Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Oregon’s Governor and the Grifter(s)

by MICHAEL DONNELLY

Oregon’s Governor-for-Life John Kitzhaber, 68, resigned Friday the 13th.  His resignation letter was the usual lawyerly-parsed, blame-the-media/take no responsibility sham we’re used to seeing. He had been governor from 1995-2003 and again from 2011 until now. The basic allegations which forced the rest of the state’s Democratic Party elite – Senate President, House Speaker, State Treasurer and others to join the state’s largest newspaper and call for his resignation – involve influence-peddling by his ten-year girlfriend/fiancée Cylvia Hayes. Hayes, 48, – a woman with a grifter’s history – pretty much publically advertised that her clout with the governor was for sale and cashed in for over $200,000 at the same time she was his advisor on energy policy, working out of the governor’s mansion and using government employees as subordinates. The most damning allegation? She took over $118,000 from a sham non-profit that went defunct without ever filing a report with the IRS. She herself never reported her payments. The entire purpose was to shake loose tens of millions of state subsidies for “Green” Energy projects.
The Energy Foundation – Banksters for the “Green” “Movement.”
It’s all because of something called the 25 by 25 Renewable Energy Portfolio standards that were quietly adopted in Oregon (and many other states). It requires that 25% of the energy mix in Oregon’s grid to come from Renewable sources by 2025. A shadowy non-profit called The Apollo AllianceMission Accomplished!  went state to state pushing the concept. Suddenly, there was a huge pool of tax money to be tapped by private entities with ties to renewable energy.  In 2013, Cylvia Hayes was hired by the Energy Foundation. This San Francisco group, tied to billionaire Democrat sugar daddy and potential California US Senate candidate Tom Steyer, paid her $40,000 dollars and funded part of her fellowship with Clean Economy Development Center, a clean-energy group based in Washington, D.C, though Hayes seems to have been their only paid fellow. Her fellowship salary was the $118,000 she did not report. The CEDC was stripped of its tax status in 2014 for failing to file IRS returns for three consecutive years. The most damning thing for Kitzhaber is that he then hired the guy who arranged for Hayes’ Fellowship as his own highest-paid aide – at a $162,720 annual salary. Somehow, they thought no one would notice!
The “Green” Biomassacre
Number of years the United States could meet its energy needs by burning all its trees: 1
– Harpers List, January 2006
The Apollo Alliance and allies have also been traveling around pushing Biomass projects, greenwashing the forest habitat, species and huge carbon cost of burning trees (let alone trash which they also consider “renewable”) – a process 1.5 times dirtier than burning coal – for small amounts of electrons. There’s a reason for it. After all the tens of millions in wind farm subsidies and other renewables, they make up about 4.7% of the power in Oregon’s grid – power that is useless on its own without coal-powered baseload energy regulating the grid from the Boardman Coal Plant, Oregon’s largest carbon polluter. And, now theBoardman Plant is being forced to go off coal and — you guessed it — switch over to Biomass. Burning our forests is the only way they can possibly meet the 25% target (Though some are trying to get Nukes declared renewables for portfolio purposes!)...
The National Ramifications
While crony capitalism is generally the GOP’s bread and butter; “green” crony capitalism is a gluten-free croissant and almond butter concoction that has taken down one narcissistic Democrat in backwater Oregon. The virus, however, has settled in across the country. Biomass plants are springing up like Starbuck’s near every forest carbon sink. Subsidized “green” energy projects abound...

 

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