BP was founder of Cap & Trade Lobby and is linked to John Podesta, The Apollo alliance and Obama

Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool By: Timothy P. Carney Examiner Columnist June 9, 2010

In this May 30, 2010 file photo, BP PLC CEO Tony Hayward talks to reporters as he visits a Coast Guard command center in Venice, La. BP's inability to contain the worst oil spill in U.S. history has focused attention on CEO Tony Hayward's words and deeds over the past six weeks - and the scrutiny has not yielded a flattering image. (AP file photo)

As BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies — including BP, according to the Washington Post.

Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP chief executive Tony Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican co-sponsor Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., repudiated the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the drawing board.

But the Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media — that BP’s lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

As Democrats fight to advance climate change policies, they are resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and finance efforts: posing as the scourges of the special interests and tarring “reform” opponents as the stooges of big business.

There’s a problem: BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switched to gas.

In February, BP quit USCAP without giving much of a reason beyond saying the company could lobby more effectively on its own than in a coalition that is increasingly dominated by power companies. Theymade out particularly well in the House’s climate bill, while natural gas producers suffered.

But two months later, BP signed off on Kerry’s Senate climate bill, which was hardly a capitalist concoction. One provision BP explicitly backed, according to Congressional Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The money would be earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more driving and more gasoline consumption.

Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break even without government support. Lobbying records show the company backing solar subsidies including federal funding for solar research. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a federal agency, is currently financing a BP solar energy project in Argentina.

Ex-Im has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction of the 1,094-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey—again, profiting BP.

Lobbying records also show BP lobbying on Obama’s stimulus bill and Bush’s Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn’t in league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those.

BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the Podesta Group, co-founded by John Podesta, Obama’s transition director and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a former top aide to Vice President Walter Mondale; Steven Champlin, former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus; and Matthew LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton’s Interior Department and whose father was a Democratic congressman. Former Republican staffers, such as Reagan alumnus Ken Duberstein, also lobby for BP, but there’s no truth to Democratic portrayals of the oil company as an arm of the GOP.

Two patterns have emerged during Obama’s presidency: 1) Big business increasingly seeks profits through more government, and 2) Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his intervention as industry shills. BP is just the latest example of this tawdry sleight of hand.

Timothy P. Carney is The Washington Examiner's lobbying editor. His K Street column appears on Wednesdays.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Once-a-government-pet-BP-now-a-capitalist-tool-95942659.html

“Now, find the link to Lindsey Graham.”

My guess is a Scana Corp.’s Summer plant in South Carolina.

(no link)

Senators pushing for increase in gas tax - 15 cents a gallon under consideration
St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN) - Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Author: Jim Tankersley, Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON — Leading voices in the Senate are considering a new tax on gasoline as part of an effort to win Republican and oil industry support for the energy and climate bill now idling in Congress.

The tax, which early estimates put in the range of 15 cents a gallon, was conceived with the input of several oil companies, including Shell, BP and ConocoPhillips, and is being championed by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

It is shaping up as a critical but controversial piece in the efforts by Graham, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to write a climate bill that moderate Republicans could support. Along those lines, the bill will also include an expansion of offshore oil drilling and major new incentives for nuclear power plant construction.

(snip)

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00009975&cycle=2010

Top 5 Contributors, 2005-2010, Campaign Cmte
Contributor Total Indivs PACs
Nelson, Mullins et al $79,491 $70,491 $9,000
Scana Corp $57,630 $51,130 $6,500
EnergySolutions LLC $35,800 $35,800 $0
Edens & Avant $31,900 $31,900 $0
Blue Cross/Blue Shield $31,450 $24,950 $6,500

http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/10/15/15climatewire-carper-suggests-bolstering-nrc-as-part-of-cl-83161.html

(snip)

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) is helping to negotiate a nuclear energy amendment that could help bring aboard swing votes who support the industry. Architects and backers of the nuclear effort include Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who are seeking more federal financial backing and other support.

(snip)

Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman John Keeley said the industry’s priorities include greater funding for loan guarantees. Congress has set aside $18.5 billion thus far for nuclear plant loan guarantees under a DOE financing program first authorized in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. But this would cover only a small number of new plants.

Four proposals remain in the running for DOE guarantees from this funding, according to several published reports. They are: UniStar Nuclear Energy/Constellation Energy Group’s proposed Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland; NRG Energy Inc.’s South Texas Project; Southern Co.’s Vogtle plant in Georgia; and Scana Corp.’s Summer plant in South Carolina.

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/40154/

Assembling the Team

During 2000 and 2001, the Joyce Foundation, a progressive trust with assets near $1 billion, known for funding groups like Center for American Progress and Tides Foundation, provided grants to CCX totaling $1.1 million. State Senator Obama served on the foundation’s board of directors during that time and was instrumental in awarding the grants.

Shortly after the first grant was approved, the president of The Joyce Foundation, Paula DiPerna, left to join the executive team of CCX. Other notables with familiar names soon followed.

• Former Vice-President Al Gore became part-owner of CCX when his company, Generation Investment Management, made a sizeable investment. Gore brought with him his senior partner at GIM, David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, along with a company chalk full of former Goldman Sachs’ executives

• Goldman Sachs itself soon joined the team buying a ten percent interest in CCX

• Maurice Strong, once linked to Tongsun Park, the central figure in the United Nation’s oil-for-food scandal in 2005 and one of the architects of the Kyoto Protocol, joined the CCX board of directors

• Carlton Bartels was one of the first, and perhaps most important, additions to the CCX roster. As CEO of a company called CO2e, Bartels developed and delivered the actual guts of the exchange — a system for facilitating and managing the actual carbon trades

Strange Bedfellows

Just three weeks after filing for a patent for his carbon trade system, Bartels was killed during the attacks of 9/11. Bartels’ death opened the door for a new partner to join CCX, easily the oddest fit of them all: Fannie Mae. In a move still unexplained, the quasi-governmental mortgage agency, led by CEO Franklin Raines, purchased the rights to the system from Bartel’s widow. A patent on the invention was granted to Raines and Fannie Mae on November 7, 2006, ironically, the day after the Democrats regained control of Congress. According to Barbara Hollingsworth of the Washington Examiner, the patent covers both the “cap” and “trade” parts of Obama’s top domestic energy initiative and gives Fannie Mae proprietary control over the automated trading system used by Sandor’s CCX.

When asked about the patent recently Fannie Mae communications director Amy Bonitatibus told the Washington Examiner, “Fannie Mae earns no money on this patent. We can’t conjecture as to the cap-and-trade legislation.” A source close to Fannie Mae, however, says a plan is in place to funnel future earnings from the patent to a non-profit housing organization called Enterprise Community Partners. Ironically, Raines, who left Fannie Mae in 2004 amidst allegations that he inflated earnings reports in order to collect higher bonuses ($52 million in bonuses over 5-years; $90 million in total compensation), serves on the board of trustees at Enterprise. In a continuation of theme, Goldman Sachs also has a representative on the board in the person of Alicia Glen.

“Just three weeks after filing for a patent for his carbon trade system, Bartels was killed during the attacks of 9/11.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2046736/posts

“Guess who’s been involved intimately with Fannie Mae? Does the name Jamie Gorelick ring a bell?

This woman is everywhere, and

***
Jamie Gorelick got a 26 million payout when she left the place.
***

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2053986/posts

Jamie Gorelick’s Cloudy Memory (mega clintonista wall gag alert)
American Thinker ^ | 7-29-08 | Ed Lasky

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1460263/posts

Fitting the Pieces Together—Able Danger, Jamie Gorelick & 9/11
The Strata-Sphere ^ | August 9, 2005 | Bronc1

HT: taildragger

Obama's Remarks To Nation On Oil Spill [Full Text]

Statement by the President After Meeting with BP Executives [Full Text]