Buffett and Soros benefit from Obama’s decisions. Us not so much. [Reader Post]

Whenever Barack Obama makes a key decision, it always seems to benefit special supporters. 80% of the money Obama threw away on “green energy” programs went to his big donors. It’s become painfully evident that crony capitalism has its fingerprints all over other Barack Obama decisions.

Last year Barack Obama softened up Warren Buffett by awarding Buffett the Medal of Freedom, which Obama felt was appropriate for Buffett having accumulated more than $40 billion in personal wealth. In return, Buffett has become a cheerleader for Obama, voicing his support of Obama’s Buffett rule.

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

The devil, as they say, is always in the details:

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

Recently Barack Obama said no to the Keystone Pipeline. An article from Bloomberg (which curiously went down the memory hole already) scrapes the ice off the windshield so we can see why:

Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.

“Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said in an interview. If Keystone XL “doesn’t happen, we’re here to haul.”

The State Department denied TransCanada a permit on Jan. 18, saying there was not enough time to study the proposal by Feb. 21, a deadline Congress imposed on President Barack Obama. Calgary-based TransCanada has said it intends to re-apply with a route that avoids an environmentally sensitive region of Nebraska, something the Obama administration encouraged.

The rail option, though costlier, would lessen the environmental impact, such as a loss of wetlands and agricultural productivity, compared to the pipeline, according to the State Department analysis. Greenhouse gas emmissions, however, would be worse.

If completed, Keystone XL would deliver 700,000 barrels a day of crude from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico, crossing 1,661 miles (2,673-kilometers) over Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Obama gives Buffett award. Buffett voices support for Obama. Obama makes decision to help put money in Buffett’s pocket.

Tidy.

Obama has what is realistically a complete moratorium on domestic oil exploration and production while at the same time helping to fund Brazil’s Petrobas search for oil. In addition, Obama granted Petrobas permission to operate a deep water vessel in the Gulf of Mexico:

Petrobras has received final approval to operate the Gulf of Mexico’s first floating production, storage and offloading vessel, clearing the way for the Brazilian oil giant to start pumping oil from two deep-water fields, federal regulators said Thursday.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement took the “final regulatory step” in green-lighting the project, with the approval of a production safety system permit and a supplemental deep-water operating plan, the bureau said in a statement.

The floating production, storage and offloading vessel, or FPSO, has a daily production capacity of 80,000 barrels of oil and 16 million cubic feet of natural gas. The ocean energy bureau said with the latest approvals, production at the Cascade and Chinook deep-water fields is expected to begin soon.

The fields are in more than 8,000 feet of water about 165 miles off Louisiana, in an area called Walker Ridge.

The reason?

Soros.

In August of 2010 George Soros sold off his stake in Petrobas.

Billionaire George Soros’s fund management firm sold all of its Petroleo Brasileiro SA stock, dumping its biggest company holding ahead of a planned $25 billion offering by Brazil’s state-controlled oil producer.

Soros Fund Management LLC, which oversees $25 billion, sold 9.1 million American depositary receipts representing Petrobras common stock and 5.88 million ADRs corresponding to preferred shares in the second quarter, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday.

But then he bought back into Petrobas:

Billionaire investment manager George Soros built on his position in Brazilian oil and gas company Petrobras in the first quarter of 2011 for his Soros Fund Management firm, according to the guru watchers over at Guru Focus.com on May 17. He now owns 1.1 million shares of Brazil’s state owned oil company.

Soros sold out of Petrobras in mid-2010 only to return to the market in the fourth quarter of 2010 with the purchase of roughly 588,000 shares. The stock has been a money loser for Soros since getting back into the market, according to his average share price calculated by Guru Focus. Petrobras closed May 17 at $34.27 per share, so Soros’s big purchases in one of Brazil’s top two most actively traded stocks was unaffected by his large purchase orders.

May I draw your attention to the timing. Soros began “building” on his position from the fall of 2010 into the “first quarter” of 2011.

The decision to allow operation of the deep water vessel is announced in the middle of March 2011, and it coincidentally just happens to follow Soros’ Petrobas holdings expansion. Now Brazil has signed an agreement with China for China to purchase Petrobas’ oil.

The administration had already been found in contempt for its determined effort to keep US interests at bay in the Gulf while aiding Soros’ Petrobas.

Curious.

DrJohn

DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.

DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.

Except for liberals being foolish.