cap-and-trade

1 Comment Posted on Democrats, Liberals

wonder which side they are on?

This was on the Investor’s Business Daily editorial page:

Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey.

The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact.

It’s what Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, might call a “man-caused disaster,” a phrase she coined to replace the politically incorrect “terrorist attack.” But no terrorist could ever dream of inflicting as much damage as this bill.

Its centerpiece is a “cap and trade” provision that has been rightfully derided as “cap and tax.” It is in fact a tax on energy everywhere it is consumed on everything it is used to make or provide.

Fair to assume that cap-and-trade doesn’t have the support of these guys.  Even though the intro suffers a bit from some dramatic overstatement, they are right to oppose Waxman-Markey, because this legislation would inflict serious damage on our economy at a time when we can’t take any more financial chaos.   A tax on energy affects everyone, and as IBD points out, this includes that fictitious 95% of Americans who weren’t supposed to see any increased taxes under the Obama administration.   A tax of this kind directly and indirectly raises the price of everything we buy.  It affects farmers and truckers and car companies and soccer moms, and all the rest of our fellow working stiffs.  Eventually all this “hope and change” will end up costing the taxpayers a fortune, and there won’t be much payoff for our involuntary donations.

If you want to know if Waxman-Markey would have any significant impact on climate change relative to its cost, read more here.

Please don’t let this issue fade into the background with all the other distractions on the news right now.  This is important to the country’s future and we need to let our legislators know that we oppose this bill.

Posted on Republicans

free-market myth

John McCain says that his lovely new cap-and-trade proposal is a free market solution. 

Skeptics like Lawrence Kudlow disagree.

He says:

Sen. McCain weighed in with a cap-and-trade program that he alleges will solve our global climate and energy problem. It’s a bad idea. It’s really a cap-and-kill-the-economy plan, as well as an unlimited spend-and-tax-and-regulate plan. It’s a huge government command-and-control operation that would make any old Soviet Gosplan bureaucrat smile.

Ironically, the U.S. has virtually the cleanest air of any country in the world. And market forces over the past thirty years have increased all manner of energy efficiency per unit of GDP by more than 50 percent. In fact, according the editorial page of Investor’s Business Daily, U.S. carbon emissions grew by only 6.6 percent between 1997 and 2004, compared with 18 percent for the world and 21 percent for the nations that signed the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gasses. (Think Europe.)

Guess Kyoto’s not working.  I’m shocked.  The reasons Kudlow mentions for opposing this cap-and-trade deal are the same reasons the Kyoto Protocol was a bad idea. It’s an economy killer, and a promotion of massive new government bureaucracy and more stifling regulation to private enterprise.  This solution to the myth of climate change isn’t the right one.  We will do everything we can to solve the supposed problem except what would actually work to decrease our dependence of foreign oil — drilling and building more refineries.  The answer is obvious, if Republicans would be bold enough to make that case.  But they won’t.  They are too interested in being popular with their fellow Washington insiders than they are in doing the right thing for the American people.