Detroit, Mich. – Like Tennessee, Michigan is shivering through an unusually cold summer — at the same time that Rep.Gary Peters (D., Mich.) and his Democratic-delegation pals have voted to impose a massive energy tax on their own constituents to solve, ahem, global warming.
Senseless? Not if you follow the money. Let Rep. Peters, the Detroit Three automakers, and green activist Cathy Zoi demonstrate the Iron Triangle.
As recounted in my previous post, Peters (and other Michigan Dems) voted for cap-and-trade only after receiving assurances that his pet special interests — Big Auto and Big Labor — would get 3 percent of the estimated $17 billion in tax revenues redistributed to Detroit auto companies.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
As a reward for his support, Peters has been lionized for his green “leadership” in advertisements run in his Congressional district by the Climate Protection Action Fund (CPAF is also known as the Alliance for Climate Protection), a Gore-funded group founded in 2007 by ex-Clinton/Gore staffer Cathy Zoi. As CEO, Zoi has most notably championed the “Repower America” challenge to promote the Goracle’s dream of “repowering” America with 100 percent non-carbon fuel sources in just ten years.
In addition to steering millions in Waxman-Markey revenues to his Detroit friends, Peters is also a prominent broker of the Department of Energy’s $25 billion loan program encouraging U.S. carmakers to manufacture the greener cars mandated by Congress to meet new emissions rules. The loan program comes on top of DOE’s existing, multi-million-dollar research grants to the same automakers to develop alternative-fuel technologies.
Both vehicle-loan and research programs are administered by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
On June 19, CPAF’s Cathy Zoi was confirmed as DOE’s Assistant Secretary for . . . Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy!
And one month later, CPAF’s favorite green ad pitchman, Rep. Peters, introduced a new bill to almost double new Assistant Secretary Zoi’s vehicle-research program for automakers to $550 million for 2010.
Cozy place, that Iron Triangle.