Saturday, May 24, 2014

Not so green: California billionaire opposing Tom Corbett made profits on coal, oil & gas

5/24/2014

Follow The Money: Leftist billionaire slob proves that the only values he is true to is that attached to money. Where is Occupy Wall Street when you need them? 


California billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer recently announced that Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett would be one of the Republican governors he pledged to help defeat with as much as $100 million from his NextGen Climate political action committee. The plan is to make climate change a moral "wedge issue" in races around the country, targeting politicians supported by the coal, oil and gas industries.

The problem is Steyer made his billions in part by investing in coal, oil and gas industries - and may still be profiting from them.

An investigative report from Reuters titled "From black to green: U.S. billionaire's 'Road to Damascus'" details the "dirty" investments - both foreign and domestic - of Farallon Capital Management, the hedge-fund founded by Steyer, under Steyer's leadership.

According to the report:

Steyer, 56, stepped down as co-managing partner of Farallon in 2012 to devote himself to full-time activism because, as he later wrote, he "no longer felt comfortable being at a firm that was invested in every single sector of the global economy, including tar sands and oil." But he has provided few details of the extent of those fossil fuel investments or how he profited from them. He said in July 2013 that when he had left Farallon, which manages much of his estimated $1.6 billion wealth, he had instructed the fund to divest his holdings in fossil fuels. Neither he nor Farallon has said whether that process has been completed. Farallon declined to comment. A spokesman for Steyer declined to comment for this article.

Steyer has said he intends to make climate change a "wedge issue" by casting it in moral terms of right and wrong.


Many have reported that one of his main political goals is to ensure constinued Democratic control of the U.S. Senate; however, the Washington Post demonstrated yesterday that's not really the case, showing that the races Steyer intends to jump into are races in which the Democrats are already favored to win.

"Why is NextGen/Steyer worried about carrying Democrat Tom Wolf over the finish line of a gubernatorial race in Pennsylvania, when he's up by 19 percent?" asked the Post rhetorically.

"NextGen picked races it was pretty sure it was going to win. And that's it."

According to the Post analysis, Steyer's real goal appears to be to "instill a little fear":

No one is really afraid of environmentalists. What NextGen certainly wants to do is instill a little fear. To do that, they have to win. And to win — well, it doesn't hurt to pick races where the odds are pretty good that will happen.

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