**Written by Doug Powers The “global warming will cause a chocolate shortage” scare tactic isn’t entirely new , but apparently spreading the rumor that a Whitman’s Sampler will cost as much as a Chevy Volt within a decade if developed countries don’t give trillions of dollars to the United Nations wasn’t causing sufficient truffle panic among the general public. Now, a slightly altered tactic: Do it Al Gore’s way or Valentine’s Day as we know it might cease to exist : A new mini-report from the environmental group Climate Nexus points out that climate change is poised to wreck Valentine’s Day, or at least change it significantly, by threatening chocolate production. That’s right. Global warming is very bad for chocolate. As reported by The Times, research from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture found last year that as temperatures rise, the principal growing regions for cocoa could shrink, especially in Ghana and Ivory Coast, the sources of half the world’s supply. Production could fall off dramatically by 2050, making cocoa less available and more expensive. Cupid’s lament . The story doesn’t say this, but if you notice your chocolates starting to melt, take them to the Himalayas — there’s still plenty of ice there. Isn’t chocolate high in calories and fat? If anything, global warming should be endorsed by the “Let’s Move” campaign and everybody should be encouraged to fire up their SUVs and gas powered leaf blowers to help win the battle against obesity. **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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Reminder: Global Warming Still Going to Cause Chocolate Shortage
A flack for Media Matters for America, the Soros-backed one-trick GOP-bashing pony, sent an e-mail peddling the group’s latest anti-Keystone XL “study” to the Senate Democrats’ communications director at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Mary Kerr. For some reason, Senate Republican EPW communications director Matt Dempsey with GOP Sen. James Inhofe’s office also ended up cc’ed on the e-mail. Ooops. Their mistake is our gained insight (or rather, confirmation of what we already assumed). Read on: From: Emilee Pierce [mailto:epierce@mediamatters.org] Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 09:11 PM To: Kerr, Mary (EPW); Dempsey, Matt (EPW) Subject: Heads up – MMFA study on media coverage of KXL out tomorrow Mary and Matt, I wanted to flag that MMFA will be putting out a major, quantitative report on media coverage of KXL tomorrow morning. The study will be similar to our EPA counting study (http://mediamatters.org/research/201106070010) — and will drill home the point the media bought right into Big Oil’s desired frame on KXL, focusing largely on the (inflated) number of jobs that could be created, without paying due attention to the many other important issues at stake. (Ranchers’ land, spills, climate change, etc.) We are hoping for a big media splash, but – more importantly – we’re hoping that allies will be able to leverage it to gain favorable coverage. I’ve pasted a very brief summary below – and will be sure to send along the final study as soon as it’s up. If you have any questions, please let me know. All the best, Emilee STUDY: The Press And The Pipeline A Media Matters analysis shows that as a whole, news coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline between August 1 and December 31 favored pipeline proponents. Although the project would create few long-term employment opportunities, the pipeline was primarily portrayed as a jobs issue. Pro-pipeline voices were quoted more frequently than those opposed, and dubious industry estimates of job creation were uncritically repeated 5 times more often than they were questioned. Meanwhile, concerns about the State Department’s review process and potential environmental consequences were often overlooked, particularly by television outlets. – ————————————– Emilee Pierce External Affairs Director for Climate and Environment Media Matters for America Matt Dempsey e-mails: “It’s not often that Senator Inhofe’s office receives emails of a heads up to promote the Media Matters agenda! So I will do my part and share with you tonight to help them get the ‘favorable coverage’ they want from their ‘allies’ on Capitol Hill.” We know at least one Democrat recycling the Media Matters talking points: Chicago Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), who tried arguing today that 20,000 jobs “is not that many.” Chicago Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) drew fire from Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) on Wednesday when she dismissed the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, suggesting the 20,000 jobs it could create were relatively insignificant in the scheme of the greater economy. “Twenty thousand jobs is really not that many jobs, and investing in green technologies will produce that and more,” she said on Chicago’s WLS Radio Don Wade and Roma Show on Wednesday morning. “But I’ll tell you what, you know it seems to me that the Republicans would rather have an issue than a pipeline.” Coats, a vocal proponent of the project, which would transport oil from Alberta, Canada, to America’s Gulf Coast, swiftly responded in a separate interview on the same show later on Wednesday morning, suggesting Schakowsky has spoken insensitively. “Tell that to the 20,000 people that woke up this morning and didn’t have a job to go to,” said Coats. “ ‘Well, these don’t really matter’ — I mean, this not only is jobs, this is less dependence on Middle East oil.” “And here we have, you know, the president talking about becoming energy independent, but he turns down the easiest way to do that,” the freshman senator continued.
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E-mail of the day: Media Matters coordinates with Capitol Hill “allies” on Keystone XL; Plus: 20,000 jobs “is not that many”
Obama’s Green Robber Barons by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2012 Had enough of fat cat Barack Obama, his jet-setting wife and his multi-millionaire Chicago consigliere/real-estate mogul Valerie Jarrett attacking the “rich”? Well, brace yourselves. You’ll be hearing much more from the White House about the “wealthy few” who aren’t paying their “fair share” as Obama’s re-election campaign doubles down on class-war demagoguery. As usual, there’s always a set of immunity charms for the privileged friends and family of the ruling class. When it comes to all the Green Robber Barons who’ve reaped an obscenely unfair share of billions of tax dollars from the Obama administration, the envy trumpeteers will be quieter than a nest of mute church mice. Obama’s State of the Union address defiantly pitched a new round of clean energy spending orgies to help the “middle class.” But how have the serial bankruptcies and near-bankruptcies of several federally subsidized solar companies — all under Obama’s watch — helped anyone but an upper-crust elite of eco-crats and their lobbyists and consultants? Bankrupt Solyndra, billionaire George Kaiser. In the wake of the half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus bust, company officials revealed plans to hand out hefty bonuses totaling $500,000. Months before the politically connected solar energy manufacturer went belly up, it was doling out bonus payments of between $40,000 and $60,000 to several executives. Last week, a local CBS News crew caught employees at the Silicon Valley headquarters trashing solar panel glass tubes worth an estimated $10 million. The now-abandoned Taj Mahal complex cost ordinary Americans more than $733 million. But billionaire Democratic donor and frequent White House guest George Kaiser, whose nonprofit foundation was Solyndra’s biggest investor, is still sitting pretty. He and the other private investors of Solyndra will recoup their losses ahead of taxpayers. And while they blast their GOP opponents, double-standard Democrats will remain AWOL on the glaring tax-avoidance strategies of the wealthy Kaiser Family Foundation. Bankrupt Beacon Power, fat Democratic coffers. This green energy storage plant filed for bankruptcy last fall after a $43 million injection of Obama Department of Energy loan guarantees. Federal election record filings show that CEO William Capp contributed to the 2008 Obama campaign, as well as several left-wing New England Democratic candidates. Beacon Power lobbyist Steve Wolfe was a former aide to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Beacon sought bankruptcy shelter two days after the White House responded to fiscal watchdogs’ demands for a review of the DOE’s shoddy loan monitoring programs. Bankrupt SpectraWatt, red-faced Goldman Sachs. A solar cell company based in New York, SpectraWatt went belly up last August despite a half-million-dollar federal stimulus boost and lucrative backing from politically connected Goldman Sachs — whose ties reach deep into the Obama Treasury Department, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, White House National Economic Council and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. itself. The eco-failure was dumped in a fire sale for less than $5 million. Teetering Nevada Geothermal, cheerleading Harry Reid. Despite $150 million in federal DOE and Treasury Department subsidies — not to mention personal lobbying by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — this alternative energy project is on the brink of failure. A Deloitte and Touche audit grimly concludes that the company “has incurred net losses over the past several years, has an accumulated deficit of $44.0 million and an anticipated inability to retire its long-term liabilities.” According to CBS News, the company’s latest SEC filings warn of multiple defaults. My scouring of White House visitor logs shows nine visits from another Green Robber Baron, Illinois-based Exelon’s CEO John Rowe, who met with the president and former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel multiple times. As Forbes magazine reported: The clean energy company “has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M. Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for president and is one of Obama’s largest fundraisers. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a consultant to Exelon. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, helped create Exelon” — where he raked in more than $16 million over two years. Remember: “Fairness” is in the eye of the wealth redistributors.
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Obama’s Green Robber Barons
**Written by Doug Powers Maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds. Technically a “call back” is a notch below a recall, and it only affects 8,000 vehicles — which is a mere, um, 100% of all Volts sold in 2011. Lucky sales didn’t catch fire or the fixes would have been a more massive undertaking : General Motors plans to ask Volt owners to bring their electric cars into dealers to strengthen the structure around the batteries. The automaker said Thursday it plans enhancements to the vehicle’s structure and battery coolant system to further protect the battery from the possibility of an electrical fire occurring days or weeks after a severe crash. The enhancements come in response to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Preliminary Evaluation to examine post-severe crash battery performance. Has there ever been a year where an automobile has been named Motor Trend’s Car of the Year and also a Flop of the Year ? They should have called it the Paradox . You certainly can’t argue with the value though — it isn’t often you can buy a $250,000 car for just $41,000. In other Volt news, in spite of there being only 8,000 Volts sold in 2011 (1,529 in December alone, meaning either sales picked up or Al Gore used them as Christmas stocking stuffers), Michigan Rep. John Dingell thinks they’re flying off the lots : Following Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s claim that the Chevrolet Volt is an “idea whose time has not come,” Dingell apparently issued a press release that said, in part: Romney is the only fellow in the United States who appears to think that the Volt is an idea whose time has not come. Clearly it has not come to him. The Volt is selling like hotcakes . For a car being called back to repair a possible fire hazard, “hot cakes” probably isn’t the best choice of metaphor, and it certainly isn’t the most accurate one. **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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GM to Call Back Chevy Volts
**Written by Doug Powers A measure attached to a one-year spending bill passed early in December prevents the Department of Energy from enforcing light bulb efficiency standards through September 2012. The standards themselves, however, will still be phased in . Until the funding kicks in that will allow the Department of Energy to police our artificial illumination methods to ensure we’re all doing our part, enforcement of those standards will be on the honor system : New light bulb efficiency standards will begin phasing in on Jan. 1 despite intense opposition from conservatives, who have blasted the rules as a textbook unnecessary federal regulation. While Republicans secured inclusion of a measure blocking funding for enforcement of the standards in a year-end spending bill, energy efficiency groups say the provision will have little practical impact. The Energy Department rules will nonetheless go into effect at the start of 2012. “The [spending bill] cut funding for enforcement, however the law is still in effect,” said Jack Gillis, spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America. “It is our expectation that companies will still comply with the law.” At some point I predict the DoE will join forces with the DHS so J-Nap can get Wal-Mart to run “if you see incandescent bulbs, say something” videos at all checkout lanes. **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
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New Light Bulb Standards Enforced Via Honor System… for Now
Photoshop source: Courage in America The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2011 With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama’s snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal. Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May — while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill — that “one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals .” Conveniently, he defines scandal as a “widespread elite perception of wrongdoing.” So as long as left-wing Ivy League scribes refuse to perceive something to be a scandal — never mind the actual suffering endured by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry , whose death came at the hands of a Mexican cartel thug wielding a Fast and Furious gun walked across the southern border under Attorney General Eric Holder’s watch — there is no scandal! Self-serving much? Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum likewise proclaimed: “Obama’s presidency has so far been almost completely free of scandal .” This after the year kicked off in January with the departure of lying eco-radical czar Carol Browner . In backroom negotiations, she infamously bullied auto execs to “put nothing in writing, ever.” The previous fall, the White House’s own oil spill panel had singled out Browner for misleading the public about the scientific evidence for the administration’s Draconian drilling moratorium and “contributing to the perception that the government’s findings were more exact than they actually were.” The Interior Department inspector general and federal judges likewise blasted drilling ban book-cooking by Browner and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who falsely rewrote the White House drilling ban report to doctor the Obama-appointed panel’s own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict. In February, federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana excoriated the Obama Interior Department for defying his May 2010 order to lift its fraudulent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. He called out the administration’s culture of contempt and “determined disregard” for the law. This spring saw rising public anger over the preferential Obamacare waiver process (which I first reported on in September 2010 ). Some 2,000 lucky golden ticket winners were freed from the costly federal mandates — including a handful of fancy restaurants in Aloha Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district , the entire state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada , and scores of local, state and national Big Labor organizations, from the Service Employees International Union and Teamsters on down. Meanwhile, as The Hill newspaper reported last month, other not-so-lucky Republican-led states seeking waivers, such as Indiana and Louisiana , were rejected. But it wasn’t just Republicans objecting to the president’s arbitrary Obamacare fiats. In July, congressional Democrats turned on the monstrous federal health bureaucracy known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board . The constitutionally suspect panel — freed from normal public notice, public comment and public review rules — would have unprecedented authority over health care spending and an expanding jurisdiction of private health care payment rates. Obama’s health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius , faced separate legal questions over her overseer role in a hair-raising document-shredding case when she served as governor of Kansas. In October, a district judge in the Sunflower State suspended court proceedings in a high-profile criminal case against the abortion racketeers of Planned Parenthood . Bombshell court filings showed that Kansas health officials “ shredded documents related to felony charges the abortion giant faces ” and failed to disclose it for six years. That same month, Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Alter gushed: “There is zero evidence … of corruption. Where is it?” Alter’s declaration of the “Obama Miracle” came just weeks after the politically driven half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus “investment” went bankrupt , prompting an FBI raid and ongoing criminal and congressional probes of the solar company funded by top White House bundler and visitor George Kaiser . As Solyndra and an avalanche of other ongoing green subsidy scams erupted, so did the LightSquared debacle — a federal broadband boondoggle involving billionaire hedge fund managers and Obama donors Philip Falcone and George Soros . In September, two high-ranking witnesses — William Shelton, the four-star general who heads the Air Force Space Command, and National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Director Anthony Russo — exposed how the White House had pressured them to alter their congressional testimony and play down concerns about LightSquared’s interference threat to military communications. The White House continues to block efforts to gain information about the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of a special waiver for the company, even as new government tests this month showed that the company’s “ signals caused harmful interference to the majority of … general purpose GPS receivers .” The Obama White House closed out the year with Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri demanding a probe of the smelly $443 million no-bid smallpox antiviral pill contract with Siga Technologies — controlled by big lefty donor Ron Perelman. Then there was the small matter of massive voter fraud in Indiana , where a Democratic official resigned amid allegations that “dozens, if not hundreds,” of signatures were faked to get Obama on the state primary ballot in 2008. And while Americans busied themselves with the holidays, White House and Democratic campaign officials were dumping more than $70,000 in contributions from another deep-pocketed contributor — scandal-plagued pal and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who oversaw the collapse of MF Global . All this — and so much more — yet erstwhile “conservative” journalist Andrew Sullivan of Newsweek/The Daily Beast scoffed, “Where are all the scandals promised by Michelle Malkin?” There’s none so blind as those who will not see.
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The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers
Photoshop source: Courage in America The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2011 With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama’s snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal. Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May — while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill — that “one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals .” Conveniently, he defines scandal as a “widespread elite perception of wrongdoing.” So as long as left-wing Ivy League scribes refuse to perceive something to be a scandal — never mind the actual suffering endured by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry , whose death came at the hands of a Mexican cartel thug wielding a Fast and Furious gun walked across the southern border under Attorney General Eric Holder’s watch — there is no scandal! Self-serving much? Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum likewise proclaimed: “Obama’s presidency has so far been almost completely free of scandal .” This after the year kicked off in January with the departure of lying eco-radical czar Carol Browner . In backroom negotiations, she infamously bullied auto execs to “put nothing in writing, ever.” The previous fall, the White House’s own oil spill panel had singled out Browner for misleading the public about the scientific evidence for the administration’s Draconian drilling moratorium and “contributing to the perception that the government’s findings were more exact than they actually were.” The Interior Department inspector general and federal judges likewise blasted drilling ban book-cooking by Browner and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who falsely rewrote the White House drilling ban report to doctor the Obama-appointed panel’s own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict. In February, federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana excoriated the Obama Interior Department for defying his May 2010 order to lift its fraudulent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. He called out the administration’s culture of contempt and “determined disregard” for the law. This spring saw rising public anger over the preferential Obamacare waiver process (which I first reported on in September 2010 ). Some 2,000 lucky golden ticket winners were freed from the costly federal mandates — including a handful of fancy restaurants in Aloha Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district , the entire state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada , and scores of local, state and national Big Labor organizations, from the Service Employees International Union and Teamsters on down. Meanwhile, as The Hill newspaper reported last month, other not-so-lucky Republican-led states seeking waivers, such as Indiana and Louisiana , were rejected. But it wasn’t just Republicans objecting to the president’s arbitrary Obamacare fiats. In July, congressional Democrats turned on the monstrous federal health bureaucracy known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board . The constitutionally suspect panel — freed from normal public notice, public comment and public review rules — would have unprecedented authority over health care spending and an expanding jurisdiction of private health care payment rates. Obama’s health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius , faced separate legal questions over her overseer role in a hair-raising document-shredding case when she served as governor of Kansas. In October, a district judge in the Sunflower State suspended court proceedings in a high-profile criminal case against the abortion racketeers of Planned Parenthood . Bombshell court filings showed that Kansas health officials “ shredded documents related to felony charges the abortion giant faces ” and failed to disclose it for six years. That same month, Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Alter gushed: “There is zero evidence … of corruption. Where is it?” Alter’s declaration of the “Obama Miracle” came just weeks after the politically driven half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus “investment” went bankrupt , prompting an FBI raid and ongoing criminal and congressional probes of the solar company funded by top White House bundler and visitor George Kaiser . As Solyndra and an avalanche of other ongoing green subsidy scams erupted, so did the LightSquared debacle — a federal broadband boondoggle involving billionaire hedge fund managers and Obama donors Philip Falcone and George Soros . In September, two high-ranking witnesses — William Shelton, the four-star general who heads the Air Force Space Command, and National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Director Anthony Russo — exposed how the White House had pressured them to alter their congressional testimony and play down concerns about LightSquared’s interference threat to military communications. The White House continues to block efforts to gain information about the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of a special waiver for the company, even as new government tests this month showed that the company’s “ signals caused harmful interference to the majority of … general purpose GPS receivers .” The Obama White House closed out the year with Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri demanding a probe of the smelly $443 million no-bid smallpox antiviral pill contract with Siga Technologies — controlled by big lefty donor Ron Perelman. Then there was the small matter of massive voter fraud in Indiana , where a Democratic official resigned amid allegations that “dozens, if not hundreds,” of signatures were faked to get Obama on the state primary ballot in 2008. And while Americans busied themselves with the holidays, White House and Democratic campaign officials were dumping more than $70,000 in contributions from another deep-pocketed contributor — scandal-plagued pal and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who oversaw the collapse of MF Global . All this — and so much more — yet erstwhile “conservative” journalist Andrew Sullivan of Newsweek/The Daily Beast scoffed, “Where are all the scandals promised by Michelle Malkin?” There’s none so blind as those who will not see.
Here is the original post:
The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers
I’ve written before about Cozy Nancy Pelosi and her financial stake in the eco-adventures of billionaire T. Boone Pickens. See August 2008 – Nan and the Big Wind Boone-doggle. Refresher: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called congressional Republicans who want up-or-down drilling votes “hand maidens of the oil companies.” Let’s call Pelosi what she is: House girl of the Big Wind boondogglers. Though she seemingly backtracked on labeling drilling a “hoax” this week, Pelosi refuses to consider GOP energy proposals that don’t include massive government subsidies for eco-fantastical alternatives that have never panned out. Which brings us to Madame Speaker’s 2007 financial disclosure form. Schedule III lists “assets and ‘unearned income’” of between $100,001-$250,000 from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. – Public Common Stock.” Clean Energy Fuels Corp. is a natural gas provider founded by T. Boone Pickens. Yep, that T. Boone Pickens– former oilman-turned-wind power evangelist whose ads touting a national wind campaign are now as ubiquitous as Viagra promos. Pickens and Pelosi now share the same talking points downplaying the need to drill and open up more access to American oil. Instead, the Pickens pie-in-the-sky plan campaign proposes to completely replace natural gas with wind power in power generation and theoretically free up natural gas for America’s transportation needs. All well and good in la-la land. But let’s be real about the limitations and costs of wind power. Past and ongoing experience has demonstrated the notorious unreliability of wind and the miserably low operating capacity of wind power facilities here and around the world . Depending on wind requires supplemental fossil fuel plants as back up to be turned on and off to compensate for wind power supply shortfalls– nullifying any reductions in carbon dioxide emissions (which are miniscule, according to the National Academy of Sciences). Not to mention the thousands of sliced-up birds and other wildlife that have become wind power casualties (a problem that scientists say would be solved by “repowering” old turbines at a cost of untold billions). Fittingly, the environmental mascot of the Democrat National Convention– the showcase of their alternative energy approach — is an eastern Colorado wind turbine propped up with Democrat carbon credit funds that has never produced any energy because of chronic equipment malfunctions. But I digress. Naturally, the Pickens Big Wind plan is proudly endorsed by Do-Nothing Pelosi’s friends at the obstructionist Sierra Club. Through another company, Mesa Power, Pickens has committed upwards of $12 billion in wind farms on the Texas panhandle. CEFC and Mesa Power are separate entities. But what benefits one piece of the Pickens puzzle benefits them all. The wind venture, as Pickens himself acknowledges, depends on permanent federal subsidies. Pickens is banking on ‘em. And Pelosi’s banking on him. As reported on #dontgomovement.com , Speaker Pelosi bought between $50,000 and $100,000 of stock in Pickens’ CLNE Corp. in May 2007 on the day of the initial public offering: “She, and other investors, stand to gain a substantial return on their investment if gasoline prices stay high and municipal, state and even the Federal governments start using natural gas as their primary fuel source. If gasoline prices fall? Alternative fuels and the cost to convert fleets over to them becomes less and less attractive.” CLNE also happens to be the sponsor of Proposition 10 , a ballot initiative in Pelosi’s home state of California to dole out a combined $10 billion in state and federal funds for renewable energy incentives. Namely: Natural gas and wind. Follow the money. Or, to put it in economist terms as energy analyst Kenneth Medlock III did in an interview with the Dallas Morning News about the Pickens multi-billion wind farm investment: “A lot of what he’s trying to do is add value to a stranded asset…he’s obviously got millions of dollars on the line.” And so, potentially, does the Democrat Speaker of the House windily wagging her finger at the financial motivations of others. Fast forward. Today, Daniel Indiviglio at Reuters reports that a Pickens-backed bill is quietly making its way through Capitol Hill in the Christmas chaos. Amid the flurry of legislation Congress is rushing to complete by year’s end is the New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act of 2011, or NATGAS Act. The proposal would, among other things, provide subsidies for driving vehicles powered by natural gas. It’s a Pelosi legislative priority, but precious few are raising eyebrows about San Fran Nan’s conflict. Where are the Big Biz/Big Government watchdogs when we need them? Bueller? Bueller?
Originally posted here:
Pelosi and Pickens sittin’ in a tree…
