Soaring
Active Member
- May 30, 2009
- 502
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- 28
- items showing that the 'Cap And Tax" (oops, sorry, it's touted as 'cap and trade') bill, aka, Waxman-Markey, is a giagantic boondoggle. The first link is a summary 'plus' and I put a copy below. The second is the full list. Have your barf bag ready.
Betsy's Page
A Garden of Piggish Delights by Stephen Spruiell & Kevin Williamson on National Review Online
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Just how bad is Waxman Markey?
Let us count the ways. Steven Spruiell and Kevin Williamson have done a masterful job of listing 50 reasons why this is such a god-awful bill. Any one of the reasons should be enough to oppose it. The Republicans can cut an ad a day for a month and a half highlighting all that is awful in this bill and hanging the "yes" votes around the neck of all the Democrats in the House who yielded to Pelosi's pressure to vote for this mess. As they detail, the bill is a sop to special interests but will end up costing the average consumer lots while doing extremely little to lower global warming.
For just a taste of why this bill is ludicrous:
1. The big doozy: Eighty-five percent of the carbon permits will not be sold at auction they will be given away to utility companies, petroleum interests, refineries, and a coterie of politically connected businesses. If youre wondering why Big Business supports cap-and-trade, thats why. Free money for business, but higher energy prices for you.
7. Agribusiness is exempted from cap-and-trade controls, but the farm lobby will be given permits to sell and to profit from anyway. All carrot, no stick precisely what this powerful industry lobby is accustomed to receiving from Washington.
11. The farm lobby will be rewarded for practices that do little or nothing to reduce greenhouse gases. One such practice is no till planting, in which farmers forgo plowing and plant seeds directly into the soil. Two peer-reviewed scientific papers suggest that no-till either does nothing to decrease carbon dioxide or actually increases the level of greenhouse-gas emissions by upping emissions of nitrous oxide a much more powerful greenhouse gas. Now its not clear that no-till will reduce greenhouse gases, but the practice does make weed-control more difficult, meaning that it supports the market for herbicides such as Monsantos RoundUp. Guess whos spending millions lobbying for no-till?
12. Waxman-Markey provides an excuse for trade protectionism. The bill will give the Obama administration broad new powers to enact tariffs on imports from jurisdictions that have not had the poor sense to enact similar legislation, meaning that it invites both politically driven trade protectionism and retaliatory measures from abroad in the service of an empty green dream.
17. The renewable standard excludes sources of power like nuclear and coal gasification, and perhaps thats to be understood. Even though these sources are cleaner than traditional coal-burning plants, they violate a number of green taboos. Whats less understandable is the way qualified hydropower is narrowly defined to exclude hydropower from Canada. Again, the thing to remember is that Congress is less concerned with greening the environment and more concerned with greening the pockets of parochial interests.
For a party that prides itself on not being bound to special interests, this bill is a pork-a-palooza of giveaways to certain special interests. Even if you believe in the logic of the cap and trade principle for lowering carbon emissions, the giveaways were so immense that any sort of benefit is lost. As the WSJ wrote,
Meanwhile, Congress had to bribe every business or interest that could afford a competent lobbyist. Carbon permits are valuable, yet the House says only 28% of the allowances would be auctioned off; the rest would be given away. In March, White House budget director Peter Orszag told Congress that "If you didn't auction the permit, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States."
Naturally, Democrats did exactly that. To avoid windfall profits, they then chose to control prices, asking state regulators to require utilities to use the free permits to insulate ratepayers from price increases. (This also obviates the anticarbon incentives, but never mind.) Auctions would reduce political favoritism and interference, as well as provide revenue to cut taxes to offset higher energy costs. But auctions don't buy votes.
Oh, and you can add in this little gem:
The same amount of gasoline that would have $1 in carbon costs imposed if it were domestic would have 10 cents less added if it were imported, according to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie in Houston. Contrary to President Barack Obamas goal of reducing dependence on overseas energy suppliers, the bill would incent U.S. refiners to import more fuel, said Clayton Mahaffey, an analyst at RedChip Cos. in Maitland, Florida.
Mona Charen points to the irony of the administration that brags about making decisions based on data not ideology to have bought into the hokum in this bill.
Note that nuclear power, the one green source that is empirically proven to provide relatively inexpensive power without producing greenhouse gases, is not even on the presidents agenda. Is this returning science to its rightful place? Heres an irony: If the environmentalists had not so successfully blocked nuclear power after the Three Mile Island accident (which didnt hurt a soul), the U.S. would now be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol targets for CO2 emissions.
Huber also makes the commonsense point that by making carbon more expensive for American consumers we will reduce demand for it and thereby make it even cheaper for Third World nations to buy. Perhaps reflecting this reality, the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that, under Waxman-Markey, emissions of CO2 will not be reduced by the year 2020.
The Waxman-Markey bill will have little to no impact on world production of greenhouse gases, which are supposed to be responsible for global temperature increases that stopped nearly a decade ago. This massive tax increase on energy will not harm the already weakened U.S. economy; it will strengthen it. Got that? Arent you glad we have an empirical president!
Now that the vote has been taken, people can actually start reading this bill. Don't expect criticisms to stop at 50. The Democrats might be hoping that they will be able to smoothe things over with sweet talk about how this is going to help the environment, but in a recessionary economy, voters will be less likely to swallow that bilge and be more interested in what legislation is actually going to accomplish. And the answers for this bill are not pretty.
We live in a society -
"of the Government, by the Government, for the Government".
We are now slaves to A GREEDY government.
Betsy's Page
A Garden of Piggish Delights by Stephen Spruiell & Kevin Williamson on National Review Online
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Just how bad is Waxman Markey?
Let us count the ways. Steven Spruiell and Kevin Williamson have done a masterful job of listing 50 reasons why this is such a god-awful bill. Any one of the reasons should be enough to oppose it. The Republicans can cut an ad a day for a month and a half highlighting all that is awful in this bill and hanging the "yes" votes around the neck of all the Democrats in the House who yielded to Pelosi's pressure to vote for this mess. As they detail, the bill is a sop to special interests but will end up costing the average consumer lots while doing extremely little to lower global warming.
For just a taste of why this bill is ludicrous:
1. The big doozy: Eighty-five percent of the carbon permits will not be sold at auction they will be given away to utility companies, petroleum interests, refineries, and a coterie of politically connected businesses. If youre wondering why Big Business supports cap-and-trade, thats why. Free money for business, but higher energy prices for you.
7. Agribusiness is exempted from cap-and-trade controls, but the farm lobby will be given permits to sell and to profit from anyway. All carrot, no stick precisely what this powerful industry lobby is accustomed to receiving from Washington.
11. The farm lobby will be rewarded for practices that do little or nothing to reduce greenhouse gases. One such practice is no till planting, in which farmers forgo plowing and plant seeds directly into the soil. Two peer-reviewed scientific papers suggest that no-till either does nothing to decrease carbon dioxide or actually increases the level of greenhouse-gas emissions by upping emissions of nitrous oxide a much more powerful greenhouse gas. Now its not clear that no-till will reduce greenhouse gases, but the practice does make weed-control more difficult, meaning that it supports the market for herbicides such as Monsantos RoundUp. Guess whos spending millions lobbying for no-till?
12. Waxman-Markey provides an excuse for trade protectionism. The bill will give the Obama administration broad new powers to enact tariffs on imports from jurisdictions that have not had the poor sense to enact similar legislation, meaning that it invites both politically driven trade protectionism and retaliatory measures from abroad in the service of an empty green dream.
17. The renewable standard excludes sources of power like nuclear and coal gasification, and perhaps thats to be understood. Even though these sources are cleaner than traditional coal-burning plants, they violate a number of green taboos. Whats less understandable is the way qualified hydropower is narrowly defined to exclude hydropower from Canada. Again, the thing to remember is that Congress is less concerned with greening the environment and more concerned with greening the pockets of parochial interests.
For a party that prides itself on not being bound to special interests, this bill is a pork-a-palooza of giveaways to certain special interests. Even if you believe in the logic of the cap and trade principle for lowering carbon emissions, the giveaways were so immense that any sort of benefit is lost. As the WSJ wrote,
Meanwhile, Congress had to bribe every business or interest that could afford a competent lobbyist. Carbon permits are valuable, yet the House says only 28% of the allowances would be auctioned off; the rest would be given away. In March, White House budget director Peter Orszag told Congress that "If you didn't auction the permit, it would represent the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States."
Naturally, Democrats did exactly that. To avoid windfall profits, they then chose to control prices, asking state regulators to require utilities to use the free permits to insulate ratepayers from price increases. (This also obviates the anticarbon incentives, but never mind.) Auctions would reduce political favoritism and interference, as well as provide revenue to cut taxes to offset higher energy costs. But auctions don't buy votes.
Oh, and you can add in this little gem:
The same amount of gasoline that would have $1 in carbon costs imposed if it were domestic would have 10 cents less added if it were imported, according to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie in Houston. Contrary to President Barack Obamas goal of reducing dependence on overseas energy suppliers, the bill would incent U.S. refiners to import more fuel, said Clayton Mahaffey, an analyst at RedChip Cos. in Maitland, Florida.
Mona Charen points to the irony of the administration that brags about making decisions based on data not ideology to have bought into the hokum in this bill.
Note that nuclear power, the one green source that is empirically proven to provide relatively inexpensive power without producing greenhouse gases, is not even on the presidents agenda. Is this returning science to its rightful place? Heres an irony: If the environmentalists had not so successfully blocked nuclear power after the Three Mile Island accident (which didnt hurt a soul), the U.S. would now be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol targets for CO2 emissions.
Huber also makes the commonsense point that by making carbon more expensive for American consumers we will reduce demand for it and thereby make it even cheaper for Third World nations to buy. Perhaps reflecting this reality, the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that, under Waxman-Markey, emissions of CO2 will not be reduced by the year 2020.
The Waxman-Markey bill will have little to no impact on world production of greenhouse gases, which are supposed to be responsible for global temperature increases that stopped nearly a decade ago. This massive tax increase on energy will not harm the already weakened U.S. economy; it will strengthen it. Got that? Arent you glad we have an empirical president!
Now that the vote has been taken, people can actually start reading this bill. Don't expect criticisms to stop at 50. The Democrats might be hoping that they will be able to smoothe things over with sweet talk about how this is going to help the environment, but in a recessionary economy, voters will be less likely to swallow that bilge and be more interested in what legislation is actually going to accomplish. And the answers for this bill are not pretty.
We live in a society -
"of the Government, by the Government, for the Government".
We are now slaves to A GREEDY government.
