA immediately stop his plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, ease other EPA regulations targeting coal-fired utilities, and ease drilling restrictions in the Gulf of Mexico. He needs to encourage industry to invest domestically and the only way to do that is to remove the uncertainty that exists around the exploration of our natural resources. Business, except for his pals in wind and alternative energy, can’t trust the policies, can’t create jobs, and can’t waste time and money. By now, Obama should realize his pledge to make energy prices “skyrocket” is really bad for the country. He should know his policies are simply supporting the rich who have a stake in the alternative game. But then again, given Obama’s anticolonial views he knows how bad his anti–fossil fuel agenda is and that’s his end game.
Perhaps Congress should step in and rein in his powers. One step in that direction is the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, meant to control the EPA’s heavy-handed attempt to use the Clean Air Act to stop carbon emissions. It’s drawn some bipartisan support in the Senate but needs more support to become law.
And if his power can’t be stopped from within, then energy companies should go on the offensive. Oil and utility companies are going to get blamed for high energy prices because of a shortage of supply. A true capitalist response would be for the companies to tell the public why there is a shortage: because of a combination of government regulation and an anti-drilling, -mining, and -exploration policy. Oil executives need to inform the public instead of letting the government and the left do the brainwashing. They are going to get blamed when prices go higher, so the best decision is to fight for what is right.
Your green is for their green: The bottom line is that you’re getting the short end of the stick on green energy and special interests are winning. Your hard-earned dollars are funding their portfolios and lavish lifestyles. You are being scared into thinking that green is good and told coal and drilling are bad. Don’t buy it. It’s at best coercive, at worst corrupt. Pure and simple, this energy push was and is crony capitalism. Sadly, if it were not for the greedy CEOs and politicians involved, turning their backs on the USA to profit from traditional energy sources, we might have a sound energy policy. As long as coal and oil prices soar, who cares what country corporations build their plants in and do business from? Not Immelt, or Doerr or Obama for that matter. Nope. They all worked both ends.
The tide is slowly turning against the green bubble. Even legendary investor Jim Chanos is shorting renewable energy. Immelt’s feeling the squeeze from his board and shareholders and the negative PR is beginning to make him change gears. Did they think this would work? Did they think they could pull the wool over the eyes of the likes of the Tea Party and activists watching? They’re all so arrogant and greedy that when cap-and-trade was in play, these guys had the gall to request not just the money that came with selling emission output, but also back credit for unused emissions!
This green thing is tarnished. Americans might have briefly fallen for this stuff, but the curtain has been pulled back on the real motivation. Even Kyoto is crumbling. It’s time to stop this nonsense and go long on America. It’s time to focus on keeping people in the coal and oil industries employed. Did you know that if we focus on what we have available to us in terms of energy needs, we could be energy independent, and not suffer through the pricing we have now at the pumps and enjoy cheaper utility prices? If we rely only on our resources and up our offshore drilling and oil and natural gas drilling and maximize our coal and shale options, we’d be in great shape. We have more fossil fuel natural resources than any other country. It’s time to wake up to the whitewashing that elites and Obama have done on us under the guise of saving the planet. Save our jobs. Save our economy. Save companies from going overseas for cheap energy.
Save America.