{"id":1768,"date":"2015-11-14T19:25:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T02:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/?p=1768"},"modified":"2024-09-23T13:26:25","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T19:26:25","slug":"obama-lines-up-crony-capitalist-support-for-climate-pact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/obama-lines-up-crony-capitalist-support-for-climate-pact\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Lines Up Crony Capitalist Support for Climate Pact"},"content":{"rendered":"

With many analysts predicting that the upcoming United Nations Climate Summit in Paris will fail to produce an ambitious, binding global agreement, President Obama is hoping to come to the rescue. He does not want a repeat of the 2009 UN confab in Copenhagen, where he was roundly dissed by his green supporters for \u201cfailing to seal the deal.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The president has loads of friends on Wall Street. As the grand sugar daddy handing out corporate welfare, Obama has taken the White House pay-to-play game to new stratospheric levels, as even many of his media allies and erstwhile supporters have critically noted.<\/p>\n

So the president is now calling all hands on deck. He\u2019s lining up the biggest corporate welfare drones on the planet for what could be the biggest bailouts and handouts in history. And they are answering the call: Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Motors, General Electric, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Google, Facebook, and dozens more of the biggest corporate names on the planet lined up with President Obama to \u201ctake the Pledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the White House press office proudly proclaimed<\/a> on October 19:\u00a0\u201cToday, the White House will announce new commitments from companies from across the American economy who are joining the American Business Act on Climate Pledge.”<\/p>\n

“With this announcement,” the press release further noted, “81 companies\u00a0will have signed the American Business Act on Climate Pledge to demonstrate their support for action on climate change and the conclusion of a climate change agreement in Paris that takes a strong step forward toward a low-carbon, sustainable future. These 81 companies\u00a0have operations in all 50 states,\u00a0employ over 9 million people, represent more than\u00a0$3 trillion in annual revenue, and have a\u00a0combined market capitalization of over $5 trillion.\u201d<\/p>\n

By signing the Pledge, says the White House, these companies are, among other things, \u201cVoicing support for a strong outcome in the Paris climate negotiations,\u201d and \u201cDemonstrating an ongoing commitment to climate action.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognize,\u201d says the business leaders\u2019 pledge, \u201cthat delaying action on climate change will be costly in economic and human terms, while accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy will produce multiple benefits with regard to sustainable economic growth, public health, resilience to natural disasters, and the health of the global environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many readers may be shocked (though they shouldn\u2019t be) to learn that among the signers of the pledge are the chief executives of\u00a010 of the largest oil and natural gas companies<\/a>: BP, Shell, Saudi Aramco, Total, Repsol, Statoil, Eni, Petroelos Mexicanos, Reliance Industries and BG Group.<\/p>\n

Although some may have signed on due to pressure from media, politicians, and militant non-governmental organizations (NGOs), most are probably salivating at the opportunities for cashing in on subsidies and carbon credits from various proposed CO2 cap and trade scams.<\/p>\n

Saving the planet? Or enslaving the planet \u2026 while profiting from it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs, the predatory Wall Street behemoth known as \u201cthe vampire squid,\u201d glowingly promotes \u201cthe Pledge\u201d on its website<\/a>,\u00a0saying it joined President Obama\u2019s effort \u201cunderscoring our long-standing commitment to harnessing innovative financial solutions and market mechanisms to help solve environmental challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, the PR piece continues, \u201cGoldman Sachs has had a long-standing commitment to harness markets and deploy capital to scale-up clean energy technologies and facilitate the transition to a low-carbon energy future. In 2012, we established a ten year goal to finance and invest $40 billion in clean energy globally.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, would the cut-throat financial giant have invested in these \u201cclean energy technologies\u201d if it weren\u2019t banking on more bailouts,\u00a0such as those arranged by former former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson,<\/a>\u00a0who was operating as secretary of the Treasury when the stuff hit the fan in the 2008 financial meltdown. Goldman Sachs, like many other insider banks, was saved by having an inside man in the Bush administration. The investment goliath increased its presence even more in the following administration, even though candidate Obama had sworn to put an end to the revolving door between Wall Street and the executive branch. However, as we subsequently reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs was one of Obama\u2019s largest contributors, shelling out more than one million dollars to the President\u2019s 2008 campaign. Though to Goldman Sachs this amount of money is a pittance, it bought a lot, including a slew of executive appointments to make sure federal money and rules work to Sachs\u2019 benefit.<\/p>\n

On January 21, 2009, Mark Patterson joined the Obama administration to serve as Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, where he now monitors the \u201cday-to-day management of Treasury Department staff and programs.\u201d Patterson, a registered lobbyist for Goldman Sachs until April 11, 2008 and Geithner\u2019s top aide, played a role in overseeing the $10 billion that Goldman harvested from the TARP bailouts.<\/p>\n

But the TARP bailout was just chump change compared to what was to follow. As The New American<\/em> reported<\/a>,\u00a0the 2011 partial audit of the Federal Reserve by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that Goldman Sachs had received $814 billion<\/em>in federal largesse. That was, remember, only a partial audit; the real sum by now could be (and undoubtedly is) far higher, as the Fed has not divulged where the trillions<\/em> of bogus dollars it has created out of thin air have actually gone. Goldman Sachs, like many of the corporate elite have proven over and over that for every dollar \u201cinvested\u201d in campaign contributions\/bribes they can reap $10, $100, $1000, or more \u2014 in tax breaks, contracts, grants, loans, appointments, etc.<\/p>\n

Eileen Rominger, another Goldman Sachs veteran, joined Team Obama as the director of investment management at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We noted at the time that she had \u201cworked as the global chief investment officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, where she reported $57.5 million in income between 2010 and 2011 and earnings of $2.3 million to $13.2 million in investment income. According to the SEC, Rominger\u2019s role in the administration is to \u2018protect investors and promote capital formation through oversight and regulation of the nation\u2019s multi-trillion dollar investment management industry.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

As The New American<\/em> reported: \u201cA catalog of other former Goldman Sachs employees (although some have since resigned) joined the Obama administration, including Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Rahm Emanuel, Robert D. Hormats, Diana Farrell, Gene Sperling, and Gary Gensler. These people are privy to the government\u2019s monetary and executive decisions prior to other investors, giving Goldman Sachs valuable information that is little, if any, short of \u2018insider trading.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs insider Hank Paulson has been helping lead the Wall Street climate alarmist charge, issuing the much-ballyhooedRisky Business<\/em> report (along with Michael Bloomberg and many of the current \u201cPledge\u201d corporatists whom we exposed last year \u2014 see here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Some observers may be inclined to see evidence of insider trading in Goldman Sachs\u2019 sizable investments in biofuels companies, shortly before Obama announced a fedgov \u201cinvestment\u201d of $510 million in that energy sector \u201cin partnership with the private sector to produce advanced drop-in aviation and marine biofuels to power military and commercial transportation.\u201d<\/p>\n

GE, Microsoft, Google, et al \u2013 same old cronyism<\/strong><\/p>\n

General Electric (GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt has been one of Obama\u2019s most visible corporate cronies, and one of his biggest contributors. Immelt and GE have been richly rewarded (see here<\/a>\u00a0and here<\/a>)\u00a0with huge tax breaks, bailouts, and subsidies. Investor\/economist David Stockman, who was President Reagan\u2019s budget director, named Immelt<\/a>\u00a0as \u201cthe nation\u2019s number one crony capitalist.\u201d However, Obama named Immelt as his \u201cJobs Czar,\u201d despite the fact that under his reign at GE the company had laid off tens of thousands of American workers and transferred those jobs to China, which has a system Immelt enthusiastically admires. In an interview on CBS with Charlie Rose, Immelt supported China\u2019s Communist Party program, stating<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cThe one thing that actually works … state run communism may not be your cup of tea, but their government works.\u201d Yes, the Chinese communist system of central planning and special privileges does indeed \u201cwork\u201d \u2014 if you are one of politically favored princelings or Party officials. Immelt and his fellow corporatists are helping transform America into something that more and more resembles China\u2019s communist-corporatist system.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s Bill Gates, as we recently reported<\/a>,\u00a0formally jumped onto the global warming\/sustainability band wagon with a splashy media campaign. Microsoft Corporation and Microsoft execs have been big donors to Obama\u2019s campaigns, and the Gates empire has been amply rewarded.<\/p>\n

Former Microsoft executive Steven VanRoekel, a major Obama donor, was appointed by Obama as chief information officer of the United States, where, among other duties, he manages $80 billion in annual information technology spending. Other important rewards include, as The New American<\/em> reported in 2010<\/a>,\u00a0the appointment of Dr. Rajiv Shah, who had headed up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation\u2019s global health policies, as head of USAID, the foreign aid program. In that position, Shah has turned the Gates Foundation\u2019s policies (including its pro-abortion policies) into official policy U.S., as the Global Health Initiative \u00a0(Global ObamaCare) \u2014 paid for by the U.S. taxpayers. Just another \u201cpublic-private partnership\u201d case where investing a few million in politics reaps billions in return.<\/p>\n

The same can be said for most of the other big-name \u201ccapitalists\u201d whom Obama showcased in much-publicized Business Pledge; collectively they have taken trillions from the American taxpayers and consumers in bailouts, subsidized loans, grants, and government contracts. They are the antithesis of the genuine entrepreneurs, the Mom-and-Pop businesses, medium-sized businesses, and honest corporations that employ millions of Americans and attempt to make a profit by providing goods and services in the competitive marketplace.<\/p>\n

Many of the bailout corporatist billionaires who signed President Obama\u2019s pledge will, no doubt, soon be swooping into Paris in their private jets<\/a>\u00a0to lecture the rest of humanity on the urgent need to drastically reduce our lifestyles and curtail our carbon footprints. And the following month, in January of 2016, the same green plutocrats will be off to Davos, Switzerland, for the annual grand soiree known as the World Economic Forum,<\/a>\u00a0the ultimate gathering of the planet\u2019s uber-rich and famous from the capitalist, socialist, and communist worlds. As usual for WEF celebrations, it will be the largest traffic jam of private Learjets and Gulfstreams. The co-chairs for this year\u2019s event, according to the WEF website,<\/a>\u00a0include: Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft; Tidjane Thiam, chief executive officer of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse; and\u00a0Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. All of these companies are prime examples of corporate welfarists on the bailout dole. One of the \u201cWEF Agenda\u201d issues that they will be addressing:\u00a0\u201cHow to scale public-private collaboration, new business models and technological innovations that drive climate action more rapidly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Translation: How to find and fund the politicians who will shovel trillions of taxpayer dollars into \u201cgreen\u201d public-private partnerships that will guarantee us a constant revenue stream \u2014 without risk and without having to actually earn it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With many analysts predicting that the upcoming United Nations Climate Summit in Paris will fail to produce an ambitious, binding global agreement, President Obama is hoping to come to the rescue. He does not want a repeat of the 2009 UN confab in Copenhagen, where he was roundly dissed by his green supporters for \u201cfailing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":1769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[170],"class_list":["post-1768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-volume-46","cat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1768"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15927,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions\/15927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gemstatepatriot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}