Cap and Trade, Financial Regulation and Toyotas and the Truth
1. ENVIRONMENT
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) mentions plans to pass a cap-and-trade bill in a post-election “lame duck” session if necessary.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis on how the Republicans are going to have the last laugh in this Machiavellian scheme.
“Except that loose-lipped schemers are half-baked Machiavellians. The Party of No can and should have the last laugh. All Senate Rs have to do is resist the temptation to ‘do something.’ They now have a compelling and easily explained reason to postpone further consideration of energy legislation until the next Congress. It is simply that the greenhouse gang, by its own admission, does not intend to play fair or respect the wishes of the electorate.”
2. FINANCE
President Obama signs the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill into law.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Attorney Hans Bader on how this bill is over 2,000 pages of special interest handouts.
“The bill does nothing to reform the biggest bailout recipients, the government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even though administration officials admit they were at the “core“ of “what went wrong.” Fannie and Freddie helped spawn the mortgage crisis by buying up risky sub-prime mortgages and repackaging them as prime mortgages, thus creating an artificial market for junk. Now they are getting a $400 billion bailout.”
3. AUTOMOTIVE
Much of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s data on deaths associated with rapid acceleration of Toyotas is fabricated.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Michael Fumento discusses the disconnect between the press and the truth, and his submission to the NHTSA.
“In any case, the NHTSA ‘complaint database,’ available on its website to anyone (yes, including the mainstream media), is hooey. So I found when I actually looked at the complaints. (Now there’s a novel idea!) Anybody can enter anything. An entry filed by someone named ‘Damnable Liar’ from Holy Toledo! Ohio claimed his car accelerated to the moon because of a child seat problem. That was mine. But the ones citing 99 deaths in one vehicle? Not mine.”