When you think of a prototypically corrupt U.S. Senator, you might think of Claude Rains’s portrayal of Joseph Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But Senator Paine was beholden to a political machine, not an industry. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, on the other hand, is so in hock to the energy industry that he opposes any legislation whatsoever that would regulate climate changing emissions. He’s angry that the CIA is documenting evidence of climate change, and now he’s angry that the Securities Exchange Commission has told companies to “disclose information on climate-related risks and opportunities.”
“We ought to be talking about jobs, the economy and national security. The Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to protect investors. They’re the people that completely missed Bernie Madoff,” added Barrasso, a leading Senate opponent of climate rules and legislation.
Of course, the SEC is protecting investors. For example, proposed cap and trade legislation could hurt some companies’ bottom lines. Investors deserve to know that. The same legislation could present unique opportunities for other companies. Investors deserve that information, too. But that is really beside the point. Senator Barrasso doesn’t like the SEC guidance because it encourages businesses to use less energy and to invest in alternative energy research and development. His top contributor is Foundation Coal, which is now merged with Alpha Natural Resources. Wyoming is a cheap state and Barrasso wasn’t seriously challenged in his 2008 election. But he still raised over $200,000 for his campaign from Oil, Gas, and Mining interests. Those interests own him.
Why would any senator want investors to have less information, or not want the CIA to convey intelligence they’ve learned about climate change, or want dirtier air and water? No one would want any of those things unless something was desperately wrong with them. In Barrasso’s case, it’s easy to diagnose the problem. In fact, the same is basically true for all Republican senators and at least a fifth of the Democrats.
What about our president?
What is he doing re this?
His SEC just issued the guidance.
More specifically, this is from the Orzag’s budget announcement:
Excellent specifics. Thanks.
CIA helping scientists with data/imagery.
In fact, the same is basically true for all Republican senators and at least a fifth of the Democrats.
And these are the people Versailles calls “Centrists”
yeah, for the most part. We also have the problem that some senators (like Rockefeller) represent states that have so much invested in coal that it is hard for them to do the right thing whether they are reliant on industry money or not. So, Rockefeller is progressive on health care but not at all on climate change. I wouldn’t consider him corrupt, however.
There’s a difference between an industry that fears losing its tax privileges and ability not to disclose its risk to other businesses and a population of workers who are job scared.
Folks in West Virginia are justified in feeling job scared. Mining is operating with fewer workers and little else is available outside the cities. And UMW is one of the few really strong unions left in the industrial sector; most other industries have move plants to other countries; it hard to relocate a mine.
That is at least partly true in Wyoming as well. But that’s what negotiation is for. Louisiana has legitimate concerns, so does West Virginia, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas, and many other states. The way to deal with it is to work with the administration to make the transition job neutral or even net positive. It can be done, and we might not like what it looks like as policy, but trade-offs have to be made. Louisiana might get more off-shore drilling, for example. Some other state might get sweetheart financing on a nuclear plant (they’re are famously hard to finance). There are ways to get a good climate bill passed, but there are not ways to pass a clean climate bill.
Yep, but like the rest of the GOP Senators, Barasso is going to vote no regardless of the merits. The fact that he is corrupt just means he is getting paid for voting the way his caucus would ask him to.
The problem right now is that the administration is still committted to an essentially supply-side strategy on jobs — tax credits to small business, etc. Adding job transition help for climate change legislation (or healthcare legislation, for that matter) doesn’t fall within the way they want to do things.
Uh, corruption, we ain’t got no corruption. Good ol’ Joe Biden, VP, (I – Dupont Corp).