Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Cap-and-Trade Bill Due Soon

That's the headline over at the WSJ Energy Roundup. I wish just once they'd screw up and put something like this on the blog:
Polygamous lesbians flee Sharia
Ain't gonna happen though, they're pros.

I know this policy wonk stuff can get boring but there's a reason I put it in the blog; You can make a lot of money if you know what the rules are. I posted the story (pt. 1) about McCormick's reaper to show how a change in the law can make a fortune virtually overnight (after a decade of positioning yourself)

As an update to that story, I had mentioned how the Medicare Modernization Act had both Title I on the drug plans, everyone heard about that, and the lesser known Title II which radically altered the Medicare Advantage program, such that one type of plan went from 26,000 members to 819,000 members, which seems to be pretty good two year growth for an insurance product.

Well for some of the salesmen, that growth rate wasn't enough and they started fraudulently pitching a straight-up drug plan on which they'd make a $50 commission, but write it up as one of the Advantage plans on which they'd make $400-500! This got the attention of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee; seven of the companies quickly agreed with CMS's suggestion that they stop selling, immediately. Hearings are scheduled.

The Energy Roundup story had this quote from Eileen Clausen of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change:

“The announcement by Senators Lieberman and Warner is great news,” said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. “This will be the first time that any committee or subcommittee of Congress has attempted to pass comprehensive climate-change legislation. Even better, this is being done in a bipartisan way by two very thoughtful senators, which gives us confidence they will draft policy worthy of the challenge.”
Enron's Ken Lay used to be on the Pew Center's "Business Environmental Leadership Council".
I don't know if the Center sent flowers for his funeral.
The Pew Center is a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.

Joe Lieberman is the Independent-Democrat Senator from Connecticut.
General Electric Corporation, one of the largest market-capitalization stocks on the board, is headquartered in Fairfield CT.

General Electric is a founding member of US-CAP.

To quote Kurt Vonnegut "And so it goes".
Mr. Vonnegut worked for General Electric.
He was a P.R. flak.
Here are some of his thoughts on GE.