http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nation/Once-a-government-pet-BP-now-a-capitalist-tool-95942659.html

Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool

By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
June 9, 2010

In this May 30, 2010 file photo, BP PLC CEO Tony Hayward talks to reporters as he visits a Coast Guard command center in Venice, La. BP's inability to contain the worst oil spill in U.S. history has focused attention on CEO Tony Hayward's words and deeds over the past six weeks - and the scrutiny has not yielded a flattering image. (AP file photo)

As BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies — including BP, according to the Washington Post.

Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP chief executive Tony Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican co-sponsor Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., repudiated the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the drawing board.

But the Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media — that BP’s lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

As Democrats fight to advance climate change policies, they are resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and finance efforts: posing as the scourges of the special interests and tarring “reform” opponents as the stooges of big business.

Expect BP to be public enemy No. 1 in the climate debate.

There’s a problem: BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the nation’s largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired power plants that switched to gas.

In February, BP quit USCAP without giving much of a reason beyond saying the company could lobby more effectively on its own than in a coalition that is increasingly dominated by power companies. Theymade out particularly well in the House’s climate bill, while natural gas producers suffered.

But two months later, BP signed off on Kerry’s Senate climate bill, which was hardly a capitalist concoction. One provision BP explicitly backed, according to Congressional Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The money would be earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more driving and more gasoline consumption.

Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break even without government support. Lobbying records show the company backing solar subsidies including federal funding for solar research. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a federal agency, is currently financing a BP solar energy project in Argentina.

Ex-Im has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction of the 1,094-mile Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey—again, profiting BP.

Lobbying records also show BP lobbying on Obama’s stimulus bill and Bush’s Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn’t in league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those.

BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the Podesta Group, co-founded by John Podesta, Obama’s transition director and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a former top aide to Vice President Walter Mondale; Steven Champlin, former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus; and Matthew LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton’s Interior Department and whose father was a Democratic congressman. Former Republican staffers, such as Reagan alumnus Ken Duberstein, also lobby for BP, but there’s no truth to Democratic portrayals of the oil company as
an arm of the GOP.

Two patterns have emerged during Obama’s presidency: 1) Big business increasingly seeks profits through more government, and 2) Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his intervention as industry shills. BP is just the latest example of this tawdry sleight of hand.

Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool.

Timothy P. Carney is The Washington Examiner's lobbying editor. His K Street column appears on Wednesdays.

Follow Timothy P. Carney on Twitter

NY Post: $7-a-gallon gas?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/gallon_gas_9GlF3o1xIcIBelOV3k0RsK

$7-a-gallon gas?

By BEN LIEBERMAN

Last Updated: 2:49 PM, June 18, 2010

Posted: 12:02 AM, June 18, 2010

President Obama has a solution to the Gulf oil spill: $7-a-gallon gas.

That's a Harvard University study's estimate of the per-gallon price of the president's global-warming agenda. And Obama made clear this week that this agenda is a part of his plan for addressing the Gulf mess.

So what does global-warming legislation have to do with the oil spill?

Good question, because such measures wouldn't do a thing to clean up the oil or fix the problems that led to the leak.

The answer can be found in Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's now-famous words, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste -- and what I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."

That sure was true of global-warming policy, and especially the cap-and-trade bill. Many observers thought the measure, introduced last year in the House by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), was dead: The American people didn't seem to think that the so-called global-warming crisis justified a price-hiking, job-killing, economy-crushing redesign of our energy supply amid a fragile recovery. Passing another major piece of legislation, one every bit as unpopular as ObamaCare, appeared unlikely in an election year.

So Obama and congressional proponents of cap-and-trade spent several months rebranding it -- downplaying the global-warming rationale and claiming that it was really a jobs bill (the so-called green jobs were supposed to spring from the new clean-energy economy) and an energy-independence bill (that will somehow stick it to OPEC).

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) even reportedly declined to introduce their new cap-and-trade proposal in the Senate on Earth Day, because they wanted to de-emphasize the global-warming message. Instead, Kerry called the American Power Act "a plan that creates jobs and sets us on a course toward energy independence and economic resurgence."

But the new marketing strategy wasn't working. Few believe the green-jobs hype -- with good reason. In Spain, for example, green jobs have been an expensive bust, with each position created requiring, on average, $774,000 in government subsidies. And the logic of getting us off oil imports via a unilateral measure that punishes American coal, oil and natural gas never made any sense at all.

Now the president is repackaging cap-and-trade -- again -- as a long-term solution to the oil spill. But it's the same old agenda, a huge energy tax that will raise the cost of gasoline and electricity high enough so that we're forced to use less.

The logic linking cap-and-trade to the spill in the Gulf should frighten anyone who owns a car or truck. Such measures force up the price at the pump -- Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs thinks it "may require gas prices greater than $7 a gallon by 2020" to meet Obama's stated goal of reducing emissions 14 percent from the transportation sector.

Of course, doing so would reduce gasoline use and also raise market share for hugely expensive alternative fuels and vehicles that could never compete otherwise. Less gasoline demand means less need for drilling and thus a slightly reduced chance of a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon spill -- but only slightly. Oil will still be a vital part of America's energy mix.

Oil-spill risks should be addressed directly -- such as finding out why the leak occurred and requiring new preventive measures or preparing an improved cleanup plan for the next incident. Cap-and-trade is no fix and would cause trillions of dollars in collateral economic damage along the way.

Emanuel was wrong. The administration shouldn't view each crisis -- including the oil spill -- as an opportunity to be exploited, but as a problem to be addressed. And America can't afford $7-a-gallon gas.

Ben Lieberman is senior analyst of energy and environmental policy in The Heritage Founda tion's Roe Institute.

Minneapolis, Minnesota Star Tribune: Cash for Clunkers left winners, losers

Redrant: (Note all figures in current USD). I almost bought a new 2010 PT Cruiser through "cash for clunkers" It would have been $10K even drive-away with a 1993 Chevy S10 4x4 as the "clunker". My other vehicle is a 2005 Ford Ranger I bought new. It has only 25K miles on it but I really didn't need two mini-pickups. I dawdled a bit trying to find the S-10 title and the program ended. Instead my brother found a rust-free 1995 Chev Blazer with a bad crankshaft. My brother is a good mechanic but winter set in. My brother is going through everything and loaded Blazer should be road ready in a couple of weeks. If figure it will cost me somewhere between $1K and $1.5K after we sell the 1993 S10.

Anyway, my brother talked to junkyard people. A lot of primo vehicles with under 100K miles were turned in a "clunkers". Greg Lang

Here is a local article of "clunkers", almost one year later. http://www.startribune.com/local/95235699.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

Cash for Clunkers left winners, losers

Some Minnesota junkyards profited from the rebate program, but others wish people could still be driving those cars.

By MARIA ELENA BACA, Star Tribune

Last update: May 30, 2010 - 11:20 PM

As the last of the decommissioned autos are crushed and melted down, it's looking as if last year's Cash for Clunkers program was a mixed blessing in Minnesota, at least for some of the secondary players.

More than 17,000 vehicles were traded in to state dealers through the federal program intended to get less fuel-efficient vehicles off the roads and spur new car sales. Car buyers in the state raked in $72.3 million in rebates.

But Cash for Clunkers created other ripples, as well: a boom for some used auto-parts dealers, on the one hand, but an apparent narrowing of options for people seeking inexpensive used cars, on the other.

According to the Department of Transportation, the bulk of clunkers exchanged through the program ranged from 10 to 15 years old, with an average odometer reading of 160,000 miles. Many were the same kinds of vehicles that low-income families seek to buy, making such vehicles still on the road scarcer, costlier or often in worse condition, said several people who work with such families.

"It was good for certain markets and good for certain people, but only a limited number," said Chris Hatfield, incoming director of transportation programs and services for Prism, a Golden Valley-based human services agency. "Basically it was good for new car dealerships and it was good for junkyards. Anybody in the automotive business that's not a new car dealership and not a junkyard had zero benefit."

Harry Haluptzok, CEO of John's Auto Parts in Blaine, would argue that his business' boom also benefited his community. John's bought 5,081 clunkers from dealers; about 400 remain to be salvaged for parts and then crushed before a July 31 deadline.

Haluptzok estimates that the program increased John's parts and scrap metal sales by $5 million. He hired 14 additional people to help deal with the influx and expects to keep them as demand for parts has increased 30 percent over 2009, he said.

He ticks off other benefits: increased revenue to towing companies, sales tax from used parts, better-quality parts for resale at a lower cost than new.

Salvaging parts

During a recent tour, Haluptzok opened the hood of a 1999 Ford Expedition, marked "C4C" on the window. Its engine will be destroyed with a sodium silicate plastic mixture, to prevent resale, but most every other part can be saved before the body is sold for scrap.

In addition to thousands of starters, alternators, transmissions, rearview mirrors, bumpers, headlights and other parts, Haluptzok was able to reclaim tens of thousands of gallons of gas, motor oil and other fluids that he recycles or uses in his own fleet.

Aside from Cash for Clunkers, most of his inventory comes from vehicles that have been in crashes. Unlike those, many of the clunkers have perfectly reusable bumpers, fenders, mirrors and radiators -- parts that often can be difficult to come by, he said.

At the other end of the metro area, Keith Olson runs U Pull R Parts in Rosemount.

His company processed about 400 clunkers. It was a benefit overall, he said, but he added that he could only take so many Ford Explorers.

Generally, the clunkers he bought were newer than the cars he usually buys.

"They increased my revenue in that way," he said. "The first ones you sold a lot of parts off of. But we ended up with so many duplicate cars, so many duplicate parts that the value of the parts dropped and became, in my case, unsellable. They went with the car body into the crusher."

He also said he worries about people continuing to drive deteriorating vehicles because other used cars that they might have bought are gone.

Car donations

In the office at Prism, Executive Director Liz Johnson was nearly frantic. For the first time ever, she said, she has sent letters to previous donors and churches asking for car donations. Among its services, the nonprofit agency makes lower-cost car sales to working poor, and it's averaging 65 calls a week from interested families, compared with about 45 last year.

Two other organizations, however, say their car donations are holding steady. Newgate in Minneapolis and Free to Be in Blaine are on track for numbers similar to last year. Newgate Director Ron Severson said he believes that training components of those programs, in which people work on cars, keep donors coming back.

Prism also has a bodywork apprenticeship program, Johnson said, adding that the difference in donations might come down to marketing strategies.

At Prism, not quite two families a week will get cars and they'll have fewer to choose from, Johnson said.

"The economy is pushing more people into the need of programs like ours," she said. "But with the price of vehicles and the difficulty in getting them, it's twofold."

Many of the cars they get are older and in worse shape, Johnson said. Sometimes, they have to invest close to the car's book value to make it drivable; she worries that people will run into more problems as the cars age.

Terrance Donaldson, of Minneapolis, is looking forward to Thursday, when he hopes to take ownership of a 1996 Cadillac DeVille he bought for $2,000, through Prism's program, which also includes budgeting and car-maintenance classes. He has waited about a month to get his car. After a stint of homelessness, he now has a job and a place to live, and the car is another step toward pulling life together for him and his family.

"It was easier than trying to find another car for that much that might break down, or going to a car lot and have to put down $2,000 or $1,500 to get into something," he said, adding that he bought his car with a $300 down payment. "With rent, the bus and a lot of bills, it's hard to save that much."

Nature Conservancy and other left-wing environmental organizations accepted millions from British Petroleum, broadcast networks silent

Washington Post Exposes BP ties to Eco-Groups, Other Media Ignore Controversy Nature Conservancy and other left-wing environmental organizations accepted millions from oil giant, broadcast networks silent. By Julia A. Seymour Business & Media Institute 6/2/2010 4:20:59 PM British Petroleum’s (BP) reputation has been marred by the April oil rig explosion and subsequent oil spill which is still gushing more than 40 days later. But according to The Washington Post, the reputation of some left-wing environmental groups has also been polluted by the incident. “[T]he Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners. The Conservancy also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years,” Joe Stephens wrote for the Post May 24. It’s not just Nature Conservancy either, the Post found $2 million in donations to Conservation International and relationships between BP and other lefty activist groups Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Sierra Club and Audubon. “The crude emanating from BP's well threatens to befoul a number of alliances between energy conglomerates and environmental nonprofits. At least one group, Conservation International, acknowledges that it is reassessing its ties to the oil company, with an eye toward protecting its reputation,” the Post said. This was front page news at The Post on May 24, but received only silence from other mainstream media outlets including the three broadcast networks. Even after the oil spill, when the networks interviewed experts from two of the groups that had partnered with BP, reporters failed to make the connection. In the past, the research of conservative organizations has been undermined by reporters for such corporate contributions. NBC’s “Today” consulted “scientists” from the Nature Conservancy on May 8 as many coastal communities feared damage from the spreading oil spill. Reporter Mike Taibbi examined artificial reefs off the Gulf coast and spoke with the group who said, “All we’re trying to do is restore some of the injustices we have done to it in the last few decades.” Taibbi didn’t mention the BP/Nature Conservancy partnership in his report. Sierra Club’s ties to BP also escaped the notice of CBS “Morning News” on April 29, when the network interviewed the group’s director of land protection, Athan Manuel, about the oil spill in the Gulf. Manuel told CBS, “We’ve always said that oil and gas drilling is a dirty and dangerous business, both in terms of pollution, but also in terms of what damage can be done to workers and to the environment.” “NBC Nightly News” also interviewed Manuel on March 31 (before the oil spill). Manuel expressed opposition to Obama’s call for “expansion of drilling” as “too aggressive.” “[D]rilling is just a dirty and dangerous business that we think is incompatible with our coastlines and our beaches,” Manuel claimed. Yet in 2007, the Sierra Club joined forces with many liberal environmental groups and companies including BP Wind Energy to create the American Wind & Wildlife Institute. Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy and many other eco-groups like it have been uncritically treated as experts for years by the mainstream news media. The networks brought their spokesmen on to discuss a range of issues – from global warming, to land preservation. In contrast, conservative groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and scientists including Patrick Michaels have been undercut by network reporters. “Public awareness [about global warming] lagged behind, partly because of a disinformation campaign funded by the fossil-fuel industry,” ABC’s Bill Blakemore said on “World News” Sept. 23, 2007. During his statement, Blakemore aired video footage of a CEI commercial, insinuating that it was “disinformation.” Liberal Anger at Green Groups Mostly Ignored The revelation that BP was heavily tied to eco-groups like Conservation International and Nature Conservancy angered many of their supporters, yet the networks and other major papers have so far failed to report the relationships between green groups and BP. The Post quoted Reagan De Leon of Hawaii who had called for a boycott of “everything BP has their hands in,” before finding out that the oil company had its hands in the Nature Conservancy. “Oh, wow,” De Leon reacted, “That’s kind of disturbing.” According to the Washington City Paper’s blog, there was a “deluge” of angry comments from members of Nature Conservancy including Cindy D. who “accused the organization of censoring comments to its blog.” One commenter on City Paper called Nature Conservancy a “whore.” City Paper pointed out that BP spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” to “transform its image from that of a dirty old oil company into ‘Beyond Petroleum’ – a company so environmentally friendly it had transcended oil drilling (and spilling) for happy, sunny and clean technologies such as wind and solar.” They also noted that the environmental groups “trumpeted their ties to corporations, arguing that these partnerships lead to better corporate environmental policies and less damage to the planet.” That’s exactly how the relationship between BP and Conservation International was framed by ABC’s “Nightline” back in 2002. Fill-in anchor Chris Bury introduced the segment calling it an “exception” from the stories about rich and famous people doing “trivial” things. This was different, “rich and powerful and famous people trying to create something of lasting value.” Bury was talking about the “highly aggressive environmental organization” Conservation International partnering with a number of prominent businesspeople, actors, athletes and others to purchase and protect millions of acreage around the world. “[T]ogether, with other environmental groups, they have launched an extraordinary, planet-sized experiment,” correspondent Robert Krulwich said. That alliance included the head of British Petroleum, according to ABC. Media Hypocrisy: Conservative Groups Blasted for Ties to Exxon In news reports, eco-groups (like all the ones tied to BP) were rarely labeled negatively. Words like “naturalists,” “conservationists,” and occasionally “auto-industry watchdog” have all been used to describe the groups’ liberal missions. On the other side, CEI and Cato Institute fellow Patrick Michaels have been labeled with disparaging terms like “denier” and statements about funding were used to undermine them. In 2007, ABC’s Bill Blakemore alleged that CEI was behind a “disinformation campaign” that had prevented more people from understanding the threat of global warming. “Public awareness [about global warming] lagged behind, partly because of a disinformation campaign funded by the fossil-fuel industry,” Blakemore said on Sept. 23, 2010, while airing footage of a pro-carbon dioxide commercial from CEI. Blakemore, a longtime advocate of global warming alarmism, didn’t include anyone from CEI or the fossil-fuel industry to respond. According to MSNBC.com, ExxonMobil stopped funding CEI in 2006. NBC’s primary global warming alarmist Anne Thompson also undercut CEI on Aug. 15, 2007. After presenting the argument that “science” showed man has a role in global warming, Thompson said, “Getting to that point involved fighting interest groups fueled by powerful companies, including oil giant ExxonMobil.” “The Union of Concerned Scientists says ExxonMobil, gave almost $16 million over seven years to denier groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute,” Thompson continued. The Business & Media Institute’s parent organization, the Media Research Center, was also listed by the Union of Concerned Scientists among the groups receiving funds from ExxonMobil. In addition to using the pejorative term “denier,” to label CEI, Thompson failed to mention that Exxon had stopped funding the non-profit organization. A similar media contradiction happened when the news media labeled the grassroots Tea Party movement as corporate-sponsored “Astroturf” or fake grassroots. At the same time, the media have all but ignored the issue of corporate sponsorship of the left-wing green movement. And one has to look no further than Earth Day 2010 to see the corporate fingerprint on so-called green activist efforts. Major U.S. corporations like Proctor & Gamble, Siemens, Wells Fargo, AT&T, UPS, Philips and Ford all had a major presence at the so-called Earth Day “Climate Rally” on the National Mall back on April 25. That’s in addition to a sponsorship from NASA, a federal government entity and media outlets, including The Washington Post and Gannett’s USA Today. Even though that fits the left’s own definition of “Astroturf,” the news media refused to apply the term to those efforts.