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Even as the health-care fight controls the titles , another Washington fight is heating up over climate and energy . In late June, the House of Agents passed a trademark bill putting caps on the emanations that cause universal warming, and the Senate is expected to take up the measure in late September or October—if it first manages to deal with health care. In anticipation, opponents like the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have mounted an expensive campaign of ads and rallies to try to win over key Senators.

The lineup of powerful adversary —along with the partisan divide that has developed over health care—has fueled speculation that the climate legislation is dying. The opponents “clearly have the jump on us,” acknowledges Betsy Moler, lobbyist for Chicago-based utility Exelon (EXC), a strong supporter of the bill. But proponents are plotting a strong counterattack , and they believe they have at least a fighting possibility of succeeding, in part because regulators are poised to act if Congress doesn’t. “There is reason for guarded optimism,” says Steven Corneli, junior vice-president of market and climate policy at NRG Energy (NRG), a Princeton-based utility pushing hard for carbon caps.

Exelon and NRG are among the leaders of a league of companies gearing up to get out the report that a big chunk of corporate America, from Alcoa and GE to the utility industry, sure that caps on carbon emanations and policies to encourage cleaner energy are crucial. They are planning op-ed articles, media campaigns, and a procession of CEOs, such as Exelon’s John W. Rowe, a Republican, to appeal their case in the Senate.

Meanwhile, environmental gatherings have been running ads praising Representatives who voted for the House bill as idols , going door to door and calling amount of people in key states, and organizing a journey through the heartland, featuring steelworkers-turned-windmill makers and other clean power workers.

On Sept. 8, supporters stepped up their attempt . A group of 64 environmental organizations, labor unions , business commands , activists, sportsmen, and religious organizations launched a coordinated multimillion dollar campaign, dubbed Clean Energy Works, to push for legislation . “All of us are coming together and pooling our resources ,” explains Maggie L. Fox, chief executive officer for the Alliance for Climate Protection , a group founded by Al Gore. The members include American Hunters & Shooters, Business Forward, Catholics United, the Natural Resources Defense Council, VoteVets, and the United Steelworkers.

Legislation Hinges on Swing Votes

The struggle will be fought with ads, gatherings , and rings all across the country. But ultimately the fight is “really about the hearts and minds of about 20 people,” explains Exelon’s Moler—the swing votes in the Senate. On the list: More than a dozen moderate Democrats, such as Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad in North Dakota, and Mark Warner and Jim Webb in Virginia, as well as a handful of Republicans—Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe in Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and John McCain of Arizona.

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FOR years now, many businesses and individuals in the United States have been relying on the power of government, rather than competition in the marketplace, to increase their wealth . This is politicization of the economy. It made the financial crisis much worse, and the trend is accelerating.

Well before the financial crisis erupted policy makers treated home masters as a protected political class and gave mortgage-backed securities privileged regulatory steep . Furthermore , they allowed and encouraged high leverage and the expectation of bailouts for lenders , which had been practiced numerous times, including the precedent of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. Without these mistakes , the economy would not have been so invested in leverage and real estate and the financial turning point would have been much milder.

But we are now injecting politics ever more deeply into the American economy, whether it be in finance or in spheres like health care. Not only have we failed to learn from our faults , but also we’re repeating them on an ever-larger scale.

Lately the surviving major banks have reported lively profits, yet in large part this images astute politicking and lobbying rather than commercial skill. Much of the emulation was cleaned out by bank failures and merger , so giants like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan had an easier time getting back to profits . The Federal Reserve has been lending to banks at near-zero interest rates while paying higher interest on the reserves the banks hold at the Fed. “Too big to fail” policies mean that the large banks can raise money more cheaply because everyone knows they are safe counterparties.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the birth of a military-industrial complex . Today we have a financial-regulatory aggregate , and it has meant a merger of power and privilege. We’ve created a class of politically defended “too big to fail” establishments , and the current proposals for ruling reform further secure this notion. Even more worrying, with so many definite and implicit financial guarantees , we are courting a bigger financial crisis the next time something chief goes wrong.

We should stop using political attractions as a means of managing an economic sphere . Unfortunately, though, recent experience with health care reform shows we are moving in the opposite direction and not heeding the main lessons of the financial crisis. Finance and health care are two separate reports , of course, but in both cases we’re making the general mistake of digging in permanent political protections for special interest groups.

If these initial deals are falling apart, it is only because reform met with unexpected resistance . Even after Mr. Obama’s speech Wednesday night, we’re still at the point where the medical sphere is enshrined as “too big to take a pay cut,” which is not so far transmitted from the banking motto of “too big to fail.” In finance and health care, a common political dynamic has created similar trends, namely, out-of-control costs , weak accountability, and the use of immediate revenue patches to postpone dealing with fundamental tasks .

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In 1990, in a literary speech at the Comdex computer meeting , Microsoft’s (MSFT) then-chief executive, Bill Gates, timbered his bona fides as a tech spectral when he declared the PC industry would produce advances within a few years that would put information at people’s fingertips. To get there, Gates said, the world needed three things: a more “personal” private computer, more powerful communications networks, and easy hard- to-to reach a broad range of information. Sometimes visionaries are right on the vision but off on the timing.

Only now is Gates’ grand vision finally becoming a reality for businesses. While items of what he had in mind have been available for years, they typically were expensive and difficult to set up and use. Now that more private PC is here in the shape of smart phones and mini-laptops, and broadband wireless networks make it possible for people to be connected almost anytime and anywhere. At the same time, we’re seeing the increase of cloud computing, the vast array of interconnected machines managing the data and software that used to run on PCs. This mixture of mobile and cloud technologies is shaping up to be one of most essential advances in the computing universe in decades. “The big vision: We’re finally getting there,” says Donagh Herlihy, chief information officer of Avon Products (AVP). “Today, wherever you are, you can connect to all the information you need.”

A BIG FOOTPRINT AT AVON

Avon is embarking on a bulky , multiyear repair of the way it manages its nearly 6 million sales agents around the world. In the past, “sales leaders,” who help rule reps but are not employees of the firm , mainly checked in with the salespeople through face-to-face meetings and phone talking . But next month, Avon will begin to equip 150,000 sales leaders with a cloud-based computing system accessible via smart phones and PCs. The technology will keep them much more up-to-date on the sales of each reputation , and it will alert them when reps haven’t placed orders recently or when they have rewards overdue to the firm . The idea is to increase the sales and efficiency of Avon’s distribution system.

Avon’s tactics shows how the interrelation between individuals and their computers is undergoing a radical change. Up till now, people have used a range of computing devices in their professional lives, including desktops, laptops, handhelds, and smart phones. Each methods was essentially an island of capacities —applications, communications, and content. Cloud computing methods that information is not stranded on individual machines; it is combined into one digital “cloud” available at the touch of a finger from many different devices. “We’re shifting to more of a people- and information-centric world,” says Paul Maritz, CEO of software maker VMware (VMW).

For the $3.4 trillion global tech industry , this shift offers a path out of the economic doldrums. In fact, it may be the largest rise opportunity since the Internet boom. While market researcher Gartner (IT) expects the global tech market to huddle by 3.8% this year, forecasters have high hopes for portables , wireless networks, and cloud computing over the next few years. Gartner predicts the market for cloud products and services will vault from $46.4 billion last year to $150.1 billion in 2013.

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