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Real Clear: DC REvolving Door for Eco-Eyeshade People

  |   By Polling+ Staff

Panoramic view of wind farm or wind park, with high wind turbines for generation electricity with copy space. Green energy concept.

Well of course. This is how the game is played in the Swamp.

Over at Real Clear Investigations is this: https://realclearwire.com/articles/2023/10/05/dcs_revolving_door_is_swinging_briskly_for_the_eco-green_eyeshade_lobby_983081.html

DC’s Revolving Door Is Swinging Briskly for the Eco-Green Eyeshade People

Reports Real Clear’s Kevin Mooney: Washington’s revolving door is getting a fresh green paint job: Federal architects of a controversial new rule requiring businesses to measure their carbon footprints throughout their supply chains have joined a start-up company poised to reap millions by performing those calculations.

“At least three ranking Securities and Exchange Commission officials have joined Persefoni, a company formed in 2020 for the purpose of measuring such footprints of large business enterprises. 

Documents show that the SEC relied on input from the for-profit company to draft the proposed rule. Some critics argue that the estimates from Persefoni low-balled the price tags unrealistically for such accounting to make them more politically palatable.

Persefoni, billing itself as “The Platform for Carbon Accounting – Built For Climate Disclosure,” and similar outfits are emerging as their own service industry as they stand to profit from the new rule, since most companies do not have the staff or expertise to calculate their carbon footprints.

While environmentalists have hailed the rule as an important step in forcing companies to grapple with their impact on the climate by exposing it to the public, critics argue that it goes far beyond the SEC’s core mission of protecting investors. In voting against a draft of the proposal, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, a Trump appointee, said it “forces investors to view companies through the eyes of a vocal set of stakeholders” – as opposed to traditional shareholders – “for whom a company’s climate reputation is of equal or greater importance than a company’s financial performance.” 

This is a perfect example of how the Swamp works. I frequently give another made-up but accurate example.

A congressman wakes up in the morning to discover his kid has a runny nose. The congressman goes to his office and has his staff write a bill creating the ne Cabinet office: The Department of Children With Runny Noses.

No one wants to vote against children, so the bill passes. Next a ten story built in downtown Washington to house the new department, and is quickly staffed with a couple thousand new federal employees earning just under or over six figures. They unionize.The union contributes to Democrats. And then gradually those inside the Department, having newly acquired expertise, are hired at expensive salaries to lobby their old pals still in the Department.

The most recent examples of how this works are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

So this newest example is nothing more then the newest example of DC’s revolving door culture at work.

Shocking.

Not.