About Cap & Trade and Christine O’Donnell

With talk about the next Congress defunding and/or repealing Obama Care, it’s very clear that most of America is not happy with this government seizure of 16% of our national economy.

The only thing that might make Americans madder than they are about the loss of their personal control over health care, is the effective loss of control over our entire economy.   And how might this happen?  In January 2008, then-candidate Barak Obama discussed his cap-and-trade plan with the San Francisco Chronicle:

…Under my plan of cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.

One of Liberal ideology’s most destructive claims is that greenhouse gases, from the use of carbon based energy, are killing us.

To put this into perspective, we need a short history of global warming.  In 1985, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis sponsored a joint meeting between the International Council of Scientific Unions on global warming and the U.N. Environmental Program.

By 1988, the United Nations had formed the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to develop a strategy for addressing climate change.

The first IPCC assessment report in 1990 claimed:

We are certain of the following: there is a natural greenhouse effect …; emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases:  CO?, methane, CFCs and nitrous oxide.

We calculate with confidence that: …CO? has been responsible for over half the enhanced greenhouse effect … .

…[w]e predict … [an] increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3° C per decade … .

Then in 1997, the U.N. propogated the Kyoto Protocol which required “stabilization of greenhouse concentrations … that would prevent dangerous interference with the climate system.”  Of the 183 signatories by 2009, major reductions are required only of the European Union (8%), the United States (7%), Japan (6%) and 0% for Russia.

And “Kyoto provides for a ‘cap and trade’ system which imposes national caps on the emissions” of only certain developed countries.

Now we translate the effect of this on our economy:

… The same week that President Obama promised (again) that “95% of working families” would not see their taxes rise by a “single dime,” his own budget reveals that taxes will rise for 100% of everyone for the sake of global warming.  Ahem.

You don’t even have to burrow into yesterday’s budget fine print to discover the “climate revenues” section, where the White House discloses that it expects $78.7 billion in new tax revenue in 2012 from its cap-and-trade program.  The pot of cash grows to $237 billion through 2014, and at least $646 billion through 2019 … .

…[T]he political class loves a cap-and-trade tax because it gives them new economic and political power.  Congress would create a new property right to expend CO2 setting a price per ton on carbon output, and then Congress would also get to determine the distribution of allowances.  The Administration wants all of them to be auctioned off, which is what creates the giant revenue windfall.  The politicians would then decide how to spend all of that new “climate revenue.”

…By the way, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that cap-and-trade taxes would actually throw off as much as $300 billion every year – not merely $78.7 billion – and in a footnote the Obama budget implicitly acknowledges that its $645.7 billion estimate is a lowball:  “All additional net proceeds will be use to further compensate the public.”  No doubt.

Also:

Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the “making work pay” tax credit that goes to many people who don’t pay income taxes.

Thus, for us it means a cumulative pool of taxes on energy users.  And a large portion of this will be passed out to people who can’t afford the higher energy prices induced by these taxes.

Goodbye jobs, goodbye investment in energy, manufacturing and industrial production that require intense energy inputs.  Everybody’s cost of living goes up.  And the government gets to adjust the price restricted energy use whenever it wants?  Instead of your concerns being just about your health care, you will also face a struggle for food, clothing and shelter!  This artificial energy cost increase cost will pervade the entire economy.  Cap and trade is a euphemism for U.N. originated restrictions on energy use by taxation to artificially increase its price.  It is self-inflicted economic suicide and therefore requires a very sophisticated ideological assertion to justify it.  This is what global warming is all about.  Yet, the basis of the ideology is being destroyed:

…[T]he ultimate inconvenient truth:  The case for global warming is based on junk science.

…[T]housands of e-mails were made public … multiple messages in which many of global warming’s most respected advocates discussed how to suppress data that contradicts their view that the Earth’s atmosphere is being warmed to dangerous levels by the burning of fossil fuels … .  There were also multiple-emails in which they discussed how to prevent studies by global warming critics from being published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and how to avoid answering or at least deflect freedom of information act inquiries about their data and research techniques … .  Jones … asked colleagues to “hide the decline” in recent temperature data.

And we just have this hot of the press:

In the second year of a brutal recession, the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century and millions more are barely avoiding falling below the poverty line, the Census Bureau reported Thursday.

About 44 million Americans – one in seven – lived last year in homes in which the income was below the poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a family of four. That is the largest number of people since the census began tracking poverty 51 years ago.

In the context of all their infuriating information, Americans are strongly opposed to imposing a carbon tax on our economy.  So, it is good news that the Senate has failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol so far.

Here is the some of the voting record of a politician who was recently defeated in a primary election for the Senate:

Michael Castle on Energy and Oil

• Voted YES on enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution. (Jun 2009)
• Voted YES on keeping moratorium on drilling for oil offshore. (Jun 2006)
• Voted NO on authorizing construction of new oil refineries. (Oct 2005)
• Voted NO on passage of the Bush Administration national energy policy. (Jun 2004)
• Voted NO on implementing Bush-Cheney national energy policy. (Nov 2003)
• Voted YES on prohibiting oil drilling & development in ANWR. (Aug 2001)
• Voted YES on starting implementation of Kyoto Protocol. (Jun 2000)
• Sign on to UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Jan 2007)
• Supports immediate reductions in greenhouse gases. (Sep 1998)

Fortunately for the American economy, this person was defeated by Christine O’Donnell.  Great!