Has McCaskill seen the light?

I'd like to thank Andy Levine of RepoWEr America (0.00 / 0)

for predicting this shift when I talked to him last January:

hotflash: Tell me what you know about Claire McCaskill's attitude toward the energy bill.

Andy Levine: (inaudible) a kind of studied neutrality about it. It's what you'd expect out of Senator McCaskill. She is, uh, she's sharp. She's gonna want to really get into the issue in a detailed kind of way and know what's going on on all fronts. They've had some concerns they've talked about before in costs and jobs. And a lot of those we kinda feel have been allayed, or at least we've been able to have good dialogue. And they've been able to see that the bill is or at least the frameworks for the bill aren't gonna do those, the worst case damages that they've heard about from the other side.

One of the more recent concerns that she's talked about has been with the creation of an entirely new financial market, which, you know, there would be under cap and trade that'd create a new market for trading carbon permits back and forth. To me, that signals that she's ready to engage. You know, when she starts putting the auditor hat back on, that typically means that she really is going to get into an issue, she's thinking about it in the way that she thinks about things, and hopefully it means that she's gonna be a participant and make this a better bill and help pass it.  

hotflash: And what is she afraid of as far as the market, in the market?

Levine: Well, you know, I think one of the things you do have to watch in creating a cap and trade system is making sure that you're not adding a whole new set of unregulated ways for people to trade back and forth with these permits instead of buying and selling the permits. She wants to make sure that that doesn't turn into, you know, similar to, something similar to the energy markets in the early 2000s where you had Enron running blackouts. And, you know, she wants to make sure it doesn't turn into derivatives. So, you know, to me it's, it's constructive criticism. It's not a sink-the-bill criticism.

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by: hotflash @ Sun Apr 18, 2010 at 14:15:06 PM UTC

I heard some of the same sorts of things in a recent conversation with (0.00 / 0)

Repower staff as well. Repower really deserves thanks for the lobbying work they do to get the facts to legislators like McCaskill - not to mention their efforts to inform voters so that the McCaskills have some room to maneuver.

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by: WillyK @ Sun Apr 18, 2010 at 17:05:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Amen. (0.00 / 0)

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by: hotflash @ Sun Apr 18, 2010 at 17:15:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]