Lobbyist pitch: Your green ‘energy’ is worthless without subsidies

Washington Examiner ^ | 6/16/10 | Timothy P. Carney

[epithermal]

I sometimes worry that there might be some naive entrepreneur out there who takes at face value this talk on “green energy” being the next boom — a businessman who doesn’t understand that the only way to make money from wind, solar, biofuels, and the like is through government favors.

In case such a misguided soul exists, lobbying firm Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schrek have launched a public-service campaign to set them right:

Well, I guess it’s not technically a PSA, but it is good for this K Street lobbying firm to remind the business world that the green-energy game is really about lobbying and special-interest pleading.

The ad also highlights the absurdity of President Obama’s rhetoric on this issue. Last night, for instance, he said that “the path forward” regarding “clean energy” has been “blocked” by “lobbyists.” On the contrary, I’d say it’s been paved by lobbyists, such as the folks at Brownstein, Hyatt — and also at BP, GE, ADM, Enron, and many other green bandits.

Blogger Ira Stoll at the Future of Capitalism, has been following this well connected, but otherwise not well covered lobbying firm.

[epithermal]

Green energy - its what runs government

[Scott from the Left Coast]

That’s because it’s a fake solution to a fake problem. The stuff government adores.

[truthguy]

Yes, the whole green energy/jobs thing is a total fraud. If you drive up the cost of electrical energy to $0.50-0.60/kWhr no business or industry can absorb that cost. Businesses will leave in mass and that will result in fewer jobs and a reduction in economic output and standard of living. So most if not all of the experts in the Obama administration are selling snake oil with their "clean/green" energy agenda. What a fraud that will make a few venture capitalists rich (or richer). This is what is otherwise known as crony capitalism.

[bigbob]

he United States currently pays around $20 billion per year to farmers in direct subsidies - everything from corn to cotton to tobacco. The gov’t also provides investment tax credits or production tax credit for wind energy and other renewables. As of Jan. 1 the $1/gal subsidy to biodiesel blenders has been discontinued, meaning that biodiesel receives less (zero) gov’t subsidy dollars than any other form of energy, although they will probably re-instate it.

I’m not saying that one subsidy justifies another. Just providing some context, because to single out one form of subsidy is unfair.

[Jack Hydrazine]

“...a businessman who doesn’t understand that the only way to make money from wind, solar, biofuels, and the like is through government favors.”

Don’t forget that ethanol is government-subsized, also.

[kcvl]

Last year, when the Obama administration awarded its first windmill windfall of $115 million to First Wind, we reported on some of First Wind’s connections to the administration:

First Wind ... had owners that included D.E. Shaw and Madison Dearborn Partners. Shaw is the firm at which President Obama’s chief of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, held a $5.2 million a year, one-day-a-week job, and Madison Dearborn is the firm of which Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff, said, “They’ve been not only supporters of mine, they’re friends of mine.”...

First Wind, for its part, paid $150,000 in the first 6 months of 2009 to lobbyists at the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP. Disclosure forms indicate the firm lobbied the Energy and Treasury departments on behalf of First Wind in relation to the stimulus law. Brownstein Hyatt listed four lobbyists working on the case: a former Treasury department official, Michael Levy; a former Energy department official, C. Kyle Simpson; Michael McAdams, and Norman Brownstein. Mr. Brownstein goes back so far in Democratic politics that a New York Times article back in 1996 was already describing him as a “longtime Gore friend.” This release from the Campaign Finance Institute reports that Mr. Brownstein pledged to raise $1 million for the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver at which Mr. Obama was nominated, over and above Mr. Brownstein’s law firm partner Steven Farber’s efforts as a co-chairman of the convention host committee.

First Wind also paid $75,000 in the first half of 2009 to a Boston-based lobbying firm, Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications. Rasky Baerlein’s filings indicate it lobbied Congress rather than the administration. The firm listed a total of five staff members assigned to the project: Mike Gorman, George Cronin, Jeff Terrey, David Tamasi, and Emily Gombar. Mr. Cronin, the firm’s Web site says, was “a senior advisor and New England political director for US Sen. Joseph Biden’s 2008 Presidential campaign.” The firm’s namesake, Larry Rasky, took a leave from the firm in 2007 “to join the “Biden for President” campaign as its communications director. He previously served as press secretary for U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden’s 1988 presidential bid,” according to the firm’s Web site, which notes Mr. Rasky was also “deputy press secretary for President Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign in 1980.”

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/03/another-117-million-for-first-wind