Report: Kamala Harris Blew $20 Million on Election-Eve Concerts with Lady Gaga, Katy Perry in Swing States Where Trump Beat Her

Amid the stunning revelation that Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful presidential campaign ended up $20 million in the red, despite raising $1 billion from donors, a new report has found that the rock concerts that her campaign staged on the night before the election — featuring Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and others — collectively cost around that same amount, up to $20 million.

Now vendors and others who worked on those concerts, which were meant to persuade “low-propensity voters” to turn out for Harris, are reportedly facing the prospect of unpaid invoices.

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Members of the defeated Harris team told The New York Post that the concerts had a ruinous effect on the campaign’s budget and that fact was no secret — with one planned performance by rocker Alanis Morissette getting canceled to save money.

In the end, the Kamala Harris campaign staged seven swing-state concerts on election eve, including performances by Jon Bon Jovi in Detroit, Christina Aguilera in Las Vegas, Katy Perry in Pittsburgh, and Lady Gaga in Philadelphia.

All of those swing states ended up in President-elect Donald Trump’s win column on Election Day.

While the pop stars reportedly waived their fees for Kamala, the campaign still had to pay for the staging, sound, security, and other costs associate with putting on a big rock concert.

Two unnamed sources told The Post that Obama campaign alumna Stephanie Cutter pushed the concert concept as a way to entice “lower-propensity voters” to the polls, with backing from fellow Obama alum David Plouffe.

Harris-Walz campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon reportedly approved the concert plans, but is now distancing herself from the fiasco in response to mounting internal finger-pointing, claiming that she didn’t want to do them and sat on the idea for weeks, one source told The Post.

Another unnamed source said that if that was the case, then O’Malley Dillon’s indecision led to increased production costs because “putting [concerts] together last minute makes [them] cost twice as much.”

The role of campaign operations chief Dana Rosenzweig has also come into question since she oversaw the budget. “They said they were ‘spending to zero.’ I guess they overshot zero,” one source told The Post.

As Breitbart News reported earlier this week, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign fell $20 million in debt during the final week of her campaign, according to several sources.

The stunning revelation comes after the campaign raised more than $1 billion in donations, fueled by big Hollywood executives and stars, as well as the usual big Democrat donors, like the Soros family.

A Kamala campaign staffer confirmed to Breitbart News that Jen O’Malley Dillon “blew through a billion dollars in a few months.”

In addition to the election-eve concerts, the campaign held celebrity events with Lizzo, Eminem, and others — which were reportedly “all Jen’s idea,” the campaign staffer explained.

“Jen blew through a billion dollars in a few months, and it was all Jen’s idea to do all the concerts,” the campaign staffer said.

It remains unclear how much the Megan Thee Stallion concert in Atlanta cost the campaign back in July. It was the campaign’s first concert-rally hybrid event, which prompted widespread criticism that Kamala Harris had to rely on rock stars to gin up attendance at her rallies.

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com.

Originally Posted At www.breitbart.com

zerohedge
Economics , News , Politics , Science
November 22, 2024
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Utility Companies Are Not On Our Side

Authored by Linnea Leuken & H. Sterlin Burnett via RealClearPolitics,

When electric power was a novel idea and just beginning to be adopted in urban centers, the industry had a Wild West feel to it as multiple companies strung wires, opened power plants, and sold electricity on an unregulated market. Competition was fierce, but state and local governments concluded that the inefficiencies and redundancies endangered the public and imposed higher costs.

So states set up service territories with monopolistic or oligopolistic service providers, who were entrusted with providing reliable power and sufficient reserve for peak periods in return for being guaranteed a profit on rates proposed by the utilities but approved or set by newly established state public utility commissions (PUCs). These commissions were charged with ensuring public utilities served the general public universally within their territory, providing reliable service at reasonable rates.

Much has changed since then. Politicians began to supplant engineers to decide, based on self-interested calculations, what types of power should be favored and disfavored, and what types of appliances and modes of transportation Americans could use. As the 21st century dawned, a new consideration entered the picture: Climate change.

Under the banner of combatting global warming, utilities were at first encouraged and then coerced into adopting plans and policies aimed at achieving net zero emissions of carbon dioxide. The aim of providing reliable, affordable power – the rationale for the electric utilities’ monopolies in the first place – was supplanted by a controversial and partisan political goal. Initially, as states began to push renewable energy mandates, utilities fought back, arguing that prematurely closing reliable power plants, primarily coal-fueled, would increase energy costs, compromise grid reliability, and leave them with millions of dollars in stranded assets.

Politicians addressed those concerns with subsidies and tax credits for renewable power. In addition, they passed on the costs of the expanded grid to ratepayers and taxpayers. Effectively, elected officials and the PUCs, with a wink and a nod, indemnified utilities for power supply failures, allowing utilities to claim that aging grid infrastructure and climate change were to blame for failures rather than the increased percentage of intermittent power added to the grid at their direction.

Today, utilities have enthusiastically embraced the push for renewable (but less reliable) resources, primarily wind and solar. PUCs guarantee a high rate of return for all new power source (wind, solar, and battery) installations, which has resulted in the construction of ever more and bigger wind, solar, and battery facilities. The costlier, the more profitable – regardless of their compromised ability to provide reliable power or the cost impact on residential, commercial, and industrial ratepayers.

A new report from The Heartland Institute demonstrates the significant financial incentives from government and financiers for utilities to turn away from affordable energy sources like natural gas and coal, and even nuclear, and instead aggressively pursue wind and solar in particular. All of this is done in the name of pursuing net zero emissions, which every single major utility company in the country boasts about on their corporate reports and websites. Reliability and affordability come secondary to the decarbonization agenda.

Dominion Energy is a good example, as they are one of the most aggressive movers on climate-focused policy. Dominion CEO Robert Blue speaks excitedly about government-forced transitions to a wind- and solar-dominated grid in interviews. During one interview with a renewable energy podcast, he said:

“[S]ometimes the government needs to focus on outcomes. We’re trying to address a climate crisis, and we are going to need to move quickly to do that.” In the same interview, he expressed enthusiasm about federal policy that would achieve a government-directed transition.

And why wouldn’t he? Dominion, like most utilities, is granted government tax credits and guarantees on returns for investing in large, expensive projects like offshore wind, the most expensive source of electric power. The bigger the project, the bigger the profit with guaranteed returns.

Also, onshore wind companies have received special “take limits” from the Fish and Wildlife Service to kill protected bald eagles and golden eagles, while prosecuting oil companies if birds are injured or killed on their sites.

Net zero policies are not the environmental panacea that climate change activists proclaim. Industrial-scale wind and solar use substantially more land than conventional energy resources, disrupting ecosystems and destroying wildlife habitats in the process.

And despite recent technological advances, wind and solar are still not dispatchable resources, meaning they cannot provide consistent power at all times needed. Refuting claims made by environmentalists and utilities that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electric power, costs have risen steeply as the use of wind and solar has increased. Customers of Duke Energy in Kentucky, for example, are paying 78% higher rates in the wake of coal-fired plant closings.

Politicians and utilities are pushing for even more electrification for appliances and vehicles despite the fact that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials have repeatedly warned in recent years that adding more demand for electric power while replacing reliable power sources with intermittent renewables is destabilizing the power system.

It appears that the utilities prioritize short-term profits over grid reliability or keeping costs reasonable – and the government officials who are supposed to keep them in check are only encouraging them. It doesn’t need to be this way. The U.S. grid was not always this way. Only in recent years, with the obsessive pursuit of net zero, have rolling black and brownouts become so common.

Today, utility companies are sending lobbyists to conservative policymakers in order to convince them that the utilities have our best interests in mind. Their track record tells another story. Meanwhile, Americans have less reliable electricity at higher costs.

Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org, X: @LinneaLueken) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/22/2024 – 06:30