The movie, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, focuses on Andy Dufree (played by Tim Robbins) who is convicted -- on circumstantial evidence -- of murdering his wife. Dufree is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank State Penitentiary, a fictional prison in Maine. After much noble suffering and struggle, Andy Dufree breaks out, leaving behind evidence of the warden’s corruption and brutality.

The wind industry’s strategy in Maine and in the rest of the US parallels the plot in the movie: Americans have been falsely condemned for global warming on circumstantial evidence by a stacked jury and without due process. The jury was stacked with biased climatologists, environmental groups, bureaucrat enforcers, and industry insiders. The verdict, declared without trial by the Environmental Protection Agency was something like this: “carbon dioxide is pollution. Since you can’t control yourselves, we will.”

The jurors then became our self-appointed judges, and wardens, and jailors.

We have been promised freedom, independence, and a “green” redemption, if we just put in the years and of course, payments. Only through renewable energy and wind power, they say, will come salvation.

Wind turbines are hailed as free, clean, and a provider of “green jobs.” In addition, they will provide “freedom and independence from foreigners who hate us!”.

But, those same turbines bring decades of torture and servitude, high cost and debt. America is headed to such a prison replete with sleep deprivation, heavy chains of cost on the “inmates,” and corrupt “jailers and wardens.”

Look at what is happening in Maine.

Recently, courageous journalists have written stories about health complaints from the people in Maine from Mars Hill, Freedom, and Vinalhaven. These people are victims of sleep deprivation caused by the low-frequency noise emitted by the wind turbines.

Maine’s legislators are ignoring the complaints. Meanwhile, the people suffering from the noise are literally “locked-in.” They now have difficulty selling their homes, because of the noise and visual pollution.

Others decry the betrayal and the destruction of Maine’s islands and hills. But they are put down as just “NIMBYs.”

The Maine “warden-legislators” are giving preferential treatment via expedited permitting for industrial turbines, and excessive compensation to developers and investors of massive wind turbine industrial parks.

Permitting is fast. Appeal is shortened, stifled and silenced. Harmful health effects, and destructive environmental impacts are ignored.

The Maine wind power law, and announced offshore wind power law, will lock Maine people, and the people of the United States, into usurious long-term electricity costs. Contracts at almost double the current wholesale cost of electricity have been granted by Maine’s Public Utilities Commission to First Wind, the largest industrial wind developer in Maine.

Contracts amounting to $0.80 per kilowatt-hour have been given by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to First Wind’s subsidiary Deep Water Wind, in a 20-year contract for a planned offshore wind development.

For every onshore wind turbine installed in Maine, $1 million to $2 million is added to the national debt. Offshore wind turbines could add $15 to $20 million each to the deficit and debt. Those costs and debts are ones that our children and grandchildren will be forced to pay. Incentives given to industrial wind developers mean there will be scant additions to state or federal tax revenues.

Local property taxes are promised, but few are delivered. The town of Mars Hill for example, receives only a net $100,000 per year from First Wind, the company that owns the turbines installed in 2008. No other business is given such favorable treatment in the state of Maine, or for that matter in the United States.

Unfortunately, we don’t have documents like Andy Dufree to prove corruption. But we do have plenty of circumstantial connections that are easy for all to see:

• Former Maine governor and his son: Angus King, developer of a $283 million wind project, whose son, Angus King III, is head of mergers and acquisitions at First Wind.

• Former legal counsel and friend of current Governor John Baldacci, Kurt Adams, is now vice president of transmission development at First Wind.

• Former employee of the Natural Resources Council of Maine and current chairman of the Energy and Utilities Committee, Jon Hinck, a Democrat from Portland, is married to Juliet Browne, who works as an attorney for the wind industry.

• Former defenders of Maine’s mountains and water, The Natural Resources Council of Maine, have turned into promoters for the wind power industry, after receiving contributions and money for natural resources protection in a deal arranged by Juliet Browne.

• The hedge fund owners of First Wind have connections high up in the Obama Administration. David E. Shaw, founder of D. E. Shaw (amajor investor in First Wind), was appointed to President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in 2009. Lawrence Summers, a former employee of D. E. Shaw, is now director of Obama’s National Economic Council.

• In 2009 First Wind was given $115 million in stimulus funds. The company was just granted a $117 loan guarantee to build a project in Hawaii.

But, according our warden-legislators and jailors, there are no problems here. All this for being falsely convicted on circumstantial evidence? Where is the justice in that?

Jay Dwight is an investment advisor based in Wilton, Maine.