Today Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius executed the broken-legged horse: she vetoed the bill
that would allow two coal-fired power plants to be built in the state.
Legislators tried to create a new law that would have overridden a
ruling by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to deny air
permits for the plants. The Senate has enough votes to override the
veto, but the House does not, so lawmakers I spoke to earlier this week
expect the veto to stand.

But what’s of greater interest is that Sebelius, simultaneous with the veto, issued an executive order
creating the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group.
This is another one of those state global warming commissions, and as I reported earlier this week, they have hired the Center for Climate Strategies to manage their policy development process. I’ve reported ad nauseum
that CCS’s work in dozens of states is funded mostly by global warming
alarmists like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Energy Foundation,
but in Kansas there is a new multi-million dollar resource paying the
bill: the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation.

Who else has Sandler supported? They were instrumental in joining George Soros to create the Center for American Progress and Democracy Alliance. Gave nice contributions to ACORN,
Oceana, and Environmental Defense too. For the first time in watching
the maneuvers of CCS, we’ve discovered a bond not only to the
environmental left, but the explicitly political activist left as well.

Cross-posted at Cooler Heads. 

UPDATE 3:05 p.m.:

From the last 3 tax returns (tax years 2003-2005) available on
Guidestar, other contributions (cumulative for the period) of note made
by the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation (the Sandlers owned Golden
West Financial until they sold to Wachovia):

ACLU: $6.5 million

American Institute for Social Justice: $3.2 million

Center for American Progress: $6.7 million

Human Rights Watch: $7 million

Natural Resources Defense Council: $350,000

Sierra Club Foundation: $500,000

Media Matters of America: $100,000

Oceana: $2.5 million

People for the American Way Foundation: $150,000

Sojourners: $219,000

Pew Charitable Trusts: $250,000

Also included are a number of contributions for asthma research and Jewish support organizations.