The Green cabal. Funny how Soros turns up everywhere on the left

Obama's green subsidies attract do-gooder bandits

President Obama's green energy push is rapidly proving to be a crooked racket. It works like this: Revolving-door political hires rev up subsidy programs that enrich their former employers. Then they cash out themselves, pocketing taxpayer loot while turning out energy products that range from inefficient technologies to total failures. Faster than the turbine on a subsidized wind mill, the "clean-tech" revolving door spins out green bandits who get rich off the subsidies they helped craft.

Cathy Zoi, an Al Gore acolyte, has left her job as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy to go to work for a new fund that invests in green energy. It was started by Democratic donor George Soros.

Her former "special assistant," Peter Roehrig, joined DOE's renewable energy office from the U.S. Renewable Energy Group. The latter is a company founded by lobbyists who saw they could pocket taxpayer dollars by acting as cutouts for Chinese windmill barons trying to get their hands on stimulus money.

There are plenty of revolving-door green bandits, but the paths of Zoi and Roehrig - both of whom passed through the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office, which was responsible for $16 billion in stimulus money - exemplify how Obama's stimulus and green-energy initiatives open the door for corruption and patronage.

Zoi's tenure at EERE was rife with conflicts of interest. Her husband, Robin Roy, is an executive at Serious Materials, a small window manufacturer that boomed when Obama came to office. First, Serious Materials benefited from free advertising by the White House: President Obama praised a new Serious factory in March - before he officially nominated Zoi - and then Vice President Biden made a public visit to a different Serious plant in April, just after her nomination but before her confirmation. Finally, Serious was also the first window company to pocket a stimulus tax credit - worth $584,000 - for investing in new equipment.

Zoi testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in favor of a HOMESTAR program, also known as cash for caulkers, which became another subsidy for Serious.

At the time of her nomination, the couple owned between them 120,000 stock options in Serious Materials, according to her April 2009 personal financial disclosure. She also owned at least $265,000 of stock in a Swiss company called Landis+Gyr that makes "smart meters," high-tech thermostats that the administration has promoted for saving energy. Pro-free-market writer and lawyer Chris Horner described the conflicts of interest: "Clearly, DoE funding to encourage the adoption of 'smart meters' would very likely lead to much increased sales by Landis+Gyr -- and a potential windfall for Zoi."

Now Zoi has left Energy's EERE, where she advanced and implemented subsidies for renewable energy, and is going to work for a Soros-backed green-tech fund: Silver Lake Kraftwerk, a partnership between Soros Fund Management and Silicon Valley private equity giant Silver Lake.

Zoi's boss will be veteran tech investor Adam Grosser, who gave more than $50,000 to Democratic candidates last election. Soros said the fund, for which he is employing the former head of the federal Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office, will focus on "developing alternative sources of energy and achieving greater energy efficiency."

The Soros-Zoi hire not only undermines Obama's talk about stopping the revolving door, it also undermines the constant liberal refrain that Soros - unlike conservative political donors - is simply funding political causes he believes in, not causes that profit him. The Soros-created Center for American Progress is a leading advocate of green subsidies.

The pedigree of Zoi's former "special assistant" focused on giving out stimulus money, Peter Roehrig, also deserves scrutiny.

Roehrig, according to an online biography, "helped start US Renewable Energy Group, [US-REG] which has recently made the largest ever U.S.-China joint investment in American renewable energy to date." A little-noticed report by Russ Choma at MSNBC.com last December, however, showed that US-REG epitomizes the way in which Obama's green agenda has become a feeding frenzy for the politically connected.

US-REG was founded by K Street lobbyists John O'Hanlon and Moses Boyd and Democratic fundraiser Ed Cunningham, apparently for the sole purpose of winning federal subsidies. The company started a joint-venture with a Chinese wind-power developer, took a 51 percent stake, and applied for stimulus money - while their co-founder, Roehrig, was on the inside, working for Cathy Zoi in DOE.

In any other industry, these conflicts of interest and naked subsidy-suckling would draw a firestorm of media attention about cronyism and corporate welfare. But green bandits like Zoi, Soros, Roehrig, and O'Hanlon, instead are praised as entrepreneurs who are also trying to save the planet. It just shows what you can get away with in this town if you cloak yourself in green.