Greenwire, the widely read environmental trade publication, is having some stories republished online by The New York Times, and today has a good piece, “Enviro Ad Sparks Debate — Grass Roots or AstroTurf?,” reporting on the Environmental Defense Action Fund hiring activists in North Dakota to promote cap-and-trade. (Original reporting done at the SayAnything blog.) Since Waxman-Markey would hammer a cold-weather, energy-producing state like North Dakota, there aren’t a lot of indigenous, impassioned supporters available. You have to hire them at $90 a day.

The best comment n the story:

“When someone else does it, it’s astroturfing; when you do it, it’s community organizing,” said Kenneth Green, resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “Both sides do this kind of thing.”

While trade groups and companies tied to oil and coal might be acting on behalf of shareholders when they bus workers to rallies, Green said, “if you look at the size of the environmental industry, it’s a big industry.”

Right. Which is why the gasps of outrage are so phony when the greens, unions and leftwing activists cry about businesses having any organizational role in citizen activism. They don’t want to talk about the substance, the issue, but instead poison the well by saying anything touched by employers is inherently suspect.

As Michael Barone notes in his First Rule of Life: “All process arguments are insincere, including this one.”

The National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest advocacy organizatoin for small businesses, has joined the National Association of Manufacturers in sponsoring the comprehensive advertising campaign about Waxman-Markey now under way in 13 states. NFIB President and CEO Dan Danner explains:

We’re very concerned about the impact of the legislation on small businesses. America’s job creators are struggling enough in this economy and don’t need additional burdens. Small business owners are not able to adjust the price of their goods and services quickly enough to match potentially steep energy cost increases without hurting their customer base. The Waxman-Markey bill would significantly raise energy-related costs and lead to considerable job losses.

Here’s the TV spot that focuses on the damage the cap-and-trade regime will do to businesses and workers.

The initial stage of the campaign reaches the public in Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. With the House having already passed H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, AKA Waxman-Markey, the ads encourage the public to communicate with the Senators who will next consider cap-and-trade legislation.

BTW, the ads posted at YouTube are the ones meant for Indiana (and cosponsored by the Indiana Manufacturers Association — thanks!), but they are fundamentally the same spots in the other dozen states.

The National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business have started an advertising campaign in 13 states stressing the impact on families and jobs of the Waxman-Markey bill.

Here’s our news release. The first video follows.

Jay Timmons, NAM’s executive vice president, says:

Our message to senators is that the Waxman-Markey bill is an “anti-jobs, anti-energy” piece of legislation. It will shrink our nation’s economy, make us less competitive with foreign countries, raise energy costs for consumers and businesses, take away disposable income for Americans and cause significant job loss. Our country needs a growth strategy as we struggle to come out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. What we do not need are policies and regulations that will cost millions of jobs and harm our overall economy.

The NAM’s YouTube page has the two other TV spots.

And all the prosperity, longer lives and freedom it has helped produce.

An op-ecolumn from Investor’s Business Daily, “Let’s Celebrate Oil’s 150th Birthday And The Value It Adds To Our Lives,” by Alex Epstein. Excerpt:

Nearly every item in your life would either not exist or be far more expensive without oil; there is simply no comparable source of practical, portable energy.

Yet today people increasingly label oil a pollutant that damages rather than enhances our lives and, even worse, an addiction — likening our consumption of oil to a junkie’s self-destructive heroin habit. This is profoundly ignorant, not to mention unfair to the petroleum industry that tirelessly innovates, year after year, to find more oil and extract it more efficiently.

Does this mean that no one should look for alternatives to oil? Of course entrepreneurs should — if they believe that they can truly match or exceed oil’s value in the market. For example, if a liberated nuclear industry can provide ultracheap electric power that makes petroleum the whale oil of the 21st century, that will be something to celebrate.

Today, though, we should be celebrating petroleum — “the juice of the fountain of eternal youth” — and the industry, past and present, that uses it to work miracles in our lives.

And of course, the blog at the Scientific American uses the occasion to bemoan petroleum’s baleful effect. Reminding us of a good rule of thumb: Never read anything with the question “whither” in the headline.

Since there are so few songs about factories, we define the tuneful Friday category to embrace the romanticism of machinery.

Doomed romanticism in the case of Richard Thompson’s wonderful “1952 Vincent Black Lightning.” Thompson is one of the true guitar heroes at work today, but let’s not forget his lyrical abilities, either:

Says James, in my opinion, there’s nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won’t do
They don’t have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I’ve got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

Thompson talks about writing the song and performs it in this video. Here’s another version, and here’s Del McCoury and his band doing it uptempo bluegrass-style. A little too cheerful, but still nice. (The second song in the clip, “Sinner Man,” is more striking.)

This month has seen the release of yet another Richard Thompson box set retrospective, “Walking on a Wire: Richard Thompson (1968-2009)” (Shout! Factory) As The Wall Street Journal’s Jim Fusili observed in his appreciation, “Very few rock musicians have tallied such an impressive body of work.” It’s a daunting collection, but with truly great songs (and well-crafted guitar solos) like “The Calvary Cross.” (Try this live version.) And Disc 3: “1952 Vincent Black Lightning!”

His official website is BeesWeb, with free downloads, too.

An op-ed in Roll Call by Joseph C. Farrell, former president and CEO of the Pittston Co. (now the Brink’s Co.),
“Why the Business Community Is Wary of Cap-and-Trade: a View From Virginia.” Farrell notes that Virginia derives 81 percent of its energy from carbon-based sources:

Cap-and-trade will effectively become one of the biggest tax increases in U.S. history. Even if allowances are granted for emissions permits to help offset the costs, those allowances will likely be temporary and not address the underlying deficiencies in the legislation.

Meanwhile, large polluting countries like China and India have indicated time and again that they will not slow down their own productivity in order to address climate change. Of course this begs the following questions: How effective can our very expensive cap-and-trade system be without the participation of the world’s fastest-growing economies, and how will it affect the competitiveness of American businesses?

While most employers are concerned with the immediate threat posed by the Employee Free Choice Act in Congress, there is a long list of other threats facing job providers.

Workforce Management magazine provides a great overview of the spectrum of employment policy legislation pending in the 111th Congress. This article details proposals like the Healthy Families Act that would make job creation more difficult and expensive, WARN Act expansion which makes it harder for employers to retain jobs during times of economic down turn and proposals like the Paycheck Fairness Act that will expose employers to unlimited punitive damages for allegations of gender-based discrimination.

Worth a read.

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has just indicated that the jobs-killing Employee Free Choice Act will not be considered by the Senate anytime soon. Leader Reid explained to a Las Vegas business audience, “We have too many other things on our plate.”

While we’re encouraged that the Senate won’t take up the bill in the short-term, that doesn’t mean the legislation is dead.

Just last week the heir-apparent at the AFL-CIO claimed that union bosses will up the pressure on the card check legislation once the health care debate is completed. Richard Trumka shouted that the labor will resume its efforts soon, claiming:

“We WILL PASS EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE ACT legislation, we will not allow our ‘friends’ to pass on this essential part of an economic recovery solution!”

Recovery? How about recovering a little common sense and acknowledging that legislation that forces union membership onto unwilling employees and employers, both, is nothing but a jobs killer?

The American Energy Alliance helpfully supplies more, good links to articles and commentary on the 150th anniversary of the successful drilling of the first commercial oil well in the United States, completed at Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia Inquirer, “Obscure, unsung genius of Penna.’s early oil boom“:

TITUSVILLE, Pa. – The oil boom that began 150 years ago in this small northwestern Pennsylvania town changed the world and made countless people rich, but not the man who found the way to extract black gold from the earth.

Edwin Laurentine Drake died an invalid, virtually penniless. In his later years, he relied on the goodwill of friends and a state pension given late in life to recognize the millions of dollars in tax revenue Pennsylvania made thanks to his drilling method.

The Titusville Herald, “The drizzle didn’t stop the sizzle with 240 attending BBQ,” celebrating the return of Penny Pennzoil to Titusville, 50 years on.

And from the inimitable Daniel Yergin, writing in “Foreign Policy“: “Oil’s very future is now being seriously questioned, debated, and challenged. The author of an acclaimed history explains why, just as we need more oil than ever, it is changing faster than we can keep up with.”

“Refusal to Fix Act Hardly Inspires Trust”

Congress’s refusal to fix the Consumer Product Safety and Improvement Act (“Consumer Product Destruction,” Review & Outlook, Aug. 12) is, if possible, even more irresponsible than the original legislation. Intended to protect children from lead paint in Chinese toys, the law has resulted in both huge losses and new regulatory costs on industries ranging from motorcycle and ATV manufacturers to toy makers and retailers. Many of these products pose little or no risk of lead-poisoning to children—or anyone else. Yet faced with a real problem—one it created and which it alone has the power to undo—Congress does nothing.

This should serve as a warning to the rest of us as lawmakers seek to ram through massive climate and health-care legislation. The CPSC shows that the unintended consequences of crisis-driven lawmaking are often worse than the original problem—if it was a problem. Don’t count on Congress to correct its mistakes.

Eric Havill
Branchport, N.Y.

NAM President John Engler made a similar argument in the latest edition of “Industry Today”:

The Obama Administration and Congress have big plans for U.S. manufacturing and the economy this year, offering proposals to restructure health care, promote “green jobs,” and establish a powerful new regulatory regime to control greenhouse gas emissions.

Before any of these proposals as enacted into law, members of Congress should stop, take a deep institutional breath, and ask themselves: “Are we repeating the mistakes of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act?”