The Bush/Obama-Green lobbying axis

If you just read the mainstream media, you probably think all of George W. Bush’s old energy staffers now work for the oil industry lobbying against “green energy” policy. And, to be frank, if you read me you might conclude that all the revolving-door green-energy lobbyists come from the Obama administration or other Democratic staffs.

But many Bush energy types are now green-energy lobbyists. Witness Dick Cheney’s notorious energy task force, demonized by the Left as a conspiracy by Big Oil. Andrew Lundquist was a task-force staffer and a member of the Murkowski-Young-Stevens Alaska Mafia, and now his lobbying clients include the American Coalition for Ethanol, Hudson Clean Energy Partners, and the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Better yet was Mark Maddox, whose job at Bush’s Energy Department was promoting the  FutureGen clean-coal corporate-welfare project proposed by the task force. Then he cashed out to become a lobbyist working for the FutureGen clean-coal consortium.

There’s a whole bunch of the green-Bush-revolvers out there. And if you’re an Obama-friendly subsidized solar company right now worried about becoming the next Solyndra-like punching bag of the GOP, what do you do? You hire some of these guys.

That’s what Abound Solar is doing, as Keenan Steiner at the Sunlight Foundation writes. Steiner also includes interesting details about Abound’s political connections. 

The Abound investor is billionaire heiress Pat Stryker, who Forbes ranks as the 331st richest American. Stryker also donated $50,000 for Obama’s Inauguration according to the Center or Responsive Politics and bundled $87,500 for that inauguration, according to a bundler list released by the Obama campaign in 2009. She gave $35,800 to the 2012 Obama Victory Fund earlier this year.

I’ve been saying it for a couple years. If you’re looking for opportunities for corruption, look to green energy.

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