Cap-and-Trade treason

Posted By Alan Caruba On April 27, 2010 (6:30 am) In Voices and Choices

If you thought that the way the Obama administration and its cohort of Democrats in Congress rammed through the takeover of the nation’s healthcare system was appalling, prepare to watch the same process applied to Cap-and-Trade. Your government no longer represents you, the voter, the citizen.
 
Cap-and-Trade (H.R. 2454) allegedly is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is no scientific justification for this because there is no “global warming” that requires it, nor is manmade, anthropogenic, generation of carbon dioxide (CO2) a threat to the planet. Just the opposite, everything dies without it; all vegetation and all animal life. Life on Earth would thrive if there was even more CO2.
 
To what end would Congress impose such emission limits when they do not exist throughout China, India, third world “developing” nations, and are being abandoned by European Union nations where the Kyoto Protocol limits have harmed their economies?
 
Global warming has been exposed as a massive hoax and fraud. Why would the United States Senate proceed to enact a bill based on it? In essence, it will make some corporations, utilities, and people very rich and impoverish the rest of us.
 
Having passed the House, the Senate will be handed a huge bill that, like healthcare, few will have read before they vote. It will impose the largest tax the nation has ever seen.
 
The act will bless the various “exchanges” created for the sale and trade of “carbon credits” that have no value whatever. It creates a bubble comparable to the sub-prime mortgage debacle that triggered the 2008 financial crisis and resulting recession.
 
The amount of CO2 will not be reduced because the Earth produces 97% of all the CO2 in the atmosphere. Even then, that amount is the smallest part of the atmosphere that consists of more than 95 percent water vapor!
 
Cap-and-Trade is an act of betrayal because it will destroy the U.S. economy, destroy jobs, and further impoverish Americans in a variety of ways. 
 
The Cap-and-Trade Act that has already passed the House will be put in play by Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joseph Lieberman. It was created in the House by Rep. Henry Waxman and Rep. Edward Markey. They know the bill will set in motion the destruction of the nation whose life’s blood is affordable and abundant energy use.
 
Just as the Obama administration moved swiftly to acquire ownership of General Motors and Chrysler, to take over insurance giant AIG, control one sixth of the nation’s economy through the healthcare act, and is now seeking to expand the regulation of Wall Street, Cap-and-Trade will ensure the destruction of the nation as manufacturing flees to other parts of the world.
 
Beginning one year after enactment, homeowners will not be able to sell their homes without complying with onerous and unnecessary energy and water “efficiency” standards. These standards, moreover, will increase annually. Within five years, 90 percent of the residential market will be controlled by the government.
 
On April 19, the Environmental Protection Agency announced new guidelines for “Energy Star” homes requiring them to increase “efficiency” by 20 percent more than those built to the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code. Home ownership, already the largest expense for Americans, will be further increased by required upgrades.
 
According to the Congressional Budget Office, in a few years the average cost of energy use to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one will be exempt from energy taxes and you can expect the cost of a gallon of gasoline to rise beyond $4 to European levels.
 
In Europe, industrial carbon quotas have enriched the continent’s biggest energy users such as steel and cement makers. Their surplus carbon permits, often provided for free, are estimated to be worth more than $4 billion at current market rates by 2012. There is no scientific justification for them.
 
It will be the U.S. government that will determine who receives the initial free “carbon credits”, thus giving corporations that have supported Cap-and-Trade a huge advantage over those who do not. Not only will the government rake in billions from the taxes to be imposed, but utilities will raise their prices and pass it along to consumers. 
 
There is no need whatever to reduce use of so-called “fossil fuels.” There is no need for the “efficiency” and “conservation” measures that will be imposed. If the government would permit access to the nation’s vast reserves of coal, oil and natural gas, none of this would be needed, but it will not.
 
The nation is under attack from within by a consortium of fanatical environmentalists and rent-seeking corporations and utilities seeking to profit from these government mandates and limits.
 
It is the perfect storm. It is treason.
 
Editor’s Note:  Politico.com: (4/24/10) The planned Monday unveiling of a bipartisan climate bill was postponed after one of its three authors, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said that he couldn’t support the legislation if Democrats moved it to the backburner to focus first on immigration reform. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) announced the postponement Saturday evening, saying that “external issues have arisen that force us to postpone only temporarily.”

 

Taxing people won’t make bank bailouts right

Read the Small Government Times article by Jeffrey A. Miron here.

 

Ron Paul: Government is too big to succeed

Ron Paul: Government is too big to succeed
Posted By Ron Paul On January 20, 2010 (7:55 am) In Featured, Voices and Choices

Last week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission kicked off their first round of hearings on the causes of the economic meltdown on Wall Street. The commission is being compared to the the Pecora Commission launched in 1932 to investigate the causes of the Great Depression. The Pecora commission is beloved by those who believe the solution to every problem is more laws because it was used to justify a number of new laws, including Glass-Steagall.

Of course, none of those laws addressed the real causes of the Great Depression. It was the introduction of unsound monetary policy and central economic planning pursued by the Federal Reserve that really threw everything off balance. The Fed was founded in 1913 to stabilize the economy and prevent a recurrence of the short-lived Panic of 1907, but instead it promptly produced the Great Depression which lasted more than 15 years.

The Pecora Commission was stacked with big government sympathizers who blamed the free market and the gold standard without question, and without any consideration of government interference in the economy. This panel is no different. Never will they contemplate how government steered us into this crisis, and what perverse incentives can be removed or repealed so that the market will function more smoothly. Never will they discuss how investment should come from savings, not debt. Never will it occur to them that fiat money, artificially low interest rates and the whole Federal Reserve System might be unwise and unstable, not to mention unconstitutional. The answer will always be more government regulation and oversight. It is predictable that this government panel will eventually come to the firm conclusion that government needs to be bigger, and that the market is just too free.

How sad is this when exactly the opposite is true?

It is big government that gives out tax breaks to engineer behavior, often creating large pockets of malinvestments. It is government that created the FDIC and the Fed as lender of last resort which all encourages moral hazard. It is big government that gives bureaucrats the ability to bail out cronies with taxpayer dollars while screaming that the economic sky is falling if they don’t. It is big government that every year adds new layers to the already labyrinthine regulatory code that smaller businesses can’t keep up with while simultaneously preventing new businesses from emerging. It is big government that misdirects economic productivity into bankrupt businesses that they consider to be too big to fail.

If this panel was serious about understanding the root of the problem, as they claim to be, they would have people testify who understand the crisis and saw it coming. To my knowledge, none of them have received a phone call. The problem is those people would say too many things the government panel would find inconvenient. They would point fingers at too many of the state’s anointed. They would recommend getting government out of the way of the free market and getting back to simply protecting contracts and punishing fraud. But the biggest fraud is perpetrated by the Federal Reserve. No one on this panel takes that viewpoint seriously. Instead, they will be asking people who are still scratching their heads at how they could have missed the housing bubble what new regulations they can put in place to prevent future bubbles. Thus, I don’t expect much real wisdom to come out of this current investigation.