The Heritage Foundation’s Lachlan Markay uncovers a potentially key motivation for the president’s recent proposal to offer incentives to companies to buy and use trucks powered by natural gas:

One company that stands to benefit handsomely from the president’s proposal is Westport Innovations. The company converts diesel engines to be fueled by natural gas. Wall Street analysts predicted a boom for the company if the NAT GAS Act were passed. CNBC analyst Jim Cramer said he “expects shares to absolutely explode” in the event the legislation were to pass. …

If Westport reaps the predicted windfall, one of the chief beneficiaries will be George Soros, a major Obama donor and supporter. Soros’s hedge fund holds 3,160,063 company shares (as of its last SEC filing).

Soros has given $384,090 to the Democratic Party, Democratic PACs, and Democratic Candidates in the three election cycles beginning in 2008, including $4,400 to Obama himself, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He describes himself as “an early supporter of Barack Obama, first in his Senate campaign in Illinois and later when he ran for President. Soros supported Obama in his presidential bid because he believed he could provide the transformational leadership the country needed.”

What’s so frustrating about the president’s perpetual crony capitalism is that it taints and sullies even sound products. Natural gas is a clean, abundant, affordable source of energy and companies would be smart to invest in trucks powered by natgas — but it’s just flat-out not the government’s business to incentivize the use of certain products and punish the use of others.

Meanwhile, it is the Department of Energy’s business to approve exports of natural gas, and, yet, some of the same lawmakers who would presumably support this latest proposal of the president’s have discouraged the approval of export applications — because (heaven forbid!) more exports might mean higher natural gas prices. Artificially low natural gas prices mean less natural gas drilling and more oil drilling. How’s that for an unintended consequence of the plans of those who want nothing more than to eliminate “dirty” oil drilling?

It’s all an argument for the government to get out of the energy industry entirely.