Scribe has reported extensively on the tendency of large government spending projects to reward the politically connected. It’s a virtual constant of federal interventions in the market, and perhaps nowhere is it more evident than in the Obama administration’s “green jobs” push. Writing on National Review Online today, I detail the political connections backstopping California venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and take a look at the extensive taxpayer support given to nine different companies financed by the firm. Here’s an excerpt from the piece: Hoover Institution fellow …
In late July, the Department of Education held a reading event as part of it’s “Let’s read! Let’s move!” initiative. During the event, D.C. schoolchildren were given free copies of SpongeBob Goes Green, a book based on the Nickelodeon cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants. According to the publishers: SpongeBob decides to speed up the warm weather by pumping carbon dioxide into the environment. Little does SpongeBob know, he’s messing with Mother Nature in a big way and bringing global warming to Bikini Bottom! Soon it’s sweltering hot, and everyone has to pack …
A college graduation is a great achievement that is the culmination of years of hard work, feverish paper writing, and the occasional all-nighter. So when college students get to their graduation ceremony, they are usually greeted with a great celebration. They are also very positive affairs with well-known speakers giving a speech that makes it an unforgettable day. As well it should be. Former Vice President Al Gore seems to have not gotten the memo. You see, he used a commencement speech at the University of Tennessee as a political …
From his sprawling new $9 million ocean-view villa in Montecito, California, with its high ceilings, wine cellar, terraces, six fireplaces, five bedrooms, nine bathrooms, pool and 6,500 square feet of living space, former Vice President Al Gore is asking a favor of the American people. He’d like you to tighten your belt and shell out big time for higher electric bills, all in the name of fighting global warming. In a renewable electricity standard (RES) proposal now before Congress, those costs would be huge. A new Heritage Foundation study modeled …
Earth Day is a great day for politicians to push their clean energy agenda and President Barack Obama made this clear when he reiterated in his Earth Day video message that we need to transition to a clean energy economy. Politicians say that we should use the earth’s renewable resources, most notably the wind and the sun, to power our country. Some Members of Congress are even pushing for a federal mandate that requires a predetermined percentage of our nation’s electricity come from certain energy sources. The champion of ideas, …
In Los Angeles, in the heart of California’s anemic economy, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Department of Water and Power (DWP) hope to massively raise energy rates by a whopping 21% next year, with other rate increases slated through 2014, for a total 37% hike. Are the increased rates intended to pay for a budget shortfall? No. Are they going up because the cost of energy is going up, too? Not exclusively. The increased rates would raise money to “invest” in renewable energy. In fact, Villaraigosa thought the hike was …
Al Gore has had a busy week. First, the former vice president’s renewable energy investments received some serious backing from the taxpayer as $3.4 billion stimulus package would be allocated for smart grid investment. $560 million went to Silver Spring Networks, a company Gore’s venture capitalist firm invested in, that makes hardware and software to improve efficiency in the nation’s electricity grid. That’s not the only way Gore is profiting from the global warming debate. On November 3rd he published his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the …
John Broder of The New York Times has an interesting piece on Al Gore’s financial profit tied to his global warming alarmism and push for renewable energy. Gore’s venture capital firm invested in Silver Spring Networks, a company that makes hardware and software to improve efficiency in the nation’s electricity grid. When President Obama told a crowd at a solar power plant in Florida, ironically on an cloudy day where the sun was nowhere to be found, that $3.4 billion of the so-called stimulus package would be allocated for smart …
Not Evil Just Wrong, a documentary by Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, which premiered last Sunday at The Heritage Foundation and 6,000 other locations in 27 countries, asks some tough questions of Al Gore and his film, An Inconvenient Truth. The title of Gore’s film is telling because it implies that its content is “the truth”: it plays into mainstream environmental rhetoric which claims that the debate as to whether human-created Co2 is warming the planet to a dangerous degree is over and the science is settled. The trailer for …
Heritage’s David W. Kreutzer: Waxman-Markey
