For the price of a nail a shoe was lost .........

OK! I admit it. I started this post several days ago and put it on hold until I could do more research. And now I have and now it’s time.

So the tally last Friday was 219 to 212 on the “Cap and Tax” bill in the house. If it hadn’t been for 8 GOP members crossing over we would not have to rely on wiser heads in the Senate to prevail. Yes, I can do the Math; it would only have taken 4. I tried to simplify it for those from Lake Havasu who are already anticipating the upcoming Holiday weekend. But they did cross over, the GOP members I mean.

And when they did, it begged the question why? A great website for this kind of research is “RollCall.com”, and a look at last Friday’s vote revealed that one of the defectors was Mary Bono from California, no great surprise there, but there were 3 from New Jersey and at least one from Connecticut. Do you want to ponder if any of those members had connections to Wall Street? Remember, the real name of this abomination is “Cap and Trade”? Where do trades get done in this country?

A more interesting analysis of last Friday’s vote can be found within those 44 Democrats who also crossed over and came out against “Cap and Tax”. My Congressman was one of those and I’d like to think he’d seen the light for the right reasons but I know better. The most important thing on a politician’s mind even as the election results are announced is how do I do it again 2 years, 4 years or 6 years from now?

Let’s face it doing deals is what politics is all about. It has been a tradition on Capitol Hill ever since its creation but this is different because of the degree of cynicism involved. Speaker Pelosi,” Ms. Botox” is a street fighter from way back and there is no doubt that dispensations were given for certain members under her Whip to vote no because of the “sensitivity” in their individual districts to the measures in the legislation.

Not all those so affected were allowed this flexibility. Some, like a Congressman from Mississippi complained that he was “being forced to walk the plank”. See he knew that the chance of the provisions of this bill becoming law is virtually nil. But he also knew that he would be up for election again in 2010 and that, while his electorate might have moved onto other things by then, his opponent would remind them often and loudly.

So as far as Pelosi and Obama were concerned all was now well. The deals had been done and their majority was assured. Until 3 am the next day when a further 300 pages flopped onto actual and virtual desks to add to the 1300 pages already there. Most, of course, didn’t read those pages and most still haven’t. But 1 or 2 or more did and they didn’t like what they read. One such was Ms. Marcy Kaptur who is the representative for Ohio’s 9th Congressional District. Ohio is a coal state in more ways than one and Marcy dug in her heels.

To buy her off, Henry Waxman put in the fix. The fix was $3.5 Billion for her to use as she wishes to loan to anyone in her purview who could claim a contribution to “renewable energy sources”.

That was the cost of one vote. Would you like to contemplate the total?