Today at 1:30 pm Eastern time Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe
Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the
fifth Senate reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming
legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the
American
Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons that will become obvious
momentarily.
The orchestrated spectacle, with a cast expected to be in the
dozens which massive alignment of special interest groups is
apparently supposed to persuade you of the justness of their
cause, is in fact a manifestation of all that is wrong with
Washington and what Americans have become increasingly enraged
by.
At this press conference, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman have both
already indicated, they will insist that their scheme isn’t
“cap-and-trade” because… they aren’t going to use that term
this time around. Kerry has even said that “this is not an
environment bill.” It seems that the public aren’t buying that
argument, either, so it’s really about whatever appeals to you.
Just not what it was about the previous four times they’ve tried
to slip this
Power Grab past you. Except that a summary of the bill makes
plain it is, too, cap-and-trade. And worse. It includes
billions of dollars each year in gas tax revenue to
underwrite the wealth transfers these companies are so in favor
of.
For this latest effort to hide an enormous tax and wealth
transfer — a unilateral move that guarantees jobs will be
shipped to China, India, Philippines, Mexico and elsewhere — —
these lawmakers will be surrounded by numerous representatives of
Big Green. That includes not just the wealthy pressure group
industry but many among “Big Business”, numerous of whom are the
benefactors enabling those pressure group chiefs’ huge salaries
and vast PR budgets to scare you into accepting an agenda that
uses the state to, oddly enough, enrich these same companies.
Huh.
Sen. Lieberman has repeatedly teased the breadth of today’s
organized scrum as proof that the scheme is now a good
idea. Absent from his cheerleading is the fact that you are
not represented at the table when your wealth and future
prospects were being divvied up.
The reason for so many businesses leaping onto the stage today is
also the dog that surely will not bark when the media report on
industry’s touting of an enormous energy tax and wealth transfer
from individuals: why do they support this?
The answer is because they have been promised a slice of the
spoils taken from the average taxpayer and ratepayer. I detail
who these companies are and how they hope to cash in on this
scheme in my new book “Power
Grab”. For example, consider Exelon. This Chicago-based
utility, which today is expected to be represented both
individually by its CEO and by its trade association the Nuclear
Energy Institute (NEI), expects more than one billion dollars in
increased profits for no additional capital investment if the
scheme announced today passes. Their only cost would have been
the lobbyists.
That’s just one company. But the windfall, arranged by
politicians, comes from average American families. The company
even admits the whole sordid mess in a Forbes article
from earlier this year:
“Exelon needs that legislation to happen sooner rather than
later. Without a carbon price of some sort, Exelon’s fortunes
aren’t so bright…. ‘The conundrums are real,’ [Exelon CEO
John] Rowe acknowledges. ‘There’s nothing that’s going to drive
Exelon’s profit in the next couple of years wildly. It just
isn’t going to happen.’
Except, of course, carbon legislation. And because of that, the
company views spending on lobbying for legislation almost like
a capital expense….
Exelon has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M.
Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for
President and is one of Obama’s largest fundraisers. Obama’s
chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a
consultant to Exelon. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel,
helped create Exelon. Emanuel was hired by Rowe to help broker
the $8.2 billion deal between Unicom and Peco when Emanuel was
at the investment bank Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner
Kleinwort). In his two-year career there Emanuel earned $16.2
million, according to congressional disclosures. His biggest
deal was the Exelon merger.”
The article details how Exelon wrote the provisions allocating
the energy use “allowances”, or ration coupons. Others, including
(according to Sen. Kerry) BP, wrote the provisions applying to
oil companies, to ensure costs are passed straight through to
you.
I lay the particularly odious example of Exelon — and those of
others on the dais, ranging from Duke Energy to GE to “Chicago
Climate Exchange” members — bare in “Power
Grab”. Before your elected representatives impose this on you
later this year, as soon as by the July 4 congressional recess,
educate yourself on the rhetoric and ruses employed to part you
from your money and, if history is any guide, threaten your
family’s lives and indeed your livelihood altogether.
