THE REAL WINNER OF OBAMA’S ‘WAR ON COAL’: GEORGE SOROS (2015)
The real winner of President Barack Obama’s so-called “war on coal” isn’t the EPA, nor is it the natural gas industry. It’s liberal billionaire George Soros.
Last week, Obama’s EPA announced sweeping regulations for U.S. power plants, forcing them to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions 32 percent by 2030. The news sent shockwaves through the coal industry, sending stocks tumbling and forcing the industry’s two biggest players to consider bankruptcy filings.
That’s where liberal billionaire Soros steps in. In the days after the Clean Power Plan was announced, Soros bought more than 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of Arch Coal — the country’s two biggest publicly-traded coal companies.
Both Peabody and Arch Coal “have seen their market values plummet” due to “competition from cheap natural gas, new environmental regulations and a slowing export market,” according to SNL Financial. Soros was able to pick up these coal stocks on the cheap, in part, due to Obama administration regulations targeting coal-fired power plants and coal mines.
Soros, the 29th richest person in the world, has been a major funder of liberal causes in the country. In 2009, he pledged to spend $1 billion of his own money backing green energy, and he also put funding behind the Climate Policy Initiative think tank, according to The Guardian.
DNC considers reversing ban on fossil fuel donations (2018)
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) is planning to vote on a measure that would overturn its recently adopted policy rejecting donations from fossil fuel companies’ political organizations.
The resolution sponsored by DNC Chairman Tom Perez frames the controversy as one over labor rights, saying that the party values workers and welcomes “the longstanding and generous contributions of workers, including those in energy and related industries, who organize and donate to Democratic candidates individually or through their unions’ or employers’ political action committees.”
The DNC’s executive committee could vote on the measure as soon as Friday. Its passage would effectively overturn the policy passed in June to stop accepting funds from political action committees (PACs) associated with oil, natural gas or coal companies or associations and their employees.
HuffPost on Friday first reported on the proposed resolution. The DNC did not respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Breitbart Senior Editor-at-Large and author of “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends” Peter Schweizer discussed how regulations during the Obama administration helped the president’s friends.
Schweizer said, “Barack Obama’s best friend, a guy named Marty Nesbitt…sets up a private equity fund while his friend is the regulator-in-chief, and what he does is he invests in what he calls ‘highly-regulated industries.’ … And so, to give you one brief example, the University of Phoenix, the for-profit school, Barack Obama’s administration says, ‘We think this school is bad. We’re going to suspend the Pentagon from using GI Bill money for soldiers to go to school there.’ Well, of course, the stock price goes from $100 a share to about $3 a share. Guess who steps in to buy it? Barack Obama’s best friend Marty Nesbitt and his company Vistria investors. They come in. They buy it for pennies on the dollar. And then lo and behold, the Obama administration says ‘You know what, we think we’re going to let GI money flow again back to the University of Phoenix.’ And that pattern is repeated over and over again in other sectors of the economy. It was rampant.”
h/t UnStumpableDonald