“There are right-wing billionaires with near-limitless appetite for political spending and virtually no rules left to constrain them.”
That is David Roberts commenting on opposition within the US to cap-and-trade based solutions to global climate change. His and Theda Skocpol’s depressing analysis on what went wrong with the cap-and-trade initiate in the US (not just on this single point) sounds highly plausible, although I am too far from the site of battle to have much of an insight myself.
But I do have a hypothesis on the billionaires. I’d wager that, to a man, they believe they acquired their wealth as a consequence of their own brilliance, while very few, if any, give more than a moment’s consideration that, maybe, they also might have gotten just a teeny bit lucky, being in the right place at the right time etc. So, consumed with their own arrogance, they feel it is their (god-given?) duty to shove their extreme views down the rest of our throats. All for our own good, of course.
Hat tip: Alex Evans of Global Dashboard
Bottom Up Thinking 