In Groton, New Hampshire a massive wind farm deal has just been approved that will cost over $100 million, $34 million coming from New Hampshire and American taxpayers in the form of tax credits and incentives.  Whether you agree with the “green” tax credit or not at least you think they will be creating a few construction jobs in an industry that is really struggling.  It turns out that isn’t even the case.  Iberdrola Renewables—a Spain based major wind power player—is behind the Groton, NH wind farm, but interestingly they also own a Spain based construction company—Iberdrola Engineering and Construction.  Guess who is rumored to be doing the building of the $100 million wind farm—that’s right it is Iberdrola Construction.

So thank you American taxpayer, you just spent $34 million dollars to help the construction industry in Spain.

During Senator Collins’ reelection campaign, Maine saw the unwelcome intrusion of the so-called ‘netroots’: fringe Left-wing online activists led by MoveOn.org and the notoriously foul-mouthed and anti-semitic website DailyKos.

DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas adopted the Maine race as a personal battle, and helped raise funds online for Collins’ opponent. MoveOn.org and other ‘netroots’ groups showed up in Maine, held
protests, harassed Senator Collins in public, put on disguises to sneak into events, and screamed at her in crowds outside of debates.

Unfortunately for Marcos, MoveOn and the rest of the gang, their efforts in Maine were swiftly rejected by the general public, the press, and the electorate.

Now the Netroots are back at it again. Perhaps they are bored now that we’re out of cycle, or perhaps continuing to rage against something, anything, is the only thing that can keep this gang happy. This time
around, the netroots crowd is taking part in an orchestrated attempt to claim Senator Collins’ work on the stimulus bill somehow caused the current Swine Flu outbreak.

This wave of netroots nonsense is being led by Media Matters, the George Soros-funded organization started by notorious journalistic hitman David Brock, perhaps best know as the author of books attacking
the personal lives of Anita Hill and Bill Clinton. Brock’s group is circulating a video which attempts to connect Senator Collins with the Swine Flu outbreak. Brock and his netroots cohorts are claiming the removal of flu preparedness money from the stimulus package somehow relates to the current scare. Here are the facts:
- Senator Collins was one of nearly 20 Senators, Democrats and Republicans, who negotiated the final stimulus package. All of them agreed that this funding should go through the regular appropriations
process and that it did not meet the standards of “stimulus spending,” including Senator Schumer who spoke about the “porky” projects that were eliminated.
- The stimulus package was passed with overwhelming Democratic support and without complaint that this research money was not included.

And, in a statement from Collins’ office yesterday, spokesman Kevin Kelley points out that “There is no evidence that federal efforts to address the swine flu outbreak have been hampered by a lack of funds.”

As a matter of fact, even if these funds HAD been included in the stimulus bill, they still wouldn’t have had any impact on the current scare. This is all very crass political maneuvering, par for the course for this group of fringe malcontents. And one of the most ridiculous aspects of these attacks is that, at a time when Democrats control both houses of congress and the White House, they would blame a Republican for something like this. The fact is the Democrats in Congress overwhelming supported the Stimulus bill as it passed, without this funding. If this was such a big deal, why did Democrats
support it?

Why did the President sign it?

If this money was such a priority, and needed to be included in the first available funding mechanism, as the netroots are trying to say now, then why wasn’t it included in the TARP bill?

Only now, after Media Matters and others concocted this controversy, are Democrats starting to talk about putting the funding into the upcoming War Supplemental.

Everyone knows this money had no place in the stimulus bill, including President Obama, democrats in congress, and even these netroots maniacs trying to make hay from this. They are simply following Obama
Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel’s orders:
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”

Gross opportunism has always been the name of the came for Brock and company. When it was advantageous for Brock to be a Republican and attack Clinton and others, that’s what he did. When it became advantageous for him to flip ideologies and work for George Soros attacking Republicans, he did.

What these groups are doing is brazenly dishonest, and if their aim was to cause some kind of political damage to Susan Collins, they’ve once again fallen short.

In today’s Portland Press Herald, the state’s largest paper editorializes in favor of Collins’ actions. It recognizes her work over the years to make sure this country was prepared for an outbreak like this, and it applauds her from removing the funding from the stimulus bill and instead seeking more appropriate vehicles for funding.

Media Matters is a terrible, terrible institution. It is an organization whose sole purpose is to personally destroy public figures who take contrary policy positions, and in this case they seem to be spearheading an effort to scare moderates into full compliance with the Administration. This does not seem to be a very intelligent tack to take, especially against a Senator whose support among Independents and Democrats in an extremely blue state led her to a 24 point margin of victory last fall.

From Kos:

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 9/8-10. Likely voters. MoE 4% (10/22/07 results)

Collins (R) 57 (56)
Allen (D) 38 (33)

I polled this back in October of last year, and seeing the bleak numbers, moved on to other races. This was an attempt to see if Allen had closed the gap in the past 10 months or so, and unfortunately, the answer appears to be “no”.

One of the most striking things about this poll is that it has Collins with 38% of Democrats. Collins has a 59-36% lead with Independents, and isn’t losing to Allen in any demographic group.

The Allen campaign has been attempting to allay the fears of supporters, who have suffered through almost two years of double-digit deficits in polls, by saying that the race will tighten when ads start to run. We’re now a full month into the ‘television wars’, and things are looking as bleak as ever for the six-term Congressman from Portland.

So bleak, in fact, that the DSCC is running a new batch of deceptive negative attacks on Collins on Maine tv. Tom Allen had declared last month that he would reject this type of outside support, but I suppose the view down the barrel of political obsolescence has changed his mind.

Allen knows he is fighting an earlier battle than November 4th; once MoveOn.org and his other out-of-state benefactors grok the meaning of these numbers, the money is bound to dry up. Kos himself has written him off, Soros and company can’t be far behind.

Tom Allen’s veterans/military situation is problematic, to say the least. Allen has been in Congress for the exact same amount of time as Collins (12 years), and in that time, he’s yet to pass a single piece of legislation into law. Compare that with Collins, who has a diverse and vast record of legislation that, in particular, has benefited Maine veterans and military families.

Collins’ constituent service in renowned in Maine, and she has been celebrated for the work she’s done in particular for veterans. From chasing down forgotten medals for WWII vets, to working through the mire of red tape to make sure constituents receive benefits, Collins has made a mark that the veterans of Maine have been vocal in their appreciation for. Tom Allen, not so much. He has a reputation for being less than eager to become entangled in constituent issues, and there have been multiple rumors about instances when Allen’s office has referred people to Collins’ office in order to actually get things done.

Allen’s campaign was helpful in articulating just how out-of-touch Allen is with the culture of veterans and military families when they began running their campaign on the money of George Soros and MoveOn.org. The campaign staff also made gaffes to bolster the contention that Allen is not a friend of Veterans. Perhaps most illustrative was a series Allen ran on the home page of his website, touting his alleged efforts to ‘keep America’s promise’ to our veterans. Allen has apparently seen an opportunity to take the veteran community and morph it into another victim class that he and fellow Democrats can take advantage of.

Allen’s website home page featured a striking series of images, including this one of what Tom Allen apparently thought was a U.S. soldier:

The website AsMaineGoes.com quickly pointed out that the image on Tom Allen’s home page promoting his work for America’s vets was actually a photo of a British Royal Navy Honor Guard during a ceremony on the Isle of Man. As a matter of fact, all of the photos in the series on his home page were not of Maine veterans that supported Tom Allen, but rather stock images taken from the same website Democrats had used six months earlier for a similar ad. (In that instance, Democrats were caught airbrushing the Canadian Army insignia from the uniforms to pass them off as Americans). The fact that this image was run so prominently on Allen’s home page indicates a remarkable lack of familiarity with American military culture, and makes his ploy to garner votes by fomenting a sense of helplessness in veterans that much more distasteful.

Now Allen’s donors at VoteVets.org, Soros and the usual gang, are running an ad on Maine television to try to blame Susan Collins for the cost of the Iraq war. The ad features a veteran of the Iraq war named Alex Cornell du Houx. Cornell du Houx is indeed an Iraq War veteran. But he is also former head of the Maine College Democrats, an active liberal activist, a poster boy for MoveOn.org’s affiliate group VoteVets, and a Democratic candidate for State Legislature to boot.

Cornell du Houx’s appearance on the ad amplifies the sentiment expressed by commenters on the Royal Navy website flap: Couldn’t Tom Allen find one vet in Maine that supported him? In Cornell du Houx’s case, couldn’t Allen find one veteran who wasn’t an obvious political figure?

The answer is clearly ‘no’. Allen’s lack of outreach, his failings as a legislator, and his reputation for being tepid when it comes to constituent service are all reasons the Veterans community in Maine wants nothing to do with him.

Running ads against Collins about military affairs and veterans’ issues is a dead end for Allen. This is her turf, and the backlash from Maine’s most honorable citizens will be sharp.

Susan Collins website

Maine Senator Susan Collins has more than doubled her lead over Democratic challenger Tom Allen in the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state. The Republican incumbent is ahead 53% to 38%.

When “leaners” are included, Collins leads 55% to 40%.

The new numbers mark a big improvement for Collins, who had just a seven-point lead and earned below 50% support from voters in July. She now has her highest level of support since April.

Rasmussen has been notoriously Democrat-leaning this cycle, and explained on their blog a few months back that they are over-sampling Dems by roughly 9%.

Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of these numbers is that they come a week into Allen’s television ad campaign. The Allen camp has attempted to spin the lackluster performance of his campaign by saying things will change markedly once the ‘TV wars’ begin. Unfortunately, Rasmussen disagrees.

Collins has led in every poll since this race began. Last month, Maine-based Democratic pollster Patrick Murphy showed Collins with a 26 point lead over Allen. Rasmussen is the only poll that has shown Allen within 10 points, reinforcing the contention that they are oversampling Democrats in Maine.

Now that Rasmussen is showing this race to be a blowout, it will be interesting to see the reaction of the already-desperate Tom Allen campaign. A few weeks ago, they were caught red-handed disguising a female tracker to sneak into a GOP event, complete with wig and makeup.

Watch for the Allen camp, Communications Director Carol Andrews in particular, to try to shirk the poll results off as unreliable. Just last month, Andrews was quoted extensively in the Maine media making the case that Rasmussen’s previous 7 point Collins advantage was a clear example of the viability of Allen in the race. His precipitous decline over the last month will most likely end Andrews’ love affair with Rasmussen Reports.

The Potato Blossom Festival is attended regualrly by everyone in Maine politics, and this year was no exception. ( See Jessica Alaimo’s great story on it here) State legislators, both Senators and Maine’s other Congressman, Mike Michaud, were all in attendance. Even 2010 gubernatorial hopefuls were there. But not Tom Allen.

Allen’s wife Diana was present for the industry dinner, leading many to wonder what could have been so important to keep her husband away, and risk insulting basically half the state in a slight that no Maine political figure would want to be accused of.

Now sources confirm that Tom Allen skipped his opportunity to pay homage to the Second District in order to attend a swanky fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard. That’s Martha’s Vineyard, MASSACHUSETTS.

Allen has consistently bowed to the whims of his far-left Hollywood benefactors, but this maneuver is hard to understand. We’ll see how it plays out.

BIW was the lead yard for the new DDG-1000 program of next-generation destroyers, a program that Senator Snowe says the U.S. spent nearly $18 billion on research and development for. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved funding to continue the program, but the House Armed Services Committee did not. Maine Senator Susan Collins sits on the Senate committee, but Maine and BIW are un-represented on the House committee. This was not always the case: in 2003, Tom Allen chose to leave the Armed Services Committee, leaving BIW and Maine workers to fend for themselves.

Now the Navy has canceled the DDG-1000 program and will revert to the decades-old DDG-51 program on a limited basis. Tom Allen seems to be celebrating this development, when in fact BIW is facing a crisis. Allen’s position has shifted from full support of the DDG-1000 program three weeks ago, to the complete opposite position now that the Navy has trashed the program. In fact, his change of heart is remarkable, when looked at side-by-side.

On July 2, 2008, Allen and five other New England Congressmen wrote a letter to the chairs of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, strongly advocating for the funding of the DDG-1000 program. Here’s a quote:

“Not fully funding the program (DDT-1000) could set our nation and the U.S. Navy back an entire generation and threaten the skill-sets and knowledge-base of our highly dedicated shipbuilding and ship systems workforce.”

But just 3 weeks later, Allen directly contradicted this statement in a quote to the press:

“The DDT-1000 could lead to layoffs for workers,whereas with the DDT-51 — we’re building them now. It’s going to be more steady work. … There should be absolutely no layoffs.”

Here are more flip-flops:

On July 2, Tom Allen said:

“The DDG-1000 is designed to defeat current and anticipated future threats that existing combatants cannot.”

But on July 22, Tom Allen said:

“It’s about building a ship at significant costs that doesn’t answer the threats of the future.”

On July 2, Tom Allen said:

“Close to 10,000 jobs across the country could be
negatively affected.”

But on July 22, Tom Allen said:

“I am confident that the return to the DDG 51 program will maintain a stable
workforce at Bath for years to come.”

On July 2, Tom Allen said:

“Congressional action to delay or deny funding to this shipbuilding program will remove capabilities the Navy methodically determined as necessary to fight and win in littoral waters.”

But on July 22, Tom Allen said:

“The DDG 1000 really doesn’t meet the national security needs of the country”

Allen’s double-talk on this issue is astounding, and his pathetic dithering in the face of such a serious issue should enrage the workers at BIW and the voters of Maine in general.

This story is developing rapidly, we’ll check back in with more as it comes in.

Political analyst and election guru Larry Sabato had high hopes for Tom Allen. The Democratic Congressman from Maine is challenging incumbent Republican Susan Collins, and the news has been a little rough from the get-go. Nevertheless, it’s taken a year or more of steady proof to finally show Sabato the light.Collins has led in fundraising every quarter since the race began, over a year ago. Polls have shown a consistent double-digit lead for Collins, including a recent poll that showed her ahead by 25 points.

Pundits that saw Maine as a possible pickup for Democrats in a bad year for the GOP have dropped off one at a time over the last few months. For example, Chris Cilizza of WashingtonPost.com tossed the Maine contest out the door two months ago, after initially pegging the race as the sixth most competitive in the nation.

Now Larry Sabato is abandoning hope in Maine, another terrible indicator for a campaign team that must at least be good at taking bad news by now. Here is Sabato’s eulogy:

Politics can be just like fishing. You can have the best equipment, find the best location, and have the perfect conditions, but sometimes, the fish just aren’t biting. That’s how Maine Democrat Tom Allen feels right about now. Once considered one of the top recruits of the cycle, Allen seemed poised to unseat yet another Northeastern Republican in Senator Susan Collins. He has the fundraising ($2.75 million cash on hand), the name ID, and the national mood at his back, but Allen just can’t seem to make the sales pitch to Maine voters.

A recent poll shows Collins holding a commanding 53 to 37 lead which has not changed since the campaign began. To be sure, Collins has not committed a fireable offense, but neither did Senators DeWine or Chafee in 2006, yet both found themselves unemployed last November. This cycle, Collins has done a better job of consolidating independent and moderate Republican support from headliners like Joe Lieberman (aside: does he endorse Democrats anymore?), John McCain, and George Bush Sr. to inoculate herself from the poisonous national mood. Thus far, Allen’s attempts to tie her to the Bush administration have fallen flat, and if he doesn’t fundamentally reshape Maine’s electoral landscape, so too will his bid for the Senate.