Monday night in the U.S. Senate, something historic happened. Democrats took to the floor and demanded…um…nothing, really. And they weren’t going to leave until…they felt like it, I guess. That was the gist of the PR stunt known as “#Up4Climate” on Twitter.
It was a filibuster that wasn’t really a filibuster that sought to draw attention to an issue progressives have deemed so important they have not offered or attempted to pass anything on since they took control of the Senate in 2007. That’s right, Senate Democrats have no legislation to address the coming “doom” they predict from the Artist Formerly Known As Global Warming. They just wanted to draw attention to it.
The Artist Formerly Known As Global Warming has been lingering near toenail fungus and the Canadian Football League Championship on the list of concerns for Americans. This presents a problem for Democrats. They raise millions in campaign cash from rich donors who stand to make billions from subsidies from so-called “green energy” scams, er, “investments” from government. It’s one hand washing the other, then stealing your wallet. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Normally Democrats wouldn’t waste their time with speeches after midnight that no one will watch on an issue no one cares about. But this dog and pony show had an audience of one – progressive sugar daddy Tom Steyer. It was such an obvious dance-for-campaign-cash that even the Washington Post said “There is another more political reason for the decision by Senate Democrats to devote their time to the issue right now. And that issue is campaign cash.” And there’s a lot of cash at stake, for everyone involved.
Tom Steyer is a hedge fund billionaire who made a fortune in oil and now spends his time and money trying to purge himself of the guilt he feels for the “harm” he’s done. He does this by buying politicians to force Americans to live how he wants them to live and to make a fortune in the process. He could just write a check to charity, but that would mean he’s genuinely interested in helping others rather than his investments return a healthy, taxpayer-provided profit. Everything progressives accuse Charles and David Koch of being Tom Steyer is.
Steyer is invested in “green” technologies and companies that simply do not work, at least not yet on the scale needed to replace current energy sources. They may some day, but not today.
But when you have billions there’s no need to wait for an investment to mature and be able to meet the needs of the market. You can just buy a political party, have it mandate people use your product and then collect subsidies along the way. Spending $100 million to elect Democrats who will make his will law seems like an insane proposition to a normal person, but normal people don’t generally become billionaires. Steyer isn’t taking a risk, he’s making an investment. And there’s no investment with a better return than politicians in Washington.
Steyer isn’t buying free-thinkers. He’s buying an army of progressive flying monkeys to force the use of his product and acceptance of his will on 330 million people. Although $100 million seems like a lot, it’s a drop in the Pacific Ocean compared to what success would return. Solar panels and windmills can’t compete with oil and coal for cost, reliability and efficiency, so people don’t use them. That’s the free-market. That’s why Steyer and the other “watermelons” (green on the outside, red on the inside) want government to give them money to build their businesses (risk is for suckers), then obligate everyone to use their product.
It’s exactly how the iPhone was developed, minus the subsidies and the forced purchases. Apple took a risk and created a product it thought people would want and buy. If people hadn’t bought it, Apple would’ve lost billions. But people did want it, and Apple made hundreds of billions. No one was forced to buy it. In fact, people slept outside Apple stores voluntarily to buy it.
If an energy source could be created that ran cars and light bulbs on hope and good vibes, people would be lining up to spend whatever it cost to buy it. Just like people would slap a solar panel and a windmill on their house in a second if it could do more than eventually partially toast a piece of bread. But if the cost of electricity could be taxed and regulated to unaffordable levels, alternatives, no matter how shoddy, would skyrocket in value.
That’s the problem with people such as Steyer. They’re anti-free-market, anti-opportunity, anti-that which made them successful, and they’re anti-American. That last one is harsh but perfectly accurate.
The Koch brothers, often accused by progressives as being anti-American, support organizations and a political philosophy that seeks to get government to leave people alone and allow them to earn what they can within the law and without harming others.
The Steyers of the world “invest” in politicians explicitly to not leave people alone. The politicians he invests in seek to control others, tax them, then take a slice of that tax pie and require the use of their products to get an even bigger pie all for themselves. Anti-American is the perfect word for that, but if you prefer another feel free to pick from a list of so many littered throughout history that end with “ism.” Or simply call it “progressive.”