Matthew Continetti
The Washington Free Beacon
3/21/2014
…Steyer pledged to remove himself from the operations of his hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management, in the waning days of 2012, when he was being considered as a possible secretary of Energy in the second Obama administration. But he remains an “outside limited partner” with the firm, and the “bulk” of his billion-dollar fortune is parked there. As of 2012, when Steyer was supporting Democrats, donating millions to Podesta’s Center for American Progress, and otherwise championing natural gas over other forms of energy, Farallon held more than $7 million in shares of gas technology company Fuel Systems Solutions. He was making plenty of money from the Obama administration’s championing of natural gas.
As of the end of 2013, Farallon also held close to $40 million in Kinder Morgan, which is building a competitor to the Keystone Pipeline. When Farallon’s position in Kinder Morgan was exposed last summer—after the Keystone debate had been raging for years—Steyer pledged to sell his share of the stock and donate the profits to charity. Last September, it was revealed that Steyer had backed a UT study on hydraulic fracturing, which showed that the process does not result in dangerous methane emissions. As far as I can determine, Steyer remains an adviser to and backer ofEFW Partners, a “global investor in the basic resources critical for economic growth: energy, food, and water.” I wonder whether EFW is short or long on LNG.
Just as Politico was publishing its write-up of Podesta’s defense of natural gas, George Soros, another ultraliberal billionaire hedge-fund manager, was increasing his stake in oil and gas company Penn Virginia Corporation. Shares of Penn Virginia spiked on the news that Soros’s fund would take a more active role in restructuring the company, which extracts both shale oil and natural gas. Soros of course is one of the most famous Democratic donors in the world, an architect of the Democracy Alliance, a founder of the Center for American Progress, and a backer of Priorities USA, the Obama Super PAC that, under the leadership of Democratic empire-builder Jim Messina, is shifting its allegiance to Hillary Clinton. George Soros’s net worth is some $23 billion. And we are supposed to pretend that he is not benefiting financially from the energy policies of the Democrats he puts into office…
Read the complete article at The Washington Free Beacon.
Related: The Greens’ Malleable Principles Environmentalist Tom Steyer shrugs at Senate Democrats who support Keystone.
Earlier this year, billionaire Tom Steyer pledged to raise $100 million to make climate change a dominant issue in the 2014 midterm elections. That sounds impressive, but as the midterms take shape, a serious dilemma is emerging for Steyer and his allies: Sticking to their principles would require them to refuse help to quite a few key Senate Democrats running for reelection in red states…
Read the whole thing.
While America Spars Over Keystone XL, A Vast Network Of Pipelines Is Quietly Being Approved from Think Progress:
…America will have to wait for the White House’s decision on Keystone XL… Meanwhile, here are ten other pipelines — projects that haven’t been waylayed by international approval processes or political skirmishes — you should know about…
Update: The War on the Koch brothers: Washington Post Falls for Left-Wing Fraud, Embarrasses Self
…Why would the Washington Post embarrass itself by republishing a thoroughly discredited attempt to link the Koch brothers to the Keystone Pipeline? Because that is a Democratic Party talking point, and the Post is a Democratic Party newspaper. But the truth is a little worse than that…
Read the whole thing!
Also, Who is John Podesta? from Judicial Watch.
