This note ought to cause a little heartburn in the Pickens Plan camp.

Of course, that team’s $58 million dollar campaign — which we are told has nothing to do with making money, by the way, even from the $2 billion Mr. Pickens just sank into windmills – confronts one element of timing that may outweigh even consumer weariness with green preening: the expiration of the wind-production tax credit. When it expires every few years, well, for some reason those windmill projects that Mr. Pickens insists are economically feasible coincidentally stop in their tracks, as noted here.

E&E News reports today that the Senate Democrats have just prepared a new package of sweeteners to draw votes for extending the wind-production tax credit again along with other “renewables” pork, to be voted on next week. For you conspiracy nuts out there: no, there is no relation between that and Mr. Pickens’ visit to Washington this week, or his sit-down with the Senate Democrats on Tuesday night. Nothing to see here, now move along . . .