Tag Archives: Al Gore

How big business and enviro-charlatans benefit from Obama’s cap-and-trade energy tax

Recently, I posted about the economic effects of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, including how it would impact individual families. I wrote about the true effects of Obama’s green jobs initiative, which will actually decrease employment instead of increasing it.

I also posted before about scientific dissent from global warming, the alleged melting polar ice caps, Obama’s planned tax hikes on oil and gas, deceptive alarmism to procure research funding, the alleged warming of the oceans, and the use of made-up crises in order to impose socialism. You can also read the testimony of a Princeton University physicist who is against global warming alarmism.

Who will pay for cap-and-trade?

ECM e-mailed me this story from PowerLine Blog, which explains how much each state will pay if cap and trade passes. John Hinderacker asks whether Obama things that the electorate is stupid enough to believe that the firms who must absorb this tax will just take it out of their profits and leave consumers untouched. He argues that Obama thinks we are stupid enough to believe that.

One commenter to the post writes:

No, he like many liberals actually believe corporations don’t pass on the tax to consumers but it is extracted from profits (lowering them). Remember, they have a very static, zero-sum view of the world.

This is also my view of Obama. He has been indoctrinated with socialist views and he has no freaking idea why they don’t work. He will be as shocked and surprised as any child is when they first learn that the Tooth Fairy is a myth. But that won’t stop him from nationalizing companies once he sees the mess that his interventions have made. Probably his handlers have this all planned out for him.

And where will that money be redistributed to?

But today I wanted to tell you about the people and corporations that are actively pushing for cap-and-trade, because if it passes they will suddenly become very, very rich.

The full story is posted at Steve Milloy’s Green Hell blog.

Big business meddling in government

Excerpt:

Although many businesses have been coerced into supporting Waxman-Markey, much of big business has actively pushed for the bill. Many Wall Street banks hope to profit from the trading of the $9 trillion in emissions allowances to be created under Waxman-Markey. Goldman Sachs would be the preeminent global warming bookie as it owns the exchanges where carbon allowances would be traded.

General Electric, whose CEO sits on Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, was instrumental in putting together the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a bizarre big business-environmental activist group lobbying consortium that is a primary driver of global warming legislation. USCAP has even taken credit for drafting parts of Waxman-Markey. GE, it seems, would like a federal law requiring electric utilities buy the wind turbines and other energy technologies manufactured by — guess who — GE.

Republican James Sensenbrenner recently asked the Department of Justice to investigate USCAP members General Motors and Chrysler for illegally using taxpayer bailout money to lobby for global warming legislation. AIG, the insurance giant that is now a ward of U.S. taxpayers, only dropped out of USCAP after Rep. Joe Barton pointed out the illegality of accepting federal money and then using it to lobby the federal government.

Enviro-charlatan greed

Excerpt:

And then there’s Al Gore, who stands to become the first “carbon billionaire” through his partnership in the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and the UK-based investment firm of Generation Investment Management. When Gore testified in favor of global warming legislation before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, he failed to disclose his personal financial interests and no Senator came close to asking him about them.

When he testified in April before the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee in favor of Waxman-Markey, Gore again failed to disclose his conflicts-of-interest. When Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Steve Scalise (R-LA) probed into these matters, Gore feigned ignorance and pretended that he would not personally benefit from Waxman-Markey. Although Rep. Waxman made baseball players testify under oath to Congress about the comparatively petty issue of drug use in baseball, he did not subject Gore to penalty for perjury.

And more fascism, too

Competing for most-appalling character in the Waxman-Markey saga is Rep. Ed Markey. Immediately after the head of Warren Buffet’s electric utility unit testified against Waxman-Markey’s cap-and-trade provision, Markey fired off a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) specifically requesting that Buffet’s utility be investigated. After being rebuked by House Republicans for this blatant intimidation, Markey then asked FERC to expand the requested investigation to all investor-owned utilities, rather than appearing to single out Buffet’s. Now all utilities are under operating with a Markey-pointed gun to their heads.

They told lies about Bush’s “abuses of power” all through his presidency. Now that they are in control, and every new day brings to light more greed, bullying, corruption and fraud than we saw in Bush’s entire eight years in office. And that’s not even to mention that the average unemployment rate under Bush was about half of what it is today under Obama.

Kevin Boland reports on John Boehner’s blog that the bill is up for a floor vote in the House this week.

Will Al Gore make billions if cap and trade passes?

I spotted this story over on Steve Milloy’s Green Hell blog.

He writes:

Al Gore’s venture capital firm has invested $6 million in a software company that stands to make billions of dollars from cap-and-trade regulation — further fueling controversy that Gore lied about his profiteering from cap-and-trade to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee during testimony in April.

Hara Software sells software to help track greenhouse gas emissions. The market for such software is now about $2.5 billion dollars in size, and is expected to grow by a factor of ten to $25 billion if cap-and-trade legislation is enacted, according to Hara CEO Amit Chatterjee.

…Gore is also under fire for lying to Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) at the same congressional hearing about his relationship with Goldman Sachs.

My post featuring the video of Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn grilling Al Gore on his investments is here.

Is Al Gore getting rich from faith-based global warming alarmism?

Representative Marsha Blackburn
Representative Marsha Blackburn

You may remember I blogged before about how Marsha Blackburn asked Al Gore about whether he was profiting from his global warming alarmism? That was a very interesting video clip. And Green Hell Blog has posted many interesting things about Gore’s answer to Blackburn in that video clip.

Excerpt: (H/T Gateway Pundit)

When Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn confronted Al Gore with his profiteering from global warming legislation at today’s House Energy and Environment Subcommittee hearing on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, Al Gore said that every penny he ever made from his business activities went into non-profit efforts.

That is a flat-out lie, according to this March 6, 2008 Bloomberg report that indicates that Al Gore invested $35 million of his own money in various for-profit endeavors.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore left the White House seven years ago with less than $2 million in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now he’s making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.

Gore invested the money with Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, California, firm that selects the private funds for clients and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products, according to a Feb. 1 securities filing. Capricorn was founded by billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, former president of EBay Inc. and an executive producer of Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary film on global warming.Kudos to Rep. Blackburn for asking one of the “10 Questions for Al Gore” and exposing Gore as the fundamentally dishonest operator that he is.

Pro Patria analyzed of Al Gore’s rising net worth here.

Excerpt: (H/T Gateway Pundit)

So what has Al Gore gained from his Big Green escapades?

According to public disclosure information, Gore was worth somewhere between $1 million and $2 million in 2000. Not quite eight years later, Gore is estimated to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million. While I ordinarily would applaud such financial gains from such a short period of time, I can’t help but to question just how it happened. When you look out at what Al Gore has done, it’s evident that he figured out on a way to capitalize on the creation of Big Green while becoming the official doomsday prophet that has helped to build Big Green into the monetary powerhouse that it has become.

In any other industry this would be considered a severe conflict of interest. In essence, Al Gore has helped to create a fictitious catastrophe, then told everybody what the solutions have to be, and then put himself in a position to capitalize on the hype. It’s not only seriously dishonest, but many people and industries are going to suffer in the wake of this hype while Gore and Big Green bring in millions (and in some cases, billions) of dollars in green money.

Follow the money! Somehow I doubt that he is giving away the vast majority of it, like Dick Cheney did.