Investigate Them

This is now a permanent department of this website and will always be accessible from the link "Investigate Them" at the top of the website for easy reference.

Sunlight disinfects. If we have seen one thing since the creation of Maine's expedited wind law in 2008, the media do not put adequate sunlight on the wind industry. Just the opposite - we've seen things like congresswoman Chellie Pingree husband at the time S. Donald Sussman, largest media owner in Maine whose media almost always fail to report on the cons of wind only to discover ourselves that all along, he had been the person who gave First Wind's longtime owner, hedge fund D.E. Shaw its start with a $28 million stake. The media won't even report that in December 2015, former Governor John Baldacci, creator of the horrible expedited wind law, became Vice Chairman of Iberdrola's wind division, Avangrid, the second largest wind company in the U.S. Former Press Herald owner Bobby Monks, Jr. had a photo of wind turbines on his website on the very webpage where he solicited investment opportunities. No matter how many times reporters are corrected for using the wind developers' fake nameplate megawatts and fake "35,000 homes powered", they continue to use this completely misleading information. 

Until such time that we can rely on the media, as well as others who spew propaganda for the wind industry such as the supposed environmental groups we can at least do some investigations ourselves and do our best to get the word out ourselves.

Following are some tools that can be used to ferret out information, including that which might point out conflicts of interest:

The Foundation Center - data on foundations including, Form 990, a form that provides the public with at least some financial information about a nonprofit organization

http://foundationcenter.org/gain-knowledge/foundation-data

Guidestar - the world's largest source of information on nonprofit organizations where you can sign up for a basic account free in just a minute or two and begin reading Form 990 for non-profits and getting a glimpse of where they are getting their money

https://www.guidestar.org/Account/Register

A GUIDE TO MAINE LEGISLATORS’ PRIVATE AND PUBLIC INTERESTS - we've seen way too many examples where certain legislators have, at a minimum, an appearance of conflict of interest with the wind industry

https://pinetreewatch.org/maine-legislature-guide/

and

http://apps.pinetreewatch.org/maine-legislature/

Maine Legislators Disclosures of Sources of Income

http://www.maine.gov/ethics/disclosure/legislators.htm

Maine Lobbying Information - search by lobbyist, client, legislative document

https://secure.mainecampaignfinance.com/PublicSite/SearchPages/LobbyingInfoSearch.aspx

Lists of Maine lobbyists and their clients can be found and downloaded into Excel and PDF, etc. here:

https://secure.mainecampaignfinance.com/PublicSite/SearchPages/LobbyistClientList.aspx

List of Maine Lobbyists by Year and Client from 2002-2018 in Excel

Note that this list contains multiple worksheets each with a slightly different view of the information. Specific Clients were identified as "Wind Related" based on judgement. Please let us know if any were missed or miscoded. I'm sure we missed some. Also, we probably could have coded every large Portland law firm as Wind Related but we didn't for this exercise given much of their work falls in other areas.

Download here: Maine%20Lobbyists_L_2-25-18.xlsx

Discover the Networks - this website describes the networks and agendas of the political Left. Apologies in advance for offending anyone, but I believe it is fair to say that most of the push for wind comes from the left these days, although clearly, there is plenty of blame for Republicans as well. 

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/

Additional resources will be added as appropriate including contact information for investigative reporters. Sort of a shame we need to preface the word "reporters" with "investigative". Please contact us if you have suggestions which should be added. And if you find anything you believe should be reported that can be documented and fact checked, please consider leaving in the comment box below. As mentioned above, this department will always be accessible from the link "Investigate Them" at the top of this website for easy reference.

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Comment by Long Islander on February 26, 2018 at 7:49am

The list of Maine lobbyists noted above was derived from data generated (on 2/25/18) at:

 https://secure.mainecampaignfinance.com/PublicSite/SearchPages/Lobb...

However, after noticing that lobbyist Patricia Aho, was not shown there to have been a lobbyist for Horizon Wind Energy (now EDP Renewables), I went back to an old lobbyist list we had from 2011 (generated 1/23/12) and confirmed Aho was indeed a lobbyist for them. I have no idea why that list shows her as a Horizon Wind lobbyist and the newly created list (17 years in Excel) has no record of her as a lobbyist for Horizon Wind.

The 2011 list is here:

http://www.maine.gov/ethics/pdf/2011LobbyistlistbyLobbyist.pdf

and

2011LobbyistlistbyLobbyist%20-%20Copy.pdf

From the 2011 file under Patrica Aho on page 4:

 So this appears to be a discrepancy between the 2011 lobbyist list and the 2002-2018 17 year lobbyist list obtained on 2/25/18. If the one instance I recalled (Aho for Horizon Wind) was discrepant, this raises the question as to why and are there more discrepancies?

 

Maine as Third World Country:

CMP Transmission Rate Skyrockets 19.6% Due to Wind Power

 

Click here to read how the Maine ratepayer has been sold down the river by the Angus King cabal.

Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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We have the facts on our side. We have the truth on our side. All we need now is YOU.

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 -- Mahatma Gandhi

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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