Helping Homeowners In Michigan
Archive for the ‘Cap and Trade’ Category
Michigan: The Sucker State
September 10th, 2010 | 
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Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised by this, but I take no satisfaction in saying ‘I told you so.’
Even Obama No Longer Pushing Green Jobs
The Washington Times reports today on a little-noticed aspect of the administration’s latest — and likely fruitless — effort at stimulus: It doesn’t include funding for green jobs.
The long delays typical with environmentally friendly projects — combined with reports of green stimulus funds being used to create jobs in China and other countries, rather than in the U.S. — appear to have killed the administration’s appetite for pushing green projects as an economic cure.
After months of hype about the potential for green energy to stimulate job growth and lead the economy out of a recession, the results turned out to be disappointing, if not dismal. About $92 billion — more than 11 percent — of Mr. Obama’s original $814 billion of stimulus funds were targeted for renewable energy projects when the measure was pushed through Congress in early 2009.
***
Only about $20 billion of the allotted funds have been spent — the slowest disbursement rate for any category of stimulus spending. Private analysts are skeptical of White House estimates that the green funding created 190,700 jobs.
The Department of Energy estimated that 82,000 jobs have been created and has acknowledged that as much as 80 percent of some green programs, including $2.3 billion of manufacturing tax credits, went to foreign firms that employed workers primarily in countries including China, South Korea and Spain, rather than in the United States.
Whip out your calculators: 82,000 into $20 billion means those green jobs cost about $243,902 each. Let’s hope they pay well. The high cost per job should come as no surprise; despite the hype from green groups and the administration, cleantech jobs generally require enormously expensive subsidies.
For example, back in January, the administration was touting the $2.3 billion in manufacturing tax credits as creating 17,000 jobs — or about $135,294 per job. Even that tally proved to be overly optimistic, given the fact that many of those jobs went to other countries.
Sad really. Michigan, the state that entered a recession long before the rest of the country because of its shortsighted proclivity to put all its financial eggs in one basket; the state whose economic well-being hinged on the success or failure of the automobile industry has repeated its mistake. Ironically, both industries owe their ultimate failure to the same thing: government.
The automobile industry had been on an unsustainable path of union submission for years, when government policies allowed them to inflate the costs of automobiles beyond what would be affordable to the average person’s wages. Easy credit to anyone who could fog a mirror allowed people to purchase cars well beyond their means for years. (Sound like the housing market? That’s because it is an identical situation.) The unions continued to ask for more and the auto companies found it easier to capitulate because of the stupidity of government policy. They relied on this unsound and untenable strategy until it ran them into the ground. Then what did they do? They turned to the government for a bailout of their unviable financial strategy, which bailout was handed out by the government for the ‘good of the unions,’ to all but one notable exception: Ford Motor Company who so far, has gone it alone in the private sector. Only time will tell if they are able to work their way out of the situation they got themselves into.
As the automobile industry sat up with their collective hands out, Michigan government was busy trying to jump onto the next stupid federal policy: green jobs. The State of Michigan itself, hoping to grasp onto more government cheese, decided to play ball with the new administration’s push of green energy for furtherance of its Cap & Trade policies. Since that time, we’ve watched as the fraud of that scheme has been exposed from everyone to Al Gore and his Chicago Climate Exchange to the outing of the falsifying of data on the original science of ‘global warming,’ which fanaticism started the prospect of the new Ponzi scheme.
Despite watching this unfold, Michigan continued to pour money (much of which it didn’t even have in the first place) into investing in green energy jobs. The cost of such jobs being, as cited above, somewhere around $200,000 each. That is not to say they PAY that much, but that’s how much the State of Michigan spent to obtain each one. Over the past two years Michigan has almost exclusively invested its entire future into this federal government-invented scam.
Yes Michigan, you are a sucker. There is no such thing as a free lunch and continuing to pursue it is nothing less than pure folly. True wealth lies in production of goods and services that people can purchase at a price sustainable with the wages from own production and hard work – not from that which is artificially maintained with unsustainable government policies. The entire country is about to get a lesson in what true production means, too bad Michigan had to be the first in line to step up and take the bait.
Posted in Al Gore, Automobile Industry, bailouts, Cap and Trade, Economic Crisis, Economy, Government, Green Initiative, Green Jobs, MI, Michigan, Money | 
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Good news: Layoffs! (No, Really!)
This probably qualifies as the best news I’ve heard in over a year. I give it two
New job losses would not ordinarily qualify as good news, but Reuters reports that a lack of Senate action on cap-and-trade legislation is forcing the Chicago Climate Exchange to lay off about half of its remaining “really talented” 50-employee staff.
The first round of layoffs by owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc., which acquired CCX in April for $604 million, began July 23 when about 20 people were let go. Employees were reportedly told that the American marketplace for carbon credits was being “restructured.”
The only surprise is that Richard Sandor, who founded CCX in 2003 and was dubbed a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” in 2007, is being retained as an advisor. “Voluntary” trading of greenhouse gas emissions on CCX has all but dried up and prices have plunged from a high of over $7 per ton in 2008 to just 10 cents now, making recent stock market losses look rosy by comparison. Not exactly what Sandor, who once predicted a $10 trillion worldwide carbon market, expected would happen.
The biggest losers have been CCX’s two biggest investors — Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs — and President Obama, who helped launch CCX with funding from the Joyce Foundation, where he and presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett once sat on the board of directors.
More good news: As I reported in April, Fannie Mae owns a patent to operate a residential cap-and-trade program on CCX. Barring last minute, lame duck passage of President Obama’s energy bill, the mortgage giant will not be profiting from your higher energy bills.
Posted in Al Gore, Cap and Trade, Chicago Climate Exchange, Corruption, Economy, Financial System, Fraud |
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Waxman: I’ll use a conference committee to get cap-and-trade
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) just handed the Senate Republicans a great excuse to filibuster any energy bills Harry Reid wants to advance in 2010. Waxman tells The Hill that any energy bill from the Senate, regardless of whether it has a cap-and-trade component for any industry in it, will allow him to attach his version of cap-and-trade in conference committee:
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said he would “absolutely” seek to keep greenhouse gas limits alive in a House-Senate conference if the Senate approves energy legislation this summer that omits carbon provisions.
“It would be open in conference to consider because our bill has it,” Waxman told The Hill Wednesday.
Waxman authored a sweeping climate and energy bill that the House narrowly approved last year that merges an “economy-wide” cap-and-trade system with other provisions to boost alternative energy and energy efficiency.
Greenhouse gas caps face large hurdles in the Senate, and may be left on the cutting-room floor when the Senate debates an energy package that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants to bring up next month.
Well, Waxman may certainly try to get the House version of cap-and-trade inserted in the conference report, but that won’t help move it in the Senate. A conference report is subject to a cloture vote, just as the Senate version authored by John Kerry and Barbara Boxer is. If Kerry and Boxer can’t move their somewhat less egregious version now, a conference report with Waxman’s version would be dead on arrival in the Senate. Democrats like Russ Feingold have already objected to the strange allocation of carbon credits that favor California and Massachusetts, not coincidentally the two states represented by the authors of both versions of the bill.
However, that may be Waxman’s point. He may want to derail any energy package that doesn’t include cap-and-trade, because once such a bill gets passed, it makes it more difficult to get back to C&T. With the oil spill ongoing in the Gulf, there is some political pressure to do something about America’s direction on energy. Without that component, Congress might not address energy for another few years, and C&T isn’t popular enough to stand on its own.
That’s precisely why Republicans need to remain vigilant regarding energy policy. Any deal conducted in the Senate between the GOP and Reid will get undone in conference. Waxman’s practically putting that on a billboard in Washington, and Republican leadership had better pay attention.
Obama To Use BP Oil Spill As An Opportunity To Push His Economy Killing Climate Change Bill
Never one to to allow a “good crisis” to go to waste, Barack Obama is pledging to use the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as an opportunity to push the U.S. Congress to pass his controversial climate bill. In fact, during a recent interview Obama directly compared the current crisis in the Gulf to 9/11, and indicated that he believed that it would fundamentally change the way that we all look at energy issues from now on. But the truth is that Obama’s climate bill is the same economy killing legislation that it was before the BP oil spill. It would still drive gas and electricity prices through the roof, it would still cause large numbers of U.S. businesses to flee overseas, it would still be one of the biggest tax increases in U.S. history and it would still usher in an unprecedented era of climate fascism. But now thanks to the BP oil spill there is suddenly a lot more momentum in Congress for doing something about energy and about “climate change”.
Of course the truth is that carbon dioxide is not causing climate change and high levels of carbon dioxide are actually very good for the environment, but reducing carbon emissions has almost become a religion for radical environmentalists, and Barack Obama is absolutely determined to push through his “cap and trade” carbon trading scheme. In fact, just as 9/11 completely changed the war that Americans viewed the fight against terrorism, Barack Obama sees the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico fundamentally changing the way that Americans see energy issues. During a recent interview, Obama told Politico columnist Roger Simon the following….
“In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.”
Not only that, but Obama considers it one of his greatest “leadership challenges” to make sure that we all “draw the right lessons” from the BP oil spill….
“One of the biggest leadership challenges for me going forward is going to be to make sure that we draw the right lessons from this disaster.”
So what are those “right lessons”?
Well, apparently what we are all supposed to get out of this disaster are the lessons that Obama has been trying to “teach” us all along – that carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes are good for us.
But Barack Obama is not the only one urging us to learn the “right lessons” from the BP oil spill.
In a recent interview with ABC News, Microsoft’s Bill Gates also linked the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with “climate change”. Gates warned that if we don’t make the necessary changes soon that we will suffer severe consequences….
“We’ll have more crises like the oil spill and we’ll have the supply disruption. We’ll start to see more and more effects of the climate problem.”
But would the climate bill that Obama is pushing really save us from “climate change”?
Of course not.
But Barack Obama’s climate change bill would do the following things….
*It would drive gas and electricity prices through the roof.
*It would crush the already fragile U.S. economy by piling a bunch of new taxes and regulations on U.S. businesses. Needless to say, large numbers of them would begin looking for greener pastures.
*It would increase worldwide pollution by forcing companies out of the U.S. and into nations that have no restrictions on pollution whatsoever.
*When you add up all of the overt and hidden taxes in the bill, it would represent one of the biggest tax increases in U.S. history.
*Since every action we take involves the production of carbon emissions (including every breath that we take), it would open the door for an era of tyrannical climate fascism where the U.S. government literally monitors every aspect of our lives to make sure that we are being “eco-friendly”.
But Barack Obama makes this climate bill sound like it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. In fact, he continues to promise that the number of “green jobs” gained by this bill will far outweigh the number of other jobs lost.
But is this true?
Of course not.
In fact, other countries that have tried a “cap and trade” scheme have experienced disastrous results. For example, a leaked internal assessment produced by the government of Spain reveals that the “green economy” there has been an absolute economic nightmare for that nation. Energy prices have skyrocketed in Spain and the new “green economy” in that nation has actually lost more than two jobs for every job that it has created.
The unemployment rate in Spain is now hovering around 20 percent and the economy there is on the verge of complete and total collapse. In fact, if the government of Spain does end up defaulting on their debts, it could make the financial crisis that has been unfolding in Greece look like a Sunday picnic.
It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that a climate bill like the one Spain implemented will devastate the U.S. economy. But facts haven’t gotten in the way of Barack Obama pushing his agenda before, so why should they now?
However, it is not just Barack Obama that is pushing an agenda of trying to radically reduce carbon emissions. All over the world, many of the global elite have joined forces with the radical environmentalists in an effort to “save the world” from the growing “threat” of carbon dioxide.
And since each person on this planet is a source of constant carbon emissions, many of those who truly believe in this radical environmental agenda consider the rapidly growing population of the earth to be the number one cause of climate change.
You see, to those obsessed with “climate change”, just getting corporations around the globe to radically cut carbon emissions is not nearly going to be good enough. The truth is that they know that in order to get carbon emissions down to where they want them to be, they are going to have to do something about the growing world population.
To them, in the “war against climate change” anyone who breathes is the enemy. In fact, according to an official UN report, no human can ever truly be “carbon neutral”.
So please understand that for those obsessed with climate change, “carbon taxes” and “cap and trade” are just the beginning. To truly achieve their goals, “one child policies” and “forced abortions” will also be necessary.
So if Barack Obama does get his climate bill pushed through Congress and it does kill the U.S. economy, that would only be a “first step” for those truly dedicated to the radical environmental agenda. What they have planned down the road is a whole lot more horrific.
Posted in Barack Obama, BP, British Petroleum, Cap and Trade, carbon dioxide, climate change, global warming, Government, Oil Spill |
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1099 Mandate from Hell Slipped into Health Bill; Global Warming Profiteering; Fannie Mae Owns Cap and Trade Patents; Shock and Pain Coming to UK, US
With news on Goldman Sachs and Greece dominating the news let’s take a look at some other significant stories the past week you may have missed.
1099 Mandate From Hell Slipped into Health Bill
The CATO Organization is noting Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill
In a recent summary, tax information firm RIA notes the types of transactions covered by the new 1099 rules…
Basically, businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.
Tax CPA Chris Hesse of LeMaster Daniels tells me:
Under the health legislation, the IRS could be receiving billions of more documents. Under current law, businesses send Forms 1099 for payments of rent, interest, dividends, and non-employee services when such payments are to entities other than corporations. Under the new law, businesses will be required to send a 1099 to other businesses for virtually all purchases. And for the first time, 1099s are to be sent to corporations. This is a huge new imposition on American business, costing the private economy much more than any additional tax that the IRS might collect as a result.
The Air Conditioner Contractors of America said:
The House bill would extend the Form 1099 filing requirement to ALL vendors (including corporate) to which they pay more than $600 annually for services or property. Consider all the payments a small business makes in the course of business, paying for things such as computers, software, office supplies, and fuel to services, including janitorial services, coffee services, and package delivery services.
In order to file all these 1099s, you’ll need to collect the necessary information from all your service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold on your payments.
Clearly this is insanity. If enacted, it will be the most widely ignored IRS regulation in history.
Obama Administration Global Warming Profiteering
Pajamas Media is highlighting More Global Warming Profiteering by Obama Energy Official
Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.
Zoi, who left her position as CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection — founded by Al Gore — to serve as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, now manages billions in “green jobs” funding. But the disclosure documents show that Zoi not only is in a position to affect the fortunes of her previous employer, ex-Vice President Al Gore, but that she herself has large holdings in two firms that could directly profit from policies proposed by the Department of Energy.
Among Zoi’s holdings are shares in Serious Materials, Inc., the previously sleepy, now bustling, friend of the Obama White House whose public policy operation is headed by her husband. Between them, Zoi and her husband hold 120,000 shares in Serious Materials, as well as stock options. Reporter John Stossel has already explored what he sees as the “crony capitalism” implied by Zoi being so able to influence the fortunes of a company to which she is so closely associated.
In addition, the disclosure forms reflect that Zoi holds between $250,000 and $500,000 in “founders shares” in Landis+Gyr, a Swiss “smart meter” firm. She also still owns between $15,000 and $50,000 in ordinary shares.
“Smart meters,” put simply, are electric meters that return information about customer power usage to the power company immediately and allow a power company to control the amount of power a customer can consume. These smart meters are a central component of the Obama administration’s plans to reduce electricity consumption as part of the “smart grid.”
Conflict of interest anyone?
Fannie Mae owns patent on residential ‘cap and trade’ exchange
The Washington Examiner reports Fannie Mae owns patent on residential ‘cap and trade’ exchange
When he wasn’t busy helping create a $127 billion mess for taxpayers to clean up, former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines, two of his top underlings and select individuals in the “green” movement were inventing a patented system to trade residential carbon credits.
The patent, which Fannie Mae confirmed it still owns with Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary CO2e.com, gives the mortgage giant a lock on the fledgling carbon trading market, thus also giving it a major financial stake in the success of cap-and-trade legislation.
The patent, which covers both the “cap” and “trade” parts of Obama’s top domestic energy initiation, gives Fannie Mae proprietary control over an automated trading system that pools and sells credits for hard-to-quantify residential carbon reduction efforts (such as solar panels and high-efficiency appliances) to companies and utilities that don’t meet emission reduction targets. Depending on where the Environmental Protection Agency sets arbitrary CO2 standards, that could be every company in America.
So Fannie Mae, a quasi-governmental entity whose congressionally mandated mission is to make housing more affordable, has been a behind-the-scenes participant in a carbon trading scheme that would do just the opposite.
Layoffs at casino in Bethlehem
Philly.com is discussing Layoffs at casino in Bethlehem
Less than a year after a grand opening that rivaled the glitz and glamour of a Las Vegas revue, Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem is laying off 80 employees.
The 9 percent reduction brings the casino’s workforce to 780, down from its current 860, and nearly 200 fewer than when it opened last May 22 with 3,000 slot machines.
Slots revenue is taxed at 55 percent in Pennsylvania, compared with 9.25 percent in New Jersey. Pennsylvania uses the gambling proceeds toward property-tax relief (wage-tax relief in Philadelphia) and aiding the horse-racing industry.
Look at the insanity of it all. Imagine using slot revenue to prop horse betting. What’s next, using internet bingo to prop up casinos?
There are only so many consumer entertainment dollars out there. What people spend at the casino does not go to the horse track or to movies or to eating out elsewhere. No jobs are created out of these maneuvers although there may be some slight shifting of jobs from one community to the next.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Council Told to Consider Bankruptcy
Bloomberg is reporting Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Council Told to Consider Bankruptcy
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which has missed $6 million in debt payments since Jan. 1, should consider seeking Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, City Controller Dan Miller told a three-hour special committee hearing.
Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, the sixth-most populous U.S. state, has guaranteed payments on $282 million in bonds on the incinerator, run by the Harrisburg Authority. The payments on the bonds and on a working-capital loan this year add up to four times the amount the city collects in property taxes each year, budget documents show.
The city this month skipped a $637,500 payment due on a loan to Fairfield, New Jersey-based Covanta Holding Corp., operator of the incinerator.
On April 23, the Harrisburg Authority told the city that it won’t make a $425,282 payment due May 1 on a $17 million bond issue the city has guaranteed, said Robert Kroboth, interim finance manager. Kroboth said it isn’t likely that the city will honor its guarantee, meaning the payment will fall to the bond’s insurer, Hamilton, Bermuda-based Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp.
A decision other than bankruptcy is lunacy. The sooner Harrisburg files the better. Los Angeles and Houston ought to do the same.
Union Prohibits Weekend Volunteer Work Party To Fix Elementary School
The News Tribune reports Union squelches Tacoma school volunteers at weekend work party
Volunteers at a weekend work party at Fawcett Elementary School in East Tacoma came prepared to get their hands dirty.
But some say they felt like they were working with one grubby hand tied behind their backs last weekend due to school district and union rules.
“There was a lot of work that could have been done, but wasn’t,” said Ron Joslin, whose daughter is a third-grader at the school.
Tacoma Public Schools spokesman Dan Voelpel said the district appreciates volunteer efforts to help make schools better, but there’s a protocol for volunteer cleanups. First, volunteers must fill out a form detailing what the work party plans to do.
“Our buildings and grounds supervisory staff need to review it to make sure that what people want to do is safe and up to school standards,” Voelpel said. “And we have to, by union contract, notify the unions affected. They can determine if the work being performed substantially takes away from union labor. They can object to the work proposed.”
Mark Martinez, executive secretary for the Pierce County Building and Construction Trades Council, put it this way: “Sometimes people don’t appreciate our craft.” His union represents an estimated 60 Tacoma schools employees.
Parents say one of the vetoed Fawcett projects would have removed overgrown bushes that block views of the street from the school. Other proposed projects that didn’t happen include painting a Fawcett Falcons mascot on a school wall and spreading 40 yards of beauty bark on school playgrounds and elsewhere.
No, Mark Martinez, I do not appreciate your craft because your “craft” is nothing but bloodsucking.
Taxing Trip
Please consider KCTV5 INVESTIGATION: Taxing Trip
In 2001, Congress passed a law mandating every school district in America provide its homeless kids with a ride to and from school. For example, a school could be required to pick up a child at a shelter in Kansas City and drive them to an Olathe school every day.
While it seemed like a good idea in sound economic times, the recession has exploded the number of homeless students who need help.
But transporting kids to their original schools comes at a staggering cost. In Olathe, the district will pay $44,000 to transport kids this year. In Shawnee Mission, the tab is $150,000. The Kansas City, Mo., district will spend $194,000. And in Kansas City, Kan., the district served 471 homeless students and spent $295,000 transporting the kids.
Here is a 6 minute video that shows what the kids have to endure.
Mervyn King Warns UK Will Hate The Next Government, No Matter Who Wins
The Times Online reports Austerity Britain will hate its new Government, says King
The Governor of the Bank of England was at the centre of an electoral storm last night after saying that the austerity measures needed to tackle Britain’s budget deficit would be so unpopular that whoever wins next week would not get back into government for a generation.
The Governor’s prediction was made to the American economist David Hale, who passed on the remarks in an Australian television interview. Mr Hale, who has known Mr King for many years, was commenting on debt levels in major economies when he turned to the British election. “I saw the Governor of the Bank of England last week when I was in London, and he told me whoever wins this election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be,” he said.
Analysts have said that without commitment to severe austerity in the first weeks of a new Government, Britain could be heading towards a sterling crisis and a boycott of the gilts market.
The National Institute for Economic and Social Research said yesterday that whoever was in power by 2015 would have to raise the basic rate of income tax by 6p to reduce the budget deficit down towards 3 per cent.
That would be on top of cutting spending by an extra £30 billion in spending cuts and raising taxes to meet current targets. NIESR thinks the further tightening, in addition to what are expected to be the deepest cuts for half a century, is needed because the Government has been too optimistic about its economic assumptions. Simon Kirby, one of the report’s authors, said: “It will be a shock and very painful for almost everyone.”
Shock and pain for nearly everyone sounds about right. The same holds true for the US.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Posted in Cap and Trade, carbon trading, Corruption, Economy, Financial System, Fraud, global warming, Goldman Sachs, IRS |
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The $10 Trillion Climate Fraud
The $10 Trillion Climate Fraud
Al Gore is co-founder of an investment management firm that is now the fifth-largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange.
Cap-And-Trade: While senators froth over Goldman Sachs and derivatives, a climate trading scheme being run out of the Chicago Climate Exchange would make Bernie Madoff blush. Its trail leads to the White House.
Lost in the recent headlines was Al Gore’s appearance Monday in Denver at the annual meeting of the Council of Foundations, an association of the nation’s philanthropic leaders.
“Time’s running out (on climate change),” Gore told them. “We have to get our act together. You have a unique role in getting our act together.”
Gore was right that foundations will play a key role in keeping the climate scam alive as evidence of outright climate fraud grows, just as they were critical in the beginning when the Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the seed money to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, essentially, air. More specifically perhaps, hot air.
The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) advertises itself as “North America’s only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.” Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 when the CCX startup grants were issued. As president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities. Now isn’t that special?
Few Americans have heard of either entity. The Joyce Foundation was originally the financial nest egg of a widow whose family had made millions in the now out-of-favor lumber industry.
After her death, the foundation was run by philanthropists who increasingly dedicated their giving to liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.
Currently, CCX members agree to a voluntary but legally binding agreement to regulate greenhouse gases.
The CCX provides the mechanism in trading the very pollution permits and carbon offsets the administration’s cap-and-trade proposals would impose by government mandate.
Thanks to Fox News’ Glenn Beck, we have learned a lot about CCX, not the least of which is that its founder, Richard Sandor, says he knew Obama well back in the day when the Joyce Foundation awarded money to the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where Sandor was a research professor.
Sandor estimates that climate trading could be “a $10 trillion dollar market.” It could very well be, if cap-and-trade measures like Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Boxer are signed into law, making energy prices skyrocket, and as companies buy and sell permits to emit those six “greenhouse” gases.
So lucrative does this market appear, it attracted the attention of London-based Generation Investment Management, which purchased a stake in CCX and is now the fifth-largest shareholder.
As we noted last year, Gore is co-founder of Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offsets of dubious value that let rich polluters continue to pollute with a clear conscience.
Other founders include former Goldman Sachs partner David Blood, as well as Mark Ferguson and Peter Harris, also of Goldman Sachs. In 2006, CCX received a big boost when another investor bought a 10% stake on the prospect of making a great deal of money for itself. That investor was Goldman Sachs, now under the gun for selling financial instruments it knew were doomed to fail.
The actual mechanism for trading on the exchange was purchased and patented by none other than Franklin Raines, who was CEO of Fannie Mae at the time.
Raines profited handsomely to the tune of some $90 million by buying and bundling bad mortgages that led to the collapse of the American economy. His interest in climate trading is curious until one realizes cap-and-trade would make housing costlier as well.
Amazingly, none of these facts came up at Senate hearings on Goldman Sachs’ activities, which may be nothing more than Ross Perot’s famous “gorilla dust,” meant to distract us from the real issues.
The climate trading scheme being stitched together here will do more damage than Goldman Sachs, AIG and Fannie Mae combined. But it will bring power and money to its architects.
Posted in Al Gore, Cap and Trade, carbon trading, Climate, Corruption, Fraud, Government |
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