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American Tradition Institute’s Paul Chesser discusses how General Motors and General Electric have pursued electric vehicle subsidies in China on The Morning Show with Mike Greg Knapp on KCMO in Kansas City, 10/12/2011.

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By Paul Chesser

Taxpayer-backed “Green” investments are the flavor of the moment, whether they are renewables such as wind or solar companies – many of which are fledgling and therefore struggling, unless they are part of a larger corporation such as General Electric. And then there is the transportation sector and electric vehicles.

The need to create recharging infrastructure is perhaps an even bigger example of waste and inefficiency that the federal government – mostly through the Department of Energy – is “investing” in its electric vehicle experiment, whose centerpiece is the Chevy Volt. As with other Obama administration “Green” energy initiatives, billions of taxpayer dollars are pouring into that effort.

At least one recipient of massive government funds looks somewhat Solyndra-esque. San Francisco-based Ecotality was awarded two Department of Energy grants that totaled $115 million to install 14,000 of its Blink vehicle charges in 18 metropolitan areas around the country. Energy Secretary Steven Chu praised Ecotality subsidiary Electric Transportation Engineering Corporation (eTec, but now called Ecotality North America) at the Washington Auto Show in January 2010, at the same time he announced a $1.4 billion loan agreement with Nissan North America to retrofit its Smyrna, Tenn. plant to produce the Leaf.

Read the rest at the National Legal & Policy Center blog.

By Kevin O’Brien, Cleveland Plain Dealer—Some form of green energy may actually deliver cost-effective power, but for now, it’s a scam.

Ohio’s legislators knew that when they approved the renewable portfolio standards, which call for Ohio utilities to generate a preposterous 12.5 percent of consumer electricity from expensive, inefficient sources like wind and solar energy by 2025. Another 12.5 percent is supposed to come from sources like “advanced nuclear,” “clean coal,” biomass and other ideas that will have to be pried off the drawing board really soon. Don’t hold your breath.

The Beacon Hill Institute, in a report published by American Tradition Institute, figured these green dreams will add $1.4 billion to Ohioans’ electricity bills by 2025.

Read the rest here.

By Paul Chesser

Read at The Daily Caller

Last week, the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) released a report on the amount of money that has been spent in the fight over Transcanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline, which would run 1,700 miles from the Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, is opposed by environmentalists.

Unfortunately, CRP’s report portrays the fight as a battle between “Big Oil” and poor little environmental activist groups. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

The report quotes Eddie Scher, the senior communications strategist for the Sierra Club. Scher complains that environmental groups can’t compete with the “literally unlimited resources” of energy companies.

“There’s no question we’re up against big numbers of campaign dollars,” he said. “We’re up against the cream of the crop when it comes to K Street lobbyists. But we believe even well-financed insanity is trumped by democracy.”

But the Sierra Club — like other major environmental groups — is by no means poor. At the end of 2009, it had more than $170 million in assets between its activist wing and its education foundation. The Nature Conservancy ended last year with $5.65 billion in assets, after taking in $210.5 million in revenue. The World Wildlife Fund had $377.5 million in assets as of June 2010, after scraping together $177.7 million for the fiscal year. And the National Audubon Society had $305.9 million stashed away at the end of last year. The Environmental Defense Fund, Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and almost every other national “green” group you’ve ever heard of are similarly “impoverished.”

And then there are the foundations — dozens if not hundreds of them — that finance environmental activism. Among their benefactors: the Energy Foundation ($68.6 million in assets), the Joyce Foundation ($773.6 million), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund ($729 million), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($6.8 billion), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($5.7 billion), and Heinz Endowments ($1.2 billion).

Scher’s Sierra Club might not spend as much money on lobbying as energy companies do, but that’s by choice. The part of the Sierra Club that is organized under the 501(c)(4) section of the tax code — in other words, the part of the organization that isn’t limited by lobbying restrictions — had nearly $49 million in assets at its disposal at the end of 2009. According to its 2009 tax return, the group spent about $4.9 million on “lobbying and political expenditures.” Only $480,000 of that money was spent at the federal level. The other $4.4 million was spent lobbying at the state level or on political activities like advertisements.

But that’s because the Sierra Club has made a strategic decision to focus more on litigation than on lobbying. The group files, on average, one lawsuit per week.

Other groups with as much financial might, such as the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council, make similar tactical decisions about litigation, lobbying, and other activities. In fact, litigation involves more bullying than lobbying does. There are few things worse in life than dealing with lawsuits.

It’s time for the people at these well-heeled environmental groups to stop whining about how they “can’t compete” with energy companies.

Read at The Daily Caller

By John O’Sullivan, Climate Realists blog—Discredited global warming scientist, Michael Mann, sees his last-ditch efforts to hide data fall apart as legal experts reveal a mountain of legal precedents against him. A leading authority on education law, Ronald B. Standler, shows that academic freedom has been nothing but an amorphous quasi-legal concept since it first appeared in American courts in the late 1950s. Standler’s reasoning is a telling assist to the climate skeptics’ legal playmaker, Chris Horner of ATI who now looks set be the attorney who scores the courtroom winner.

Read the rest here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, October 3, 2011
Contact: Paul Chesser, [email protected]

As it waits for the resolution of its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which seeks the outside employment permission records of global warming activist Dr. James Hansen, American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center has received the belatedly filed 2010 public financial disclosure of the renowned director of the NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

ATI obtained Dr. Hansen’s Form SF 278, which is required to be filed annually, also under the Freedom of Information Act. The disclosure revealed that Dr. Hansen received between $236,000 and $1,232,500 in outside income in 2010 relating to his taxpayer-funded employment, which included:

• Between $26,008 and $72,500 in honoraria for speeches;

• Between $150,001 and $1.1 million in prizes;

• Just under $60,000 in the form of in-kind income for travel to his many outside-income generating activities

The travel reporting marked the first time Hansen detailed such “in-kind” benefits, which included apparent first-class travel for him and his wife on trips to Australia, Japan, and Norway. The new detail raises the question of whether Dr. Hansen wrongly submitted forms in previous years, which he left blank and attested “none” in the space where he is required to report travel expenses taken as part of his outside employment, all in years in which he was busy with numerous paid outside activities of the same sort as he was in 2010.

“Now that Dr. Hansen’s outside income has come under scrutiny, we see a newfound attention to detail on forms where he reports about these sources,” said Christopher Horner, ATI’s director of litigation. “It also shows that Dr. Hansen continues to enjoy a healthy level of earnings that supplement – and for his curious exploitation of – the taxpayer-funded position he holds.”

As ATI detailed in its current lawsuit against NASA in federal court in Washington, Dr. Hansen admits this income began after he escalated his public – and often political – global warming advocacy, for which outside parties have spectacularly rewarded him.

ATI sued NASA because the agency refuses to make public any forms 17-60 – the application for permission for outside employment – by invoking the Privacy Act and calling their release “a clearly unwarranted violation’ of Hansen’s privacy.” These forms would demonstrate to the public and Congress whether NASA has signed off on Hansen’s lucrative activities, even though they raise serious questions under Ethics in Government Act rules. NASA’s withholding of the 17-60s is improper because Dr. Hansen, like other federal employees of the highest levels of pay and responsibility, waives certain privacy interests as a condition of his employment. Dr. Hansen is required to file the permission forms before most or all of his outside employment activities.

These requirements that cover Dr. Hansen include annual public financial disclosure that is vastly more detailed and personal than the one-page application for permission for outside employment and other activities. This is also true of senior government officials including Members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, the President and Vice President.

ATI expects the media will share its curiosity about Dr. Hansen’s records at NASA, considering they have shown similar recent interest in others’ disclosures. For example:

• The Wall Street Journal‘s recent coverage about Congress members’ public financial disclosures

• The Huffington Post on Thursday reported that some Democrats demand an investigation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s filings and the propriety of his wife’s income

• The New York Times‘ recently published a (serially corrected) 2700-word piece that highlighted how public servants are “restricted from using their positions ‘for personal gain’ or on matters in which they have a direct financial interest,” and how they “must avoid outside work that can pose a ‘time conflict,’ and ‘detract from [the employee's] full time and attention to his official duties,’” as those rules “were designed to promote the notion of a full-time [employee].”

“That Dr. Hansen very well may be the country’s first millionaire bureaucrat — thanks to this flood of outside income since 2006 all clearly related to his public employment – raises similar questions,” Horner said. “Given his high profile and the significant role attributed to him in the climate debate, his and NASA’s own record on this front should generate at least as much interest.”

See Dr. James Hansen’s 2010 SF 278 disclosure form (PDF).

For an interview with American Tradition Institute senior director of litigation Christopher Horner, email [email protected] or call (202)670-2680.

This week the Ohio News Network reported on a bill co-sponsored by State Sen. Kris Jordan, which seeks to repeal the state’s Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard. Sen. Jordan cited research by American Tradition Institute as justification for repeal of AEPS, as ONN reported.

Watch the video report by ONN here.

By Paul Chesser—American Tradition Institute

A lot has been said about the ties of George Kaiser, a campaign contribution bundler for President Obama’s 2008 campaign, to the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal that likely has cost taxpayers $535 million thanks to a Department of Energy loan guarantee. Kaiser’s investment firm, Argonaut Venture Capital, held over 35 percent of the failed solar company’s stock – more than anyone else.

But next in line (with 11 percent) behind Argonaut in the Solyndra stakes is Madrone Capital Partners, which is managed by a trio whom the political Left has attempted to tie to support for Republicans. Of course, “they did it too” is not a legitimate defense, but in this case, it’s not a portrayal of the entire picture either.

Read the rest at the National Legal & Policy Center blog

ATI Environmental Law Center director of litigation Chris Horner discusses the Solyndra scandal with Mike Rosen on KOA in Denver, 9/28/2011.

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