Big Labor’s Agenda, the Death of Cap and Trade and the Politics of ‘Mad Men’

1. CONSUMER

Big Labor has been pushing hard to make Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren the new consumer protection czar.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Labor Counsel F. Vincent Vernuccio on why the left so strongly supports Warren’s appointment.

 “Lacking experience, advocating bank nationalization, and allowing special interest to control corporate boards, Warren is right when she said banks are not going to like her ideas. What she left out is that probably so will most of America.”

2. ENVIRONMENT

Besides the possibility of a lame-duck session, the chances of a cap and trade bill passing have effectively died.

CEI Expert Available to Comment:Senior Fellow Mario Lewis, Jr. discusses how the Democrats will now have to take full responsibility for the EPA’s endangerment finding, and the coming regulatory cascade.

“Thanks to the vote on S.J.Res.26, the Democratic leadership has become the Party of Endangerment — the party endangering America’s economic future by taking exclusive ownership of EPA’s endangerment rule and the regulatory chain reaction it has set in motion.” 

3. CULTURE

AMC is bringing back Mad Men, and all of its associated glamour.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Communications Christine Hall discusses how the show displays how far we’ve come, in cultural and political terms, and also how much we’ve lost.

“It will be interesting to see how the show references the Johnson-Goldwater campaigns in this new season, which begins in 1964.  The year marked an epic battle between the forces of statism, which won (Great Society), and Goldwater-style conservatism, which suffered a massive set-back. I hope the writers, who I imagine to be Hollywood liberals, will offer a thoughtful reference to this critical moment in American politics and not use it as merely a proxy for bashing Goldwater conservatism.”