Free Republic

A former top White House official and the head of President Barack Obama’s personal advocacy group is joining the board of a green energy company backed by a major Democratic donor that recently received millions in federal contracts. LanzaTech announced Wednesday that Jim Messina, Obama’s former deputy chief of staff, reelection campaign manager, and the head of his retooled campaign apparatus Organizing for Action was appointed to the company’s board of directors. “Jim’s proven ability to merge technology, messaging, and communications in support of ideas that transcend ‘business as usual’ will help us continue our mission of reshaping how our...

President Barack Obama will star at an “intimate” $32,400 per head June 6 fundraising dinner and discussion in the Portola Valley home of star Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and his wife, Neeru, according to the invite obtained by the Chronicle. The dinner is one of two events in Peninsula private homes on Obama’s upcoming fundraising swing here, which benefits the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. In addition to the Khosla home dinner, Obama will also attend an earlier reception in the home of Marci and Mike McCue of Palo Alto. McCue co-founded Flipboard, and serves as its CEO. Senator...

The failed Range Fuels wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that sucked up $65 million in federal and state tax dollars was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar to another bio-fuel maker with equally grand plans to transform the alternative energy world. LanzaTech, a New Zealand-based biofuel company, paid $5.1 million for the plant in Soperton. Its main financial backer: Vinod Khosla, a California entrepreneur who also bankrolled Range Fuels, and helped secure its government loans, before Range went bust last year. LanzaTech hasn't received the same type of loans, but the company has received $7 million from the U.S....

You and I know it was never about facts, it was about hyping the green dream. Just look at the numbers. First from the opposition:Of course they don’t dare mention the amount of money their side has put into it, because, well, that would look imbalanced. Now have a look at the other side of the issue from the legislator who spearheaded the effort:Logue: Big money beat Proposition 23 By LARRY MITCHELL – Staff Writer CHICO — Assemblyman Dan Logue, R-Linda, said big money defeated Proposition 23, which would have put the brakes on Assembly Bill 32, the state’s...

Reading all the specific earmarks of funds in Proposition 84 set our suspicious journalistic minds to wondering: There are so many organizations slated to get money from this $5.4 billion bond measure, sold as being for water quality and water supply, that it began to look like a cynical "pay to play" initiative, in which those who paid to get the initiative on the ballot get much larger sums to spend once the bonds are sold. Remember "pay to play?" The Planning and Conservation League perfected this technique with 1996's Proposition 204. While writing the ballot measure it sought donations...

The state doesn't need an oil company 'extortion tax' to pay for clean energy research, already a booming segment in the venture capital industry. WHEN GAS PRICES GO THROUGH the roof, two things inevitably happen: Voters see red, and all kinds of nutty proposals are floated aiming to make oil companies share their pain. Hence Proposition 87, which would impose an oil extraction tax on companies that drill in California and use the proceeds to pay for alternative fuel research. Even by the warped standards of ballot initiatives, Proposition 87 — the result of confused economic thinking — is deceptively...

Even by California standards, the number of ill-conceived, deceptive propositions on the ballot this November is unusually high. A perfect example is Proposition 87, which would impose a tax on in-state oil production and expire when $4 billion had been generated to pay for a variety of alternative energy programs. Proponents' TV ads, which assail the high cost of gasoline and tout Proposition 87 as a means of relief, are hopelessly confused. The primary effect of adding billions to the cost of oil produced in California would be to ensure that state refineries look for cheaper oil on the global...

SIR RICHARD BRANSON has joined forces with two of America’s top venture capitalists to slake California’s thirst for environmentally friendly fuels. Branson has injected more than $60m (£32m) into Cilion, a company that will make bioethanol from corn. He is investing alongside Vinod Khosla, the renowned Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and Ron Burkle, a Los Angeles billionaire who counts Bill Clinton among his advisers. The project is the start of a move by Branson’s Virgin empire into environmental businesses, a plan known internally as the Gaia Capitalism Project, after the environmental theory developed by the British scientist James Lovelock. Virgin Fuels,...

Backers of a measure that would hit energy companies drilling in California with $4 billion in new taxes planned to start running a hard-hitting TV ad across the state today urging voters to "make oil companies pay.'' There's nothing subtle about the new ad, said Paul Begala, a consultant for Proposition 87. "We're not shy; our most important goal is to get California off its dependence on oil,'' said Begala, a former Clinton White House aide and CNN television commentator. "If you want support, you have to build support.'' Prop. 87 would tax companies for oil pumped in California, based...

Direct democracy in California is becoming the latest hot investment for venture capitalists looking to merge their societal goals with a good return on their money. By backing ballot measures tailored to promote their personal and financial interests, investors can quickly change public policy and make a buck at the same time. Proposition 87 on the November ballot, which would tax oil to promote alternative fuels, is winning support from a key financier who is heavily invested in the kind of technologies that the initiative would reward. Vinod Khosla, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems and now a prominent...

In California politics, Silicon Valley executives used to be considered newbies, nerds or simply multimillionaires with too much time and money on their hands. No longer. Emboldened over the past decade by some success passing ballot propositions, a handful of the valley's most influential power brokers are once again aiming to use the initiative process to put their stamp on public policy in California. Two of the boldest electoral initiatives yet to emerge from valley interests will be on November's ballot: NetFlix founder Reed Hastings and Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr are backing Proposition 88, an unprecedented statewide real...

Though more local school bonds are passing, voter support for these measures is in decline. This seeming contradiction can be understood by looking at the impact of Proposition 39 passed by voters in 2000. That year, a small group of multimillionaires and billionaires, most from the Silicon Valley, spent more than $60 million on a campaign to lower the vote threshold for the passage of local school bonds that only property owners are obligated to repay. The two-thirds vote for local bonds was established in the California Constitution of 1879 in recognition of the fact that not everyone who voted...

The Proposition 87 campaign is shaping up into a big bucks battle between big oil companies and "no oil" investors and environmentalists. Chevron and other major energy producers are fueling the drive to defeat the November ballot measure that would impose a severance tax on California oil production to pay for alternative energy. Venture capitalists with multimillion-dollar investments in "greentech," meanwhile, have joined forces with environmentalists to finance the campaign to create the $4 billion fund for alternative energy. Proposition 87 would impose a tax on California oil producers of 1.5 percent to 6 percent, depending on the per-barrel price...

** The "Clean Energy" initiative, Proposition 87, on California's November ballot is looking good. The support level for it in a private poll is over 60 percent. The measure would enact an oil extraction tax at the wellhead to generate some $400 million a year for research and development on alternative fuels. Among the nation's big oil producing states, California is the only one without an oil tax. Voter disdain for oil companies is high.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke yesterday at the annual conference of the Western Governors Association in Sedona, Arizona, where he pushed three resolutions on alternative energy and global warming. “We should fundamentally change our approach to energy,” he declared. “We've all seen the pictures of melting glaciers. We know the dangers of climate change. How the oceans are getting warmer, how they're rising. How agriculture can be threatened.” "We are long past the time when we can just talk about this problem," said the former action superstar, who is being challenged for re-election by Democrat Phil Angelides. "We must take action."...

Pain at the pump is the price of this country’s addiction to oil. Americans are feeling it intensely—outraged over oil company profits, fearful that another hurricane in the gulf, or a terror attack in the Middle East is all it would take to send prices even higher. But what if there was one solution to all of this? Something that could solve America’s energy crisis, strengthen our national security, and help save the planet at the same time? Vinod Khosla: I looked, did my research and found this was brain dead simple to do. Stone Phillips, Dateline anchor: Is it...

Exclusive The emails have poured in all day. "Thanks for the memories, Scott. It was fun." Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy says that most well-wishers seem to be treating his relinquishment of the CEO post as some kind of sad departure from the company he helped start. This reaction surprises McNealy to a degree - given that he'll spend the next few months traveling around the globe doing what he's done for the last quarter century - talk about Sun. You can, however, understand how outside observers sense a more dramatic shift taking place. McNealy has thinned out the ever-shrinking...

SAN FRANCISCO - Venture capitalist John Doerr made his name and fortune with early investments in Netscape Communications Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc. and other pioneering tech firms that went from scrappy startups to household names. Now Doerr and his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, are placing big bets on an emerging sector he calls "green technology," one he believes could become as lucrative as information technology and biotechnology. Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins plans to set aside $100 million of its latest $600 million fund for technologies that help provide cleaner energy, transportation, air and water. That's on top...

Vinod Khosla is bankrolling a ballot initiative that would tax oil producers and subsidize alternative energy -- technologies he invests in as one of the valley's most prominent venture capitalists. If California voters embrace the November initiative, the tax on oil companies could generate $4 billion for projects intended to reduce the state's dependence on oil by 25 percent within a decade. Such political moves are still new territory for the well-heeled venture capital community more accustomed to funding start-up companies than ballot campaigns. That changed in 2004, when the industry put its money behind another technology-building initiative: stem-cell research....

Alternative energy researchers are hoping that California voters get a chance to act on their rage against oil companies at the ballot box in November--and alternative energy companies are pointing to the initiative as the boost needed to get the industry off the ground. However, critics of a new initiative effort say the main beneficiaries would be the venture capitalists behind the campaign. The group Californians for Clean Alternative Energy is gathering signatures to place an initiative on the November ballot that would impose a tax on oil production in California. The Clean Alternative Energy Act would place a tax...