Green Weenie Alert--Obama's At It Again

Once again, Barack Obama has tapped an "experienced business executive" for an important post. This is part of his plan to court business by appointing "one of their own." Much like the appointment of General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as jobs and competitiveness czar, this is another stealth eco-extremist and self-serving superbureaucrat. The nominee for cabinet-level Secretary of Commerce is John Bryson, former CEO of Edison International.

Immelt and Bryson could be quite the gruesome twosome in D.C. Immelt runs a corporation which in the past was quintessentially American--General Electric. After taking the reins at GE, Immelt managed to farm out large portions of GE's workforce to China while getting huge federal subsidies for "green energy production" manufacturing products like the mercury-laced compact fluorescent lightbulb. As a result, in 2010 GE used creative accounting, made billions in profits, and paid zero tax. Immelt carefully studied Spain's experience with green energy production, and found that for four jobs created by the green initiatives, nine were lost. As jobs czar he is working hard to make sure that the four created are in China while the nine lost are in America.

Bryson knows how to play the game almost as well as Immelt. Edison Electric is indeed an energy consortium, but one which is designed to follow the green weenie agenda by using government subsidies and foreign labor to create "clean" energy. Bryson is an opponent of the use of fossil fuels, and demagogues the oil companies' profits (you know, those things that the oil companies pay huge taxes on). Oh, and did I neglect to mention that Bryson is also a huge fan of cap and trade? In fact, he believes in it so much that he has plans to implement it by use of administrative regulation, thereby bypassing Congress which has thus far refused to buy into the cap 'n tax scheme.

The Commerce Department is about as useless as the Labor Department, which it theoretically offsets. In fact, both departments have the ability to inflict serious damage on an already sputtering economy. The Obama administration wants to control every facet of American lives, while having as much understanding of free market economics as a three year old child has of quantum physics. Bryson is definitely their man, since he knows how to manipulate and jury rig figures to make it look like a company is making profits when it is actually taking in more money from the government than it spends in production. That is not "profit" by any definition known to genuine businessmen.

Bryson first made his name known to the powers-that-be as the co-founder of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). That organization is one of the pie-in-the-sky green organizations which pretend to have a viable plan to eliminate fossil fuel needs a week from next Friday. NRDC is a pretention on top of a pretense. In addition to its utopian ideas of immediate creation of viable alternative energy sources without any need for a transitional period, it does so in the name of national defense. Well, if you're going to lie, you might as well lie big.

Bryson said that carbon taxes – whether open or hidden in a cap and trade regime – were still not the best way to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gasses. The best way, he said, was a robust system of regulations that penalized energy producers for producing more energy than the government deemed necessary. So much for democracy and the free market--bring on the elitist bureaucracy.

Obama pulled Bryson out of his bag of tricks to replace Gary Locke, whom he has nominated as ambassador to China. In a fun twist of fate, Locke will replace John Huntsman, who is currently being touted by certain factions as a potential Republican candidate to replace Obama.

California Republican Congressman Darryl Issa said of the nomination: "With gas prices at nearly $4.00 per gallon (I'm paying $4.39 for regular), it's certainly eye-catching that President Obama has nominated a founder of an organization that opposes efforts to increase domestic oil production to serve as the nation's key advocate for our economic interests. The nomination of John Bryson to lead the Department of Commerce seems deeply out of touch with our current energy challenge." I had never noticed before that Rep. Issa is a master of understatement.

Current NRDC president Frances Beinecke praised Bryson's expertise on energy issues. "As one of the founders of NRDC, John Bryson is a visionary leader in promoting a clean environment and a strong economy." Only an Obamist who believes that government creates wealth by throwing taxpayer money at wild schemes while taking money away from profitable traditional energy companies would accept that statement on its face.

At Commerce, Bryson could join hands with NLRB socialists who filed complaints for unfair labor practices against the Boeing Corporation for daring to open a new plant in a right-to-work state. And guess who sits on the board of Boeing. Yep, John Bryson. But we all know that a foolish consistency (or incompetence) is the hobgoblin of little minds. At Commerce, Bryson wouldn't even have to pretend to care about profits and jobs. In no time at all, he will have thrown gazillions of dollars at Boeing (or whoever will grease his green palm) to develop a solar-powered jumbo jet. Of course, he and his fellow Obamists will continue in the interim to fly private or government fuel-guzzling jet planes for their trips around America and the world to tell other people how they should not be using fossil fuels.

This is akin to putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Fortunately, this is a cabinet position, requiring Senate confirmation. Senate Republicans have already indicated in a formal letter to the President that they have the signatures of forty-four Republicans committed to opposing this nomination. Only forty-one votes would be needed to put the nomination on hold. The Republicans made that move before they even knew that Bryson was the nominee. They determined that the position should remain open until Obama agrees to finalize the long-pending trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. The nomination of a green weenie only firmed up their resolve.

Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats also want to make any Commerce Secretary confirmation contingent on the additional creation of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program which would provide transitional health care and economic assistance to workers who lose their jobs as a direct result of the trade agreements. Obama has expressed a willingness to sign the trade and trade assistance bills, but Republicans have strongly indicated that this would put the horse before the cart, and give Obama plenty of wiggle-room to renege after the confirmation.

For now, it appears that without cooperation from the White House on long awaited trade deals, this nomination will be stymied. But remember this. Obama has become the maestro at recess appointments. That almost always means the rejected nominee will serve in the post until the expiration of the Congressional year. A clever and forceful recess appointee can do a great deal of damage in that period of time.