Events like commencements tend to connect me to family members I haven't seen in a while. In this case, an older woman, widowed, whose politics I'll describe as "Eisenhower Republican, Reagan Republican, but by no means Sarah Palin Republican".

In the course of conversation, she mentioned that she reads the Wall Street Journal every day and considers it a reliable, fact-based and generally unbiased source of information. Since yesterday's (5/21/09) issue had a page-plus set of stories on the Waxman-Markey bill and how it will affect various industries, she thought it might be of interest to me and passed her copy along.

On the theory that one picture is equivalent to roughly two text-only blog posts, I looked at the illustrations first. Six iconic images, representing six economic sectors. If the labels are indicative, electric power generation, transportation (meaning automobiles) and industry (meaning manufacturing) might not be good places to invest your retirement capital. Agriculture, commerce and residences seem indicated to do much better. The headline just below this swathe of graphics read "Carbon Bill Could Reshape Industries, Energy Use."

The only other picture (p. B-5, if you're looking) was the obligatory shot of wind turbines -- the ones shown are said to be in Utah. It's associated headline was "Bill to Benefit Nuclear, Clean-Power Industries." Other heads spoke of oil refiners predicting higher gasoline prices, farmers wanting credit for carbon sequestration, the steel industry bracing for impact, and the potential of profits from carbon allowance trading.

None of which is inherently counter-factual, but all of which was presented in a voice which made the legislative effort sound somewhat misguided, foolish, and politically expedient. As regards that last, the writer (Joseph B. White) felt it necessary to point out that "the bill requires that emissions ... be cut ... 83% ... by 2050, long after most current members of Congress will have left office." What? My 50-something congressman won't still be in office 40+ years from now? I'm shocked. (Shocked!) Clearly, I should trust his long-term decision-making far less than I should the opinions of a journalist working for a financial information powerhouse which somehow failed to predict the current recession months, or even weeks, before it hit.

Similarly, I should distrust any act of Congress which (in the article's parting shot) "would even establish new efficiency standards for 'portable light fixtures,' also known as lamps." I mean, if Congress doesn't even know enough to call a lamp "a lamp", how can they be trusted to get the bigger items right? (Never mind that my good friends at Merriam-Webster define "lamp" as, among other things, a celestial body and a source of intellectual or spiritual illumination. Even Congress wouldn't try to establish efficiency standards for those!)

In the page-plus of coverage, pretty much the only sure winners described were "Silicon Valley venture-capital investors", backing clean energy startups. Next best-off were power generators who had sold their coal-fired plants in favor of nuclear power -- they weren't necessarily going to win, but at least they wouldn't lose too much.

It would be enough to make me cancel my WSJ subscription if, indeed, I had one. A prevalent bias expressed as the ecological equivalent of "now I'm not racist, but ...", an overriding concern with the interests of current big business (after all, they're also currently big advertisers), a recent inability to predict what a lot of common-sense folks knew was coming (it was only a matter of when the house of credit cards would fall in), and a complete lack of any sense of history. After all, was there ever a major technology shift where someone (admittedly, not the previously dominant market players) didn't make a lot of money? And when in this country has there been a major economic expansion that wasn't facilitated by enabling government policy and/or infrastructure?

Yes, I'm biased in my coverage of Waxman-Markey. I think it's too little, too late, too weak, too full of handouts to too many of the biggest emitters and economic problem children. Not that I ever expect to read that in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.