'Clean Energy' and Dirty Politics

The Golden Goose lays a rotten egg.

We have often used the term, “open kimono” to highlight an inadvertent disclosure of the progressive machine’s inner workings. It’s the stuff that usual comes in a footnote in some policy paper or buried in the blah-blah of a “progress report.”

Today, we present a bare-nekkid example of the way things really work in Portland.

Here’s the way the Tribune kicked it off…

Reforms pave way for clean energy grants

Work is well under way to resolve questions raised by a city audit ahead of a City Council vote on $111 million in Portland Clean Energy Benefits Fund grant requests...

That “work” came down to a report from the city’s auditor that, stripped of the usual City Hall double-talk, said the people playing with the money on a nine-member committee supervising the fund—none of them elected—had no way of really knowing whether or not any of its grants were working. Or, for that matter, being skimmed.

The committee and the fund are the result of just one of the silly ballot measures approved by the city’s nutty voters; a measure which was, in the Trib’s shorthand…

…drafted by a coalition of minority, environmental, social justice and faith-based organizations. It was approved at the November 2018 election and imposes a 1% surcharge on retailers with annual sales of $1 billion or more in the US and $500,000 or more within Portland.

Short version: Hey! It’s just pin money to Home Depot or Starbucks or Apple or Walmart (but not Amazon, of course) so let’s rip ‘em off.

The first tranche went out last year at $8.6 million, and triggered a hit-job in the Oregonian—which in turn triggered the city audit. The Oregonian’s latest story made sure to offer itself a big pat on the back…

The proposal…comes six months after the city rescinded a five-year $12 million grant from this same fund to nonprofit Diversifying Energy following an Oregonian/OregonLive investigation that documented its leader’s extensive history of financial misdeeds and unpaid taxes.

…which, as we pointed out at the time, missed the point of the actual scandal entirely. No surprise: they missed it again.

So: what is it?

Let’s count the ways.

It’s flat-out racist. And courts in some places don’t think that’s very nice

The city steps up to the plate, in its own document, and says the fund is…

…the first ever climate fund in the U.S. that is created by and led by people of color. It is tasked with reducing carbon emissions while ensuring the benefits of those reductions materialize for frontline communities who have been historically excluded. It remains an understatement to say that PCEF is groundbreaking.

And how!

That a city would get away with printing such a challenge to any self-respecting constitutional rights attorney is a testament to our supine local legal beagles. The city document is loaded with “whites need not apply” verbiage, such as…

Within the recommended portfolio there is robust representation of culturally specific groups implementing projects that provide a multitude of benefits to all of PCEF’s priority populations.

Which the Oregonian neatly summarized as…

The fund is also meant to prioritize people of color and other historically marginalized communities.

Not that any local media would note that the whole give-away is under the thumb of Carmen Rubio, a Latinx (or whatever you want to call it), who rose from the ranks of the Latino Network to city council. Which is now disproportionally made up of POCs.

Nor is there any metric for when those “historical” sins will be paid off. Our best guess: never.

In addition, there’s no mention of racial groups getting in on this historic score-settling and “underserved” nonsense who really don’t look much like the long-term oppresseds. For example…

• The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization ($1,418,922), for something listed as the Bottling Blocks Related Northwest project, which will benefit an apartment complex the organization is building;

• Rohingya Youth Association of Portland ($232,056), for the Rohingya and Somali home weatherization project;

• The Ethiopian and Eritrean Cultural and Resource Center, which got $100,000 to “enhance environmental knowledge and awareness among the Ethiopian and Eritrean community in Portland.”

It would take an Excel genius to find any actual money being spent on…y’know, certain disfavored races. A few looked promising at first…

• De Rose Community Bridge and Holistic Wellness, which got an astonishing $1,061,922 to run a 1-2 acre garden “on which project participants will conduct regenerative agricultural educational programming.” Our hopes were dashed when they added that it will be “led by African immigrants and focused on educating and benefiting African women.”

• The Community Cycling Center got $499,419 but—no dice—it will “give away 60 bikes, fund 14,000 hours of staff time and provide stipends and logistical support to Black and Latinx community leaders”

Leaf through the not-very-informative list of grants and you (or a federal judge) might start wondering about that “groundbreaking” set of criteria for grants. And that’s a no-no, although Oregon likes to believe that the 14th amendment, along with the civil right law of 1964, stops at the state line.

It might have interested the program’s list of backers—more on them in a moment—to take note of a national injunction handed down in 2021 in a federal case, Faust v Vilsack, which stopped the Department of Agriculture…

…from implementing a loan-forgiveness program for farmers and ranchers under Section 1005 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). Plaintiffs assert that Section 1005 denies them equal protection of the law because eligibility to participate in the program is based solely on racial classifications.

There’s a legal test for anything that stinks of racial preference, as outlined by the court…

First, the policy must target a specific episode of past discrimination. It cannot rest on a generalized assertion that there has been past discrimination…

Second, there must be evidence of intentional discrimination in the past.

Statistical disparities don't cut it, although they may be used as evidence to establish intentional discrimination....

Third, the government must have had a hand in the past discrimination it now seeks to remedy.

Kinda tough to prove that with Somalis, Eritreans and Rohingya getting big bucks. Not to mention our recent friends from south of the border—all here, one assumes, because they wanted to be in these systemically racist United States.

Nor did anyone point out yet another 2021 ruling, this one against the Biden administration…

…a federal court in Texas ruled that the race-based parts of the law governing relief to restaurant owners are unconstitutional. Last week a higher federal court, the Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, ruled the same way.

The law establishes a three week “priority period” in which only applicants from certain racial and ethnic backgrounds can request relief.

Think there are any rogue local lawyers who will step up to the plate? And forego billing any of the well-fed non-profits and their allies ?

Which brings us to…

It’s self-dealing at grotesque levels, even for Portland

Let’s go back to those placid days of 2018, when the whole idea of the “soak the multinationals” tax was dreamed up. Here’s a web site that will, essentially, give you a 30-thousand-foot view of the non-profit ecosystem, which is the only growth industry, beyond bureaucracy, in Portland.

There were, by my count, 130 non-profits lined up behind the measure. Every progressive machine pol, from our distant US Senator Merkley to the sainted Bud Clark, signed on, as well as most of the city’s neighborhood associations and many religious leaders, along with oddball endorsers such as Hot Lips Pizza and Los Mayos Taqueria.

It was kinda odd that Home Depot and Apple and Walmart weren’t on the list, considering that they were the vehicles for passing the tax along to the mopes who were going to vote for it. But then, as we said, to them it’s just a rounding error—and a hint that they really ought to be expanding in Happy Valley.

So, let’s take a look at some of the measure’s backers who will hit the jackpot…

• Street Roots, which purports to help the general (and ever-growing) homeless population, which is getting $1,171,087 not for tenters but to retrofit their own building;

• Central City Concern, our city’s biggest low-rent operator of neo-flophouses, who got an unbelievable $5,525,750 on something called “PCEF CCC Large Application 2021.” Which is for, essentially, air conditioning their properties in Old Town.

• Hacienda CDC, which mines the various lodes of federal and state money, tax gimmicks, and cut-outs with non-profits to build “affordable” apartments. They raked in a heart-stopping $9,400,000, to “provide cleaner air, increased comfort, better health, reduced financial burden and improved social outcomes for 1000 Portland residents through upgrades to six multifamily communities with a total of 243 units. Approximately 92% of the residents are people of color and all are low-income.” How much Hacienda will save in annual operating costs is not mentioned.

• Proudground, which gets three grants for a total of $3,081,217. One grant will “cover the full cost of solar installation for 15 homes owned by low-income people and people of color and is a continuation of an existing program which has already installed 26 PV systems.”

• Verde, which gets $4,690,070 for a couple of projects: “…a 1.2 MW community solar project serving low-income households, and a 60 kW solar array and electrification and cooling infrastructure at Dignity Village. The community solar project will be located on Port of Portland property and plans to serve up to 150 low-income Indigenous, Black, and Brown households in the Cully neighborhood.”

• Service Employees InternationalUnion (SEIU) Local 49, our old friends in the public employee sector, picked up $500,000 “to expand the Green Jobs Education Program… that engages frontline communities in reducing carbon emissions in commercial office buildings.” For the half-million, SEIU says it will train 150 green warrior janitors over three years.

These aren’t the only groups that lobbied for the measure in 2018 that cashed in. Here are a few others…

• Community Energy project, $9,999,378

• Portland Community Reinvestment Initiatives Inc., $1,186,730

• ROSE Community Development, $499,000…

The list goes on…but you get the idea.

Many projects don’t actually reduce dreaded CO2, although the committee came up with a mystery number—300-thousand tons of CO2 removed from the atmosphere yearly—although it is hard to see how the many training and indoctrination programs being funded will contribute to that goal, unless they find people who do not exhale. A few examples…

• Constructing Hope Pre-Apprenticeship Program ($7,200,000), to “assist low-income people of color and women to move into careers in skilled construction trades that work on clean energy and green construction projects.” The project vows to place 400 people “from PCEF’s priority population” into green jobs.

• Leaders Become Legends ($1,849,873), for “Increasing access to Green Jobs for Black, Brown and Indigenous Portlanders.”

• Ecotrust ($2,038,051) which is a “a project of the Green Workforce Collaborative which is a partnerhip aimed at addressing economic injustice through green jobs training.” They promise to graduate “a total of 36 cohort members annually.”

• Urban League of Portland ($2,971,156). The wheeler-dealers in local “affordable” housing will branch out to “recruit, train, and coach…100 jobseekers and 40 small business owners annually.” Note: none of them are guaranteed jobs—or profits.

In all, there are 12 “workforce” grants, totaling $26.5-million.

This is not chump-change.

The rest of the “clean energy” grants are for solar panels and heat pumps and other “green tech” gadgets, in a market that would probably disappear without heavy government sudsidies.

Yes, those solar panels—made in China—will have an impact, although Portland does occasionally have a cloudy day, and winter nights tend to be rather lengthy.

And—yah—there are batteries to store that solar energy, although they run out after four hours.

And all those heat pumps? Here’s what Carrier, which makes and sells the expensive devices, says…

Because of how they work, heat pumps produce less heat than furnaces and work best in warmer climates (zones 1-3 on the U.S. Department of Energy climate zone map.

Home guru Bib Vila adds…

…if you’re in zones 4 through 7, a furnace will probably be your best bet.

Portland is right on the border between Zones 4-5.

If you live in one of Hacienda’s “affordables,” when they install heat pumps they might want to issue warm cardigans as well.

Which brings us to our final point…

Who’s making those multi-million dollar decisions?

It’s the old Portland story. Progressive pols and self-interested groups come up with a bright idea—always involving someone else’s money. The irony of non-profits, which are happily tax-exempt, dipping into the taxpayers’ pockets is lost on pols and media types.

Then, once the idea is sold to the credulous voters, appoint an unelected “volunteer” committee to dole out the dough. Expect no media surveillance. Reporters really don’t understand anything about Climate Change. Nor do most voters.

We’ve seen this in the city and county charter commissions—but give the Climate Change committee credit: none of their members are in high school.

Otherwise, they are the usual mix oftrue believers and utopians and do well by doing good types. I’ll bet you haven’t heard of any of them. Let’s wander among the resumes...

• Shanice Brittany Clarke, who is Director of Community Engagement at Portland Public Schools. She’s credited in her official blurb, with having “worked directly with 75-100 community organizations annually.” Might one ask: was she sharing inside information with any of them?

• Faith Graham, “director of the Network for Energy, Water, and Health in Affordable Buildings, a national social impact and learning network at the intersection of affordable housing and energy efficiency.”

• Michael Edden David Hill, “who, in addition to experience in wind power design and deployment, also has expertise in construction management on one of the largest solar photo voltaic systems in the country.”

• Dr. Megan Horst is an Assistant Professor in the school of Urban Studies & Planning at Portland State University. She “brings a strong equity lens and experience in food justice work.” Would someone please define, “food justice?”

• Jeffrey Moreland Jr., the head of Raimore Construction LLC, “that contracts heavy civil construction projects in the Portland Metropolitan area.” He responded to an application question thusly: “This potentially presents a direct conflict of interest which could in theory result in a financial benefit of more than $500 annually.” He was appointed anyway by former (and now deceased) City Councilor Nick Fish.

• Maria Gabrielle Sipin, “a professional transportation planner and community health advocate.” She graduated from PSU in 2018 and slipped directly into non-profitland. The university highlighten her “report on OHSU’s vision for diversity and inclusion and their goals to reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips...”

• Amanda Squiemphen-Yazzie is “an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.” It might be worth mentioning that Native American groups were some of the biggest winners in the committee’s money-dump: the Native American Youth and Family Center got $5,498,885 for two projects; Oregon Native American Chamber got $778,496 for “workforce development;” Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians got $3,778,496 for training; Portland All Nations Canoe Family got $2,320,814 “to create a replicable ‘toolkit’ that would assess, mitigate, restore, conserve, and protect land and watersheds…through Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge.”

• Ranfis Villatoro, “the Oregon State Coordinator for the Bluegreen Alliance,” which “unites labor unions and environmental organizations to solve today’s environmental challenges.”

• Robin Wang, “a seasoned business, nonprofit, and community leader with a passion for deploying capital and harnessing business to benefit the greater good.” His LinkedIn profile shows a spotty record of short-term positions in various “start ups,” such as “Oregon Consumer Justice,” where he was “Interim Executive Director and Interim Chief Financial Officer.”
  

All insiders, most with potentially worrisome conflicts of interest, all true believers in the climate apocalypse, all monetizing climate change for all it’s worth.

Notably absent: advocates for taxpayers; a bona-fide climate scientist; a skeptic.

They’re unelected—more than one nominated by either a dead or defeated city councilperson. They’re untouchable; most have never been quoted in a newspaper or on TV.

It’s an unholy alliance between the construction/development gang—an industry rife with shady players, the lightly-regulated non-profit world, and the political machine, where money is the mother’s milk.

It’s a game of mutual back-scratching. Of who, not what, you know.

Take a look at the various mind-bending sums being doled out and you’ll see a recipe for insider-deals, blatant political patronage, even kickbacks and outright pocket-stuffing.

It’s a lethal combination that regularly becomes a scandal. In fact, the Committee has had one already, thanks to the Oregonian.

Let’s remember who was left out of this mad give-away—on purpose.

As a member of that group, allow me to ask:

Where the hell is my free air-conditioner?