And they're CLEAN!
Massachusetts is down-wind of Dirty Coal around the nation and is home to its own unlined Coal Ash Pits that threaten drinking water.
This is the TVA Coal Ash Spill in Harriman, TN:
By now, even the marginally informed understand that the deep-pocketed, Dirty Energy Koch Brothers have generously funded gobal warming deniers and OPPOSITION to Cape Wind.
At the top of this blog, in the left hand corner is a search feature. You can plug in KOCH and find a few articles available about the right-wing extremist policies the Kochs have funded, frequently in secret, thanks to the abomination of the Citizens United decision.
The generous Koch funding allows slick and convincing promotion of policies and fantasies that disadvantage Americans, such as the Tea Party.
There are few to be surprised that another Sock Puppet has appeared with secret funding.
That's the Koch Way!
FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act is a federal statute that includes statutory time limits for the production of documents.
The article at the bottom indicates a FOIA request was submitted March 29, 2011.
MORE THAN 2 YEARS AGO??
This is disingenuous on the part of the bogus Cape Wind opposition group!
Cape Wind opponents rotate in a new puppet
The latest puppet site is run by the owner of an ice cream shop located on a quiet back road in Kingston, N.H., several towns over the state border
Article | News | July 12, 2013 - 1:38pm | By Miles Grant
This expensive mailing flooded the Cape this week.
Latest is run by a NH resident and former “Freedomworks” corporate front group staffer
Cape Wind’s big money opponents like to change up the names of their front groups and the names of their spokespeople pretty regularly. By refusing to admit funding sources, they can usually sucker a few news outlets into taking the front seriously, at least for a little while.
The latest calls itself the “New England Ratepayers Association” is run by a New Hampshire resident and former “Freedomworks” corporate front group staffer named Marc Brown and recently flooded the Cape with an expensive mailing operation targeting Cape Wind. As Jack Sullivan reports for Commonwealth Magazine, Brown refuses to tell anyone where he’s getting his money or marching orders:
A new group trying to rally opposition to Cape Wind is being run by the owner of an ice cream shop located on a quiet back road in Kingston, N.H., several towns over from the Massachusetts border. [...]
A spokesman for Cape Wind said he suspects Brown’s group is merely a front for organized business interests that have continually tried to obstruct the project for more than a decade. “New Hampshire ratepayers aren’t buying any Cape Wind power,” said Mark Rodgers. “I think it’s just the latest example of a growing trend, which is secretive corporate interests hiding behind shells and front men and trying to have an outsized influence on public policy.”
Brown declined to disclose his sources of funding for the New England Ratepayers Association or reveal what salary he is being paid for running the group. Brown said he has asked the IRS to give the association tax exempt status as a social welfare group, which would allow the organization to raise funds for political advocacy without revealing the names of its donors.
Is it really this hard to find good front group help these days? By now, everyone knows the “Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound” is really the Bill Koch Employees to Protect Bill Koch’s Estate View.
The “Massachusetts Competitive Partnership” is really Wealthy Cape Estate Owners Who Care About Their View, Not Your Kids. Now their top anti-Cape Wind spokesman is … a New Hampshire scoop shop owner?
So who’s funding Brown? It could be the usual big money – heavy industrial polluters and wealthy Cape landowners – but there’s another possibility, too. He’s written several opinion pieces shilling for new electric transmission lines and new natural gas pipelines. Is Brown being funded by out-of-state energy providers hoping Massachusetts won’t take a big step towards a cleaner, more self-sufficient future with Cape Wind? Brown won’t say and no reporters have successfully dug into his funding, so these are only guesses.
It’s a remarkable contrast to Cape Wind’s supporters. Cape Wind’s conservation, public health and labor allies are so transparent they put all their names on one website.
Join them by asking federal regulators to speed the development of clean, affordable offshore wind energy.
This column previously appeared on Blue Mass Group. and appears here with the authors' permission.
http://www.capecodtoday.com/article/2013/07/12/20438-cape-wind-opponents-rotate-new-puppet
Wind farm foes sue Coast Guard
Opponents of the proposal to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound have sued the U.S. Coast Guard in federal court, saying the agency failed to respond to a request for public records as required by law.
The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound filed the suit Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., making it the latest legal action against federal officials and agencies connected to the approval of Cape Wind.
"We have filed (Freedom of Information Act) requests with numerous federal agencies that are defendants in many of the lawsuits that are being filed," alliance president Audra Parker said. "The Coast Guard is the only federal agency that hasn't provided documents. This is well over two years ago."
In the complaint, lawyers for the alliance lay out a timeline dating back to March 29, 2011, when the organization filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Coast Guard. It was seeking communications between the agency and Cape Wind; any other state or federal agency responsible for authorizing the project; consultants; Hy-Line Cruises officials; state Sen. Dan Wolf, D-Harwich; former state Rep. Demetrius Atsalis, D-Barnstable; and U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass. The request asks for documents dating back to April 28, 2010, when the U.S. Interior Department approved the project.
According to the timeline, the Coast Guard failed to provide the documents despite repeated requests and deadline extensions as well as an appeal to the Department of Homeland Security of what the alliance believed to be a de facto denial.
After more than two years of wrangling, the Coast Guard sent an email to the alliance June 18 asking whether the group was still interested in receiving the records, according to the complaint.
"The email requested that the alliance advise whether it was 'still desirous of the information requested in the subject FOIA. If so I (a Coast Guard official) will try and resurrect the request and search for the information,'" according to the complaint.
The alliance gave the Coast Guard another week to respond and then initiated the lawsuit.
The alliance wants to determine if the Coast Guard, like the Federal Aviation Administration, was under political pressure to go easy on Cape Wind, Parker said, referring to accusations last year by GOP lawmakers and Cape Wind's opponents that President Barack Obama's administration exerted influence on the FAA to approve the project.
For example, a document in the administrative record separate from the documents requested through the Freedom of Information Act request showed the White House seeking the best point of contact in the Coast Guard on the Cape Wind project, she said.
The Coast Guard is congressionally mandated to provide navigational safety, specifically in Nantucket Sound, Parker said.
"The burden should be on the developer, not on the mariners," she said.
Representatives with the Coast Guard did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Mark Rodgers, spokesman for Cape Wind, called the alliance's most recent lawsuit a "desperate publicity stunt."
"The opposition group is still referring to a decadelong review as 'rushed,'" Rodgers wrote in an email to the Times. "They have no credibility."
Cape Wind has sold 77 percent of the power from the project, which is expected to include 130 turbines located on Horseshoe Shoal in the Sound.
The company has received the necessary permits and a lease and has made progress recently toward securing debt and equity for the $2.6 billion project.
Supporters of the project, which was first proposed in 2001, say it will help combat climate change and provide clean energy jobs.
Opponents argue that the project is too expensive and will harm the environment, tourism and safety in and around the Sound.
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130713/NEWS/307130322/-1/NEWSLETTER100
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