Gettin' While The Gettin' Is Good

Governor Huntsman is hosting his last WSGA Annual Conference this weekend in Park City, but it sounds like there might be some rumblings of discontent in the ranks.

Jon Huntsman, the Republican governor of Utah, has had one foot out the door since being named Ambassador to China by President Obama. But he will still be chair of the Western Governors Association when it holds its annual meeting in Salt Lake City this weekend.
Moreover, it looks like his final days in office will be marred by a controversy over just whose tax dollars are being spent on a highly controversial "Western Climate Initiative." Paul Chesser, a global warming skeptic who is a researcher with Climate Strategies Watch, submitted Freedom of Information Act requests and discovered that the initiative -- aimed at supporting dramatic reductions in carbon emissions -- has contracted or partnered with a wide range of liberal climate change groups. A full-time WGA staff member has been detailed to manage the climate project. The subsidies to pay for all this will likely be a topic of discussion at the governors' meeting because a majority of state governors didn't sign on to it. Many of them view draconian reductions in carbon emissions as a serious threat to their states' economies.
One governor I spoke with points out that the WGA is supposed to operate on a consensus basis. He says the WGA's involvement in planning climate change proposals is serious overreach. "The dues states give WGA come from tax money and I was surprised to learn just how much the WGA seems to be getting ahead of many of the states on carbon regulation," he told me.

So the Governor, like many of the Global Warming/Cooling/Whatever-it-is-today crowd over-stepped his boundaries in the name of "saving the planet" from something that we are arrogant to think we can influence? Color me shocked...

Maybe this is why he was so eager to jump on that Ambassadorship.....