Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance with Attorneys General | Hacker News Reader

Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance with Attorneys General

nytimes.com

23 pointsmjfern9 comments

Good grief, Charlie Brown. Cutting-and-pasting documents written by lobbyists onto official notepaper with only the tiniest of editorial figleaves (eg' substituting the phrase 'those questions' for 'my questioning') seems like a case of honest services fraud to me. Being from Europe and being used to publicly financed elections in a parliamentary system, the amount of money sloshing around US politics looks like the political equivalent of crystal meth, with a correspondingly unhealthy effect on the body politic - and it's a huge problem in both parties, because it delegitimizes policies I agree with as much as ones that I don't.

I'm not familiar with how the constitutional federalism rules play out in regards to the behavior of public officials in the states. It seems to me that it would be tremendously difficult for someone in Oklahoma who opposed this policy to sue the attorney-General over it, for example. The collective suits of the Federal government by multiple states that have proliferated in recent years are also hard to assess legally. Can any of our resident lawyers offer an opinion on this, even a shallow one?

I really like your analogy: money is the crystal meth of politics.

> I'm not familiar with how the constitutional federalism rules play out in regards to the behavior of public officials in the states.

That's an interesting question. The constitution says, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government" (not Republican party -- there are no parties in the US constitution). I think most people have taken that to mean no monarchies.

But consent of the governed also rules out corporatist states. However since state attorneys general are either elected directly or appointed by elected officials it may be considered (by transitivity at the very least) that these As-G in fact have the consent of the people to act against their interests.

Letting someone else write a letter doesn't surprise me all that much. I had a friend who was trying to get some federal legislation passed and he pretty much wrote it and handed it to the Congressman's staff. They passed it off as their own.

How is lobbyists writing letters anywhere near as bad as lobbyists writing bills. Letters have very little legal significance, it's just bureaucratic infighting. Bills are what become law. Attorneys General are charged with prosecuting the people the executive branch wants prosecuted. They are the legal attack dogs of the the government. It is not at all surprising to me that they use any tool that comes to hand in support of their goals.

Why is this story being flagged off the home page? And before you say it's because the story is unrelated to hacking, please have a look at the other top stories on the home page...

#5 "Confessions of a mortician"

#9 "The Divine Comedy"

#10 "The Return of Africa’s Strongmen"

#12 "America’s Toughest, Ugliest Warplane Is Going Back into Battle"

#18 "Khoisan have been the largest population throughout most of modern-human history"

Not at all surprising. It is common knowledge that energy companies utilize the government to pass protectionary measures that hinder progress and keep us married to outdated technology. Oil is not that efficient and obviously bad for the environment but it is so heavily subsidized by the government through lobbyists and campaign funding that it is hard for any new, cleaner energy to gain traction.

Sounds like a win-win! Why waste taxpayer dollars making policy or decisions when the private sector is happy to do it for free?

This is corruption.

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