".......“Podesta has no financial interest in the Keystone XL decision,” says Credo Action. Is that truly the case? I am not saying that John Podesta is directly invested in companies that will profit if Keystone is defeated. What I am saying is that the connections between VIPs and think-tank donors and corporate boards and lobbying clients are hard to disentangle. It is so easy for a reporter to lose the thread, especially when that reporter is already inclined to think that the motives of his subject are pure. Podesta’s fame and power have certainly helped line the pockets of his brother, for example. The Washington Times reports that the Podesta Group’s income grew from $10 million in 2007 to as much as $30 million in 2010, with 2013 revenue “estimated to be around $20 million.”
John’s compensation is a trickier matter. His business relationships are not as formalized or as regulated as his sibling’s. His various postings and seats and memberships and appointments are hard to pin down. An article in Friday’s New York Times cites a Podesta aide “working with him on the disclosure report he is preparing.” That report soon will be the hottest read in Washington. Podesta’s not a monk. In addition to his role advising Steyer, and the $200,000 he receives in compensation from CAP, he sits on the board of Portland-based Equilibrium Capital — in which he also had “a small ownership stake” — advises government contractor Gryphon Technologies for $100,000 a year, and was paid $90,000 this year consulting for the HJW Foundation, which also gives money to CAP. And he is a member of the board of directors of Joule, a Massachusetts-based energy company that is “developing a revolutionary platform for renewable fuel and chemical production that is expected to eclipse the scalability, productivities, and cost efficiency of any known alternative to fossil fuel today.” John Kerry appears in a photo on the “about us” section of the company’s website. Joule knows who powers its batteries.
Podesta has revolutionized the influence game by giving it the patina of intellectual respectability. Traditional lobbying has become blasé; it’s much better, much nobler, to enlist corporate “partnerships” in the progressive cause. As first reported by The Nation, the Center for American Progress has a number of corporate sponsors that pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to join its “Business Alliance.” In return for payment these corporations gain access to the center’s scholars, its leadership, and its events with major Democratic officials. On Friday CAP released a list of its 2013 “corporate supporters,” including multinationals such as Citigroup and Coca-Cola and Daimler and Samsung; firms such as Albright Stonebridge and McLarty Associates and the Livingston Group that represent foreign interests; and affiliates of foreign governments such as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative in the United States and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation."........ More
