"Solar isn't just for the green crowd anymore," President Obama told a Las Vegas ballroom full of subsidy-seeking lobbyists, investors and corporate executives. "It's for the green eyeshade crowd, too."
The crowd cheered the President's toast to their taxpayer-provided profits, and soon Obama headed off to a $33,000-a-head fundraiser at the mansion of the billionaire owner of the local newspaper.
You, the taxpayer, paid for Obama's flight to Vegas. This is what Hope and Change looks like seven years after Obama accepted the Democratic nomination.
Obama was the keynote speaker at the National Clean Energy Summit, an annual confab organized by outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid — which tells you a lot about the nature of the event. A big theme at the conference, and in media coverage of Obama's talk, was that it's not merely "tree-huggers" who like green-energy regulations and subsidies, but also corporations.
He's got a point. K Street firms, giant corporations and industry lobby groups sponsored the conference. One sponsor, at the "Gigawatt Level," is Cassidy & Associates, a storied K Street firm that made its name pioneering as earmark lobbyists.
Cassidy & Associates is also a hub of Harry Reid's fundraising and political apparatus — and by extension, the policymaking apparatus of the Democratic Party. Kai Anderson, Reid's former chief of staff, is a lobbyist at Cassidy. Gerald Cassidy contributed $50,000 to Reid's Senate Majority PAC last cycle. But it gets cozier — and grosser.
Cassidy lobbyist Rebecca Lambe was also treasurer of Reid's Senate Majority PAC — the largest member-run super PAC in the 2014 election. Cassidy proudly touted Lambe's connections to Reid, and her concurrent job at Reid's SuperPAC.
Again, fundraising, lobbying, policymaking and super PACs are all rolled into a one package that is the Reid-Cassidy axis. On this axis, the National Clean Energy Summit rotated, and Obama was there to bless it all.
Other top sponsors of the conference also swim in the Reid orbit. MGM Casinos was a lead sponsor and the host of the conference. Anderson, at Cassidy, is one of their lobbyists.
A glassmaker called View Inc. — they make hi-tech windows that can reduce energy usage — is in the top tier of conference sponsors. Anderson is one of their lobbyists, pushing Congress for federal earmarks, grants and contracts. View Inc., at its website, points out that their product can help institutions meet state energy regulations. Reid and Obama push for stricter energy regs, View Inc. hires Cassidy and Anderson to support such regs, and Cassidy and Anderson funnel money to Obama and Reid and their party. It's a triple play.
Others bankrolling the Vegas confab included Tom Steyer, the billionaire Democratic donor and green-energy investor who lobbies for subsidies to make his otherwise unprofitable green-energy investments profitable.
Solar City, the subsidy-dependent solar installation company run by billionaire Obama max-donor Elon Musk, was a sponsor, too. Musk's Nevada battery factory also received $1.25 billion in state subsidies.
It's kind of jaw-dropping. Reid and Obama now openly brag about how their policies deliver profits to special interests, whose lobbyist are donors and fundraisers for Reid and Obama. You may be old enough to recall when President Obama inveighed sharply against corporate lobbyists who used their connections to power in order to procure federal policies that padded their own bottom lines. But in Las Vegas, Obama happily joined and applauded corporate lobbyists who were using their connections to power in order to procure federal policies that padded their own bottom lines — and that was before he left the stage for a $3-million fundraiser.
You see what's happening here: Elected officials accrue more control over tax dollars, businessmen come to the trough for the tax dollars, the politicians demand a cut in the form of campaign contributions, and the aides demand a cut in the form of lobbying contracts or other revolving-door gigs.
The insiders all win, the taxpayers and the politically unconnected companies lose. This is somehow considered acceptable because everyone shows up wearing green.
So as President Obama spends his last 16 months in office calling for dramatic climate regulation and legislation, keep in mind that he's pushing policies to subsidize his friends — including Harry Reid's friends.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
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