John Holdren

President Obama’s “science” czar, John Holdren, was co-author of a 2004 energy policy paper that recommended “cap and trade” legislation, including “clean coal” technology and $2 billion from the federal budget for construction of one or two new nuclear facilities.

WND has learned a co-author of the paper with Holdren is John Rowe, a financial bundler for President Obama’s 2008 campaign who serves as chairman of Exelon, the mega-utility owning 30 percent of all U.S. nuclear plants.

Rowe, who has financial ties to several members of the Obama administration, last month boasted how his company stands to gain financially from the regulation of high-carbon emitting plants – the very recommendations Rowe set forth in his paper with Holdren.

Susan Tierney, another author of the paper, “Ending the Energy Stalemate: A bipartisan Strategy to Meet America’s Energy Challenges,” is now the No. 2 official at the energy department.

The paper also has ties to the Apollo Alliance, an environmental activist group with a board comprised of a slew of extremists. The alliance helped craft “clean energy” portions of Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” bill.

Among the paper’s key recommendations were:

• Establish a mandatory, economy-wide tradable-permits program to limit greenhouse gas emissions while capping initial costs at $7 per metric ton of CO2-equivalent reduction.
• Provide $4 billion over 10 years in public incentives for integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal technology and for carbon capture and sequestration.
• Provide $3 billion over 10 years in public incentives to demonstrate commercial-scale carbon capture and geologic sequestration at a variety of sites.

The paper also recommended “$2 billion over 10 years from federal energy research, development, demonstration and deployment budgets for demonstration of one to two new advanced nuclear facilities.”

Just last month, the Obama administration announced a conditional $8.3 billion loan guarantee to support the construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia, which would be the first new U.S. nuclear plants in more than three decades.

While Rowe’s Exelon does not seem poised to develop the new Georgia plants, it does stand to gain from recent “clean energy” and “clean coal” initiatives from the White House.

A section of Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” bill, signed into law in January, provides for $3.4 billion earmarked to “work toward making coal part of the solution and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from industrial facilities and fossil fuel power plants.”

USA Today last month quoted Rowe stating “clean coal” legislation will benefit his company.

Rowe explained costs to run coal plants go up, driving energy prices higher, benefiting Exelon, since 92 percent of the company’s power comes from low carbon-emitting nuclear plants that won’t suffer the same higher costs as coal plants.

“Exelon wins sooner or later,” Rowe stated. “It may just be after I retire,” at the end of 2012.

Rowe was a donor and financial bundler for Obama in the 2008 campaign.

He also has financial ties to Obama’s chief for staff, Rahm Emanuel, who served as an adviser in a $8.2 billion merger of two utility companies, Unicom, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison, and Peco Energy, to create Rowe’s Exelon, which is now one of the nation’s largest power companies.

That deal was described as the biggest financial transaction in which Emanuel was ever involved. Rowe, who served as chief executive of Unicom, reportedly sought out Emanuel personally, stating he believed Emanuel would offer a different dimension, providing wisdom on what might pass muster at the governmental level.

‘Extremists’ linked to Holdren paper

Meanwhile, several co-authors of Holdren’s 2004 energy policy paper have links to the Apollo Alliance, which successfully promoted “clean coal” funding as part of Obama’s “stimulus” bill.

Co-author Ralph Cavanagh is an attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, an Apollo affiliate.

Another co-author, Leo Gerard, is the international president of the United Steel Workers, which is on the Apollo board and has worked closely with Apollo’s initiatives.

The group has boasted in its own literature of its role in helping to craft portions of the multi-billion-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that Obama signed into law last year.

The Alliance helped draft “clean energy and green-collar jobs provisions” of the bill, for which the $3.4 billion was earmarked to “clean coal” initiatives.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lauded the alliance for helping craft the “stimulus” bill.

“The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in motivating the public to support them,” Reid said in a statement.

The Apollo Alliance claims it was founded in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks “to catalyze a clean energy revolution in America.”

Discover the Networks notes that in July, Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Apollo Alliance Chairman Angelides to serve as chairman of the newly created Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Among its board members is a grouping of radicals, including:

• Van Jones, President Obama’s controversial former “green jobs czar,” who resigned in September after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Jones also called for “resistance” against the U.S.Jones himself decried the Apollo Alliance mission as “sort of a grand unified field theory for progressive left causes.”
• Joel Rogers, a founder of the socialist New Party. WND reported on evidence indicating Obama was a New Party member. In an interview with WND, New Party co-founder and Marxist activist Carl Davidson recounted Obama’s participation with the New Party.
• Jeff Jones, a founder of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group who spent time on the run from law enforcement agencies while his group carried out a series of bombings of U.S. government buildings.Jones joined the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, from which the Weathermen splintered in the fall of 1965. Two years later, he became the SDS New York City regional director, a position in which he participated in nearly all of the group’s major protests until 1969, including the 1968 Columbia University protests and the violent riots that same year at the Democratic National Convention.

  In 1969, Jones founded the Weathermen with terrorists William Ayers and Mark Rudd when the three signed an infamous statement calling for a revolution against the American government inside and outside the country to fight and defeat what the group called U.S. imperialism. President Obama came under fire for his longtime, extensive association with Ayers.

  Jones was a main leader and orchestrator of what became known as the Days of Rage, a series of violent riots in Chicago organized by the Weathermen. The culmination of the riots came when he gave a signal for rowdy protestors to target a hotel that was the home of a local judge presiding over a trial of anti-war activists.

  Jones went underground after he failed to appear for a March 1970 court date to face charges of “crossing state lines to foment a riot and conspiring to do so.” He moved to San Francisco with Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn. That year, at least one bombing claimed by the Weathermen went off in Jones’ locale at the Presidio Army base.

  Jones’ Weathermen took credit for multiple bombings of U.S. government buildings, including attacks against the U.S. Capitol March 1, 1971; the Pentagon May 19, 1972, and a 1975 bombing of the State Department building.

With research by Brenda J. Elliott

Link to article: Obama czar in ‘clean energy’ corruption?