Tuesday, September 18, 2018

The Massive Lobbying of Special Interest Fractivist Foundations

Tom.jpg?resize=75%2C95Tom Shepstone
Natural Gas NOW

…
… 

The Institute for Energy Research is assembling invaluable documentation of the massive grass-roots lobbying by special interest fractivist foundations.

We often use this blog to repost important articles authored by our friends at the  Institute for Energy Research (IER). They put out a lot of material and it’s always well researched and presented, so we’re happy to pass along their information when it has a bearing on natural gas development. They’re now engaged, though, in a project off enormous importance that deserves special attention. It has to do with documenting what is the humongous amount of grass-roots lobbying (as the IRS defines it) by supposed charities. That lobbying by three special interest fractivist foundations has, in reality, no charitable purpose. Rather, it is aimed at fleecing taxpayers to finance a “green energy” corporatist venture in which the chief contributors are heavily invested.

The enterprise IER has taken upon itself is to create a database allowing fleeced taxpayers to follow the money. It’s a website database called Big Green, Inc. and it’s fabulous. Here’s a nice quick overview:

Having investigated many of the organizations and grants involved that IER tabulates I found the ability to download a spreadsheet detailing almost 10,000 grants invaluable. Its focused on selected donors, but among them are some of the biggest fractivist foundations, including the following:

Each one of these special interest fractivist foundations is doing its bit to attack oil and gas as a means of advancing the world;’s biggest scam, the raiding of public treasuries and ratepayer pocketbooks to subsidize uneconomical renewables for which backup is always required by coal, oil, nuclear or, preferably, natural gas power.

There is simply not way for renewables to ever compete under this circumstance except to supplement the dispatchable energy sources. That is, unless government steps in the pay the difference or make ratepayers pay for the difference, which has happening around the world, the most famous example of which is the failed German Energiewende that has exploded electric costs and done nothing for emissions.

The direct and indirect subsidies given to renewables by government constitute a purely corporatist enterprise; a melding of the special interests of private investors in this “green energy” with government that grows its own power and fortunes through this unholy alliance. They simultaneously subsidize to lower the cost of renewables, while doing all they can to punish natural gas and raise its price, to make hedge fund investments in renewables pay.

They use non-profit tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charitable organizations as fronts, pretending their doing educational work or some such thing when, in fact, almost 100% of their activity consists of grass-roots lobbying as defined by there IRS – attempts to influence public opinion on legislation. Yet, they’re almost never called on it. It’s America’s biggest unknown scandal; non-profits doing politics at public expense.

BigGreenInc.Logo_.Color_.png

This what the IER’s Big Green, Inc. database is so useful in fighting. I’ll be digging into the data in great detail over the coming weeks and months, but let me offer, for now, just three examples of what I mean:

  • Did you know the William Penn Foundation gave the DRBC a total of $814,000 between 2011 (when they halted development of gas regulations) and 2013? The money went to “toward building capacity to assess, manage and mitigate impacts to water resources due to land changes related to natural gas development activities” and similar activities, yet the DRBC made not subsequent one move to further the development of their regulations. What happened to all that work and why wasn’t it used?
  • Did you know the William Penn Foundation simultaneously (2010-2016) gave the Delaware Povertykeeper a/k/a Riverkeeper (then suing the DRBC over gas issues) a total of $1,992,700 “toward continued advocacy and outreach to protect the Delaware River” and the like? This fungible money clearly helped the Povertykeeper sue the same DRBC the Foundation was subsidizing, making of mockery of the entire program on the part of all three entities, none of which had any intention of allowing natural gas development to go forward. It was fraud on a grand scale.
  • Did you know the Sea Change Foundation created by hedge fund “green energy” investor Nat Simons gave the Energy Foundation $108,195,371 between 2008 and 2016? That the Energy Foundation gave the NRDC a total of $29,608,382 over the same period? That the Sea Change Foundation directly gave the NRDC another  $20,481,395 over that very same period, bringing the total Sea Change (hedge fund “green energy” investor Nat Simons) subsidy of the NRDC to over $50 million? Think the NRDC doesn’t have a special interest?

This is the real world and its a world of immense corruption for all to see, thanks to the Big Green, Inc. database. This underworld reeks of special financial interests. It is a world where violation of tax-exempt lobbying rules is a given; where no one bothers to even pretend to comply or give a thought toward being caught. It’s an insider world where taxpayers and ratepayers are ripped by enormously wealthy individuals with second and third homes all over the world that they can only reach by jet and who pretend to be concerned about global warming. They’re frauds—all of them—and what’s amazing is how few of them there are who really finance the whole disgusting enterprise.

The post The Massive Lobbying of Special Interest Fractivist Foundations appeared first on Natural Gas Now.

https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/the-massive-lobbying-of-special-interest-fractivist-foundations/

Posted by at
Labels: ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)