Green Hell Blog

California Treasure Bill Lockyer is retaliating against two Texas-based refiners that are supporting Proposition 23, the California ballot initiative to rollback the state’s global warming law until unemployment (now at 12.4 percent) recedes to 5.5 percent.

According to Climatewire:

… state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a former attorney general, urged the state’s largest public employee investment funds to divest themselves of Valero and Tesoro stock.

Lockyer sent a letter to the public pension funds, known as CalPERS and CalSTRS, asking them to rid themselves of any stock connected to the refiners Valero and Tesoro. Lockyer charged the companies with attempting to constrain gasoline supplies in California to ensure profits for years to come — and opposing the state’s climate change law as a means to ensure that constraint.

“CalPERS and CalSTRS should not be investing in Texas oil companies that hurt the California economy, no more than they should invest in companies that spend millions of shareholder dollars to undermine California’s environmental laws and the state’s green energy industries and green tech jobs,” Lockyer wrote.

Lockyer, a board member at CalPERS, is expected to ask the board tomorrow to divest Valero and Tesoro holdings during a meeting.”

It was also reported to this blog that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who views the global warming law as his signature accomplishment, kept Chevron out of the Proposition 23 battle by threatening the company with adverse tax measures.

The Wall Street Journal reported today about a staffer in Harry Reid’s office who nearly doubled his $3,500 investment in a renewable energy firm in 2008. Sen. Reid helped pass legislation that benefitted the firm.

Reid’s spokesman tried to defend the staffer, Reid’s top energy policy adviser, by asserting that he had no influence over tax incentives for renewable energy firms.

Under federal securities law, of course, it is not important whether the staffer had any influence over legislation, Sen. Reid or anyone or anything else.

If it can be shown that the staffer breached a duty of confidentiality in using “inside information” as the basis for buying and selling the stock, then he may very well be guilty of the crime of insider trading.

In May 2009, the Associated Press reported,

Federal prosecutors and the FBI have been investigating possible illegal insider trading by two Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement attorneys who were in a position to receive sensitive information about agency probes of public companies.

Similarly, if the staffer had material information that the public didn’t have and he took advantage of it in the buying and selling of securities, he could have committed a serious crime — as well as anyone he may have tipped off.

Reid’s staffer has denied wrongdoing, but that should not be dispositive.

The Department of Justice, FBI and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ought to be investigating the staffer as well as any other potential insider trading violations described in the WSJ article.

At the very least, the staffer should be afforded the same opportunity as Martha Stewart to chat with federal investigators — that worked out so well for her.

Don’t expect this to happen, however, as Sen. Reid and other members of Congress will no doubt quietly work to quash any investigation.

The Financial Times reports today,

EDF, France’s nuclear energy operator, paid investigators to infiltrate the anti-nuclear movement around Europe, according to testimony given in a French judicial investigation.

The investigation is looking into whether the state-controlled group condoned illegal practices as part of a surveillance operation…

The work involved “a web watch, completed by on-the- ground work” that he described as “going to meetings, to demonstrations” and “taking the temperature of these organisations”.

But before the greens get all self-righteous about this, let’s review some recent Greenpeace criminality:

• 7 from Greenpeace arrested after high-profile stunt at Kimberly-Clark
• Greenpeace activists arrested over whale meat theft
• Guy in polar bear suit arrested during Greenpeace protest
• Marshall Islands Arrest Greenpeace Activist At Missile Range
• Greenpeace activists arrested for trying to board British nuclear sub

There shouldn’t be anything wrong with a nuclear power company simply gathering information about groups that pose very real threats to the security of its facilities.

A manifesto allegedly from the eco-terrorist group Earth First! claims to have dumped mercury and chemical solvents at the Plainfield, CT site of a proposed wood-burning power plant, reports the local NBC affiliate.

Although an Earth First! spokesman denied the dumping, Connecticut officials reportedly have found three areas of the site that are contaminated with unidentified substances.

Earth First!’s credo is:

“We believe in using all the tools in the toolbox, from grassroots and legal organizing to civil disobedience and monkeywrenching. When the law won’t fix the problem, we put our bodies on the line to stop the destruction.”