Behind Biden's Big Green boondoggle

 Monica Showalter:

In many ways, Joe Biden's presidency is a baffling one.

He's down in the polls, and his policies are disasters, but unlike, say, Bill Clinton, he can't change course, or moderate his direction, not even to save his presidency.

He's particularly rigid on some of these policies, such as the green agenda, even as the voters say "no" and the obvious political consequences of that are coming for him.

So what gives?  Is he simply too old to change?  That doesn't explain it, because he's been a political weathervane for the duration of his career.

Something is going on, and RealClearPolitics's Philip Wegmann may have put his finger on it.

Eight years ago, the Obama administration bristled at the word "recusal." White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters that the reason that top presidential adviser John Podesta would not be involved in the decision-making process involving the Keystone XL pipeline was that the State Department, not the White House, was already evaluating it "in an impartial way." It wasn't a "recusal," Earnest insisted — there just was no need for Podesta to be involved.

And yet, as the Associated Press reported, the liberal Washington insider suggested that he shouldn't work on the issue "because his views are well-known." Fast forward to the current administration.

The White House has not instituted any special recusals, prohibitions, or other barriers for Podesta as he prepares to oversee $370 billion in new green energy spending, despite the fact that the president's newest senior policy advisor publicly backed a number of those efforts before joining the administration.

So did a number of organizations affiliated with Hansjörg Wyss.

Wyss is the Swiss billionaire behind what the New York Times described last year as "a daisy chain of opaque organizations" that supported a number of left-leaning environmental groups and progressive causes. According to the Times, the recipients of those funds later backed progressive causes almost exclusively and helped Democrats as they regained control of the White House. As RealClearPolitics first reported, Wyss is not a U.S. citizen, a fact that had remained a public mystery despite the hundreds of billions of dollars he has spent to influence American politics. Wyss is also a longtime associate of Podesta.

For the past two decades, the career of Biden's newest political appointee seems inextricably tied to the reclusive foreign billionaire.

So John Podesta, the heaviest of the heavy-duty Democrat operatives, is the guy who's got his finger on $370 billion in new greenie boondoggle spending, passed through the badly misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act" of 2022.  He's the guy who tells how this money is going to be spent, despite his close ties with Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who's a green fanatic and a prodigious bankroller of pretty much every project Podesta has been involved with — from the establishment of the Center for American Progress, whose purpose was to swing the Democrat party leftward, to his HJW Foundation, which merged with the Wyss Foundation, keeping Podesta on payroll for his "consulting services" at an $87,000 retainer.

What's that?  According to Wegmann:

In a 2011 interview, he described the work of his Wyss Foundation as serving as a rival source of influence to the U.S. government.

"Land owned by the federal government is managed for various interests, including hydraulic power, coal and gas, forestry," Wyss told Swiss journalist Marie-Christine Bonzom. "So, it needs some kind of counterbalance so it doesn't get ruined everywhere."

Wyss has donated $1 billion to that rival-the-government-and-private-sector operation.

Wegmann gently notes:

His priorities align neatly with the current environmental efforts of the White House. The same day President Biden ordered a pause on new oil and gas leases on public lands, he also committed to protecting 30% of U.S. land and coastal seas by 2030. As National Geographic reported at the time, that movement to achieve the so-called 30 by 30 goal "was energized by Swiss philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss, who donated a billion dollars to launch the Wyss Campaign for Nature," after which he pledged another $500 billion.

...which sounds like a nice way of saying that Wyss's money gets Joe Biden to do anything Wyss wants as his limp and pliant political puppet.

That certainly would explain some of Joe Biden's most destructive green policies, such as shutting down American energy production even as pump prices skyrocket, and then begging to the Saudis and Venezuelans for help, a seemingly irrational and desperate move, despite the perfectly available and abundant energy resources that can be extracted here in the States.

Now we have Podesta with his hands on the $370 billion in new greenie spending, a very inflationary $370 billion, by the way, and Wyss the guy he owes political favors to.

Wegmann points out that Wyss has pretty well put all Democrats in hock to him, given that his cash has gone to Democrat campaigns as well as congressional lobbying that has gotten this greenie spending bill passed.  Add Biden to the mix, and Wyss gets whatever Wyss wants.

...

The Biden energy policy looks idiotic whoever is responsible for it.  Cutting US production and then asking the Saudis and other Middle Eastern countries to produce more is an irrational move that Biden can;t explain because it is inexplicable to rational people.