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The NIMBYist fight against wind projects, most notably Cape Wind, has long been suspected of being funded from the coal industry. (After all, more wind electricity correlates to less burnt coal.)  The Boston Globe reported today about how lobbying disclosure firms have linked Cape Wind opponents to a coal-energy firm.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound is fighting hard to keep Cape Wind from reducing the amount of diesel and coal burnt to provide New England’s electricity.  This effort literally has millions of dollars behind it, in an astroturfing effort to mobilize regular citizens to step up in defense of the sailing grounds of billionaires like William Koch, the founder of Oxbow.

 Oxbow’s primary businesses are the mining and marketing of energy and bulk commodities such as coal, natural gas, petroleum, metallurgical and calcined coke, and electric power generation.

Koch has given over $1 million to the effort to the Alliance. But his efforts don’t end there. Koch has long had Oxbow’s lobbyists working to fight Cape Wind, often alongside the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.

The Globe article, however, suggests a direct financial relationship, one that does not have seem to been seen in paper beforehand.

And that direct financial relationship suggests a McCain connection.

Now, amid this article, note “BKSH”:

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which has already retained two other lobbying firms, recently added BKSH & Associates, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm that works for Oxbow. When BKSH filed a lobbying disclosure report with the US Senate Office of Public Records in April, reporting its new client, it listed Oxbow as an affiliated organization, one that contributes more than $5,000 in a quarterly period to the lobbying effort and actively participates in or supervises lobbying efforts.

BKSH lobbyist Rich Meade said the affiliation was reported because Oxbow had referred the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound to the firm and spent time strategizing with BKSH lobbyists before deciding the group should be a separate client.

The conversations with Oxbow and the group represented “enough of a body of work” that BKSH decided to report a relationship to err on the side of caution, Meade said.

What is BKSH & Associates? This is the bi-partisan lobbying firm that Charles R. Black, Jr, was the chair of until March 2008. Why is he no longer in that slot? Because Charlie Black is now working full-time on the Presidential campaign of John McCain.  In addition to Charlie Black, the Alliance to Protect Nantucker Sound has been represented for years by Tom Loeffler, McCain’s Campaign Chairperson.

Many have raised the absurdity and incongruity of John McCain giving his global warming speech at a (non-US) wind company. 

Here is yet another reason to find this absurd:  two of McCain’s closest confidants are associated with the efforts to squash America’s first offshore wind energy project.