So about two weeks ago Sen. John Kerry, a lead author of the looming Kerry-Graham-Lieberman global warming/cap-and-trade legislation said about his bill, to disassociate from Earth Day loopiness: This is not an environment bill.

No kidding. No one on the planet claims it would change the climate in any way our most sophisticated instrumentation could discern. It’s about power. Hence the title of books like “Power Grab“.

Today we read in E&E Daily, from another co-sponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham: “It’s not a global warming bill to me. Because global warming as a reason to pass legislation doesn’t exist anymore. ”

Oddly, both remarkable statements have been ignored by the establishment press, slavish as they are to also seeing this agenda through to the end because, as Sen. Tim Wirth said in 1988 and Barack Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address, even if you don’t buy the excuse, their agenda is still “the right thing to do.”

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So we know that Sen. Lindsey Graham has stormed away from today’s scheduled 11 a.m. Eastern Senate press conference stage, and taken with him his support climate legislation, putting on hold what will surely in this latest form also represent the biggest tax increase in our history. All of which is, of course, “for now”.

No, that won’t last. But the unfolding/ongoing theater deserves commentary for when it returns.

This is the same bill that John Kerry now says was put off until this week from last so the voters didn’t confuse it around “Earth Day” as an “environmental” measure, and that Graham now says is an “energy independence” bill. This is even though the bill was breathlessly touted instead by all of its supporters just months ago as what it is designed to be: a “global warming” law to address what they apparently no longer view as that big an issue.

Or else they took Stanley Greenberg’s advice and realized you aren’t buying and are scrambling to re-brand their Power Grab. And this seems more likely given what we know about the bill is that it’s core design remains, with tweaks aimed at luring political support by various constituencies –

First, about this dance, Rich Galen wrote in his Mullings blog last night that “So, by putting off – perhaps until the next Congress – meaningful legislation which might have led to reducing our dependence on foreign oil, in favor of legislation which may maintain our dependence on foreign workers Harry Reid and Barack Obama have chosen convenient politics over good policy.”

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Today is Earth Day, so if you haven’t already, sprawl yourself on the ground 
and give Mother Earth a great big hug.  The president and vice president 
decided to mark Earth Day by hightailing it to New York City.  I know: New 
York City isn’t exactly the most logical place to spend Earth Day: acres of 
earth are paved over and under for high rises, streets, and subways.  But 
Earth Day wasn’t the reason they trekked to the Big Apple.  They had another 
reason.  Obama was in Manhattan to deliver a sanctimonious dressing-down of 
Wall Street.    (Biden just came to sit for a hard-hitting interview with 
the ladies of “The View.”)

At the same time Obama was blistering the big banks, we learn that the head 
of the Biggest, Meanest, Greediest Bank, Goldman Sachs, has been to the 
White House at least 4 times for meetings with Obama and his chief economic 
adviser, Larry Summers—WHILE Goldman’s lawyers were negotiating with the 
SEC over civil fraud charges against Goldman.

Now THAT’S weird!  The president who pledged to bring a new kind of politics 
to Washington, stripped of conflicts of interest and lobbying and big money 
and special favors seemingly engaged in all of those things?  At once?!

Say it ain’t so!  Of course, it’s so.  In the immortal words of Obama’s 
former pastor, Jeremiah Wright: “No messiah here, just another politician.”

Obama was on Wall Street today, acting the hypocrite. He went on about the 
damage done by the big banks while he and his White House are up to their 
eyeballs in the big banks.  They love them well enough to take—and 
keep—their money.  They love them well enough to schmooze with their 
Chairmen.  They love them well enough to court their votes.

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Today, by some people’s estimation, is Earth Day. Riley thinks we should celebrate Human Ingenuity Day instead. We tend to agree. Turn on a light, power up an electronic device or otherwise support the brilliance of human invention.

The ultimate in Obama’s Big Government schemes that still await us is the “global warming” agenda, a necessary component of which is the “green jobs” boondoggle. “Green jobs” is certain to be a central part of the Senate’s stab at cramming down “cap-and-trade”, commencing with introduction of the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman legislation now moved back to a week from tomorrow (to divorce itself from the originally intended association with the loopiness of Earth Day).

Deconstructing the Big Lie of “Green Jobs” is the focus of a key chapter in my new book just out today, “Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America.” Go grab it.

Legislating “green jobs” programs means incurring massive debt to pay for make-work as part of a campaign mandating enormous inefficiencies on the economy. It therefore also ultimately means concomitant taxes. It kills real jobs in a trade off for far fewer temporary jobs, largely make-work and at enormous per-job subsidies. This creates a “bubble” that must be constantly pumped full of taxpayer cash simply to maintain it, also ensuring a bust to go with any putative boom.

Read the below excerpt from Power Grab expanding a bit on this appealing sounding (“jobs”!) sales pitch for statutorily mandating enormous inefficiencies on the economy — heck, read the whole book — and you will have a substantially better idea why Barack Obama surrounded himself with Greek columns at his DNC coronation in Denver. That’s the sort of debt we’re talking about. The fella’s prescient, I’ll give him that much. Now, from Power Grab Chapter 5, “Green Jobs and Scam: The Wholesale Fraud of ‘Green Jobs’”:

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