MARCH 6, 2009
This is a scam or scams it is a shakedown of
shakedowns where for electricity, heating oil, natural gas, coal and gasoline are
going to be enormously taxed by the federal government. Cap and trade or a carbon tax is where energy
producing companies supposedly pay fees that will be used to fix high pollution
sources here and around the world.
The revelation that
this will go into the black hole of the federal government’s coffers has sent
shockwaves through corporate groups that were for image appearances in full
support of cap and trade now are alarmed at what their environmental window
dressing has turned into permanently raising energy costs to them and to you. Right now manufactures of Gasoline make .07
cents a gallon and the Federal government makes a whopping .42 cents a gallon.
Cap and trade will not replace that tax but add a second tax that is targeted
to be an additional 1.00 to 1.50 a gallon.
The housing bubble was
very bad, but when oil went up to $ 150.00 a barrel this broke the world wide
economy. And here we are now in deep recession bordering on a depression. The
cap and trade system that was rejected by the EU, would in effect give the US
$150.00 a barrel oil from now on, intentionally driving business and homeowners
into financial ruin so that once again the federal government can step in as
these peoples pretended savior and give them drips and drabs of money to
ensnare them in a welfare state which would be their only means of survival.
As bad as things are
now with $40.00 a barrel oil, if oil in the US alone were to be artificially
driven up by cap and trade to $100.00 or $150.00 a barrel the shrinkage of the US
economy in jobs and spending would hurl this nation in the deepest depression
one could ever envision. The intent of this piece of legislation along with a
combination of others is break this nation economically, and to cause its
people to demand socialism to save them. – “This eerily sounds like “He shall take them
with his flatteries, and shall cause all men to buy and sell with his mark.”
All that we are
looking at would not be possible at all had Christians, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists,
Pentecostals and Charismatics not voted in great numbers for liberal Democrats
in the house, the senate, and the current liberal president effectually
removing all checks and balances designed by the framers of the constitution to
prevent such a thing as this from happening.
All eyes should be on
the mid-term elections that will begin at the end of this year as candidates
announce that they will run. It behooves every believer and every citizen of
the country to restore the constitutional checks and balances and hearings and
debates over all legislation. Vote in
the primaries and support the most conservative candidates that will fearlessly
seek to cut taxes and cut runaway federal spending.
Jim Rogers is not happy with the Obama administration. Ever since the White
House unveiled its costly climate program, the CEO of Duke Energy has been
arguing the proposals amount to nothing more than a tax. Indeed.
Mr. Rogers belongs to the U.S.
Climate Action Partnership, about 30 companies that decided they were going to
dance with the
Duke sat, yet it and its compatriots are still shaping up to be
"People are learning,"
says William Kovacs, vice president of environment, technology and regulatory
affairs at the
Truth is, any cap-and-trade system is a tax, even if Mr. Obama's plan has
only started to force business proponents to admit it. The government sets a
cap on how much greenhouse gas can be emitted annually. Companies buy and sell
permits that allow them to emit. Customers bear the price of those permits.
But the political question was always how that first batch of permits would
end up with companies. Corporate support rested on the belief they'd be
"allocated," for free. This would allow them to delay the day when
they'd have to pass costs on to consumers, and ignore, for now, the
"tax" question.
It didn't take long for the pols to figure out they could auction off permits and spend the loot. President Obama's
auction bonanza would earn the feds $650 billion in 10 years, according to the
administration's budget estimate -- and that's a low, low, low estimate.
Thus Mr. Rogers's lament. No one can now pretend that this
isn't going to cost, and Duke is going to be tagged as tax collector via higher
electricity bills. If the customer outrage won't be enough, some utilities will
also be forced into fights with state regulators, who have to approve the
rate-hike requests.
Congress isn't sympathetic. Most Democrats want the money to spend, while
many Republicans have written off companies asking for government freebies. "What you saw when [the Climate Action Partnership] was draping
itself in the name of saving mankind, what they were really doing was trying to
create the largest earmark in modern history," says Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob
Corker of the "allocation" system.
Mr. Corker has been having fun exposing the self-dealing in recent climate
bills. Companies aside, he blew an early whistle on Congress's ambitions to use
an auction system to enrich itself. During last year's
debate on Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D., Calif.) climate bill, he offered an
amendment to require rebates of all auction funds to American families. It
helped kill the bill, as did a growing awareness among
Mr. Obama is promising to return auction money to Americans, via a tax cut
he proposed on the campaign trail. Mr. Corker calls this a "sleight of
hand," since people were counting on a tax cut in any event. Nobody told
them they'd have to fund it with higher energy costs. It's also a wealth transfer
-- electricity users in coal-heavy
All this foreshadows the political battles to come. With the business
community moving more uniformly against the bill, the administration will be
looking to cut a deal. One way to buy support is to offer a certain percentage
of the permits for free. Next comes the fight over how
much money the government gets to keep versus how much goes to states or
individuals. Expect a lot of political courting of
Business leaders might do better to use this as an opportunity to kill the
beast. They might get some credit for protecting their customers from what they
are now, finally, admitting is a giant tax -- in the middle of a recession.