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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (22617)	8/12/2010 1:55:27 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

It's a bunch of (in general) well meaning people, just like private companies. The people are generally well meaning, but there are a significant minority that are just out for power (since government gives you control), and even for those that aren't the incentives are screwed up. You get rewarded for helping special interests against the general interest and for making government larger and more intrusive. The special interests really care about their benefit, the general population, probably doesn't even know about the (usually) tiny amount each of them pays for that big special interest benefit. If you make government more intrusive you get to say you "did something", and you get positive press for that. Unless you go so far as to seem obviously corrupt and/or a total idiot expanding government involvement too much in an area, or helping out special interests rarely has a downside for politicians.