Carol Browner: Energy and Climate Change Czar

Given that, regardless of where legislation stands, the EPA has been given unprecedented power and we are therefore under constant threat of Cap & Trade, I thought it was time to take a look at one of this administrations front runners for that agenda.

Meet Carol Browner who’s official title seems to be “Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.” I was not able to find an official Bio for her on WhiteHouse.gov, but did finally turn up an office description:

White House Office of Energy and Climate Change

The Office of Energy and Climate Change is a newly-created office within The Executive Office of the President that works to support President Obama’s agenda on energy and climate change. The Office of Energy and Climate Change coordinates and works closely with a host of government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the Department of the Interior, and others. In addition, the Office of Energy and Climate Change works closely with a broad array of stakeholders to identify new opportunities to create green jobs and transition to a new clean energy economy.

In other words, the whole point of this office and position is to “transition” to green energy. Not green energy promotion or development, but green energy takeover. Let’s see what we can dig up on Mrs. Browner.

In this video, posted December 1st 2008,  Mrs Browner makes quite a  statement:

At 3:20 Joseph Romm: “She is on the Board of The Center for American Progress and has played a key role in shaping this organization reminding us always that the environment and Global Warming are first tier issues. She’s the key reason the center has been a leader on issues of clean energy and green recovery.”

At 4:12 Carol Browner: “As Joe mentioned, I am on the Board and have been on the Board of the Center for American Progress since it’s conception”

The Center for American Progress is a George Soros funded Left Wing Progressive Think Tank which has been behind many of the policies  and staff choices of the Obama Administration. Although their website removed Carol Browner from their list of Staff & Fellows, She does still have a Bio there which states, “She is on the Board of the Directors of the Center for American Progress.”

Now let’s take a look into her background, from Discover the Networks:

Carol M. Browner was born in December 1955 in Miami, Florida. Both her parents were professors at Miami Dade Community College. In 1977 Browner received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Florida, and two years later she earned a J.D. degree from the University of Florida College of Law.

In 1980 and 1981, Browner was General Counsel for the Florida House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations. In 1983 she became associate director of the Ralph Nader-founded group Citizen Action in Washington, DC.

From 1986 to 1988, Browner served as chief legislative assistant to Democrat Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida; in this position, she worked to ban offshore oil-drilling near the Florida Keys. In 1989 she became legal counsel for the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

From 1988 to 1991, Browner was Legislative Director for Senator Al Gore. From 1991-93, she was Florida’s Secretary of Environmental Regulation.

After the 1992 presidential election, Browner served as transition director for Vice President-elect Gore. In December 1992, President-elect Bill Clinton named Browner as his choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); she was confirmed by the Senate on January 21, 1993.

In 1995 Browner used her position at the EPA to lobby more than 100 grassroots environmental groups to oppose the Republican-led Congress, faxing out documents condemning the GOP’s regulatory initiatives. In a rare show of political unity, Republicans and Democrats alike impugned Browner, accusing her of violating the Anti-Lobbying Act. A stinging letter to Browner from a bipartisan subcommittee of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee stated: “The concerted EPA actions appear to fit the definition of prohibited grass-roots lobbying … The prima facie case is strong that some EPA officials may have violated the criminal law.”

Browner headed the EPA throughout both terms of the Clinton presidency, making her the longest-serving Administrator in the agency’s history.

Bestselling author and political analyst Michelle Malkin reports that Browner, on her final day as Clinton EPA chief in 2001, ordered a computer technician to delete all her computer files, in direct violation of a federal judge’s order requiring the agency to preserve those files. When questioned about her actions, Browner claimed that her computer had contained no work-related material, and that she had merely purged the hard drive of such innocuous items as computer games — as a courtesy to incoming staffers of the Bush administration.[1]

It was later learned that three additional high-ranking EPA officials had also violated the court order and erased their hard drives. Because of this, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth held the EPA in contempt of court.[2]

According to Manhattan Institute scholar Max Schulz, Browner “was the driving force behind the federal government’s effort to force General Electric Co. to spend $490 million to dredge New York’s Hudson River to rid it of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that — because they were buried under layers of silt — posed no environmental harm.” Some of Browner’s employees ultimately faced criminal charges for falsifying evidence and tampering with lab results.[3]

After her EPA tenure, Browner became a founding member of the Albright Group, a “global strategy” organization headed by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

In 2006 Browner and her husband, Tom Downey, lobbied on behalf of Dubai Ports World, a United Arab Emirate-owned company, in its quest to take operational control of six major U.S. ports. They met with New York Senator Charles Schumer in an effort to minimize congressional opposition to the deal. Ultimately the deal fell apart.[4]

Browner also served as a “commissioner” of the Socialist International (SI), the umbrella group for 170 “social democratic, socialist and labor parties” in 55 countries. SI’s “organizing document” cites capitalism as the cause of “devastating crises,” “mass unemployment,” “imperialist expansion,” and “colonial exploitation” worldwide. Browner worked on SI’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which contends that “the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”

During the 2008 presidential primaries, Browner avidly supported Hillary Rodham Clinton‘s bid for the Democratic Party nomination. After Clinton was defeated in the primaries by Barack Obama, Browner campaigned for Obama in several battleground states and at League of Conservation Voters events.

Browner, who has said that global warming is “the greatest challenge ever faced,” calls herself a “strong backer” of “utility decoupling.” Under “decoupling” policies, utility companies will be required to provide less energy, while the government guarantees the companies steady or increased profits through “taxpayer subsidies” and “voluntary” conservation measures. As author Kathy Shaidle puts it:

“In other words, taxpayers will be given grim Carter-era exhortations to put on sweaters rather than turn up the thermostat and be forced to pick up the tab for utility companies’ reduced earnings, while getting less energy in return.”

From December 2003 to January 2009, Browner served as Chair of the National Audubon Society. She is currently a Board member of the Alliance for Climate Protection (an organization founded by Al Gore in 2006); APX, Inc. (which specialzes in environmental commodities markets); the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress; and the League of Conservation Voters.

On January 22, 2009, President Obama named Browner as his choice for the post of Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, popularly known as “Environment Czar.”

In her book Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin writes:

“By February 2009, [Browner] had already announced radical plans to declare carbon-dioxide emissions a danger to the public — a move that could potentially subject not just power and chemical plants, refineries, and vehicles, but also schools, hospitals, and any other emitters of carbon dioxide to costly new regulations and litigation.[5]

So from her positions and previous actions I have reached the following conclusion, Carol Browner, a Socialist, feels she is above the law. She will do whatever it takes, the ends justify the means, to accomplish the goal of stopping all conventional forms of energy and forcing green options on the American people, all in the name of Climate Change.

Mrs Browner was very involved with the BP Oil Spill incident on behalf of the Obama Administration. It is because of what her involvement was during this disaster that I cannot call her an “Environment Czar”, the environment was neglected throughout the incident.

She echoed Obama’s line in a Press Conference on May 12th,

“No one in the administration will rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people of this region are able to get back to their lives and livelihoods.”

But we all know this was not the case. Obama rested, while Carol Browner and the rest of the Administration looked for ways to exploit the incident. No one focused on adequate cleanup, no one focused on environmental stewardship, no one focused on containment. Here she is talking about disaster plans and dispersants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjL9QAoldDU

She walks right over Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s requests for environmental protection measures without pause, but claims they are looking into it.

And then the Corexit question, a complete spin job that dispersants are helpful.

Instead of pushing for all available resources being sent to the Gulf and conducting round the clock cleanup operations, Carol Browner was behind the Oil Drilling Moriatorium:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu0GQjUXAQE

The environment was not adequately protected. The ends justify the means?

She is also a big pusher of Carbon Capture, Carbon Trading, and enforcing Auto Emissions. It is her involvement in the fuel standards/auto emissions policy making that prompted the organization, Judicial Watch to sue for records:

In February, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Obama Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to obtain documents related to Ms. Browner (who holds the official title of Special Assistant on Energy and Climate) and her role in crafting official U.S. climate policy. Ms. Browner, who was never subjected to Senate confirmation, reportedly served as the Obama administration’s point person in secret negotiations to establish automobile emission standards in California and also participated in negotiations involving cap and trade legislation.

Through our FOIA request filed on December 28, 2009, we’re specifically seeking all records of communications, contacts, or correspondence between Browner and the Energy Department or the EPA concerning:

A. Negotiations and/or discussions among the auto industry, the State of California, and agencies of the United States with respect to fuel-standards/auto emissions for the time period between January 20, 2009, and June 1, 2009; and

B. Negotiations/discussions with respect to cap and trade legislation for the time period between June 1, 2009, and October 1, 2009.

The EPA has failed to respond to these requests in any manner. Subsequent to filing its lawsuit on February 18, Judicial Watch received a letter from the Energy Department (dated February 17) in which the agency denied that it even had any documents responsive to Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests. (I’m not sure I believe that!)

According to press reports, Ms. Browner instructed individuals involved in auto emissions negotiations to “put nothing in writing, ever.” The New York Times reported that Browner made every effort to “keep their discussions as quiet as possible.”

And here’s something else to make you nervous about Browner.

Her involvement in these important discussions is particularly troubling given her documented ties to the radical socialist organization Socialist International, which reportedly calls for “global governance” and advocates that wealthier nations should shrink their economies in order to address the climate change “crisis.”

According to Fox News, Browner’s name was “scrubbed” from the organization’s website once she became linked to the Obama administration, but evidence of her involvement (including a photo of Browner speaking to the group’s congress in Greece) remained.

So, here we have an unconfirmed Obama administration official conducting secret meetings and instructing participants to avoid producing a written record. This is the perfect storm of corruption: concentrated executive power with no congressional oversight and no transparency. And this stonewalling on the “Climate Czar” documents adds yet another chapter in the growing Climategate scandal.

Here again, just like the illegal deletion of records under the Clinton Administration, we can see how far this woman will go to hide the evidence of her radical moves, in the furtherance of her radical agenda. Don’t keep records, delete them, hide them, shred them, shhhh.

Here’s an excerpt from a  White House Blog she wrote:

Clean Energy Leadership from the White House to Main Street

Last year we made the largest investment in the clean energy economy in our nation’s history, which is expected to create more than 700,000 jobs by the end of 2012. These are jobs not just in providing the parts and technology to create power from the wind or fuels from the land, but in manufacturing solar panels, in building the wires and mechanics behind our smart meters, in creating next generation batteries – the list goes on.

Other nations realize that the country that leads the clean energy economy will be the country that leads the 21st century global economy. The President is dedicated to making the United States that country – and is inspired by the small towns across rural America that provide the backbone for this effort. Towns like Macon and Fort Madison can be models around this country, and I’m confident one day we’ll look back to these places as some of the engines of this new clean energy future.

As extraordinary the work that towns like Macon and Fort Madison are doing, these plants can’t solve all our energy challenges alone. But their work is a key part of a comprehensive strategy to move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels to one that relies on homegrown fuels and clean energy. And the President knows we can come together on this issue and pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation that will spur a new generation of clean energy industries, create good American jobs, and enhance our energy security.

I find the 700,000 job’s goal laughable because Mrs. Browner refuses to take into account the number of jobs her very intitiative seeks to destroy. The blog also shows that Mrs Browner is dedicated to this goal, no matter the price tag. And all her previous actions show she will carry it out, no matter the jobs lost, no matter the cost.