Anonymous ID: e77aa8 Jan. 22, 2021, 9:46 a.m. No.12668826   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>8897

Biden Energy Pick Set to Make Millions from Prominent Energy Company

 

Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, President Joe Biden's pick for energy secretary, could pocket up to $5 million for stepping down from a prominent position with a Silicon Valley energy company.

Granholm will relinquish her spot on the board of Proterra, Inc., an electric-vehicles manufacturer, if she is confirmed by Congress. She will also sell off all stocks in the company, resulting in a windfall. Disclosure forms show that Granholm's stock in Proterra is valued between $1 and $5 million. She will also divest from other energy companies, including First Solar, a solar-panel company, and Duke Energy, an electric company. These investments would bring Granholm an additional $2,000 to $30,000.

 

Granholm's close ties to the energy industry are likely to raise conflict-of-interest concerns. In addition to her role with Proterra, Granholm does consulting work for startups and businesses in the clean-energy, transportation, and advanced-manufacturing sectors. As energy secretary, Granholm would push Biden climate policies that would provide a lucrative boost to those sectors.

 

The industry has already seen an uptick since Democratic victories in the 2020 elections and Georgia runoffs.

"Renewable energy stocks have shot up since the Georgia Senate runoff and it's reasonable to ask why that would be," said Josiah Neeley, an energy expert at the R Street Institute. "If it's because the prospects of cheaper, more efficient renewable energy have suddenly brightened, that would be a good thing. If it's that the renewable industry is more likely to get more subsidies and loan guarantees, that might be good for the companies, but not so good for the taxpayers."

The renewable-energy sector will expand under Biden as he seeks to hit net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. This goal would require a massive electric-vehicle push. Companies such as Proterra, a leading electric-bus manufacturer, could stand to benefit from such policies.

 

Granholm also helps run Granholm Mulhern Associates, a firm she co-owns with her husband, Daniel Mulhern. As part of her role with the firm, Granholm provides consulting services to clean-energy companies. The firm will dissolve when she leaves the energy sector—but Mulhern intends to launch a new consulting firm solely in his name, which will bring over his current clients.

Andrew Bates, a Biden transition spokesman, told the Washington Free Beacon that Mulhern will divest from his stocks, which include between $16,000 and $75,000 in First Solar and Duke Energy. Bates said that Mulhern will not consult with energy companies.

 

Granholm is not the only Biden nominee likely to raise conflict-of-interest concerns. Gen. Lloyd Austin, Biden's pick for defense secretary, stands to make up to $1.7 million by leaving the board of defense contractor Raytheon, while Janet Yellen, Biden's nominee for treasury secretary, was paid more than $7 million for speeches to Wall Street firms and other major corporations.

 

Granholm did not respond to a request for comment.

 

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-energy-pick-set-to-make-millions-from-prominent-energy-company/

Anonymous ID: e77aa8 Jan. 22, 2021, 10:11 a.m. No.12669201   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9218 >>9328 >>9429

George Washington

Farewell Address, 19 September 1796

 

The unity of Government which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union, to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual and unmoveable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

 

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-00963

Anonymous ID: e77aa8 Jan. 22, 2021, 10:12 a.m. No.12669218   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>9222

>>12669201

"However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."