About Me

Name: Defend America
Email: guy.ratki@gmail.com Biography
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Archives

What is Crime Inc?

On last week's show, Glenn Beck explains what Crime Inc is:

Crime Inc.: What the 'Greening of America' Really Means

Friday, May 14, 2010
By Glenn Beck Team

NEW YORK —  It's a safe bet that most Americans' first exposure to the concept of carbon trading or cap-and-trade legislation came during the most recent presidential campaign when both candidates advocated the need to make protecting the environment a government mandate instead of the moral obligation it's always been. In the past few months President Barack Obama has repeatedly stated that a comprehensive energy/environmental law, including cap-and-trade, is an absolute priority of his administration.

Cap-and-Trade

Simply put, the idea behind the cap-and-trade plan is this: The federal government would set limits or cap the amount of pollutant a business could create. If the business chose to emit levels exceeding the cap they would have to find a business not using its full allotment and purchase the surplus from them. Needless-to-say, for the concept to work there would need to be a highly centralized infrastructure to facilitate the transactions, matching buyers to sellers.

The CCX: A Dream Come True?

For people like Richard Sandor and former Vice-President Al Gore the focus on "green politics" represented the culmination of years of planning and a giant step towards a massive payday.

With a big helping hand from then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, Sandor's brainchild, The Chicago Climate Exchange, opened for business in 2003 billing itself as "North America's only cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases..." In other words, the facilitator for a scheme not quite hatched. Sandor, a long-time economist turned environmentalist shared his vision during a 1990 interview with the Wall Street Journal, saying, "Air and water are no longer the free goods that economics once assumed. They must be redefined as property rights so that they can be efficiently allocated." The statement didn't get a lot of attention back then but today seems prophetic. Sandor claims his idea of efficient allocation, also known as carbon trading, will develop into a $10 trillion industry.

Assembling the Team

During 2000 and 2001, the Joyce Foundation, a progressive trust with assets near $1 billion, known for funding groups like Center for American Progress and Tides Foundation, provided grants to CCX totaling $1.1 million. State Senator Obama served on the foundation's board of directors during that time and was instrumental in awarding the grants.

Shortly after the first grant was approved, the president of The Joyce Foundation, Paula DiPerna, left to join the executive team of CCX. Other notables with familiar names soon followed.

Former Vice-President Al Gore became part-owner of CCX when his company, Generation Investment Management, made a sizeable investment. Gore brought with him his senior partner at GIM, David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, along with a company chalk full of former Goldman Sachs' executives

Goldman Sachs itself soon joined the team buying a ten percent interest in CCX

Maurice Strong, once linked to Tongsun Park, the central figure in the United Nation's oil-for-food scandal in 2005 and one of the architects of the Kyoto Protocol, joined the CCX board of directors

Carlton Bartels was one of the first, and perhaps most important, additions to the CCX roster. As CEO of a company called CO2e, Bartels developed and delivered the actual guts of the exchange — a system for facilitating and managing the actual carbon trades

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,592243,00.html




Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive