Defeat Cap and Trade? Yes We Can!

Like I was sayin… if you don’t act now, you are gonna be stuck with this thing.  The house passed the Waxman Markey bill that is intended to fight global warming by doubling your electricity bill and forcing you into ity bitty cars.  As bad as this bill is, it is even worse as its purpose is to protect us from the global warming hoax.

Here is a great post that gives information on how you can help stop this bill from passing the senate.  Please take the time to contact your senator and tell them that you are against this bill.

Cap and Tax Bill Nears Vote

Like I was sayin… Hold on you your wallets.  The house is moving toward passing the Waxman Markey bill to combat the global warming hoax.  You can read all about the latest on the bill here.

Some of the more vexing issues are that we are going to have a massive tax increase to fight a make believe crisis.  Energy prices are expected to almost double.  Gas will go up at least 77 cents a gallon according to some estimates.  Waxman just added another 300 pages to the bill prior to the vote and there are placeholders for more legislation.  This means that anybody who votes for it is voting for a bill that is missing language that will be inserted after the bill passes.  I didn’t even know this was legal.

This story has links to a list of congressmen that are on the fence.  You need to call them to put a stop to this.

Global Warming and Truth in Advertising

As congress moves closer to drafting and passing a cap and trade bill, Americans need to understand that they are the victims of a giant hoax.

There is a great post over at the Conservative Patriot HQ discussing this topic.  Our media and government seem to want to ignore that fact that man made global warming claims are dubious at best.  Most of the studies ignore evidence to the contrary or skip the peer review process all together.

Soon, Americans will be burdened with a massive energy tax that will cripple our economy.  The question is, are we going to let this happen?

We are all rich when it comes to Cap and Trade

Like I was sayin… you get what you ask for.

Everybody wants to be kind to the environment, however, some would like all Americans to pay a hidden tax to combat the specter of global warming (or climate change, the new ice age, or whatever bugaboo the climate fear-monger’s PR department is using now).

The president’s current budget depends upon and plans for vast revenues from a cap and trade program.  Some people assume that corporations will just pay these fees without passing on the expense to customers.  This is a very naive way of looking at how businesses work.

Today in the WSJ, there was a great opinion piece that lays out the ramifications for all Americans.

Hit hardest would be the “95% of working families” Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat “unless you use energy.” Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

The bottom 95% of earners will not have their direct taxes raised, but rather the amount that they pay in pass through taxes.  A pass through tax is a tax that a company passes along to it’s customers.  By the way, all taxes levied on businesses are pass through taxes.

Interestingly enough, this “tax” would not be spread evenly across all Americans.  Some will be harder hit than others.

Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.

The fact that individual Americans will be required to pay for this type of program seems to not sink in for many Americans.

Many liberal democrats have lamented the drop in oil prices which were impacting all Americans.  This cap and trade scheme put forth by the administration is an attempt to push energy prices back up.  In another opinion piece in the WSJ, Laura D’Andrea Tyson points out:

 Critics of a cap-and-trade system are correct when they claim it will raise the prices of goods and services whose production and use emit carbon. That’s exactly the point: Higher prices are necessary to encourage energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy, to discourage carbon emissions, and to reduce the societal costs of global warming.

Here again is the specter of global warming being put forth as justification for enacting policies that will be detrimental to all Americans.  The fact that global average temperatures have been dropping for the last 8 to 10 years doesn’t seem to figure into the calculation.

Slowly but surely, Americans will begin to realize the path we are headed down.  I only hope that it won’t be too late to reverse course when they do understand.

Change you can believe in, but not expect.

Like I was sayin… please don’t hold me to my word.

For the last year, the Obama campaign has be working feverishly to make sure that we understand that an Obama administration means that Change is coming, we can now all have Hope, and finally that all our prayers will be answered (at least if you don’t make too much money that is).

Now that the election is only a few days away, the Obama campaign is concerned that Americans will be upset if Obama doesn’t deliver. 

According to a Times of London story by Tim Reid, senior staffers are working on a communication strategy to let America down softly:

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, “so there’s not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair.

The adviser added that Obama was one of the first to realized that expectations may risk being inflated.  It seems that it didn’t dawn on anybody in the campaign that promising to ease everyone’s burdens would risk setting up some expectations.

Recently when asked about his first 100 days, Obama indicated that he would need more time to tackle issues like the war, health care, and global warming:

“The first hundred days is going to be important, but it’s probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference,” he said.

Perhaps now we can expect great change and hope during the administration following Obama’s should he win.

Cleaning the Air by Cleaning Out Your Wallet

(April 11, 2008 ) – Like I was sayin… somebody has to pay for it.  I like to believe that I am at least a little green.  I do my part by recycling, watching water consumption, etc…  I’ll even by an alternative fuel vehicle as soon as they are comparable with gasoline powered vehicles in both performance and price.

Most Americans support legislation to help the environment, but many don’t understand the impact to them personally.

There is been a lot of press recently about the “America’s Climate Security Act of 2007″ (S. 2101)introduced by Lieberman (I-CT) and Warner (R-VA).  The bill sounds sensible enough.  It seeks to combat global warming (more on that later) by instituting a cap and trade system.  Under a cap and trade system, caps for the maximum amount of CO2 are set.  Companies producing less than a certain amount can sell their excess to companies producing over the cap.  There are also fines for producing over the cap or the cap plus what you have purchased.  The idea is that it incents companies to reduce emissions.

One of the drawbacks that most people don’t understand is that companies that pay extra fees, fines, or taxes just don’t turn on their printing presses to pay the extra money, they pass the cost on to the consumer.  One of the impacts of the bill will be to raise the cost of energy which will be paid directly or indirectly by the American people.

A recent article by Allison Kasic highlights some of the impacts to the American economy:

• Gross Domestic Product would be reduced by $151 billion to $210 billion by 2020 and between $631 billion to $669 billion per year in 2030.
• Americans would lose 1.2 million to 1.8 million jobs in 2020 and 3 million to 4 million jobs in 2030.
• Household income would be reduced by $739 to $2,927 per year in 2020 and $4,022 to $6,752 per year in 2030.
• Electricity prices would increase by 28% to 33% by 2020 and 101% to 129% by 2030, and gasoline prices would increase  20% to 69% by 2020 and 77% to 145% by 2030.

The household impact is from the direct cost of energy rising.  Do American’s really support paying an extra $700 to $3000 a year to support this bill?  How many people actually know that what this bill means to them? 

Another cost will be passed on the the American tax payer.  The bill itself is carving out over $845 billion to help low income Americans pay energy bills and to subsidize alternative energy.

Some argue that the cost is worth it to stop global warming.  However, in order to accept that you first have to accept that man is causing global warming.  The fact that humans are responsible for only 3% of the the total CO2 emissions passes right by folks and you won’t see the global warming alarmists pointing it out anytime soon either.  The other 97% comes from nature.  People also ignore the fact that the earth has been cooling for the last 10 years.

There is no doubt that we should act in a responsible way where the environment is concerned.  However, knee-jerk political gestures that destroy the American economy are no way to go about it.

50 cent a Gallon Gas Tax proposed by Mich. Democrat

(March 20, 2008 ) – Like I was sayin…. you can’t have it both ways.  Democrat Congressman John Dingell wants you to pay MORE at the pump.

With gas prices escalating and the American consumer wondering how to make ends meet, John Dingell, a Mich. Democrat, wants to raise gas taxes by 50 cents a gallon.  The only good news is that he wants to wait until after the 2008 elections to propose the increase.  You see, it is more important to get his party elected that it is to do what he thinks is right.  If he is so sure this is the right thing to do, why is he waiting until after the 2008 elections to push this?

His argument is so full of holes, it is hard to understand why he would propose such a thing.

Here is a link to an article that lays it out.

Firstly, he wants to raise the gas tax as a cure for the “sick” planet.  There is so much information contrary to the global warming hoax, this is almost laughable.  Don’t get me wrong, we need to conserve and find ways to end our oil dependence, but taxing us into oblivion is not the answer.  The fact that the planet has been cooling for the last 10 years doesn’t seem to matter. 

Secondly, he wants to raise taxes to lower the consumption of gas.  The idea being, the more you tax something, the less of it you get.  This runs contrary to the current dem push to raise taxes to fix the economy.  If taxing gas leads to less gas consumption doesn’t taxing corporations and investors lead to less growth and less investment? 

Just remember this November when you go to the polls, you can vote for the party that wants to take more and more of your money away or the party that believes taking less from you leads to a better America.