Next Power Grab: Cap-and-Trade

Next Power Grab: Cap-and-Trade; NRO

E&E Daily reports this morning that Obama administration officials have met with Kerry-Graham-Lieberman to prepare an April push for the-tax-formerly-known-as-cap-and-trade.

That’s very good timing for reasons I’ll explain as the moment nears. Also timing well, on the heels of this report, is a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal-Europe which, in the words of Open Europe’s daily update, “looks at the EU’s emissions trading scheme for carbon and argues that it is "a cautionary tale in how quickly environmental policy engineering degrades into rent-seeking for the fortunate few.”

You Gamecocks need to explain to your neighbors the bag of magic beans that their senior senator is chasing. I’m not claiming that Senator Graham is listening to his constituents of late, just that it may be worth one last effort to educate him and his staff.

Then again, maybe this explains what he is up to: he's been cuddling up with GE.

Comment: Oh...a Senator cuddling up with business (special interest), say it isn't so.

Check out Senators and Special Interests: A Public Choice Analysis of the Seventeenth Amendment, 73 Oregon L. Rev. 1007 (1994), by Todd Zywicki; this is very good read, which highlights that dramatic rise in special interest influence within the US Senate since the enacting of the 17th Amendment. This article dispels the 'greater democracy' myth purported by progressives and demonstrates the consequences we see today, for instance Graham cuddling up with GE.