See previous: “AP: Special interests? Oh, they’re good this year.“
The New York Times reports on the rampant rent seeking:
Major global-warming legislation that squeaked past the finish line in the House last month attracted millions of dollars in new lobbying money.
The fresh cash came from a combination of new groups and existing companies ramping up their payments to hired advocates in the second quarter of 2009. Entities hiring climate lobbyists for the first time shelled out more than $1.5 million overall from April to June and included a new natural-gas coalition and an arm of former Vice President Al Gore’s nonprofit empire. …
“This bill was all about lobbyists,” said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen. “Lobbyists from big environmental groups hooked up with utilities.” …
On the rent-seeking point, Max Borders reminded me of Bjorn Lomborg’s recent Wall Street Journal piece about “The Climate-Industrial Complex.” In light of Lomborg’s quotation referencing the famous warning by Pres. Eisenhower, I would also like to quote from that speech:
… the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. … The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
In sum, watch out when researchers chasing federal grant money start playing the desired tunes while politicians and shills run about screeching how “Science has spoken!”
