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Is Kleiner Perkins Sorry It Ever Met Al Gore?
American Spectator ^ | 5.13.13 | WILLIAM TUCKER

Posted on 05/13/2013 3:40:15 PM PDT by neverdem

A leading venture capital firm gets taken to the clean energy cleaners.

The story in the New York Times says Kleiner Perkins has been “humbled” by the past decade’s performance. That seems appropriate. The nation’s most famous venture capital firm had a stunning 35.7 percent annual rate of return in the decade of the 1990s. That was before they met Al Gore.

Somewhere around the time Gore had won his Academy Award for warning the world about global warming, the former Vice President was hired on as a senior partner at KPCB. Fortune wrote an article describing Gore sitting in the board room firing off ideas after calling Senator Barbara Boxer “on the way over” to get government on board. Clean Energy! It was the Next Big Thing! Silicon Valley would do for the nation’s energy generation what it had done for computers — discover technological secrets that would change the whole game. And make money at it, too! After all, solar cells were made out of the same thing as computer chips, right? Silicon! If Silicon Valley could do for solar what it had done for the microchip — well, think of it!

Gore seems to have made out all right in all this. A report that came out about...

--snip--

(To his credit, Bill Gates has made the same survey of America’s energy landscape and concluded nuclear is the way to go. His Intellectual Ventures decided to sponsor development of the Traveling Wave reactor, a futuristic design that produces no waste and does not have to be refueled for 50 years. Discovering that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was backed up ten years considering new designs, he took the project to China. He is currently working with the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation.)...

(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: algore; cleanenergy; energy; greenenergy; greenfraud; greenscam; kleinerperkins; renewableenergy

1 posted on 05/13/2013 3:40:15 PM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem

I don’t have a link to this but I recall a story from the time after Gore left politics and was casting about looking for something else to do.

He had an interview with some company. They asked him, Mr. Gore, what can you do for us?

He was stunned. Didn’t have an answer. Nobody had ever asked him that before.


2 posted on 05/13/2013 3:44:30 PM PDT by DManA
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To: neverdem

When you act stupid, you are gonna get stupid.


3 posted on 05/13/2013 3:45:08 PM PDT by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote; then find me a real conservative to vote for)
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To: neverdem

I can personally vouch for the fact that these Bay Area VCs think they are the smartest people who ever came down the pike, most of them anyway.

The fact that they trusted a fool like Al Gore just shows how dumb you can get when you let ideology into the value equation.


4 posted on 05/13/2013 3:48:58 PM PDT by Steely Tom (If the Constitution can be a living document, I guess a corporation can be a person.)
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To: DManA
I doubt it. Gore is about ten degrees off the bubble but he is not stupid. He knows damn well the things he has to offer are access and influence, the two most valuable commodities in post 20th century America.
5 posted on 05/13/2013 3:49:57 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: neverdem

The leftists push of the AGW scam was the biggest fraud on the american people until THE FOREIGNER came onto the scene. When you have a business model based on fraud it only has one place to go.


6 posted on 05/13/2013 3:50:43 PM PDT by spawn44 (MOO)
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To: neverdem
Oh WOE is me... whys everybody always pickin on me???

listen... warming, cooling, it was 50/50. so i took a shot!!!

7 posted on 05/13/2013 3:50:55 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -ww- NO Pity for the LAZY)
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To: hinckley buzzard

“the things he has to offer are access and influence’

The ‘aristcracy of pull’ as a somewhat well known author once wrote.


8 posted on 05/13/2013 4:01:40 PM PDT by dynachrome (Vertrou in God en die Mauser)
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To: DManA

Your story reminds me of when Ted Kennedy was asked in an interview why he wanted to be president. He didn’t have an answer, either.


9 posted on 05/13/2013 4:20:01 PM PDT by JPG (Stay strong.)
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To: neverdem; potlatch; PhilDragoo

Al Gore never won an Academy Award for An Inconvenient Truth. Davis Guggenheim won that Oscar. Gore went on stage to hold the Oscar for a photo op—another case when perception is more important than reality.


10 posted on 05/13/2013 4:31:56 PM PDT by ntnychik
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To: neverdem

If they are seeking connections to Russian billionaires (hint, hint, nudge, nudge, say no more).

Goes back to Daddy Gore, Sr., being the buddy of the Russian-American billionaire Armand Hammer.

Junior has also always had a close relationship with daddy buddy Hammer’s Occidental Petroleum, which bought into the Elk Hills strategic petroleum reserve in 1998 for $3.65 billion.

Incidentally, a similar purchase is what inspired the Teapot Dome scandal during the Harding administration; scandal standards have changed over the years.


11 posted on 05/13/2013 4:43:37 PM PDT by PieterCasparzen (We have to fix things ourselves)
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