“After more than two years of secret negotiations beginning in 2009, lawmakers in Clark County, Nevada, unanimously agreed to sell 9,000 acres of public land to ENN for the bargain price of just $4.5 million ($500 per acre) in December 2011.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal questioned the “steep discount” ENN received for the land, which had been previously appraised for between $30 million and $39 million. The arrangement also included a bundle of tax incentives for ENN.
Reid, who reportedly helped secure a series of state and federal waivers as part of the deal, was actively involved in the negotiations with ENN. In April 2011, he led a delegation of senators to China, where the lawmakers met with senior Chinese officials and toured a number of green energy facilities, including the ENN headquarters in Langfang, China.
Upon his return, Reid called on the United States to pursue “new opportunities to collaborate on and advance clean-energy deployment here and abroad.”
Several months later, ENN chairman Wang Yusuo spoke at Reid’s clean energy summit, calling for a “more open and comprehensive” partnership between China and the United States on green energy.
ENN hired Richard Bryan, a Democrat who served with Reid in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to 2001, to represent the company in negotiations with state and federal officials. Reid’s son Rory is a partner at Bryan’s law firm.
“Senator Reid has actually gone to China, has actually had visits with the chairman of ENN, the entire global enterprise, has actually taken a look at some of their developments there,” Bryan said of Reid’s involvement. “It would seem to me that Senator Reid would exercise his persuasive powers on behalf of the state of Nevada.”
Wang’s company wants to build a 720-megawatt solar farm, research park, and thin-film solar panel manufacturing facility in southern Nevada, and has said it expects to spend between $4 billion and $6 billion on the project. That is at least half the $8 billion ENN plans to invest in green energy in the United States over the next decade.
The project is threatened, however, because NV Energy—Nevada’s largest utility provider—has said it is not in the market for renewable energy at this time, citing the higher costs of solar power and the fact that it has already exceeded the state-mandated quota for renewable sources through 2014.
Reid has responded by badmouthing NV Energy and threatening to have one of its coal-fired power plants shut down.”
Lots of links @ “BLM Won’t Say if They’ve Euthanized Cows in Ranch Standoff
‘We do have a protocol in terms of when we would euthanize animals’”
http://freebeacon.com/politics/dirty-harrys-clean-energy-cronyism/