In light of last Saturday’s panel discussion at the National Governors’ Association, “Advancing a Green Energy Economy,” here’s The Fall and a music video, “High Tension Line.” As obscure as most songs by Mark E. Smith, but likewise catchy.

Smith is quite attuned to energy policy issues. There’s “Mountain Energei” and the ’80s semi-hit, “No Bulbs,” as in, “No bulbs in this flat.”

In a post this morning, we noted the failure of the Center for Public Integrity to include trial lawyers in its list of interests lobbying on health care issues. If you’re going to be querulous about groups exercising their First Amendment rights to influence health care legislation, you have to wring your hands about the American Association of Justice (AAJ) and its allies, too.

Not just lobbying, but campaign contributions also provoked fretting today in the goo-goo-sphere. The National Journal picked up a news release from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington that tallied up the campaign contributions that went to the attendees of the President’s Blair House health care meeting. From “CREW’s study of health care contributions to summit participants“:

A review of campaign finance records shows the health care establishment has invested heavily in the campaigns of the members of Congress invited to the meeting. In total, these 21
lawmakers have taken nearly $28 million in campaign donations from health care interests since
2005. These donations include contributions from health professionals (including physicians,
pharmacists, nurses, and others providing health care services) and their trade associations, as
well as the employees and political action committees (PACs) of hospitals and nursing homes;
pharmaceutical and health product companies; health services firms; HMOs; health and accident
insurers; and miscellaneous health care interests (such as research groups).

“Invested heavily in” is the sneering way of saying, “contributed to.” Shocking in a representative democracy, we know.

Strangely, CREW omits from its list contributions made by trial lawyers and labor unions. (At least the Center for Public Integrity included the unions.) Are the trial lawyers NOT a health care interest?

Well, of course they are, and they prominently contribute to campaigns, too. The Manhattan Institute’s latest edition in its “Trial Lawyers, Inc.” series reports, “In the last decade, lawyers and law firms—excluding lobbyists—have injected $780 million into federal campaigns, on top of $725 million donated to state races.”
Legal Newline, a legal reform-oriented publication backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, today reported on the litigation industry’s campaign contributions to Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), “Durbin gets big bucks from trial lawyers.” At today’s health care meeting, the Senator argued impassionedly for the necessity of lawsuits in achieving recompense for injured patients. Sen. Durbin’s argument is an important point of view, and it absolutely deserved to be heard at today’s health care event.

But to omit trial lawyers and their campaign contributions from any accounting of health care interests is ridiculous on its face. CREW’s political selectiveness belies its claim to the moral high ground on “responsibility and ethics” in Washington. Or anywhere else.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) last week led a group of eight Democratic Senators who, in a letter, challenged the Environmental Protection Agency on plans to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. As Sen. Rockefeller said in a release announcing the letter:

At a time when so many people are hurting, we need to put the decisions about our energy future in to the hands of the people and their elected representatives-especially on issues impacting clean coal. EPA actions in this area would have enormous implications and these issues need to be handled carefully and appropriately dealt with by the Congress, not in isolation by a federal environmental agency.

It’s not just in hard times, either. Policy decisions should always be put in the hands of the people and their elected representatives. The executive branch regulates and administrates, but in a representative democracy, it doesn’t arrogate policy decisions to itself.

Joining Rockefeller in the letter were Sens. Mark Begich (AK), Robert Byrd (WV), Sherrod Brown (OH), Robert Casey (PA), Clare McCaskill (MO), Carl Levin (MI), and Max Baucus (MT). The full letter is here.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) this week welcomed the Senators’ letter and noted the bipartisan support for her resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res. 26) that would stop the EPA’s power grab. In a release, she said:

Congress remains the appropriate body to develop climate policy. Having evaluated and pursued other options to respond to EPA’s proposed regulations in the past, I’m convinced that alternatives to the disapproval resolution will face a difficult path forward. Economically damaging regulations will be no more acceptable at some later date.

I commend my colleagues for becoming more engaged in this important issue and hope they will show their commitment by signing on as co-sponsors of the disapproval resolution. It’s time to take the threat of EPA’s command-and-control regulations off the table. 

Ramesh Ponnuru, a National Review editor, tries to be provocative in a Time magazine piece, “The Case Against College Education.” Most readers may indeed be unfamiliar with the arguments that, for many students, the value of attending a four-year college is oversold.

But manufacturers and community colleges and workforce exports have long known this to be the case. And there are credible, excellent alternatives to a four-year baccalaureate (or starting at a college and then dropping out). As Ponnuru writes:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) in Politico, “Bipartisan health care reform must include tort reform“:

The unsustainable path of rising costs is a serious national problem. Currently, health care spending exceeds $2.5 trillion per year. By 2019, it is expected to top $4.7 trillion per year. Any hope for cost containment would involve comprehensive medical malpractice reform to end the practice of defensive medicine, close the loopholes that allow frivolous lawsuits to clog up the system, and set reasonable limits on jury awards.

Compare that tone to a news release from the American Association for Justice:

“Opponents of reform have repeatedly attacked injured patients and used the malpractice issue to hijack the health care debate,” said AAJ President Anthony Tarricone. “If health care reform makes medicine safer, then fewer patients will need legal recourse – a win for everyone. But it is unconscionable to tell injured patients that they should be left with no recourse if injured through no fault of their own.”

Advocates of tort reform have repeatedly attacked injured patients? That’s just ugly and shameless.

We’ve had a few posts on the medical liability issues involved in health care reform and the Blair House event at Point of Law.com:

• Medical liability reform mentioned, in passing, sort of
• More than a mention
• On medical liability reform, a base misrepresentation
  

Today’s Commerce Department report falls short of expectations and does not fall into the “glimmers of hope” category that we’ve seen in some other economic reports in recent months.

The 3 percent gain in January orders was driven mainly by volatile civilian aircraft bookings, and as a result does not reflect an overall improvement for manufacturers of durable goods. Despite a 15.6 percent surge in transportation, orders in other sectors actually fell by 0.6 percent in January.

At the tail of end last year, there was a spike in orders, but that was likely due to an expiring pro-investment tax provision for accelerated depreciation of equipment. We saw a reversal in January, led by a 9.7 percent plunge in machinery orders.

The fact that unfilled orders — which are a better determinant of future activity –remained very week in January and actually declined outside of aircraft, signals that demand for durable manufactured products remains tepid.

Going forward, manufacturers will be challenged by weak demand for big-ticket items by businesses and consumers. Still, inventory restocking should be a temporary support for manufacturing output in the near term.

President Obama on Wednesday spoke to the Business Roundtable, the trade association that represents the largest corporations in the United States (and with which the NAM shares many members). In his remarks, the President expressed support for the pending free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia and South Korea.

Now, I know that trade policy has been one of those longstanding divides between business and labor, between Democrats and Republicans. To those who would reflexively support every and any trade deal, I would say that our competitors have to play fair and our agreements have to be enforced. We can’t simply cede more jobs or markets to unfair trade practices. At the same time, to those who would reflexively oppose every trade agreement, they need to know that if America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores. In other countries, whether China or Germany or Brazil, they’ve been able to align the interests of business, workers, and government around trade agreements that open up new markets for them and create new jobs for them. We must do the same. And I’m committed to making that happen.

That’s why we launched the Trans-Pacific Partnership to strengthen our trade relations with Asia, the fastest-growing market in the world. That’s why we will work to resolve outstanding issues so that we can move forward on trade agreements with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia. And that’s why we will try to conclude a Doha trade agreement –- not just any agreement, but one that creates real access to key global markets.

Reuters reported on the speech and reaction, “Obama trade talk cheers business groups,” citing one of the NAM’s specialists in the area:

Doug Goudie, director of international trade policy with the National Association of Manufacturers, said he took seriously the Obama administration’s new focus on trade and much appreciated the goal of doubling exports.

“Moving forward on those three FTAS as soon as possible is going to be the best way to jumpstart the rest of their plan,” such as increasing the number of small- and medium-sized U.S. companies that export, he said.

The Business Roundtable issued a statement summarizing the meeting, with President John Castellani also highlighting trade issues:

We agreed with the President that the United States cannot sit on the sidelines while our competitors negotiate trade agreements that benefit their companies and workers over ours; we discussed the need for Congress to pass the pending free trade agreements as a first step toward the enhanced international trade and investment that is essential to growing the U.S. economy and creating more and better-paying jobs.

The next step for the President is to stop talking about “moving forward” on the FTAs and instead say, “Congress should now enact the pending Free Trade Agreements.”

It’s a good opportunity to hum along with “Played by Linda Blair” by the unappreciated musical genius, Mike “Sport” Murphy. “Sing dollar, dollar, dollar,” is an apt turn of phrase.

The Center for Public Integrity, one of the hordes of goo-goo groups that pullulate across Washington, posted an article at its website, “Lobbyists Swarm Capitol To Influence Health Reform.” Well, it’s a nice change of pace from “Descend upon Capitol,” but the authors still managed to load up on phrases like, “a boom year for influence peddling.”

Eliminate the usual rhetoric and you get a good cross-section of the various public and shareholder interests that are using their First Amendment rights to influence the Congressional health care debate. The NAM is mentioned.

Kelly Johnston, vice president for government affairs at Campbell Soup, said the company channeled its lobbying efforts through groups like the American Benefits Council and the National Association of Manufacturers. The public insurance option was Campbell Soup’s biggest target. Johnson said the company feared a public plan would lure small and medium sized businesses to dump their private insurance plans, resulting in higher rates for larger companies.

“We want to create more incentive, not less incentive, for smaller businesses to get into private insurance,” he said.

Darn right. It’s an excellent argument about health care costs and access, and the NAM is proud to represent that point of view.

The activists who are offended by the exercise of constitutional rights usually concentrate their bemoaning on business, but we give the Center for Public Integrity credit. Its authors also addressed organized labor’s lobbying, which makes sense, given that the unions have influenced the White House’s health care plan more than has business.

Missing, however, is any mention of the trial lawyer lobby, the American Association for Justice and their various allies, associates and funding recipients. The AAJ’s fourth quarter 2009 lobbying report lists 10 lobbyists, including former congressional staffers, who worked on health care-related issues. The AAJ reported spending $4.6 million total on lobbying in 2009, and has celebrated its ability to block medical liability reform. If you’re going to be serious about examining lobbying activities on health care, you can’t ignore the trial lawyers.

As a professional consumer of the blogs and columns of organized labor and their “progressive” allies, we use a rule of thumb: You can stop reading as soon as the writer uses the phrase “war against workers.” The rest of the post or column will just be low-quality agitprop, offering neither insight nor pleasing turn of phrase.

In Roll Call today, we see this column by Kimberly Brown, executive director of the labor policy and advocacy organization American Rights at Work, “No More Limbo for Workers’ Rights.” She writes:

The war on working people has a new battleground: the National Labor Relations Board.

Thanks, Kim! You saved us a lot of time.