Who Stands to Benefit From Cap-and-Trade?

While most of the media was watching more coverage of Michael Jackson, the cap-and-trade bill passed in the House late Friday night 219-212 — proving once again that the one thing we should all be paying attention to is whatever the mainstream media is ignoring.

I'll get to the eight Republicans who voted for this bill and the special interests they represent in just a moment, but first I want to show you what nearly everybody missed.

For about an hour last Friday evening, House Minority Leader John Boehner railed against his fellow lawmakers for not reading the 341 pages of amendments added at 3 a.m. on the morning of the vote.

He started by pulling out a chart, which shows the ridiculously complicated web of regulation this 1,300-page bill introduces. Boehner also ticked off some of the highlights from the bill, which he calls a tax "on anyone who drives a car, buys an American-made product or flips on a light switch."

The bill doles out almost a trillion dollars worth of grants (aka "bribes") with the government acting as middleman between citizens and businesses. Here are just a few examples:

• On page 45: All of California's housing standards must be imposed on every American community

• On page 92: Make sure buildings have a place to plug-in an electric-hybrid vehicle

• On page 112: Additional credit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac housing goals for energy-efficient and location efficient mortgages

There's even establishment of something called "green banking" centers. What's that? Good question — wish I could tell you.

We're also going to require that every car sold in America has an engine capable of operating on alternative fuel — which shouldn't be a problem given that we now own GM (though it may very well be a problem for GM's bottom line).

If all these additions snuck in under cover of darkness weren't bad enough, here are two more inconveniently overlooked fun-facts:

First, a 98-page EPA study on climate change, which shows global temperatures will decline until 2030, has been suppressed. By the way, the White House came out Monday and said it wasn't suppressed. Of course, that's just like how Ben Bernanke never threatened the Bank of America into buying Merrill Lynch; how Chrysler's bondholders really wanted to take that deal with Fiat, and, of course, Rick Wagoner really wanted to step down from GM.

And second, we could have learned our lesson by looking at the countries we're trying to emulate.

Take Germany, which most would say has been very successful when it comes to cap-and-trade. Germany has been able to cut emissions by 18.4 percent below 1990 levels, meeting the benchmark used by the Kyoto Protocol and in Europe. Except, The Washington Post says that half of their decrease was due to sagging industrial output in the former East Germany after reunification. The downside: German homeowners pay 25 percent more for electricity than they did before, even as their utility companies earn record profits.

When your personal liberty and our sovereignty are being stolen out from under our noses, it pays for everyone to be extra-vigilant.

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Who stands to benefit from cap and trade? Why do we need to do it now? What does a "green banking center" have to do with cooling the Earth?

And, most importantly, is there still a chance to stop this insanity in the Senate or will our politicians there simply wait for the next celebrity death before once again convening in the middle of the night to sell America out to highest bidder.

— Watch "Glenn Beck" weekdays at 5 p.m. ET on FOX News Channel