What T. Boone Pickens Doesn’t Want You to Know about the Pickens’ Plan for California
source: http://www.theseminal.com/2008/10/21/truth-pickens-plan-califron
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T. Boone Pickens recently dumped another $5 million of his personal fortune into feel-good ads promoting his “renewable energy” and “clean fuels” initiative. As his TV ads flood the airwaves, I thought you might be interested in these 10 truths about Prop. 10:
1. Billionaire T. Boone Pickens is trying to steal Californian Kids’ lunch money. Like a grade-school bully, Pickens is using the sheer size of his wallet to try to ram through a self-enriching ballot initiative that the non-partisan California Legislative Analyst has estimated will cost an entire generation of Californians hundreds of millions of dollars annually – over $330 annually for 30 years!
2. In fact, his $5 billion measure is really a $10 billion Boone-doggle.
3. Pickens’ shareholders paid a pretty penny for his “magnanimous” public policy. Pickens claims he’s investing his own money out of a selfless motivation for “a better America.” In fact, Pickens has financed Prop. 10 by manipulating the price of his own Clean Fuels Corp. (NASDAQ CLNE) stock. Pickens “shorted” around $20 million worth at $18 per share on the open market, and then re-purchased $5 million of shares directly from the CLNE corporate treasury. This caused a free-fall of CLNE’s share price (worse than the broader market) to just $10 per share.
4. T. Boone the “Oil & Gas Man” is really the “Tax Man.” With California facing staggering budget shortfalls, Pickens’ Plan will certainly require a tax hike, or else come at the expense of schools, health care and other critical needs.
5. You wouldn’t buy a car on a thirty-year mortgage. Not with your own money you wouldn’t, and neither would Pickens and his country club buddy Aubrey McClendon (CEO of Chesapeake Energy, Prop. 10’s other major backer). That’s why they want to use Californians’ money to build a market for their natural gas companies. Under Pickens’ Plan, our children and grandchildren will be paying off Prop 10’s lavish subsidies of $50,000 per natural gas-powered truck long after those vehicles are rusting in a scrap yard.
6. There is no requirement that vehicles funded under Prop. 10 will even remain in California. This is in contrast to on-going California alternative fuel subsidy programs that have provided CLNE with millions of dollars in funding.
7. Prop 10 doesn’t require any results. Despite T. Boone’s campaign’s high-falutin’ claims, Prop. 10 doesn’t require even one particle of emissions reductions, reduce petroleum consumption by a single ounce, or generate a single watt of renewable energy.
8. There’s no broad-based coalition supporting Prop. 10, despite the Yes-on-10 campaign’s claims of helping the environment and reducing oil dependence, its only major backers are those who stand to gain financially from its passage
.
9. Nearly “everyone” opposes Prop. 10 including every major editorial board (the L.A. Times even called Prop 10 a “reprehensible scam”!); every major environmental group (Sierra Club, NRDC, CLCV, Environment California…) and it has united unlikely allies like the California Federation of Labor and California Chamber of Commerce.
10. Natural gas looks cheap now, but it won’t be for long under the Pickens Plan. The natural gas burned in power plants is bought by electricity generators at wholesale on the commodities market, but Pickens and McClendon want to sell that natural gas to motorists at retail. Plus, increasing demand for natural gas will certainly increase natural gas prices across the board.
1. Billionaire T. Boone Pickens is trying to steal Californian Kids’ lunch money. Like a grade-school bully, Pickens is using the sheer size of his wallet to try to ram through a self-enriching ballot initiative that the non-partisan California Legislative Analyst has estimated will cost an entire generation of Californians hundreds of millions of dollars annually – over $330 annually for 30 years!
2. In fact, his $5 billion measure is really a $10 billion Boone-doggle.
3. Pickens’ shareholders paid a pretty penny for his “magnanimous” public policy. Pickens claims he’s investing his own money out of a selfless motivation for “a better America.” In fact, Pickens has financed Prop. 10 by manipulating the price of his own Clean Fuels Corp. (NASDAQ CLNE) stock. Pickens “shorted” around $20 million worth at $18 per share on the open market, and then re-purchased $5 million of shares directly from the CLNE corporate treasury. This caused a free-fall of CLNE’s share price (worse than the broader market) to just $10 per share.
4. T. Boone the “Oil & Gas Man” is really the “Tax Man.” With California facing staggering budget shortfalls, Pickens’ Plan will certainly require a tax hike, or else come at the expense of schools, health care and other critical needs.
5. You wouldn’t buy a car on a thirty-year mortgage. Not with your own money you wouldn’t, and neither would Pickens and his country club buddy Aubrey McClendon (CEO of Chesapeake Energy, Prop. 10’s other major backer). That’s why they want to use Californians’ money to build a market for their natural gas companies. Under Pickens’ Plan, our children and grandchildren will be paying off Prop 10’s lavish subsidies of $50,000 per natural gas-powered truck long after those vehicles are rusting in a scrap yard.
6. There is no requirement that vehicles funded under Prop. 10 will even remain in California. This is in contrast to on-going California alternative fuel subsidy programs that have provided CLNE with millions of dollars in funding.
7. Prop 10 doesn’t require any results. Despite T. Boone’s campaign’s high-falutin’ claims, Prop. 10 doesn’t require even one particle of emissions reductions, reduce petroleum consumption by a single ounce, or generate a single watt of renewable energy.
8. There’s no broad-based coalition supporting Prop. 10, despite the Yes-on-10 campaign’s claims of helping the environment and reducing oil dependence, its only major backers are those who stand to gain financially from its passage
.
9. Nearly “everyone” opposes Prop. 10 including every major editorial board (the L.A. Times even called Prop 10 a “reprehensible scam”!); every major environmental group (Sierra Club, NRDC, CLCV, Environment California…) and it has united unlikely allies like the California Federation of Labor and California Chamber of Commerce.
10. Natural gas looks cheap now, but it won’t be for long under the Pickens Plan. The natural gas burned in power plants is bought by electricity generators at wholesale on the commodities market, but Pickens and McClendon want to sell that natural gas to motorists at retail. Plus, increasing demand for natural gas will certainly increase natural gas prices across the board.
