The Chicago-based Exelon Corp. was planning a merger with Maryland’s Constellation Energy. To obtain approval for the merger, Exelon agreed to pay the state $1 billion. Credit: Taylor McKnight. License: Shutterstock.

The Greatest Heist in World History

How the Green Graft Works: One Example

The state of Maryland had a unique opportunity to fix Chesapeake Bay pollution in 2011—supposedly the big concern among Maryland’s elite—but instead, it squandered the chance by focusing on pet ideological projects and/or wasteful boondoggles for then-Governor Martin O’Malley’s political pals. The Chicago-based Exelon Corp. was planning a merger with Maryland’s Constellation Energy. Exelon owns the 100-year-old Conowingo Dam, which needs dredging. Every time a big storm comes along, the Dam spills massive amounts of sediment and nutrients into the bay, smothering the oyster beds, now almost nonexistent in the upper bay. The Conowingo is the greatest single source of Bay pollution, dwarfing all others.

To obtain approval for the merger, Exelon agreed to pay the state $1 billion. No analysis of merger benefits or costs, just a big payoff. If O’Malley were truly interested in the environment, he would have demanded Exelon spent some of the $1 billion cleaning up the Conowingo. But none, zero, was requested to address the sedimentation problem. Instead, O’Malley showered that $1 billion on green projects that, just like Obama’s program, guaranteed lots of green for the governor’s friends, but saddled Marylanders with expensive, unsustainable, green energy.

My favorite was $89–$157 million for a new powerplant fueled by chicken excrement. The idea was a favorite of O’Malley buddy and Attorney General Doug Gansler. As of 2021, when Gansler geared up for a second run for governor, he was still talking about it, but that’s all it was: talk. What happened to the money?

The end-of-the-world prediction by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is now the basis for public policy, and the Biden administration has taken it to heart. Credit: Senate Democrats. License: https://bit.ly/44dkSZ1.

The Greatest Heist in World History

Obama’s Trial Run: The $80 Billion Boondoggle

The Obama administration’s $80 billion green energy program was a small-scale trial run compared to the monies already enacted under the Biden administration, but it provided a window into the true motive. In his book, Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom, Patrick Moore writes:

You have heard the news on climate change that says human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide are going to make the world too hot for life. So now as you drive down the highway in your SUV, you are afraid that you are killing your grandchildren by doing so. As this makes you feel guilty and accountable, you vow to send a hefty donation to Greenpeace, or any of the other hundreds of “charities,” selling you this narrative. It is a very effective strategy on their part, as stirring a combination of fear and guilt is the most powerful motivator to get people to open their wallets in an effort to help avoid this alleged disaster. And all this inevitable doom due to an invisible gas that is essential for life and even now is only 0.0415 percent of the atmosphere. (p. 26)

In his best-selling book Throw Them All Out, author Peter Schweizer compiled a partial list of Democrat financial supporters who donated a total of $457,834 to either Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign or to the Democratic Party. Companies run or invested in by these insiders subsequently received U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grants and loans for $11.3 billion—a payoff rate of 25,000 to 1 (pp. 87–88).

(Photo of the climate strike and march in Pittsburgh on September 24, 2021.) Some radical environmental groups have been supported by hostile foreign governments. Credit: Mark Dixon. License: https://bit.ly/3r4ETmc.

The Greatest Heist in World History

Green Graft

Some environmental groups have also expressed concern that offshore wind farms and construction of windfarms are disrupting marine life and may be responsible for the unusual number of whales dying recently. Amid this growing concern, the Save Right Whales Coalition has produced a report detailing conflicts of interest in that offshore wind companies have made extensive payments to many environmental organizations. These include:

• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Net assets of $385.7 million as of 2019. Accepted $500,000 from Orsted Wind around 2018 and has supported offshore wind since.
• New England Aquarium Corporation. Net assets of $55.4 million as of 2019. Received donations from three separate offshore wind companies—Vineyard Wind, Bay State Wind, and Equinor—between 2018 and 2020. Now supports offshore wind.
• Environmental League of Massachusetts. Net assets of $1.5 million as of 2019. Received $5,000–$9,000 from Vineyard Wind in 2020. Has supported offshore wind since 2010.
• National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Net assets of $243.5 million as of 2020. Has received $100,000–$499,999 from Avangrid Renewables and Apex Clean Energy in 2019 and 2020. Apex has promised to donate $1,000 per megawatt of its commercial generating capacity. The foundation is silent on offshore wind.
• National Audubon Society. Net assets: $585.2 million as of 2021. Has received monies indirectly from the Avangrid Foundation, associated with Avangrid Renewables, a large wind and solar firm. Audubon supports wind.
• The World Wildlife Fund. Net assets of $375 million as of 2019. Received undisclosed donations from Orsted in 2019. WWF supports offshore wind.
• Other recipients include The Nature Conservancy, the Wetlands Institute, Blue Planet Strategies, Maryland Coastal Bays, Assateague Coastal Trust and others.

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro recently remarked that “I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office.” Credit: U.S. Navy. Public domain.

The Greatest Heist in World History

Summary: President Joe Biden has enlisted all federal agencies in pushing his climate agenda as a top priority. As a result, the United States will slowly abandon its vast conventional energy infrastructure. Energy costs will skyrocket, crippling the economy, and when government subsidies run out, the entire green energy infrastructure will collapse, just as it did under President Obama’s Green Energy program. But this time there will be nothing to fall back upon because we will have left our carbon-based energy infrastructure fallow. Without reliable energy, our nation will be crippled.

While imposing this new, expensive, inefficient energy regime, the Left is opening the spigots of government spending once again to finance an unsustainable activity. To compete, companies are being forced to invest in the political market rather than their own markets and products. In essence, the Left is incentivizing corruption, luring private companies away from free market capitalism to crony socialism, and literally threatening the continued viability of our market economy, our standard of living, and perhaps even our survival.

Executive Order 13990

In one of his first acts as president, President Joe Biden signed Executive Order 13990, which ordered all agencies to review any relevant regulation promulgated under President Donald Trump and rescinded those actions that enabled our nation to become energy independent for the first time since the 1970s. Following a lawsuit by many Republican-led states, a federal judge recently blocked implementation of Executive Order 13990.

But they have not relented. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro recently remarked that “I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office.”