The crony capitalists in the ethanol industry is working with a left-wing veterans organization with connections to Clintonista Wes Clark, to promote the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the Daily Caller reports. The progressive veterans group VoteVets.org announced a nearly $110,000 ad buy for a week of pro-RFS ads in Des Moines, Iowa and Washington, D.C. This ad buy comes during a time of increasing consensus among federal officials that the RFS needs to be reformed because it is straining the country’s refining capacity and harming the environment.
The ad features Iraq war veteran Michael Connolly, who argues that the RFS means less oil money is going abroad to America’s enemies who use funds to buy weapons to attack U.S. troops. In the ad he says the best way to support the troops is to use ethanol — use less oil and America’s enemies get less oil.
Connolly is not the first former serviceman to laud the benefits of ethanol. The ethanol industry has been invoking high-ranking military officers and veterans as a to highlight the national security argument for forcing refiners to blend ethanol into the fuel supply.
“I think you’re basically seeing a convergence of former military around the RFS issue right now, because it is soon to be decided by the EPA, and that’s clearly an issue of getting us off oil, which is important to a lot of former military,” VoteVets.org founder Jon Soltz told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Soltz was once quoted saying: “If they want to attack ethanol, that’s fine… but if you come after ethanol you’re supporting killing our troops.”
“A number of former military people have become very interested in renewable of all kinds, and have worked on the issue, as well as climate change,” Soltz added. “VoteVets, for instance, has been working on green energy for years now, before we ever got into the issue of the RFS or ethanol.”
General Wesley Clark, retired, is on the advisory board for VoteVets and is also a co-chair for Growth Energy, an advocacy group run by the ethanol industry. Clark was the supreme allied commander of NATO under President Clinton. He made a failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. His consultancy has also worked with Growth Energy in the past. Clark is also a senior advisor with Blackstone, which had investments in biofuel producers like Costaka.
