Breaking: The (Leftist) Billionaire Boys Club

This afternoon there’s an important update on the story of the epic hypocrisy of Tom Steyer, the billionaire promising to spend $100 million on behalf of Democrats, and John’s long analysis of the Democracy Alliance.

Senate Report copyThe Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have released a new report entitled The Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA (PDF link).  The report gives the lie to the frequent hysteria over the Koch brothers, as it shows the extent of deeply politicized left-wing philanthropy dwarfs in amount and reach anything the Kochs and their friends carry on—often skirting the edge of the law regulating charitable activity.  The money flowing into the environmental establishment is massive and centrally coordinated.

One of the more striking findings of the report is not so much that billionaires like Steyer provide lavish funding, but how rich so many environmental organizations are.  Check out the assets values displayed in this table:

Green Assets copy

Just one organization on that list—the Natural Resources Defense Council—has a larger annual budget than all of the major conservatives think tanks combined, for all purposes.  This is what makes the constant whining about “climate skeptics” so incredible.

More significant than the dollars involved (I’m not sure I’d lump in funding of the Nature Conservancy, for example, with the climatistas on the list) is the details of how leftist foundations work hand in glove with the Obama Administration.

In one shocking example, the Committee learned of an arrangement between the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) and EPA where RFF agreed to pay the salary of Shalini Vajjhala, then an employee at the nonprofit organization Resources for the Future, to work at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). According to internal EPA documents, this arrangement benefited EPA as Vajjhala would have the opportunity to, “stake our claim there” – where “our” is the EPA Office of International and Tribal Affairs and “there” refers to the White House. . .

In another outrageous email exchange, former Assistant Administrator for the Office of International and Tribal Affairs, Michelle DePass, and “Richard Windsor,” former Administrator Jackson’s alias, strategize over how best to leverage a public appearance before the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA). Reproduced in full, the email exchange states:

EPA email copy

The report goes on to detail the revolving door between activists and government agencies.  There’s lots more, especially about the growing effort by leftist foundations to strangle hydraulic fracturing that is key to natural gas production—the single best energy story of the last decade that has done more to reduce carbon emissions than all the windmills and solar panels the greens worship.  No good deed goes unpunished.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses