While unemployment rises in Colorado and energy industry employees from the 200 coal mine workers in Trinidad to the 405 workers at Abound Solar are being laid off, members of the Green Lobby are making out pretty well for themselves, and two of those members are directly related to Members of Congress from Colorado.
Before Solyndra lost $535 million in taxpayer money and laid off 1800 workers, Congressman Ed Perlmutter's first wife was cashing in as their lobbyist.
From a book on Washington, DC corruption by the Washington Examiner's David Freddoso:
As it sought approval for its first Department of Energy loan, Solyndra hired lobbyist Deana Perlmutter, then-wife of Democrat Congressman Ed Perlmutter of Colorado.
Congressman Perlmutter has long profited personally off his support for "green energy." A Washington Times investigation in 2009 found that Perlmutter inserted a provision into a House global warming bill that would benefit a green energy bank his family and a political donor were invested in.
Green energy cash isn't just going to the Perlmutters, but has found its way into the bank account of Senator Mark Udall's family as well.
An editorial in The Colorado Observer yesterday noted that the majority of the Udall family income is coming from a group founded by Al Gore that has a very different legislative agenda than Colorado voters:
Maggie Fox, wife of U.S. Senator Mark Udall and CEO of the Climate Research Project, for example, made a whopping $181,891 in 2009 according to IRS documents – more than her husband’s comfortable $174,000 Senate salary. But that’s not all. Ms. Fox evidently did such a fine job in 2009 that she received a $102,000 raise in 2010, when IRS documents show that she was paid a salary of more than $283,000.
Considering the majority of the Udall family income appears to come from sources that have a specific legislative agenda in mind, it’s worth asking what the Climate Research Project is getting out of Senator Udall.
The Denver Post editorialized in 2006 that Congressman Perlmutter needed to build a "firewall" between him and his lobbyist then-wife, saying they were raising "a flag of caution." The editorial noted that "the risks of conflict are hardly theoretical. In 2005, Congress approved $750 million for projects favored by lobbyists whose relatives were involved with the bills, according to USA Today."
With Maggie Fox and her group directly targeting the US Senate for votes, and getting paid more for it than her US Senator husband, voters must wonder who exactly is pulling the strings.
Moreover, knowing the hundreds of thousands Fox is pulling in trying to destroy the coal industry, most voters would probably recoil when she puts out statements celebrating new regulations aimed at shutting down the coal industry, and the thousands of good-paying Colorado jobs associated with it.
What does Fox care that a coal worker's family can't put food on the table? She's still got a reservation at Morton's.
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