One of the Democratic Party’s top fundraisers and the co-chairman of the Democratic National Convention host-committee, Duke Energy Corp. CEO Jim Rogers, contributed more than $210,000 to Democrats since 2008 and saw his company receive $230.4 million in federal grants for so-called “green energy” projects.
From The Washington Free Beacon:
Just as Rogers has helped fund Democratic politicians, they, in turn, have helped steer massive amounts of federal funding to Duke Energy. The 2009 stimulus package, for instance, was a boon for the company: Duke received federal grants totaling $230.4 million for a number of “green” energy projects including “smart grid” development and wind energy storage.
According to Recovery.gov, Duke created 196.6 jobs as a result of the grants.
The company also received a $350,000 grant to assist General Motors in the development of the Chevrolet Volt, the poorly selling electric vehicle that the Obama administration has recently proposed subsidizing at a rate of $10,000 per car.
Rogers’ support for the president’s “green” agenda earned him a spot on the short list to become President Obama’s Energy Secretary.
As if that act of crony capitalism weren’t enough, in 2009, Mr. Rogers’s company paid the lobbying firm of the co-chairman of Obama-Biden transition team, John Podesta, and Mr. Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta, $860,000 to lobby to “support the passage of climate change and energy legislation” and “energy efficiency and clean energy solutions.” John Podesta was also formerly the president of the left wing Center for American Progress.
As Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer reported in his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, in March 2011, Mr. Rogers took the “unusual step of committing corporate assets to obtain a $10 million line of credit for the National Democratic Convention in 2012.”
Mr. Rogers and Duke Energy, it seems, have learned the Obama Administration’s chief crony capitalism procedure: if you want to play, you have to pay; those who write smaller campaign donation checks receive bigger checks–in the form of taxpayer-funded stimulus monies.
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