Going green, seeing red | LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Published 9:21 am Monday, March 26, 2012

To the editor:

Investigative reporting apparently suffered a cranium stork stroke on this island last fall.

Somehow local news media missed what I discovered in Peter Schweiger’s “Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison.”

Summit Texas Clean Energy, a subsidiary of Summit Energy located at 701 Winslow Way, received $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2011 to go green and clean. By the time Schweiger’s book was published, Summit CEO Erik Redman had created 11 new jobs but I don’t recall reading any details about the newly created jobs in our local media.

Nor do I recall any front-page photos of our Bainbridge Island city manager glad-handing or our local congressman or state representatives welcoming Summit Energy headquarters to Bainbridge.

Where are banner headlines about local Congressman Jay Inslee’s fundraising event hosted by former disgraced New York governor Eliot Spitzer? This is getting national publicity but it is not news here.

While our 2010 Democrat representatives cut $500 billion from Medicare and party on, I wonder what Summit and other “green and clean” associates identified by Schweiger will cough up out of the $16.428 billion they received.

After four years of ObamaCare, higher taxes, unemployment, gas prices and business expenses, fewer college grad jobs, record foreclosures, more regulations and government power, going green and seeing red may spark a voter red, white and blue tsunami.

RON LUKE

Bainbridge Island