By Myron Ebell, via Globalwarming.org
The chance that the Senate will pass a comprehensive energy-rationing (a k a climate) bill this year remains close to zero. BP’s big oil spill in the Gulf changes very little.
The global warming movement peaked last June 26 when the House passed the Waxman-Markey bill. When members went home for the Fourth of July, many who voted for it discovered that their constituents were angry and mobilized.
Seeing the public reaction, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) dropped plans to move a cap-and-trade bill before the August recess and turned to health care reform. It’s been all downhill since then.
The Kerry-Boxer bill, which is very similar to Waxman-Markey, passed the Environment and Public Works Committee last fall, but it was clear that it couldn’t get 51 votes, let alone 60, on the floor. That’s when Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) began working on a “middle-of-the-road” package with Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.).
Even if he does finally release a draft of the measure this week, it’s still not going anywhere. Whether Graham is on board doesn’t matter because he doesn’t bring any other Republicans with him.
Kerry’s draft has restricted cap-and trade to electric utilities only. And he’s stopped calling it cap-and-trade because the American people have figured out that it is an indirect tax on them. Now it’s “pollution reduction and investment.” Similarly, a gasoline tax has been renamed “linked fee.” Call it whatever you want, it’s still a tax that consumers will have to pay. Adding some offshore oil or nuclear incentives or clean coal research can’t hide the fact that prices will go up when energy is rationed.
What’s become increasingly apparent is that this legislation no longer has much to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a monstrous collection of payoffs to big business special interests, ranging from Goldman Sachs to Duke Energy to General Electric.
(This piece by Mr. Ebell originally appeared on the New York Times’s Room for Debate web site as part of a collection of responses to the bill)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
CO2 is pollution? How did that happen. Did plants get a vote?
Obama-Speak, the fusion of sophistry and Newspeak.
Apparently it’s too late for the seals….
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/100511/canada/canada_hunting_animal_eu
This politico-speak is just like gang language. You need an ever changing dictionary to keep up with it. And might I add, the similarities between political behavior and gang behavior that go beyond that are too close for comfort, whether your wear a red bandanna or a blue one (see what I mean?).
Watered down versions of group sponsored gang…I mean group sponsored policies often stink more than the original versions.
I’m to the point where I hope no one gets along in government anymore so no agreements can be made about ANYTHING!
Joe Romm is all we need up on the BP hearings today. I see the offshore fire and leak are an awesome push to expand Canadian oil sands production. 2 weeks ago the coal mine tragedy. That is followed by one in Russia but they do not cover it since Russians are already communists and don’t need to become communists. The surface mining for coal is now being boosted.
The energy tax, control and manipulation bills will be great tools to prevent re election for the koolaid drinkers.
Let’s hope that Myron Ebell is correct. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to prepare yourselves (ourselves) to hammer our senators with calls, emails etc. in opposition to this bill. I worry that the clowns in DC are so hot to pass something that they’ll pass anything just to satisfy their ruinous agenda.
Just as Bennet from Utah crashed and burned before even getting to the primaries (he was a 3-term sitting senator!), the voters will turn out most Democrats and a number of Republicans this election cycle. The people are tired of being lied to, taxed to death, and having stupidity and socialism shoved down their throats. I predict this will be the biggest election tidal wave in a century and so much garbage that has passed as politics will be history. The proper words to describe these political scoundrels wouldn’t pass this site’s moderators so I won’t bother typing an accurate description.
Call Kerry-Boxer the Dark Ages Tax, for that will be the net effect.
Same thing will happen here that happened in Europe in the Little Ice Age: The countryside was stripped of anything that could be found to eat and burn. The economy of the US will likewise crash & burn.
What most people don’t realize is that John Q. Public is now fully awake and has the eyes of a hawk, when it comes to environmental taxation. It took a little time for John to understand what was being proposed. Let’s face it, until Obama was elected environmental taxation was going nowhere – i.e. thank you President Bush. That’s why the IPCC and Al Gore could pull the wool over everyones’eyes with the “save our mother” rhetoric/routine. No one was really paying attention because it was all nothing but tub thumping.
Then President Obama was elected and the Greens had another shot at it. But that’s now over. America’s populist President now knows what Mr. John Q. Public thinks about environmental taxation.
John is now fully awake and he is pissed at the weak science and money grab that environmentalism has always been about. He is angry that he was manipulated by people with an agenda and weak science. Angry that people with nothign but self-interest have been manipulating him with their fear-tactics.
Climategate was the turning point. It’s over. Polls across the western world show support for environmental taxation as sinking like a stone. It was a money grab, a political opportunity, and a scam.
Mr. Public has let his representatives know what he thinks of environmental taxation: pass that legislation and I will vote you out of office. It’s over.
There won’t be any environmental legislation of any consequence. The Mr. Public
“It’s a monstrous collection of payoffs to big business special interests, ranging from Goldman Sachs to Duke Energy to General Electric.”
No kidding! And whetever the equivalent is in Australia. KRudd747, and your wealthy wife who has benefited from Howards’ and your gubmint “policies” watch out at the polls!
Mind you, come election night here i Aus, there will be a rash of AFL/RFL re-runs to misdirect the real issues. Stay of the turps Aus, let’s sort out this mess KRudd747 has created!
PS. I get to *register* to vote this year. WOW! A mear migrant!
Yes, we must call our representatives, to let them know we object to bills that are driven by special interest groups. Vote the insanity out of office. Get Obama and Chu some medication for their delusional behavior.
Oh dear, typos and spelling errors…oh well it is 3am and I have had a busy few weeks. Chow!
What’s become increasingly apparent is that this legislation no longer has much to do with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a monstrous collection of payoffs to big business special interests, ranging from Goldman Sachs to Duke Energy to General Electric.
Oh… imagine that! Let’s subtitle this thread: “Myron Gets a Clue!”
I mean there werent ANY hints of this when AlGor said he ‘Put his money where his mouth is.” Who knew it was really the other way around!
NO hint when GE put out a PR release that they were fine with eating the ObamaCare writeoff instead of declaring it like Caterpillar, Verizon and John Deere.
Nope.. it’s all a big surprise; sorta like the cost of bread going up because of Corn Ethanol.. I mean Bread is WHEAT!!!! And what’s with this rise in beef and pork prices?
And now I get stuck with higher utility bills for the abortion of a wind farm off the cape. OK, first I am financially independent since through luck or hard work I made enough to support myself and have some left over when all is said and done. That implies a fairly simple life style. I even have 10 KW of solar panels, etc. as a hobby. So I really do not buy much off the utility. But the single mom or single dad working the low level job is not going to be so fortunate. Also when the Bush tax cuts expire, a lot of these guys at the bottom will find out the raw truth. The Bush tax cuts took a lot of the lowest earning Americans off the income tax rolls. When they expire, “this tax break for the rich” is going to hit the low end guys with income taxes that they currently do not pay. I would urge people to put Lurch on a barge and take him out to sea and sink it, but that would be pollution. Just vote the clown out the next time.
Goldman Sachs, Duke Energy, and General Electric support cap and trade? We all know what selfless humanitarians these are. This must be a great thing for us taxpayers.
What does “linked free” mean?
Crap and Trade.
A brother of a workmate of mine here in Australia has, apparently, been hired as a “carbon trader”. Not sure how that career path will pan out for him. Seems dim prospects, maybe he should light a candle.
Well don’t count your chickens just yet. Obampelosi have to get this massive tax passed to pay for their “free” medicare for all; and don’t forget; for everybody in the United Nations as well. Obama has to get “free” handouts to the descendants of his Mau mau terrorist ancestors in Kenya; to compensate them for having to hack all the farmers up, so they could destroy all their farms back in the 40/50s.
One way or another, that bunch of Saul Alinski radicals plans to transform America into something that can never be changed back to anything like the founders contemplated; and cap and tax is an essential part of achieving that goal.
And total idiots like Joe Lieberman are going to help them do it. Hey Joe; do the words “Never Again” mean anything to you; and you are going to hold the shower curtain for them.
I’m not really equipped to be of much help in the politics of all of this; but I at least can try to help the public see that the Climatologers have been feeding them a lot of statistical hogwash disguised as science. In the end; my only interest is in seeing that they get the science correct; and they aren’t even close to that yet; they’re not even close to having it slightly wrong.
It appears that someone I never heard of before has just received a Pulitzer Prize for his ‘outstanding’ work demeaning the Climategate scandal with ridicule and satire.
Is the Caption for that Cartoon: Obama’s Economic Policy in action?
Pamela Gray says: “…..I’m to the point where I hope no one gets along in government anymore so no agreements can be made about ANYTHING!”
I thought the quote was “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” Gideon J. Tucker 1866
Either way I certainly agree. When the number of people “working” as bureaucrats represent 20% of those employed as it is today in the USA, a country is heading for real trouble.
“With each alternating shift of party, the merit system was thereby extended, ratcheting the number of government officials upward, in order to find room for deserving party workers.”
“If the watchword of the market economy is profit, the watchword of bureaucracy is growth… The major group the bureaucrats benefit is, of course, themselves. Their entire income is extracted at the expense of taxpayers. The existence of government bureaucracy, Calhoun pointed out, creates two great conflicting classes in society: the net taxpayers, and the net tax-consumers. The greater the scope of taxes and of government, then, the greater the inevitable class conflict created in society….” Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States by Murray N. Rothbard http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard123.html
Just think with the new Health Care Law we now have an entire “new” bureaucracy that can be used to pay off party “debts” and a whole new layer of salaries taxpayers will now have to pay.
Goldman Sachs donated almost a million dollars to Obama in ’08:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
There’s also a few ex-Goldman Sachs executives in Gore’s Green investment firm and both this firm and Goldman Sachs owns a stake in the Chicago Climate Exchange of which Maurice Strong is affiliated with.
pettyfog says:
May 11, 2010 at 10:11 am
“….Nope.. it’s all a big surprise; sorta like the cost of bread going up because of Corn Ethanol.. I mean Bread is WHEAT!!!! And what’s with this rise in beef and pork prices?”
__________________________________________________________________________
The cost of my HAY (dried grass) doubled and so did the price of feed even though it is made from what is left over after they make grain ethanol. Remember the cost of diesel fuel doubled a couple of years ago and so did crude oil. That means the cost of fertilizer doubled and the cost to transport food doubled. The only thing that DID NOT double was the price paid to the farmer for his animals, that went DOWN GRRrrrr.
What are you Americans complaining about?
At least you are miles away from the measures ALREADY implemented in politically-correct Norway:
Fact: Norway has 100% CO2-free-produced electricity, the best in the world.
As a reward, we pay 50% carbon TAX upon it. Approx. 1.25 billion US$ of a total of 3.75 billion paid for energy bills for the whole nation last year.
Our politicians have stated that we SHALL have the world’s HIGHEST taxes against POLLUTION. (You wish to have references, just ask – I recently wrote a leading article about this in a Norwegian daily newspaper.)
Obama and company can still obtain shiploads of money – they look to the Scandinavian social democrat states for inspiration.
What are you complaining about? Please, praise yourself happy that you have people in government that can protest, that you have attorneys that can investigate.
We haven’t. and we are screwed.
Gail Combs says:
May 11, 2010 at 11:08 am
That scheme ends abruptly in bankruptcy. Just wait and see. But, as always, YOU will be the one “to pay for the lunch” other people ate.
It’s getting hard to keep up with all the tax’em to death plans. The WHO (not the rock group ) and UN also want to tax everything in sight – http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/10/world-health-organization-moving-ahead-billion-dollar-internet-tax/ . In addition to local and state govt’s going after what ever they can get also. What we really need are TACKS, to nail their butts to the wall.