Barack Obama's original 2008 presidential campaign of “Hope and Change,” masterminded by campaign manager David Plouffe and chief strategist David Axelrod, was a triumph messaging, which quickly gathered immense attraction across our nation and abroad.
Part of Obama’s change crusade included slamming Wall Street at every turn, especially during his first term, labeling them as “fat-cat bankers,” who don’t follow the rules. In fact, President Obama proclaimed in a December 13, 2009 60-Minutes interview, "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street…"
While the majority of Americans were mesmerized by his messaging, along with the left-wing media's "thrill up their leg" –– glorifying him to sainthood even –– by late 2009, Matt Taibbi, liberal writer for Rolling Stone Magazine, laid out a compelling case on how Obama sold out to Wall Street: "Obama's Big Sellout." "Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008." The Obama inspiration came from the "sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, and they were voting for 'change,'” were some of the words Taibbi penned regarding then-Senator Barack Obama’s rise to power.
Needless to say, Taibbi seemed shocked, documenting that it all began after Obama was elected in 2008: "What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history." Later Taibbi asks the question, "How did we get here?" He then answers, "It started just moments after the election –– and nobody noticed."
Outsider?
Quite the contrary, because Obama arrived on the scene with his fair share of Wall Street buddies, which in fact helped ensure his presidential victory in 2008 –– with many again in 2012 –– poring millions of dollars into his campaign coffers, making their mark as TOP campaign donors, with even Wall Street executives bundling huge sums of money for Obama. There were many of the too-big-to-fail banks (you know the ones that we, the taxpayer, bailed out) that made this special donor list: Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. Further down the line you'll find Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch –– the latter two indirectly, and so on. Meanwhile, many of the executives running these enormous failures, were not only handed big bonuses, but Obama rewarded them and his big bundlers with "jobs, commissions, stimulus money, government contracts, and more" –– with Wall Street given key positions inside the White House and also tapping into the "green" funds.
Wall Street was not the only big backer of Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential bids. Besides having the usual (and expected) environmentalists and left-wing organizations in his back pocket, there were Big Venture Capitalists, Big Left-wing Money, Big Energy, and Big Oil, all bundling for, and donating to his campaign –– with each snagging their fare share of money from President Obama's “save the planet slush fund.”
Save the Planet Slush Fund
"America, this is our moment…the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal," candidate Obama declared in a June 8, 2008 speech.
Furthermore, not only did the "candidate of hope and change" pledge to do the miraculous, Senator Obama, during the 2008 Democratic National Convention, vowed to save the planet:
Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stopgap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close. As president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies retool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy - wind power and solar power and the next generation of bio-fuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.
Shortly after President Obama began his reign as our 44th president, in February 2009, he signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This was a massive economic stimulus bill –– among the biggest in history and the number one lobbied piece of legislation since 2005 –– that was sold to the American people as a means save our economy from the brink of disaster and create American jobs.
By the beginning of 2012, revelations revealed the real intent behind Obama's trillion-dollar spending spree ("walking around money"): it was “a key tool for advancing the Obama administration’s clean-energy goals and fulfilling a number of campaign commitments.” In fact, the 2009-Stimulus package was jammed-packed full of clean-energy provisions, of which about 10 percent of the monies were earmarked for renewable energy.
It's important to point out that the $100 billion in stimulus funds is not the only money being used to fuel the Obama administration's efforts to save the planet; it's closer to $150 billion and counting, because they continue to dole out more –– and all at at time when we are drowning in debt. A March 2012 report by the Brookings Institute places the Obama administrations' "total government spending (both stimulus and non-stimulus) on green initiatives at $150 billion through 2014." And what did we, the taxpayer, get out of the deal? Billions wasted, increased debt, outsourcing clean-energy money and green jobs to other countries, as well as massive amounts of corporate welfare, cronyism, and corruption.
The most controversial has been the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program, which comprises of Section 1703, Section 1705, and Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM). While both Section 1703 and the ATVM programs were established during the Bush administration, Section 1705 was created by the 2009-Recovery Act that included $16 billion in lending power. Thus far the DOE has guaranteed $34.7 billion of taxpayer money, and even though the 1705 has expired, there are reports that “the department still has about $50 billion left that could be lent, with a large chunk earmarked for nuclear projects.”
This is the same Energy Department program which the Green Corruption Files has exposed over and over how at least 90 percent of the loan winners have meaningful politically connections to the president and other high-ranking Democrats –– in many cases to both, with Majority Leader Harry Reid tied to five (a bombshell report we released last month). It also brought you the big alternative energy losers such as Solyndra, Beacon Power, Abound Solar, Fisker Automotive, and Vehicle Production Group, flushing millions of tax dollars down the eco-toilet. With SoloPower, Nevada Geothermal and others in the shadows, and quite a few DOE clean-energy projects at risk –– AREVA and its $2 billion, Georgia Power Company and its $8.33 billion –– there are billions more still hanging on the edge.
Also, many of these same companies that were funded with DOE loans, also won free taxpayer cash from one of the biggest stimulus scams: the 1603 Treasury Program, which has to date given out $19,349,675,402. This is another part of the scandal that we've been tracking that also includes numerous favored clean-energy projects. The real shock came at the end of 2102 when we learned from the Energy and Commerce Committee's “in-depth report on its ongoing investigation into the implementation of President Obama’s green energy stimulus spending,” which exposed the fact that “foreign corporations have received approximately one-quarter of $16 billion spent on 'Section 1603' renewable energy stimulus program.”
Last fall, and since, we've debunked the president's 5 million green jobs campaign promise. Worse, the Obama administration has shipped green jobs overseas, and from the beginning, the Department of Energy has exaggerated and/or manipulated the number of green jobs created, calculating saved, indirect, direct, and "touching lives" in the mix –– along with the Obama administration’s labor department counting oil lobbyists, sanitation engineers, school bus drivers, bicycle repair shop clerks, and so on, as as green jobs.
In May 8, 2013, a report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) gave us insight into the DOE's dismal reality on green jobs: "the Department of Energy has spent nearly $26 billion since 2009 on its Section 1703 and 1705 loan programs. However, these two programs only yielded 2,308 permanent jobs — meaning the cost to taxpayers was $11.25 million per job," recorded the Daily Caller.
As you will discover throughout our work, the DOE loan program is not the only vehicle used to transport taxpayer funds toward alternative energy. There are numerous ways, which includes the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Biorefinery Assistance Program that along with the DOE, used billions of taxpayer money to fund risky biofuel projects that were "not so shovel-ready" –– yet as usual, the majority had significant political connections. There are smaller grant programs like the ARPA-E and the SunShot Initiative. Throw in the Clean Energy R&D, where "$2.5 billion went for applied research, development, demonstration and deployment activities at the Energy Department’s Office of EERE," of which a huge chunk was designated for biomass energy projects and geothermal projects.
There were additional stimulus funds that were appropriated to the Energy Department, which includes $11 billion for Grid Modernization; the $5 billion Home Weatherization Program; the $6 billion Nuclear Waste Clean Up as well as $3.4 billion for carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects; $2 billion for research into batteries for electric cars; $500 million for Green Jobs Training; and funds that went to various state energy programs.
Did you know that there is a "Green War" being waged? Yep, the Department of Defense has launched more green energy initiatives than any other federal agency and many are duplicative and wasteful," as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Another means where huge corporations and Obama's green buddies get taxpayer money is through the taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im), who "has a Congressional mandate to support renewable energy and has been directed that 10% of its authorizations should be dedicated to renewable energy and environmentally beneficial transactions."
Clean Energy; Dirty Money
What happened during President Obama’s first term –– and is continuing into his second –– is the focus of Clean Energy; Dirty Money: How the Obama administration hijacked our environment and doled out tens of billions of our tax dollars to payback his political cronies –– "green" bundlers, top donors, financiers, and allies –– catapulting crony capitalism to a staggering level, while fueling corporate welfare and corruption.
Hope and change were still alive in 2012, but this time in the president’s “forward” message, fear was added as its running mate. The president described 2012 as a "make-or-break moment for America's middle class," before incorporating the theme of moving "forward."
"We've got to move forward, to the future that we imagined in 2008. We've got to move forward to that future where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules," President Obama hyped.
Again, during his re-election bid, President Obama had promised that climate change would be a priority in his second term –– a term he began with more scare tactics, proclaiming that the failure to tackle climate change, “would betray our children and future generations.”
But it wasn't until June of 2013 that the president unleashed his new climate agenda; however, prior to and since that time, his administration has continually fired up new climate legislation, regulations and mandates, which benefits special interest groups while adversely affecting American families. And, like the Affordable Care Act taking over our entire health care industry, will in essence, under the guise of "saving the planet," dominate our most valuable resource –– energy. The National Review took notice of "Obama's radical climate agenda," which by the way circumvents Congress, alarming that "the president announced that, on behalf of 'all of humankind,' he is in effect directing the EPA to take over the American economy." Reason.com, too, sees the dire reality here: "Obama’s plan ambitiously seeks to control nearly every aspect of how Americans produce and consume energy."
Last but not least, the president's Climate Action Plan calls for releasing more taxpayer money –– thus once again funding the Green Bank of Obama. “This time, though, the [DOE loan] program would devote as much as $8 billion to helping industries like coal and oil make cleaner energy,” wrote the New York Times. The Institute for Energy Research (IER) took aim at this part of the plan: "This proposal is nothing but window dressing to make it appear that the administration isn’t completely anti-coal. The new proposal would throw good money after bad."
