1. Cap-and-trade is dead  Cap-and-trade is deader than dead.
Everyone in Washington officialdom knows that. Virtually no one
in Washington officialdom understands how it would work or how
much economists think it would cost, but they’re certain it’s
bad, bad, bad and had to die.   Polluting industries and wealthy
right-wing oligarchs, aided by a well-funded grassroots army,
sympathetic conservative politicos, and a major cable TV news
network, cast cap-and-trade as a plague of socialist cooties
that would destroy the economy. The left’s Purist Brigade wove
florid tales of corruption and plutocracy. The reality — a long,
opaque, technocratic bill burdened with several high-profile
side deals — inspired no one. All the passion, all the anger,
was found on the side of opponents.  In the end, the bill was
done in by a dysfunctional, sclerotic Senate. Its enemies were
many, among them the miserable economy itself, but special
contempt must be reserved for the Senate’s “moderates,”
virtually all of whom have reveal