Buffet, W

516 capt  see berkshire

Peter Navarro reacts to Warren Buffett calling Trump's tariffs aN ACT OF WAR ...

YouTube · CNBC Television

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11 7 24 thom

Donald Trump is preparing to crash the American economy. He intends to do it by tearing up vital parts of our American government. He may even hire Elon Musk to pull it off. And from his point of view, this is not going to be a bad thing. The farther the economy crashes, the greater the buying opportunity for billionaires. It all has to do with something called the administrative state.

While it’s not sexy or even particularly interesting to the average American voter, having a strong administrative state is essential to a high-functioning economy. A strong administrative state is the only thing that protects entrepreneurs and small businesses from being squashed like bugs by monopolistic behemoths, and small businesses are our nation’s main growth engine.}:

:{For example, over 70 percent of all new jobs created since 2019 were created by small businesses, producing almost 13 million new jobs over the past 25 years. Small business creation is up 50 percent over Trump’s years because the Biden administration has been enforcing the rule of law, including taking on the giant tech monopolies. Small businesses now account for over 43 percent of all American economic activity.

A strong administrative state is also the only thing that can protect the environment from those who’d destroy it for their own profits. It’s the only thing that can protect consumers from defective or even deadly products and food or drug contamination. It our only defense against predatory banks, airlines, and insurance companies, among others. A strong administrative state that follows and enforces the rule of law — as opposed to the kind of grift-driven kleptocracies typical of strongman governments — is essential, in other words, to a functioning national economy.}:

Here in America, we see this best in the contrast between lightly bureaucratic and largely unregulated Red states and more bureaucratic and regulated (and taxed) Blue states and counties. While Red and Blue states are represented in Congress about 50/50, as the Brookings Institution found a few years ago: > “Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy.”

But now the administrative state is in the crosshairs of the incoming Trump administration, and their planned assault on it will almost certainly cause a loss of economic vitality, probably even leading to a major recession (every*Republican president since Nixon has had a major recession after tinkering with tax and regulatory policies;none*of the Democratic presidents have created one since Carter, and his started under Nixon). We also see this at the level of the nation-state. As Professor Timothy Snydernotes: > “Now consider the Russian and Hungarian economies. Russia sits on hugely valuable natural resources, and yet is a poor country. The profits from its oil and gas are in the hands of a few oligarchs. > >

“Hungary sits in the middle of the European Union, the most successful trade project of all time. And yet Hungarians are poorer than their neighbors, in part because the Orbán regime corruptly channels EU resources to friendly oligarchs. > > “The lesson is clear. Democracy is a method of checking corrupt rulers. When there is no functioning democracy, corruption is unchecked. And democracy is an element of a more fundamental guarantor of prosperity, the rule of law. In Hungary and Russia, the rule of law has been bent and broken, to the benefit of the few, and to the detriment of the many. Ending the rule of law is the Trump-Vance platform.”

Gutting the administrative state is the first and imperative aspect of ending or weakening the rule of law. Because, as Steve Bannon famously told America, the main goal of the Trump administration is “the ‘deconstruction’ of the administrative state.” He added: > “Every business leader we’ve had in is saying not just taxes, but it is also the regulation. I think the consistent …[thing] is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs is, if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”

We saw this movie before, during the last Trump administration. He put a coal lobbyist in charge of EPA, an oil lobbyist at Interior, a Telcom lobbyist and lawyer at FCC, a professional union-busting lawyer in charge of the Labor Department, an advocate for replacing public schools with religious ones in charge of the Education Department, etc., etc. But that was more mere corruption than a wholesale destruction of administrative agencies. Since the Chevron deference decision by the Supreme Court this past year, though, it’s now possible that Trump could actually destroy the American administrative state.

Even whenChevronwas still intact eight years ago, the result of Trump’s corruption in his previous administration, just like with Reagan’s and Bush’s deregulatory campaigns, was a massive recession that started*before*Covidcame along. Trump will fire Lena Kahn at the Federal Trade Commission, blowing up the antitrust efforts of the Biden administration; the fat cat billionaires already are eagerly anticipating running amok (which is why they threw billions at Trump’s campaign). The result, predictably, will be another Republican economic disaster for America’s working class.

Interestingly, our country’s most famous investor also seems to be thinking along these same lines. Warren Buffett has recently sold over $325 billion in stock and is simply sitting on that huge pile of cash. Why? Probably the Oracle of Omaha can see the same thing I’m pointing out here: Trump is preparing to turn the economy over to Musk and his billionaire buddies and the result will be a disaster.

> A disaster, by the way, that will be very useful to Buffett and other billionaires; recessions and depressions are when America’s largest fortunes are typically made or expanded because they represent great buying opportunities to those with cash, while at the same time the small companies being squeezed are willing to sell for a song.:

:{:{ So get ready; we’re in for a bumpy few years as America descends into a strongman-run oligarchy while the Supreme Court and Trump’s toadies rip apart the protections of the administrative state we’ve so carefully constructed in the years since the Civil War and the Republican Great Depression. It may well be a disaster for your 401(k), and millions will lose their jobs in a recession. If Musk cuts $2 trillion from the federal budget, as promised, it will almost certainly impact Social Security and take a huge bite out of programs for veterans, children, and the disabled. It would probably also have to end all subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, and end hundreds of billions in federal aid to infrastructure construction programs. Get ready now, to the extent that you can. Forewarned is forearmed. }:

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The Sacramento Bee

Pension funds CalPERS, CalSTRS must divest from fossil fuels

How California's pension funds can invest in the future by ... in California are demanding divestment and standing up for climate justice.

.1 month ago

MarketWatch 4 22

CalPERS backs Berkshire shareholder measure to remove Warren Buffett as chairman

Influential pension fund also backs proposal for Berkshire to report its climate impact. Warren Buffett, seen speaking in 2013, has been both...

sac bee

OPINION AND COMMENTARY

Editorials and other Opinion content offer perspectives on issues important to our community and are independent from the work of our newsroom reporters.

VIEWPOINTS How California’s pension funds can invest in the future by divesting from fossil fuels BY LENA GONZALEZ SPECIAL TO THE SACRAMENTO BEE APRIL 20, 2022

The CalPERS building in downtown Sacramento. JAY MATHER Sacramento Bee file

As the state and economy make the transition to cleaner energy sources to help reach a global goal of zero net emissions by mid-century to stop global warming, a growing number of institutions worldwide are choosing to divest trillions of dollars from fossil fuel companies. This is the ethically and financially responsible choice, and more union members in California are demanding divestment and standing up for climate justice.The California Faculty Association passed a resolution calling for the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) to divest from fossil fuels. Their members count on them to make healthy financial decisions about their funds for retirement. The faculty group was joined in calling for divestment by state associations representing higher education faculty, the academic senates at California State University and the University of California, and local chapters of unions representing teachers in cities from Los Angeles to Oakland. ...

ProPublicais doing the Lord's work. Specifically, investigative reporters Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel are doing it. Two weeks ago, the nonprofit news group published the first in a planned series of pieces revealing, in exquisite detail, the moral character of the very obscenely rich. The series will be based on "a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation's wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years." It's a goddamn truth-bomb:

It demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.

Their first report, published on June 8, exposed the very obscenely rich as the greatest tax dodgers of them all. But before I get into it, let me say two things. One, Eisinger et al. do more than reveal the truth. They reveal the extent to which the very obscenely rich go to hide it. Two, the very obscenely rich keep lying as the truth is being revealed. I don't see how one can avoid coming to the conclusion that the tax system not only privileges the very obscenely rich. It gives them incentive to lie about their privilege. There's so much lying, in fact, you wonder if being a billionaire means being a liar.

To normal people (that's you), the money that comes in is income. Importantly, income is what you earn with your labor. Sure, you might have some investments here and there yielding a few dividends. Your net worth probably includes the (hopefully increasing) value of your house. But otherwise, by and large, the vast bulk of the money coming into your household is earned, and the word you use to describe that is income. Nearly all the money coming into your household is subject to tax by the US government.

The very obscenely rich are not normal people. To be sure, they have "income" but the vast bulk of the money coming into their households "derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property," Eisinger et al. wrote. Importantly, "those gains are not defined by US laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell." So they rarely sell. They hold onto their assets and they do "labor" for them. Unlike normal people, whose income is what they earn with their labor, the very obscenely rich's "income" is what their assets earn with their asset's "labor." The moral difference between income and "income," and the moral difference between earning and "earning," is the moral difference between normal people and the very obscenely rich.

None of this would be a BFD if the very obscenely rich paid their fair share. They do not. Yes, they pay income tax on income. But, again, the vast bulk of the money coming into their households is not taxable. So the vast bulk of their money is not taxed. In fact, it's impossible to know their real share. Eisinger et al. had to get creative. "To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period," they reported. "We're going to call this their true tax rate." While the median household ($70,000 a year) paid 14 percent, and while couples earning more than $628,300 are going to pay this year the highest rate of 37 percent, the 25 richest paid a total of $13.6 billion in income taxes or "a true tax rate of only 3.4 percent."

To put this in perspective, you have to keep in mind what "earning" means. By the end of 2018, Eisinger et al. wrote, the richest 25 Americans "were worth $1.1 trillion." It would take "14.3 million ordinary American wage earners put together" to earn that much money. In other words, it would take nearly 14 and a half million normal people to work normal hours to earn with their labor what 25 people "earn" not with their labor but with the money they already have. And instead of paying $1.9 billion in income taxes (at the rate the very obscenely rich enjoy) normal people would have to pay $143 billion. Unsaid in the ProPublica report, but worth saying clearly, repeatedly and loudly, is that the US tax system encourages idleness while discouraging actual work. I'm sure Jeff Bezos works very hard but it's not humanly possible to earn with one's labor what Bezos is reportedly worth. To the very obscenely rich, "earning" is meaningless.

It encourages lying, too. Warren Buffett is the sixth-richest person in the world. He's usually seen as an enlightened centibillionaire. Yet the ProPublica report, specifically his reaction to it, shows the Sage of Omaha isn't wise so much as fraudulent. Even as he publicly supported tax reform so that people like his secretary don't pay more in income tax than he does, Buffett was privately hiding his "true tax rate," as determined by ProPublica. It is 0.10 percent. This is possible, because Buffett owns so much of the stock of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, and his company doesn't pay dividends.

Buffett tried justifying that he pays almost nothing in federal income tax by saying he has paid what he legally owed and saying he's going to give away his fortune. "I believe the money will be of more use to society if disbursed philanthropically than if it is used to slightly reduce an ever-increasing US debt," he wrote to ProPublica.

This is adding insult to injury. First, because Buffett knows full well that raising the income tax on the very obscenely rich, a move he has advocated, would mean squat when the very obscenely rich don't earn incomes with labor, but instead with their assets, which are untaxed as long as they are not sold. If he wanted to reform the tax code, he'd advocate taxing capital gains (the very obscenely rich's assets). But then he'd lose a lot of money. Being a reformer is one thing. Pretending to be is more lucrative.

Buffett's response to the ProPublica report adds insult to injury in a second way—by expressing contempt for democratic accountability. I have no doubt he thinks philanthropy serves society better than government redistribution does, but it's really not up to him. It's up to the will of the American people and their representatives in the government. Like other very obscenely rich people, Buffett is saying without saying that he's separate from and unequal to the rest of us, an attitude coming from the world's sixth-richest person that a free republic should hold in equal contempt.

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Buffet has a famous quoteabout investing: “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.”

When it comes to his $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, Buffett will need to take that one to heart now that other investors have sued Occidental for the merger financed in part by Buffet’s stake, alleging that the amount of debt required for Occidental to merge with Anadarko left the company “precariously exposed” if oil prices went lower. They cited the billions that Buffett invested in the deal as compounding this risk.

The fracking industry doesn’t care that you’re a world-famous investment sage: It destroys all capital.

READ MORe desmog 720

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desmog via drilled 10b$ permian play

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/how-corporate-profiteers-use-the-ideology-of-greed-to-win-big-while-killing-our-jobs-and-livelihoods/

no lnx

How corporate profiteers use the ideology of greed to win big — while killing our jobs and livelihoods

Mike Mozart

Written by Jim Hightower October 9, 2019

Here’s a recipe for you: Chop up 6 Oscar Meyer wieners, stir in 1 cup of Heinz ketchup, blend with 1/2 cup each of Cool Whip and Maxwell House Coffee, sprinkle a 1/2 cup of Planters peanuts over the mixture, add 3 spoonfuls of A.1. Steak Sauce and then top it off with a jar of Cheez Whiz and blast it in the microwave.

Sound like a gloppy mess? It would be if anyone could stomach the idea of making it, but an even messier version of the glop was cooked up in 2015 by corporate profiteers. That’s when Kraft Foods Group was merged with H. J. Heinz,thus conglomerating more than 200 brand-name food products — including all of the above — into one $28 billion-a-year behemoth. The combination was hailed at the time as a whiz-bang deal, a product of sheer corporate and financial genius that would generate extraordinary efficiencies, growth and profits, proving that bigger is always better.

Um … apparently not. Four years later, Kraft Heinz’s sales have slumped, profits are tumbling, its stock price has plummeted by half in the last year, investors are bailing out, its products are losing market share, shareholders are suing, regulators are investigating, employees are increasingly dispirited, and … well, as some business journalists have put it, the megamerger is a megamess.

This is not the work of inexperienced, incompetent corporate managers inside Kraft or Heinz but of a couple of highly touted Wall Street “geniuses” who’ve amassed personal fortunes in the global corporate merger game. The Kraft Heinz consolidation was engineered from outside by a Brazilian corporate takeover outfit named 3G, in cahoots with U.S. buyout buccaneer Warren Buffett. They are ideological disciples of the old orthodoxy that the sole responsibility of corporate executives is to jack up the stock price and profits for big shareholders — in this case, themselves. Their self-serving approach to increasing Kraft Heinz’s profits was to squeeze “costs,” meaning squeezing out experienced managers, workers, product development and the vibrancy of the corporation itself — which has steadily squeezed out their own profits.

This old model of self-enrichment through corporate takeover, consolidation and contraction turns out to be not just bad morals but bad business. It’s time for us, the media and public officials to start saying “NO!” to merger mania.

Last spring, a lawn care company advertised a special deal: “$50 OFF.” Off of what? In small print, the ad explained: “Off of free services.”

I think of that twisted advertising hustle when I see yet another corporate megamerger being announced with great hoopla.

The grinning CEOs of the merging giants promise everything, but — as we’ve learned from promises made by merging airlines, banks, drugmakers, etc. — they’ll most likely deliver less than nothing. Four years after the Kraft Heinz colossus merged, it has become a shamble, far less than either had been separately. What happened? Greed and Wall Street’s cost-cutting BS took over the executive suite.

3G had been the primary driver of the Kraft Heinz merger, and its top honchos quickly replaced the previous managerial teams with their own financial hotshots, who imposed a rigid bit of business school humbuggery called “zero-based budgeting.” It amounted to the practice of corporate thuggery — cut employees, slash expenses, divert revenues to the new owners, buy up other corporations … and repeat the plunder.

Suddenly, instead of focusing on improving products and customer satisfaction, Kraft Heinz employees were riveted on the minutia of cost-cutting. (The regime’s miserliness was exemplified by its removal of company-made nut and cheese snacks that had been offered for free at employee meetings). Research and new-product development budgets were whacked, seven processing plants were closed, thousands of workers were offed, and employee morale plummeted.

Also, 3G’s money manipulators had no clue about sweeping changes that were remaking the packaged food industry, especially the rise of smaller, more innovative companies that were delivering the healthier, less processed, better-tasting products consumers wanted. So Kraft Heinz’s “iconic” brands soon became perceived as simply old, losing consumer appeal, market share and profits. Adding insult to injury, last month, 3G started bailing out of its disastrous corporate creation, selling 25 million of its shares at a loss.

In June, 3G installed a new CEO, promising to right the ship, but he seems to be offering more of the same old corporate BS. “To truly change the direction of a business like ours,” he recently babbled, “we need to understand the future.”

Hey, chief. First, look to your past and try to learn that you don’t build by mindlessly destroying.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes “The Hightower Lowdown,” a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org. COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM

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 Kraft w

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/05/14/fear-greed-shale-fracking-oil-warren-buffett

Buffett, CEO of investment holding company Berkshire Hathaway, is considered one of the top investors in historyand can back up that track record with a personal wealth of around $90 billion. Buffett is known for advising investors to be“fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

In the U.S. fracked oil industry, this month can be read like a textbook version of Buffett’s fear and greed adage. The shale industry showed plenty of signs of fear while Buffett made a massive “greedy” beton the future of the Permian Shale in Texas and New Mexico, assuming it will produce oil profitably and investing $10 billion in Occidental’s purchase of shale producer Anadarko.

Buffett is betting on a fracked oil future as climate scientists warn of the waning window for preventing catastrophic climate change and fund managers and energy researchers warn of stranded oil and gas assets.

Déjà Vu?

Meanwhile, on May 1 Houston-based energy investment group Tudor, Pickering, and Holt released an investment noteabout the U.S. shale industry titled, “Don't Raise Your Budget,” and imploring shale oil producers to stop spending more money than they make selling oil.

If that feels like déjà vu, it should. In 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported the same message from investors asking for fiscal restraint alongside predictions of 2018 finally being a profitable year for the shale oil industry. As one analyst said, “Is this time going to be different? I think yes, a little bit.”

But was it different? In a word, no.

Now Tudor Pickering is begging the industry to listen and stop overspending. It's literally saying, “Please, for the love of God, don’t do it.”

This trend has led to a well-known short seller recently describing overspending shale oil companies as “capital destruction machines.”

Capital Destruction Machines

Last year DeSmog featured the company Halcón Resources as an example of how shale oil company executives get rich while losing investor money. Halcón Resources had emerged from bankruptcy and promised success with the currently popular strategy of focusing solely on oil production in the Permian region.

After last year’s first quarter financial results, investment site The Motley Fool wrote the following about Halcón’s plans:

“Halcón Resources has an aggressive plan to increase output at a lightning-fast rate, to offset asset sales in recent years. It's a big bet on higher oil prices, since the company is significantly outspending cash flow to get up to where it wants to be as fast as possible.”

To which we asked, “Anyone want to bet how this ends up?”

After another year of producing in the Permian, Halcón has not delivered and Kallendish Energy reports the shale company is now developing “new strategic and financial plans.” Why?

Well, Halcón lost another $336.6 million in the first quarter of 2019. Its stock lost over 50 percent of its value last week and is now in penny stock range. But its executives still get paid.

While the Permian wasn’t the solution for Halcón, the region is where the U.S. fracked oil industry is still pinning its hopes for finally unlocking profits. As we recently noted, Exxon and Chevron have both made fracked oil production in the Permian a central part of their business strategies.

Exxon appears to have adopted the shale oil mentality already. According to Bloomberg, “Exxon will likely continue to outspend its organic cash from operations, as it seeks to rebuild its growth portfolio.”

Permian oil producer Pioneer Resources has also been in the news recently. In February, after its financial results showed it “could not generate enough cash flows to fully fund its capital expenditure,” Pioneer’s CEO suddenly retired and the former CEO Scott Sheffield returned to run the company.

One of Sheffield’s claims to fame is that in 2016 he said Permian oil could be produced profitably when oil prices were below $30 a barrel. Apparently he was very wrong.

Sheffield has just overseen around of layoffsand a recent stunning asset sale. In February 2018, Pioneer announced its intention to focus just on the Permian (like Halcón) and thus would be selling its assets in the Eagle Ford shale play in Texas. Initial estimates were that the assets were worth $2 billion. This past April, however, Reuters reported the price would now likely be less than $1 billion.

The deal was finalized at $25 million, with future payments based on the price of oil and gas and potentially adding up to $475 million. But those Eagle Ford shale assets sold for only $25 million up front. Capital destruction in action.

Bakken oil producer Whiting Petroleum also reported losses when profits were expected.

And it isn’t just the oil producers who are suffering. The oil service companies who do much of the actual work producing the oil have not been faring well either.

In February the CEO of cash-shedding oil services company Weatherford International Plc was asked if he was considering bankruptcy. He responded, “I don’t waste a lot of time thinking or planning how to fail.” Weatherford’s stock hit 14 cents last week as the company plans to file for bankruptcy.

Things haven’t been going well for shale producers despite higher oil prices, which averaged $65 a barrelin 2018 (for U.S.pricing standard West Textas Intermediate) and was the highest average price since 2014.

Jeff Miller, the CEO of oil services company Halliburton, recently made some dire predictions about shale’s ability to continue record oil production.

“Higher activity and more advanced technology will be needed to maintain flat production levels,” said Miller. Higher activity and more advanced technology mean higher expenses. And that would apparently be required just to keep production at current levels.

Buffett’s Big Bet in Permian Bidding War

It is easy to see why Warren Buffett sees this as a time to be “greedy.” Many others are failing with their investments in U.S.shale oil and seem fearful of getting a return on capital in shale oil and gas production.

Despite others' fears (or perhaps because of them), Buffett decided to back Occidental with $10 billion for its purchase of oil company Anadarko and its prized Permian holdings. This was no bargain.

Initially it looked like oil major Chevron would be successful with its $33 billion bid to buy Anadarko. But then Occidental started (and ended) a bidding war with an offer reportedly totalling $57 billion,made possible in part by Buffett's $10 billion.

Occidental’s share prices have hit a 10-year low since the deal was finalized and one criticism has been the very favorable terms surrounding Buffett's investment. This isn’t the first time Buffett has struck a deal like this. During the financial crisis, his company bailed out Goldman Sachs with a $5 billion loan, again with favorable terms for him. Buffett did well on that investment and could stand to profit on this deal as well, thanks to the generous terms.

However, Buffett is not a seasoned oil industry expert and apparently agreed to the $10 billion loan after just a 90 minute conversation. That is a lot of money to bet on a simple premise: that the Permian can produce oil profitably. Apparently that 90 minute conversation convinced Buffett it's possible. He explained his rationale: “It's also a bet on the fact that the Permian Basin is what it is cracked up to be.”

Perhaps the terms of the deal shield Buffett’s investment from any real risk, but whether Buffett understands the Permian and the finances of fracking better than someone like Scott Sheffield of Pioneer is up for debate.

Despite the U.S. fracking industry's history of “capital destruction,” one of the top investors in the world has bet big that Occidental holds the secret to Permian profits. But perhaps this time really will be different, or perhaps Occidental will follow in the footsteps of Halcón and others who bet it all on the Permian and lost.

ANTI-SOLAR AT LEAST 2X

419 icn

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10042019/iowa-solar-fee-warren-buffett-midamerican-energy-who-gets-hurt-small-businesses

Entrepreneurs Built Iowa’s Solar Economy. A Utility’s Push for Solar Fees Could Shut Them Down.

BY: DAN GEARINO

Lawmakers are considering a new fee for rooftop solar at the urging of a utility owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.Meet the small business owners whose futures are at stake.

FAIRFIELD, Iowa — Walking between rows of solar panels in the largest project their company has ever done, the co-owners of Ideal Energy feel a mix of pride and unease. One giant task is almost done, and many more are just ahead.

"I couldn't have done it with anyone else," said Troy Van Beek, an entrepreneur and former Navy SEAL, about his wife and business partner, Amy Van Beek.

Over the past 10 years, this couple has been a leader in launching a solar industry in Iowa, showing how entrepreneurs can build a market almost from scratch.

Now, they and other small business owners are in a political fight for their future as they try to keep Iowa lawmakers from passing legislation that they fear could kill the state's still young rooftop solar industry.

Customers' utility-bill savings would cover the cost of adding solar. It's part of a national wave of utility-backed plans that would reduce the financial benefits of home solar, to the benefit of utilities. The leading supporter of the Iowa bill is MidAmerican Energy, a utility owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

The entire state of Iowa had less than 1 megawatt of solar installed in 2009 when the Van Beeks started Ideal Energy. Nearly all of the country's solar development was in the sunniest states or in states with substantial subsidies for rooftop solar, of which Iowa was neither. Today, Iowa is up to 96 megawatts, the majority of it installed on homes and businesses.

Ideal Energy is one of about a half-dozen Iowa solar installers that entered the market when it was nearly nonexistent and built it project by project....

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power_elite/interlocks_and_interactions.html

Domhoff

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owns many newspapers, incl billings gazette

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Enterprises

http://ecowatch.com/2016/05/02/buffett-rejects-climate-change-report/

Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway shareholders voted overwhelmingly against a shareholder proposal to create a report citing the climate change risks for its insurance companies.

Buffett, the so-called “Seer of Omaha” for his company’s S&P beating returns, said he doesn’t think climate change creates serious risks for Berkshire’s insurance business and also refused to make a public statement in favor of reducing fossil fuel use.

A study by Asset Owners Disclosure Project (AODP) recently found that nearly half of the world’s top 500 investors are doing nothing to mitigate climate risks in their investments. AODP CEO Julian Polter said pension funds and insurers that ignore climate change were “gambling with the savings and financial security of hundreds of millions of people.”

Warren Buffet's advice to shareholders at annual meeting: Avoid envy and costly fees. https://t.co/4A7q40ezAu

— The Associated Press (@AP) April 30, 2016

For a deeper dive:

News: AP, Reuters, Daily Caller, Bloomberg

Commentary: Christian Science Monitor, Christina Beck analysis; CleanTechnica, James Ayre analysis

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Thousands of bankers, investors, business journalists and just plain fans will flock to Omaha, Neb., on Saturday in a yearly pilgrimage to glean insight from the world's most famous investor: Warren Buffett.

What they are unlikely to get is any guiding wisdom on climate change, even though the world's most famous climate scientist, James Hansen, will be among the attendees pushing for it.

The occasion is the annual shareholder meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett's vast holding company, where the chief executive will hold court for up to five hours in the 18,000-seat CenturyLink Center, his answers parsed for even the slightest nuance that might signal how others should invest.

Hansen, the former NASA scientist who sounded the alarm on global warming decades ago with congressional testimony, will be there to urge Berkshire Hathaway's shareholders to support a resolution requiring the company to disclose climate risks facing its insurance business. Outside the arena, a coalition of activists will be chanting and waving signs, encouraging Buffett to take a bold stand on climate change.

The protest and the resolution, introduced by a Nebraska-based nonprofit, seek to highlight Buffett's conflicting messages on climate change. While he accepts that global warming is real, significant and human-driven, he seems to make investments without considering it. He opposes the shareholder resolution to disclose climate risks and has opposed previous efforts to establish greenhouse gas-reduction targets. And Buffett's investments support both renewable energy and fossil fuels.

BS

5/16

http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/01/warren-buffett-tells-greenie-crusaders-to-buzz-off-at-berkshire-annual-meeting/

Warren Buffett and shareholders with Berkshire Hathaway overwhelmingly rejected a resolution Saturday asking the holding company to write reports on the risks so-called man-made global warming causes to insurance companies.

The rejection came despite a strong campaign push on behalf of the resolution from NASA climate scientist James Hansen, Illinois State University professor and insurance expert Jim Jones, and activists from environmentalist group Nebraskans for Peace.

Tens of thousands of environmentalists associated with Nebraskans for Peace, as well as many others, spent their Saturday listening to the hours-long annual meeting in Omaha, which was composed mostly of discussions between Buffett and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger over business minutia.

Buffett eventually got down to brass tacks on the climate change report, telling activists at the meeting he is standing firm on his decision to nix the climate change report resolution. He said he believes global warming is an important issue but ultimately doesn’t think it poses a threat to Berkshire’s insurance businesses....

Buffett also defended NV Energy, an energy group he founded that won a battle over Elon Musk’s SolarCity following Nevada’s decision to introduce sharp cutbacks to its net metering program in December.

If the billionaire’s decision to nix the climate resolution was a poke in the collective eye of all climate justice warriors, then surely remarks defending earlier decision to reduce solar panel subsidies will be seen as an all out assault on the environment.

Net metering policies force utility companies in Nevada, which Berkshire Hathaway owns, to purchase electricity produced by rooftop solar panels at triple retail rates, which makes it difficult for Nevada’s utility company to the cover the costs of a fixed electrical grid.

Buffett, for his part, said at the annual meeting that people with rooftop solar power systems were allowed to sell power to the utility at exaggerated rates, which, he said, had the effect of forcing other ratepayers to subsidize the niche group of people leasing solar panels.

In a similar move, Berkshire Hathaway-owned PacifiCorp, an Oregon electrical utility company, managed to notch out a victory when it successfully lobbied to change the state’s net metering policies. The company is now able to ratchet down the amount of green electricity it is required to purchase from rooftop solar companies.

==

==

http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/22/warren-buffett-war-solar-west/

There are solar battles blazing all across the West right now, as utilities anchored to fossil fuel power plants strain to avoid the inevitable spread of solar across their areas of operation.

Not a month goes by without a story of some assault on solar-friendly policies by utilities or by the utility commissions that are often in their pocket.

Not a month goes by without a story of some assault on solar-friendly policies by utilities. Photo credit: Snake River Alliance

During the holidays at the end of 2015, it was Nevada’s utter dismembering of its net metering policy. Nevada is—or was—one of 42 states that offered net metering, a program through which customers with solar arrays are compensated for the energy they produce on their rooftops or in small installations connected to the electric grid.

NV Energy Inc. unleashed this full frontal attack on the program that—in one quick vote of three unelected commissioners—pulled the rug out from under 17,000 solar customers and eviscerated at least 8,000 solar jobs. And the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN) was happy to oblige.

Nevada has the highest number of solar jobs per capita in the U.S., but for how long?

As Nevada’s PUCN invited this “solar black hole” over one of the nation’s sunniest states, many pointed out how NV Energy fought tooth and nail against the successful net metering plan and ultimately secured its demise.

NV Energy, the state’s largest utility, is a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy. This net metering battle was high profile.

Many have pitched it as a Buffett vs. Musk showdown, as NV Energy’s demands would prove to cripple Solar City’s business in the state, which was dependent on a consistent net metering program.

==

http://news.muckety.com/2014/05/05/warren-buffetts-massive-railroad-lobby/46691

The Sightline Institute, a Seattle-based think tank, calls the avuncular billionaire “the man behind the exploding trains.”

Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns Union Tank Car Company, North America’s largest leaser of tank cars. Berkshire also owns BNSF Railway Company, which moves many of those cars.

To understand what a big deal this is, take a look at the chart at right, from the Association of American Railroads.

Rail transport of crude oil has skyrocketed in the last four years. As North American oil production has outstripped pipeline capacity, trains have taken up the slack.

Because towns, villages and cities grew up along rail lines, these cars pass through heavily populated areas en route to refineries. Several communities in the U.S. and Canada have paid a steep price.

==

RR coal gates

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/12/keystone-xl-the-art-of-ngo-discourse/

set off blogs/escalator eg wsj

JAMES FREEMAN CONNECT

Updated March 4, 2014 8:06 a.m. ET

WARREN BUFFETT, CLIMATE-CHANGE DENIER

The billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway BRKB +0.18%  is on some kind of roll. Yesterday we told you about his warning on public pension funds in his annual letter to shareholders. Now, he's puncturing deeply-held liberal myths about global warming. Mr. Buffett tells CNBC that extreme weather events are not becoming more common, and that climate change is not altering his company's calculations when insuring against catastrophic weather events. "The public has the impression that because there's been so much talk about climate that events of the last 10 years from an insured standpoint and climate have been unusual," he said. "The answer is they haven't."

==

BNSF,owned by Warren Buffet, carries up to 70 percent of all

the crude-by-rail traffic in North America today. This railroad

alone expects to load one million barrels per day onto its

network by the end of 2014.

==

One of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the U.S. will soon shut down, thanks to a well-known billionaire and previously passed legislation.

As part of its acquisition of Nevada’s largest utility, NV Energy, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway also inherited Reid Gardner, a 557-megawatt (MW), coal-fired energy plant near Las Vegas. The massive structure, which has a history of recognition among the country’s dirtiest carbon polluters, won’t be a lasting legacy of NV’s profile.

NV plans on shutting down three of Reid Gardner’s units that generate about 300 MW by the end of this year, according to the *Las Vegas Review-Journal*. The remaining 257 MW would be closed by the end of 2017. In all, the company wants to end all of its coal operations by 2019.

As *The Atlantic* points out, the utility’s decision is tied to state legislation passed last year requiring the company to eliminate 800 MW of coal energy in favor of renewables. That passage was influenced by years of fighting for cleaner air by the Moapa Band of Paiutes, a Native American community that lives near Reid Gardner.

The state utilities commission has 180 days to approve the plan, which would also include a new solar project totaling 200 MW of clean energy on the Moapa Band of Paiutes reservation. The land is about 70,000 acres and has enough to space to also support the 1.5 gigawatts of renewable energy the Moapa Band of Paiute wants to construct through a joint ventureannounced last year with Terrible Herbst Inc. and Stronghold Engineering Inc.

“This is going to provide a strong economic base for the tribe,” Sandy King, director of renewable-energy project development at Stronghold, told Renewable Energy World.

Last fall, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a limit of 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour for new coal plants.

==

Conservative media have spent years accusing the Obama administration of lawlessness. But now they're lining up to defend a rancher who refuses to even acknowledge the existence of the federal government:http://mm4a.org/Q6GzVK Related: Media Matters Investigative Reporter Joe Strupp spoke to Nevada journalists, who told him that the rancher is clearly breaking the law:http://mm4a.org/1kye9Py

==

http://www.alternet.org/environment/warren-buffett-buys-over-500-million-suncor-tar-sands-stock

See America's biggest bank run from its responsibilities

Hiding behind riot police and scurrying into alleyways, executives from America’s biggest bank, Wells Fargo, entered their April 24 shareholders’ meeting in San Francisco while hundreds of peaceful protesters stood outside demanding accountability and justice.

image

Inside,  several proxy shareholders were arrested as they called to end Wells’ fraudulent foreclosures, tax dodging, predatory lending, profiting from private prisons, and paying-off politicians to rig the rules.

IFG’s Plutonomy Program posits that globalization’s extreme concentrations of wealth and power require people to deal more directly with the individuals at the very top.  So we stood in solidarity with over 400 events organized by Occupy, families fighting foreclosure, indebted students, immigrants’ rights groups, and even Wells’ own workers, as they blocked-off several streets in SF’s Financial District.  See this video of a foreclosure fighter sharing her story at IFG’s recent Teach-in on Wells Fargo.

image

John Stumpf, American banking’s highest-paid CEO who made almost $20M in 2011, called the shareholders’ meeting to order inside while, outside, janitors who clean Wells’ offices told the crowd how profits were squeezed from cutting workers' healthcare and holding down wages.  But the bank’s record profits in 2011 were driven mainly by mortgages, where Well’s ruthless “Robo-signing” practices continue to foreclose on families, 84% of which in SF were found to be “clear violations of law” by a recent report from the City Attorney.

Warren Buffet, Wells’ single biggest shareholder, owns almost twice as many shares as any other investor.  His legendary investment fund, Berkshire Hathaway, has made him America's second wealthiest man (after Bill Gates) with a personal net worth of $44B. Buffet has been in the news lately as the namesake of  President Obama's proposed “Buffett Rule" which would  begin to  reverse years of  regressive taxation in America. Buffett says his secretary now pays taxes on a higher proportion of her income than Buffett himself pays.  That's because capital gains are now taxed at  only 15% while wages are taxed at almost double the rate. Meanwhile, Wells Fargo avoided ALL taxes from 2008--2010.

==

Warren Buffett began the New Year with a big buy -- a $2.5 billion investment in two solar projects in Southern California. This isn’t the billionaire’s first venture into renewable energy – Mr. Buffett’s a leader in the sector with multiple wind farms and other solar investments.

THE PROFITEER. (cover story)

Authors:

Dickinson, Tim

Buffett, Warren

Source:

Rolling Stone; 1/21/2010, Issue 1096, p35-35, 1p

Document Type:

Article

Subject Terms:

*GLOBAL warming

People:

BUFFETT, Warren

Abstract:

This article profiles the American investor Warren Buffett as part of a series of articles on notable individuals who have expressed their disbelief in global warming, with topics discussed including his opposition to climate legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, his investments in carbon-polluting industries, and his charitable donations to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

http://search.ebscohost.com.oca.ucsc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=47875433&site=ehost-live

Published on Monday, March 28, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

All the President's (Coal) Men

Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Obama's Wyoming Giveaway

by Jeff Biggers

What really happened in Wyoming last week?

Perhaps we should ask billionaire coal hauler Warren Buffett, the "Oracle of Omaha."

Energy and climate analysts and Big Green organizations are still staggering around for an answer to the Obama administration's blockbuster news in Wyoming's coalfields last week to green-light the mining of an estimated 750 million-2.4 billion tons of coal on public lands. According to environmental analysts, "when burned, the coal threatens to release more than 3.9 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, equal to the annual emissions from 300 coal-fired power plants."

As Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar scrambles to explain his wildly exaggerated claims of the coal lease sales from his announcement, the truth is that this mind-boggling announcement comes on the heels of EPA administrator's proposed new rules to crack down on mercury emissions from coal-fired plants--that will, in effect, continue the move away from coal-fired energy.

It would be easy to point an accusing finger atSalazar, the former cowboy Senator from neighboring coal-rich Colorado who accepted massive amounts of contributions from dirty energy companies, and whose Bureau of Land Management quietly gave the green lightfor another 430 million tons of coal at the Antelope strip mine in Wyoming last year (within hours of the EPA's crackdown on mountaintop removal mining operations in central Appalachia).

But I don't think Salazar is the culprit on this Wyoming spring sale: President Obama needs to be called out for his less than transparent catering to his long-time billionaire and coal-profiteering friends.

Consider this: One month after jointly visitingArch Coal's mammoth Black Thunder strip mine in Wyoming with a fleet of nine private jets, billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett sat in President Obama's Oval Office on December 14th and discussed ways to improve the economy.

As the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffettunderstands the economics of coal better than anyone: He owns the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad that transports most of Wyoming's vast coal supply around the country, along with the utility company, MidAmerican Energy, which operates 11 coal-fired power plants, including four in Wyoming. To be fair, MidAmerican Energy also generates an estimated 2.9 MW of wind energy.

(Little secret: While central Appalachia tends to make the news for its horrific mountaintop removal operations and underground mine disasters, Wyoming is truly King Coal, and provides 40 percent of our nation's coal production.)

Plains Justice, a citizens group on the mining frontlines in Power River Basin, has long calledthe federal land leasing program "the biggest corporate bail-out of all." Clean Energy Action in Colorado has also questioned the growing and largely overlooked costs of coal mining in the Power River Basin.

Everyone in the coal biz also knows that last week's spring sale giveaway in Wyoming has as much to do with a controversial and impending coal export terminal proposed in the state of Washington--and geared toward Asian markets---as much as US markets.

Only days before their December meeting with the President, market analysts were abuzz with Buffett's and Gate's interest in the coal industry. One headline blurted out: Billionaires want coal for Christmas.

Well, looks like the billionaire's coal Christmas came in March.

Let's look at the timeline:

Nov. 10: Gates and Buffett visit Arch Coal's mine in Wyoming, and Buffett hails the trip as "fascinating."

Dec. 10: Wall Street is already certain that Buffett will continue this gamble on coal.

Dec. 14th. Gates and Buffett meet with Obama at the White House to discuss the economy.

Jan 6th: Wall Street analysts now say Buffett is betting BIG on COAL.

Feb. 15th: President Obama awards Buffett the Medal of Freedom at the White House.

Feb. 26th: In Buffet's annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letter, he reminds all listeners that his coal-transporting railroads (nearly 300 million tons of coal a year) "will increase Berkshire's "normal" earning power by nearly 40% pre-tax and by well over 30% after-tax."

March 23rd: Citing the nuclear tragedy in Japanand world energy needs, Salazaropens 750 million-2.4 billions tons of coal on public lands in Wyoming, only days after EPA administrator Lisa Jackson cracks down on coal-fired plants.

Ah, the great game of capitalism and Big Coal machinations.

And the great dirty coal ship moves on.

Jeff Biggers is the author ofThe United States of Appalachia, and more recently, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland (The Nation/Basic Books). Follow him on twitter:@JeffRBiggers

more Jeff Biggers

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The Profiteer

Warren Buffett

CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Despite being a key adviser to Obama during the financial crisis, America’s best-known investor has been blasting the president’s push to curb global warming “” using the same lying points promoted by far-right Republicans. The climate bill passed by the House, Buffett insists, is a “huge tax “” and there’s no sense calling it anything else.” What’s more, he says, the measure would mean “very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for their electricity.” Never mind that the climate bill, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would actually save Americans with the lowest incomes about $40 a year.

But Buffett, whose investments have the power to move entire markets, is doing far more than bad-mouthing climate legislation “” he’s literally banking on its failure. In recent months, the Oracle of Omaha has invested billions in carbon-polluting industries, seeking to cash in as the world burns. His conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, has added 1.28 million shares of America’s biggest climate polluter, ExxonMobil, to its balance sheet. And in November, Berkshire placed a huge wager on the future of coal pollution, purchasing the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad for $26 billion “” the largest acquisition of Buffett’s storied career. BNSF is the nation’s top hauler of coal, shipping some 300 million tons a year. That’s enough to light up 10 percent of the nation’s homes “” many of which are powered by another Berkshire subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy. Although Berkshire is the largest U.S. firm not to disclose its carbon pollution “” and second globally only to the Bank of China “” its utilities have the worst emissions intensity in America, belching more than 65 million tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere in 2008 alone.

As a savvy investor, Buffett would only buy a coal-shipping railroad if he felt certain that Congress will fail to crack down on climate pollution. “Whatever hurts coal also hurts the railroad business,” observes Peter Gray, a corporate climate attorney at the international law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge. “Mr. Buffett must believe that efforts to adopt cap-and-trade legislation will fail.”

That’s a strange position for the billionaire to take, given that he’s promised to donate more than 80 percent of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “As someone who is giving so much money to international development, Buffett ought to know better,” says Joe Romm, who served as an assistant energy secretary under Bill Clinton. “He ought to have spent a great deal of time considering the greatest threats to developing countries “” which would have quickly educated him about climate change.”

Buffett has been a great disappointment:

• Why Warren Buffett Is Wrong About Cap and Trade
• Gates and Buffett to invest in tar sands and spawn more two-headed fish?
• Gates Foundation strategy raises key question: Can the problems of the developing world be solved by ignoring global warming?

But at least CP readers found out a key reason why last year:  He hangs around with the wrong crowd — see Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’, Part 2: Who else have Nathan Myhrvold and the Groupthinkers at Intellectual Ventures duped and confused? Would you believe Bill Gates and Warren Buffett?

Still I wouldn’t have put him on the list.  He’s not in the same league as most of the other folks.  He’s kind of the Tiger Woods of investors