We can’t blame Goldman Sachs. It’s just good business.

Goldman Sachs pours money into lefty causes and politicians of both stripes. The gifts to left-wing flagships like climate change and same-sex marriage buy protection from the anti-bank Occupy crowd. And climate propaganda is doubly useful — Goldman Sachs can invest and profit from government largess. And these are very big biccies – -in 2009 Goldman Sachs announced it would spend $150 billion on green energy by 2020.

The message to non-left causes is that if you want to get multimillion dollar philanthropic funds, mobilize people and march in the street. When Goldman is afraid of what you might do against their bonuses or profits they might get interested in your cause too.

But infamously and so much more importantly, Goldman donates to both sides of politics and their people are appointed to key positions in the Treasury and corridors of power. When Goldman crashes, it gets bailed out — and that has happened four times in the last 20 years. The TARP bailout for Sachs was as much as $10 billion, so a mere $675k in speaking fees for Hillary-nearly-Pres might be viewed as a decent investment at the time it was made. (How much is Hillary paid for the same speech now, I wonder?)

h/t To the Heartland Institute

The United States of Goldman Sachs

 Since it began facing increased scrutiny in the years following the financial crisis, the Goldman Sachs Foundation has not only greatly increased its charitable giving, but the company as a whole has also moved into hyper-drive to pour money into politically correct progressive nonprofits. It backed an Obama identity-politics agenda and same-sex marriage. The company has a long history of going all-in on climate change activism, seeking to profit from government policies that harm the larger economy.

Advocating such left-wing causes allows class-warfare-obsessed Democrats to have a clear conscience in backing a big corporation.

Bill Frezza, a fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes:

No, Goldman Sachs is not a law breaker. With all the former executives and cronies it has parachuted into the halls of government and all the money it showers on politicians running for office, it is actually a law maker.And that is the problem. Thanks to this last banking crisis, the lines between the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the Executive branch, and Goldman Sachs have all but disappeared. Using the entirely legal means of calling in chits from both political parties in its hour of need, Goldman Sachs looted the Treasury to save it from a liquidity crisis, cover its speculative investment errors, and make good on winning gambling bets that would have been uncollectable had Uncle Sam not stepped in to bail out counterparties like AIG.”

Read the whole article at Capital Research, then read it all again. It finishes with a warning:

Crony capitalism is a larger problem than just this one firm. But Goldman Sachs holds a special place among firms that influence government, and glomming on to whatever the progressive, “social justice” cause du jour may be has become a convenient way for the company to maintain that grip. As CEI’s Bill Frezza warns, “At what point will players like Goldman Sachs have handed so much ammunition to left-wing radicals who cannot tell the difference between crony capitalism and the real thing that they succeed in blowing up Western civilization? If real market capitalists don’t step up and speak out against purveyors of cronyism and the politicians from both parties that enable them, it is just a matter of time before we all go down together.”

Tell me again how influential fossil fuels are?