Well, they’re breaking ground on a wind farm, but sometimes with a headline you just can’t help yourself.
Wind Capital Group, an energy development firm run by Tom Carnahan, received a $107 million subsidy from the Obama administration to develop a wind farm. They received the money as part of the same “initiative” that also gave hundreds of millions of tax dollars to the embattled and now-bankrupt green energy firm Solyndra and others.
(The $25,000 per plate fundraiser Carnahan threw for Obama on October 4th had nothing to do with securing the loan, I’m sure.)
Wind Capital Group is now being sued by the Osage Nation, who filed suit in a Tulsa court on October 18, because the wind farm project infrastructure will interfere with operations to retrieve oil and natural gas that is legally theirs.
The Osage Nation is concerned that 94 wind turbines and their network of electrical lines and roads would interfere with oil production…
The lawsuit says the tribe is the owner of all the minerals located "in and under" Osage County and that revenues generated by the mineral estate "provide essential income for Osage citizens who share in the mineral revenue distributions, comprising the sole source of income for some citizens of the Osage Nation."
That they are being sued over a wind farm because of gas and oil rights, and by a Native American tribe to boot, is already something to chuckle at. It’s as clear-cut as a fossil fuel vs. green energy battle can get.
But the underlying issues are that the Obama Administration is willing to shell out a hundred million bucks to a political fundraiser to build a wind farm on top of Native American fuel deposits and the idea that government subsidized green projects that create few jobs are considered more worthwhile than free-market drilling enterprises that will create many jobs and tap natural resources without government interference. (And, of course, that the Carnahan family is abusing this current Chicago-style pay-to-play political system.)
It’s yet another example of the overreaching federal government dictating what energy is worth tapping and where our money will go – and it’s to the best Obama donors.
Hopefully, because of the high-profile nature of both the Carnahan family and the Osage Nation, this issue will actually be brought to attention. Hopefully…
- B.H.
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