I’m no fan of Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) - in fact, I typically can’t stand the sound of his voice.  But I applaud him for taking an hour to try to call attention to the way Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) Climate Bill (H.R.2454) was recently ramrodded through the House without anyone reading it.

This is the kind of thing that makes one throw their hands up in disgust at the American two-party system.  I’m quite sure that nobody in Congress read the sum total of this 1428-page bill.  Yes, 1428 pages.  (To be fair, the amount of text on each page is very small… in PDF format it’s at least a 12-point font, double-spaced, with well over 1-inch margins.  Still, it’s big.)

So obviously, a bunch of highly-paid lobbyists wrote every word of something that is now well on its way toward becoming law.  Some of it might be good.  Some of it is probably bad.  Most of it is undoubtedly useless.  Who knows?  Certainly nobody in Congress.

Why even bother having a Congress?  Why not cut out the middle-man and put up a Wiki site where anyone can edit the bills?  At least then there might be some tiny hope of a little representation for the lower and middle classes.  (Oh, but someone would probably charge a monthly fee to access the site.)

Anyway, we might applaud Boehner for taking this dramatic stand and opposing the evil Waxman today, but I have no illusions about his motivations.  If the tables were reversed, I’m sure Boehner would have no trouble stuffing some Republican lobbyist legislation down our throats.

By the way, I still have no idea what “cap and trade” means.  It sounds suspiciously like “credit default swaps.”  Whatever it means, I’m sure somebody is going to make a lot of money off of this bill, but it won’t be you or me.  Let’s just hope it’s not China.