Extreme “green” California billionaire Tom Steyer has unique access to Democrat lawmakers across the country due to the amount of money he pumps into their campaigns. In return, Steyer demands that Democrats to support his “green” agenda. If they don’t, then he’ll make sure that they do, usually by withholding his money or simply paying someone off—it’s a relationship that resembles blackmail.
And, perhaps in no other state is that kind of relationship with the California billionaire as obvious as in Washington with the Democrat “leaders” here.
Steyer’s recent case of blackmailing local liberals makes up our 4th most underreported story of the year.
Steyer relies on Washington State as his guinea pig
Steyer is one of Jay Inslee’s best buddies. The billionaire environmentalist has poured millions into legislative races in our state, with disappointing (for him and Inslee) results. But, Steyer isn’t letting those disappointments and setbacks – or the fact that he’s not from Washington – stop him from cooking up new schemes to “improve” our state.
Washington is, given Inslee’s total buy-in on Steyer’s “green” agenda, a convenient guinea pig for the San Francisco billionaire’s various experiments.
Inslee and Steyer’s latest experiment is a 2016 ballot initiative to impose a cap-and-tax system. Steyer has already poured $80,000 into the (very inappropriately named) Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy, an organization that the Seattle Times described as “a coalition of major environmental groups, unions and social-justice advocates [that] is working on an initiative that would impose new fees on carbon emissions from fossil fuels.”
Steyer is hoping that voters will go for the cap-and-tax initiative, even though Inslee’s preferred (and similar) plan failed to even be brought up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled state House earlier this year. A big problem is that the cap-and-tax initiative favored by Inslee/Steyer will be in direct competition with Initiative 732, which has allegedly garnered over 300,000 signatures from actual Washingtonians and will go before legislators next month.
I-732 calls for a $25-per-ton carbon tax. But, it would also decrease other taxes by an equal amount thus offsetting the costs. That’s makes it so-called “revenue’neutral”, which just doesn’t work for the ultra-left in our state.
For the cap-and-tax backers and Steyer, more tax revenue for the government is a big part of their agenda. A carbon reduction plan that is revenue neutral and does not grow state government is not appealing to environmentalists here who have an agenda… like Steyer. So, Steyer stepped up to try to make the competition go away.
Steyer not passed buying off the opposition
Yoram Bauman, the man leading I-732, had recently announced that the group was considering not submitting the final batch of signatures – which it already possesses – to send I-732 to the Legislature in 2016.
As Shift reported, that has many speculating that, after spending almost $700,000 to gather signatures and promote the initiative, Bauman and his campaign have received assurances from a big-pocketed donor that they’ll be paid off. Suspect number one on the list is Steyer.
Then, after a couple days of internal bickering, the I-732 camp decided to turn its back on the Inslee/Steyer approach, and go forward with the revenue neutral plan.
Steyer spends millions on getting Democrats elected and pushing his government-control agenda, yet he denies any comparison to the Koch brothers—the far Left’s go-to Republican punching bags for spending millions of their own dollars to advance a free-market agenda. Steyer, in a hypocritical tone, recently told the LA Times, “We’re doing something we think is good for everyone, and we have no self-interest in it.”
That, apparently, sets Steyer apart from all the other billionaires seeking to influence politicians. Except, based on his obvious blackmail attempts, that’s not exactly true.
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