Michael Giberson
The New York Times, "Congress Turns to Energy, and Lobbyists Arrive":
With gasoline prices hovering near all-time highs, the Senate on Monday began debating a sprawling energy bill that has already kicked off an epic lobbying war by huge industries, some of them in conflict with one another: car companies, oil companies, electric utilities, coal producers and corn farmers, to name a few.
The article quotes former-senator-turned-lobbyist John Breaux saying, “This is going to be the mother of all bills."
Didn't we just have a "mother of all energy bills" two years ago?
No real surprises in the story. My only quibble is with the headline: how can lobbyists arrive, if they never left in the first place?
Without lobbyists to teach them, what would our elected representatives know; and, how would they know it? Hmmm?
With some of these things, you can't even tell who's running the show. Once some lobbyists show up, then everyone else has to hire lobbyists or face the wrath of "good government."
It's been a while since this (I think remarkable) article was written. Jerry Taylor was director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. Dan Becker was director for the Sierra Club’s global warming and energy program. And they agreed on October 29, 2003 that subsidies should be eliminated:
A Complete Waste of Energy