Billionaireclimateactivistwantstoeducateallof

Billionaire climate activist wants to educate all of you stupid, unsophisticated hicks

posted at 1:01 pm on August 16, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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For all of you mouth breathing, devolved global warming deniers out there, apparently there is finally hope that you’ll be brought out of the darkness. Mega-wealthy hedge fund manager Tom Steyer (who has long since made his own bundles of Benjamins and now has the leisure to devote all of his time to sticking his nose in other people’s business) is terribly worried about your lack of education on settled science matters and is seeking to set matters to rights. Speaking at a recent climate conference held in Aspen, Colorado (and really… where else would this happen but Colorado?) Steyer explained – or possibly Voxsplained – how much work remains to be done in terms of converting the hoi polloi to his cause. (This comes from behind the pay wall at Politico Pro, so I apologize for the lack of linkage.)

“I think if you were to go around to most of the — what I would think of as super-sophisticated people who think about politics and policy more than five minutes a month — we are doing really well,” Steyer said today at a conference in Aspen, Colorado, hosted by the American Renewable Energy Institute. “And the question in the United States of America is how are we doing with everybody else, which is the 99.5 percent of the people whose lives are very busy and complicated and pressing and they don’t have a lot of time to think about the things that don’t immediately impact themselves and their family.

“And I would say on the former we’re kicking ass and in the latter we have a long way to go,” he added. “If we’re going to make a difference, we can’t just hit the people who are focused on policy in the United States. We have to understand how we can reach a much broader audience and make them understand why this is important to them and their families.”

See, they’ve only been able to win over the super-sophisticated people thus far. (Just being nominally sophisticated doesn’t cut the mustard these days, it seems.) But with a bit of education dumbed down to the level where even a bunch of hicks like you might grasp it, there’s still hope!

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) had a few choice words for Mr. Steyer which will save me a lot of snark investment here.

“Since when do we live in a country where only the self-professed ‘super-sophisticated people’ get to make decisions for everyone else? Tom Steyer has spent millions bankrolling candidates and organizations whose efforts are leaving hard-working Americans without work, without economic security and without hope for the future. And, today, he demonstrated once again how totally out-of-touch he is with the priorities of the ‘broad audience’ of Americans he so offensively characterized in Aspen today,” said Laura Sheehan, senior vice president for communications at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). “Perhaps people aren’t as simple-minded as Mr. Steyer thinks, because they certainly aren’t buying what he and his elitist friends are selling. What Mr. Steyer fails to understand is that the American people are, in fact, thinking about what immediately impacts their lives and families because ‘super-sophisticated people’ like himself and President Obama are not.”

Steyer is also displaying more than a bit of hypocrisy here. He’s still personally invested in those nasty, carbon producing fossil fuels himself, even as he chides others to pull their financial support. And those billions of dollars he’s sitting on didn’t come from investing in wind farms. And yet his entire personal agenda these days is to regulate coal-based electricity out of existence if he can manage it. (If you want to see the real world effects on the regular people Steyer is trying to reach and how his favored regulations are “important to them and their families” you can read about the results in Alabama here.)

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Tags: climate change, liberal hypocrisy, Tom Steyer

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Politico:Steyerclimate-changefundraisingabust posted

Politico: Steyer climate-change fundraising a bust

posted at 10:01 am on July 17, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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How bad can it be? After all, Tom Steyer has managed to rent out the Senate in March, forcing Democrats into an embarrassing all-nighter to protest a lack of action on climate change in a chamber where they control the agenda. That, however, rested on Steyer’s strength in personal wealth, not his ability to bundle big dollars for Democratic PACs. According to Politico, the billionaire hedge-fund exec has flopped on his pledge to raise $50 million and make climate change a central issue in the midterms:

Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer is falling far short on his pledge to raise $50 million in outside money to make climate change a midterm-election weapon against the GOP.

His super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, has raised just $1.2 million from other donors toward that goal, according to still-unreleased figures that his aides shared with POLITICO. And he appears to be struggling to woo wealthy allies in his effort to compete with big-money conservative donors — leading some supporters to question whether his fundraising goal is realistic.

So far, the only really big donor to the Steyer cause is Steyer himself.

The numbers show just how hard it may be for Steyer to persuade rich liberals to spend their millions on climate change while voters focus on the economy, immigration and Obamacare. They also call into question whether Steyer can really become the big-money titan in Democratic politics — a counterweight to the dominance that deep-pocketed donors like the Koch brothers have achieved in conservative circles.

That may be part of the problem. Harry Reid’s despicable smear tactics about the Koch brothers may have backfired on Democrats among their deep-pocket donor base, especially in relation to funding PACs. Leaks about donors to Democracy Alliance and accusations of hypocrisy (and rank dishonesty) could well be taking their toll. Also, despite Steyer’s talents on Wall Street as a hedge-fund executive, it might be that he’s just not that good of an organizer. If the reporting from Kenneth Vogel and Andrew Restuccia is accurate, that’s at least part of the problem, and al lack of salesmanship might be some of it as well:

[S]everal major Democratic donors have quietly expressed resentment about the effort to seek outside cash, grumbling that it smacks of self-aggrandizement and noting that Steyer has enough money to fund the entire campaign himself.

Some donors complain that Steyer isn’t offering would-be check writers the high-level courtship they’ve come to expect, instead delegating much of the schmoozing to top advisers. In addition, anyone donating to Steyer’s super PAC would risk being drawn into the fierce attacks that conservative groups are trying to mount on the billionaire’s credibility.

His credibility? Such as, perhaps, that Steyer made a lot of money in hydrocarbon-based energy before deciding to attack it? Steyer tried explaining on Monday how climate change transformed him, but it hasn’t done much to boost his standing so far.

The real problem is that almost no one cares about climate change in the midterm elections. Polling from both Politico and Gallup in May showed that the environment as a class of issues (of which climate change would be a subset) was the top priority for a whopping 3% of all Americans in one poll and 7% in another.  Jobs and the economy, on the other hand, got the top spot from 38% in Gallup. Three times as many Democrats prioritized dysfunctional government over the environment. Running a midterm on climate change would effectively confirm that Democrats have completely lost touch with the electorate and are only talking to their narrow clique of elites, not exactly a winning message.

Plus, Steyer’s project suffers from one other big problem. Assuming that another $50 million keeps the Senate in Democratic hands, exactly what would that do for climate change? Democrats have controlled the upper chamber for eight years, and even when they rented out the Senate to Steyer had nothing to offer on the topic. Democrats controlled all of Congress for four years, two of which were in Obama’s first term in office. What did they do with that time? They imposed an unpopular command economy in the health insurance market and passed Dodd-Frank, and … that’s about it.

Perhaps, then, it’s a bit unfair to blame Steyer’s salesmanship. It’s easier to sell refrigerators to Eskimos than to make this sale.

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Tags: climate change, fundraising, Kochsteria, Super PACs, Tom Steyer

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Poll:Democratsstillnotinterestedinvotingin

Poll: Democrats still not interested in voting in November

posted at 8:41 pm on June 23, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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A new CNN/ORC poll indicates that the Democrats have been unable to overcome the apathy that threatens to keep much of the party’s traditional voters home this November.

According to that poll’s survey of registered voters’ preference on the generic congressional ballot – a measure of voter enthusiasm that traditionally favors Democrats – the president’s party maintains a two-point lead over the GOP at 47 to 45 percent. However, among those who voted in 2010, a filter CNN/ORC uses to determine who are most likely to vote in November, the GOP holds a four-point advantage over Democrats at 49 to 45 percent.

When CNN/ORC switched over to a likely voter screen in October, 2010, they found that Republicans held a seven-point advantage (52/45 percent) over Democrats on the generic congressional ballot question. Republicans went on to gains 63 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate.

“Younger Americans, women and non-whites score low on questions that ask them whether they are likely to vote. But on questions about how interested they are in the 2014 elections, women are not much different than men, non-whites are not that much different than whites, and people under 35 years old are not much different than people between 35 and 65 years of age,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. “The task for the Democrats is not to get those voters to pay attention to this year’s election – the party faces the much more difficult task of turning that attention into enthusiasm for voting.”

The problem of low Democratic enthusiasm for the upcoming midterm elections has been a constant feature of the 2014 cycle’s political landscape, but the party’s solution remains the same.

The president’s party seems to have settled on an all-of-the-above strategy for increasing their base voters’ interest in the midterms. From the issues of income inequality, to family planning, to the environment, to campaign finance reform and the infamous Koch brothers, Democrats have paid homage to virtually every liberal shibboleth this cycle to no avail.

In March, Senate Democrats held an “all-nighter” in which they bemoaned the issue of climate change. Some observed that this was a dual purpose spectacle aimed at both energizing voters and maintaining the faith of liberal billionaire donor Tom Steyer. A few of those Democrats who participated in this modern equivalent of a rain dance lamented that the event did not make the splash they had hoped.

“If you were looking for reassurance that somebody took this seriously in Washington, you weren’t finding much,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told CNN. Perhaps Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) reading aloud from Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax on the Senate floor contributed to the fact that so few took this nakedly political event seriously.

The Democratic campaign against the libertarian Koch brothers represents another feeble effort to energize the Democratic base. Don’t tell Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), who manages to work a denouncement of the sibling businessmen into his traditional holiday greetings, but that effort has also been met with muted successes. Perhaps a union-led effort in New York City to picket a hospital which recently constructed a new wing partially funded by a $100 million Koch donation helped blunt that campaign.

In fact, the Democratic effort to find a theme that resonates with their base voters has been so scattershot that even the political press has stopped reporting on them credulously.

Monday’s Working Families Summit, in which members of the administration urged Congress to focus on passing mandatory paid family leave and affordable child care.

“It’s no secret that Democrats’ midterm election strategy is to pitch to women to get the women to come out to vote,” CNN’s Kate Bolduan asked the president on Monday. “They have said that.”

“Yeah,” Obama conceded.

“Is this all politics?” she followed up.

Obama replied by noting that he has a mother, a grandmother, a wife, and two daughters – all of whom have or will have to work in order to support a family.

“This is not just a women’s issue,” Obama said. “It’s a middle class issue and an American issue.”

Meanwhile, the Fed recently cut America’s expected rate of growth in 2014 to an anemic 2 percent. The gains Americans made in Iraq are collapsing with shocking alacrity. Fears about the Affordable Care Act continue to stimulate the law’s opponents more than hopes about the law encourage its supporters. Government continues to expand while Americans’ incomes shrink.

Incidentally, a Bloomberg poll conducted from June 6 to 9 indicates that unemployment, health care, a decline in real income, and the federal deficit are the issues respondents rated as the “most important” facing the country.

Partisan liberals may be inspired to vote in November by demonizing conservative donors or promising them federally funded daycare, but they were most likely going to turn out anyway. As long as Democrats appear unable or unwilling to address Americans’ top priorities, they will be unable to expand their universe of potential midterm voters.

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Tags: 2014, climate change, Koch Brothers, midterms, ObamaCare, Tom Steyer

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TomSteyergroup’slatestKeystoneXLattack:The

Tom Steyer group’s latest Keystone XL attack: The pipeline would be too vulnerable to terrorist attacks, or something

posted at 3:31 pm on June 10, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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Hedge fund billionaire and rapturous eco-crusader Tom Steyer has fronted a lot of ridiculous attempts to not only thwart the construction of the already-existing Keystone pipeline’s northern extension, which would merely give Canada’s oil sands an efficient connection to our refineries in the Gulf, but to smear everything about the fossil fuel industry, the technology it employs, and the global free market in which it operates. The absurdly worded poll that his NextGen Climate Action group commissioned earlier this year, claiming that the “majority of U.S. voters want to know where the crude oil transported through the Keystone XL pipeline will end up” — as if that’s somehow an indictment of the Keystone XL pipeline, and as if the U.S. doesn’t sell and ship its own petroleum products to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East (which, by the way, it does) — springs immediately to mind. This, however… this, I did not see this coming.

Hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, a climate change activist and staunch opponent of the prospective 1,179-mile pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Cushing, Okla., has hired retired Navy SEAL chief David “Dave” Cooper to assess how vulnerable the Keystone XL might be to deliberate sabotage. In a 14-page report made public today (but redacted to keep it from being a playbook for aspiring terrorists), Cooper concludes that a small group of evildoers could easily cause a catastrophic spill of millions of gallons of diluted bitumen, or tar sands crude, from the Keystone XL. They could do it with as little as four pounds of commercial-grade, improvised explosives. Cooper even did a dry run, using the completed Keystone I pipeline as a proxy; he hung out at a critical valve station long enough to content himself that he could have planted some explosives and left without a hitch.

In what Cooper deems “the most likely scenario,” a single attack could result in 1.2 million gallons of Alberta crude tarring Nebraska farms and waterways. He calculated this using published emergency shutdown response times and pipeline flow forecasts from the government and TransCanada (TRP:CN), the company that wants to build and operate the line. A coordinated attack at multiple locations, Cooper suggests, could trigger a 7.24 million gallon flood.

Oookay. It is certainly true that pipeline vandalism has plenty of precedent; as Businessweek points out, it’s been a problem in places like Nigeria, Mexico, and particularly Iraq, with militants trying to sabotage all-important energy grids, and I have zero doubts that a former Navy SEAL chief has had ample experience with those types of situations. My question, however, is why the Keystone XL pipeline is ostensibly different/more dangerous than the literally millions of miles of oil-and-gas pipeline already crisscrossing the country in a vast and interconnected network?

The risk to our energy infrastructure as well as our environment via pipeline blowout has always been there, but every option has its tradeoffs, and we have clearly determined that this particular risk is well worth the reward. As the State Department just aptly pointed out once again in their recent adjustment to their Keystone XL report from last January, terrestrial pipelines are in practice the safest and most ecologically friendly way to transport the oil that Canada is most definitely going to be drilling for anyway. Evidently, Tom Steyer really is willing to use his fossil-fuel-obtained billions to peddle whatever deliberately misleading information he feels he needs to in order to stymie what the eco-radical lobby has branded as one of the greatest environmental threat Of Our Time — and only they know why.

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Tags: Democrats, environmentalism, Keystone XL Pipeline, terrorism, Tom Steyer

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Video:JonStewartskewersHarryReid’sKochhypocrisy

Video: Jon Stewart skewers Harry Reid’s Koch hypocrisy

posted at 4:06 pm on May 14, 2014 by Guy Benson

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It’s no secret that the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart leans pretty solidly to the left, but certain Democrats evidently make his skin crawl.  Perhaps chief among them is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who Stewart pronounced “really, really terrible” over the Nevadan’s nasty smears against Mitt Romney in 2012.   Stewart and company hopped back aboard the Reid-shaming bandwagon last night, kicking things off by documenting the Senator’s Koch obsession, and ridiculing his inarticulate shabbiness:

The segment then proceeded to trash Reid’s moronic explanation for why the Kochs’ cash is evil poison, whereas Sheldon Adelson’s political contributions are righteous:

“Corruption is a billionaire who spends their money on s–t you don’t like.”

Stewart makes his point, and Reid comes off as a hypocritical asshat — but one glaringly obvious character somehow didn’t make it into the script: Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer, whose nine-figure 2014 pledge to Democrats has had Reid jumping through hoops for months.  Steyer effectively rented out the Senate floor for a pointless speech-a-thon devoted to his pet issue, and his ardent opposition to the Keystone pipeline undoubtedly helped torpedo a vote on the broadly-supported, job-creating project.  (Mr. “Green,” coincidentally, founded a company with a major stake in a pipeline that would compete directly with Keystone XL).  Sure, Reid has a political incentive to play nice with Adelson, who’s an uber rich, politically active billionaire operating in his backyard.  Adelson’s resources could potentially prove decisive if Nevada’s popular Republican Governor decides to challenge Reid in 2016, so there’s nothing to be gained from needlessly inflaming that particular wealthy conservative donor.  But the Majority Leader has an even more pressing reason to do Steyer’s bidding, as the mogul’s millions could end up being the difference between Republicans falling just short of recapturing the Senate in November, and Reid losing his current title.  All three “money bags” villains portrayed in the clips above are right-leaning businessmen.  The (at least) equally relevant lefty billionaire managed to elude a single mention, despite the fact his example would have connected the ‘big money hypocrisy’ dots even more forcefully.  A mere oversight, I’m sure.

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Tags: Harry Reid, Koch Brothers, The Daily Show, Tom Steyer

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Colorado’ssenatorsareprobablygoingtobeclutch

Colorado’s senators are probably going to be clutch in this Keystone XL vote

posted at 2:31 pm on May 3, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Whether Harry Reid will actually put their legislation to a vote or not is still up in the air, but Republican John Hoeven and hyper-vulnerable red-state Democrat Mary Landrieu made a hard push this week to rally support for their jointly proposed measure to immediately greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline. All of the Senate’s Republicans as well as eleven Democrats are already officially on board, which means they’re only a handful of “yeas” away from the 60 votes they would need to clear any procedural hurdles (although getting the 66 votes they would need to overcome the presidential veto threat the White House will likely issue is probably another matter entirely).

Conspicuously absent from that list of at least eleven Democrats so far, however, are the two senators from Colorado, via the WSJ:

Senators from both parties who are pushing the bill are eyeing the Democrats from Colorado as potential yes votes on the bill.

Mr. Bennet voted yes on a nonbinding measure last year supporting the project, and Mr. Udall has voted against it in the past.

Mr. Udall, first elected to the Senate in 2008, is running for re-election against GOP Rep. Cory Gardner of Colorado. Representing a major oil-and-gas producing state, Mr. Udall has faced increasing pressure to take clearer positions on energy issues like Keystone ever since Mr. Gardner entered the race a couple of months ago.

“I think there is a reasonable argument that the pipeline is in the national interest. I also think there are serious questions about air quality, water quality and land-use effects on the pipeline,” Mr. Udall said in an interview in Denver on Saturday. “Am I frustrated it’s taken this long? Yes, but the important goal is to get it right.”

Sen. Bennet has reaffirmed his general support for the pipeline pretty recently, although he has yet to add his name to Landrieu’s coveted legislation — but he’s not the one up for imminent reelection here. Colorado is the country’s fourth-largest natural gas producer and sits atop some major oil fields, and relatively speaking, energy issues are enormously important; since Sen. Udall and Rep. Cory Gardner are birds of a feather when it comes to certain other aspects of the energy debate…

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said late Thursday that he is replacing his proposal to expedite liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports with a bill sponsored by Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who is challenging Udall for his seat.

“Colorado’s natural gas resources have a central role to play in creating jobs and promoting global stability,” Udall said in a statement. “This effort to expedite natural gas exports to our allies and trading partners abroad is far too important to get bogged down over technical differences between the two chambers.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee passed Gardner’s bill Wednesday. When he first proposed the measure, it sought to force the Department of Energy (DOE) to quickly approve all LNG export applications for countries in the World Trade Organization (WTO). But the bill that passed the committee was watered down and instead set a timeline for DOE to consider applications.

Udall’s bill similarly would have opened LNG exports to WTO countries.

…and seeing as how their race is locked in a dead heat, I doubt Gardner is going to allow Udall to get away with anything less than a hard stance on the pipeline for long without making it a huge headache for him. Outside groups certainly aren’t — especially since Udall, for his part, has recently been spotted mingling with avidly anti-Keystone eco-radical progressive billionaire Tom Steyer at one of his mega-money San Francisco fundraisers. Awkward.

Tags: Colorado, Cory Gardner, energy, Keystone XL Pipeline, Mark Udall, natural gas, Tom Steyer

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TomSteyer:Iamabsolutelynothingatall

Tom Steyer: I am absolutely nothing at all like the Koch brothers

posted at 1:21 pm on April 23, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

Do I have any issues with a Tom Steyer using any of his legitimately earned billions of dollars to donate to political causes, candidates, campaigns, and super PACS in which he believes? Absolutely not. Do I have a problem with Tom Steyer smearing other billionaires for doing so, funding a perniciously targeted misinformation campaign full of flat-out falsehoods against the Keystone XL pipeline, and pretending that he has some sort of imagined moral high ground in this arena? Yes, yes I do. Via Politico:

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer insisted Tuesday that he’s not the left’s version of the Koch brothers. …

Charles and David Koch’s priorities “line up perfectly with their pocketbooks — and that’s not true for us,” Steyer said.

A Koch spokesman objected to Steyer’s characterization.

“That assertion is false and disingenuous, and people can see through that. Koch opposes all mandates and subsidies, even when they exist for businesses in which we operate. In doing so, we act against our self-interest. We have been consistent in this position for over 40 years,” spokesman Robert Tappan said in an email. …

But Steyer countered that there are major differences between himself and the Koch brothers, and he argued that his operation is “completely open” and transparent. “I think they have not been huge embracers of transparency,” he said of the Kochs.

“I think they’re in a very, very different position than me and from the people that I work with. And the fact that we’re on opposite sides of the table on a lot of issues — that is true. But the way that we’re approaching them is very, very different,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Steyer has disclaimed similarities to the Koch brothers, and while I’m sure it must be such a trial to suffer the slings and arrows of comparisons to that dreadfully indecent and un-American duo, the gentleman needs to check himself before he wrecks himself and ends up in the old-men-yelling-at-clouds detachment. I would direct you to some of my old posts here, here, here, and here if you’d like a refresher on just how egregious Steyer’s anti-Keystone XL pipeline crusade really is, but for Steyer to claim that he has never in his life rent-sought and that all of his motivations come only from the pureness of his public-welfare-promoting heart is some mind-boggling hypocrisy. For more on that particular point, I can’t do it any better than John Hinderaker at Powerline, who has some excellent suggestions for the many ways in which Steyer might improve his own transparency record and come clean about the role of the dirty energy he claims to abhor in having earned him his billions.

Tags: donors, Koch Brothers, politics, Tom Steyer, wealthy

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