Man donates $30K in retirement savings to speak to Obama about EVs; gets bumped off guest list

[wtmusic]

In two parts:

Man spends retirement savings to speak with Obama about EVs

"To show their plug-in passion, some people spend upwards of $30,000 on an electric car. Others – well, one, that we know of – will spend that much just to tell the leader of the free world how cool EVs are, in 180 seconds or less.

That man is our friend Paul Scott, who's no stranger to EV advocacy. A co-founder of Plug In America and currently a Nissan Leaf salesman, Scott has been involved with electric vehicles since the EV1 days that were documented in the film Who Killed The Electric Car (pictured). He announced today, independent of his job and association with PIA, that he will spend $32,400 to attend a fund raiser for President Barack Obama in Santa Monica next week. That pile of money – which is "a large percentage" of his retirement savings – will get him two-to-three minutes of the President's attention, Scott said."

http://green.autoblog.com/2013/05/31/man-spends-life-savings-to-speak-with-obama-about-evs/

EV advocate Paul Scott off Obama guest list following public outcry

"People like to criticize US politics. People like to speak poorly about President Barack Obama. There are a lot of electric vehicle haters out there. Put those three issues into the Internet blender and it's no surprise when they blow up. That's what happened with the recent story about long-time EV advocate Paul Scott spending $32,400 of his retirement savings to attend an Obama fundraiser and thereby get a chance to talk to the President about the benefits of electric vehicles.

In fact, the story got so much attention that the Democratic National Committee has now apparently disinvited Scott and returned his check. Even though Scott – a Nissan Leaf salesman, a co-founder of Plug In America and a friend of the site – took the action independent of his job and his PIA association, the public discussion of "pay for access" apparently mucked things up but good. We've asked Scott for his thoughts on the matter, but have not yet heard back. He did tell Mother Nature Network that, "I'm not in good health, and I don't know how much longer I'll live. This seemed like a good way to spend my money, to push the economic benefits of electric cars for our nation. My thought is that the average American pays this kind of money, over time, to the oil companies. We pay out $700 billion a year to Big Oil, and spend $80 billion a year protecting the oil supply." It's a discussing worth having, $32,400 or no. You can read Scott's original message to the President here."

http://green.autoblog.com/2013/06/06/ev-advocate-paul-scott-off-the-obama-guest-list-following-public/

[Fumesucker]

1. I followed some of the links.. This is interesting

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs/exclusive-obama-pulls-plug-on-32000-meeting-with-electric-car

We’ve all gotten fundraising appeals like the one sent to Scott, we just usually hurl them into the circular file. “I got an email three or four weeks ago saying that Obama was coming to L.A. and for $10,000 I could have lunch with him,” Scott told me. “For $16,200 I’d get lunch and a photo. But for $32,400, I’d get lunch, a photo, and a chance to sit in on a roundtable discussion with the president, limited to 25 people. It was off the record, but we could talk about anything we wanted. I stared at the computer screen. The money was a big part of my retirement fund.”

Scott is a survivor of bladder cancer. “I’m not in good health, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll live,” he said. “This seemed like a good way to spend my money, to push the economic benefits of electric cars for our nation. My thought is that the average American pays this kind of money, over time, to the oil companies. We pay out $700 billion a year to Big Oil, and spend $80 billion a year protecting the oil supply.”

Scott is still selling Leafs in Los Angeles, and he says sales are “robust.” He’s still mainly concerned with getting his message out, not getting down in the weeds on the DNC returning his money, so here’s another part of what he has to say: “The money means nothing to me — it was an opportunity to meet with my favorite president, who’s been great on electric cars. If I’d been able to talk with him, I’d say we have the capacity to build 300,000 electric cars, but we’re likely to sell only 80,000 or so this year. It’s not moving fast enough. We need to make the transition to electric vehicles sooner rather than later.”

[pscot]

2. P*O*L*I*T*I*C*A*L C*O*W*A*R*D*I*C*E

[awoke_in_2003]

10. You spelled "lackeys" wrong...

DC is a nothing but a smarmy brothel.

[quakerboy]

3. How about every other donor who paid for access?

are they all dumped as well? Or is this selective, we are happy to take your money to see the president, just as long as its not publicized...

[sulphurdunn]

4. I hadn't thought

of it this way before, but apparently the same corporate lobbyists who buy access can have citizen access denied, even in the pay to play game. That is not good.

[dbackjon]

5. He is not a 1%er. So no access to the White House

Maybe he should contact GetEqual on how to get the White House's attention.

[cprise]

6. Nevertheless, the DNC got caught

I think Scott's biggest offence is that he wasn't rich enough to be a repeat customer.

[shireen]

7. His mistake was talking openly about it

Access to the president and elected officials by special interests has to be done discreetly. If Mr. Scott had not talk about his motives, they'd happily take his money and he could have chatted with the president. Really too bad how this turned out.

[7962]

8. What a bunch of cowards

Its not like he wanted to talk about banning abortions. I thought Obama ENCOURAGED EVs????

[rightsideout]

9. He probably shouldn't have promoted it till after he met with Obama

Paul Scott is one of my Facebook friends. He's like the poster child for electric vehicles. He's been active in the Electric Auto Association for years and started up Plug-in America which is an offshoot of the EAA.

He announced on his Facebook page what he was planning to do and we all encouraged him and were messaging back and forth about what he was planning to say to Obama. Paul wanted to tie in both solar energy and electric cars since they both go together. Paul has solar panels on his house to help charge his leaf. Alot of EV owners are going in that direction. That way people won't say, "You get your electricity from coal to charge your car."

In hindsight, I imagine he shouldn't have said anything about his plans. We wouldn't have been upset if he kept it secret. But it was an exciting thing and who wouldn't want to share that information about meeting the President. But he didn't know the DNC would pull the rug out from under him.

I'm a bit dissapointed this all fell through. But Obama did see our electric cars at the DC auto show last year and sat in a Volt and looked at one of our EV conversions. So he is into EVs.

Maybe Obama and Paul will meet up someday to discuss EVs and solar at another time.

[Nihil]

11. "The best democracy money can buy" ...

... as long as you have enough money ... $32,400 is now considered chump change ...

Of *course* you can believe in Hope and Change in the Land of the Free ... just don't
expect it to happen ...