In his press conference today, President Obama talked about the cap-and-trade energy tax that the Democrats are trying to ram through Congress. Obama's nose grew a couple of inches as he uttered this howler:
Quote:
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At a time of great fiscal challenges, this legislation is paid for by the polluters who currently emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air we breathe.
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The idea that the energy tax will come to rest with "polluters"--that is to say, power companies, manufacturers, agribusinesses, and so on--is absurd. The cost will be passed on to consumers, as Obama himself admitted during a moment of candor during the campaign, when he said that electricity costs would "skyrocket" under his cap-and-trade proposal.
Obama isn't dumb enough to believe that the many billions of dollars in costs that his proposal will impose on energy companies, etc., will somehow disappear thereafter. But he thinks you are.
Meanwhile, others are putting out information, rather than disinformation, on the disaster that is Waxman-Markey. Like the National Mining Association, which produced this map showing, state by state, how many millions of dollars in costs will be imposed on each state annually under the bill's allowance allocation formula.
Here in Minnesota, we can look forward to an additional $100 million+ in costs to be paid for annually by taxpayers and energy consumers. Go here to learn much more.
http://www.nma.org/pdf/061909_2454_map.pdf
Waxman-Markey would be a very stupid bill even if it were true that 1) the earth is getting warmer, 2) human activity is mostly responsible for climate changes, and 3) a warmer earth would be a bad thing. Given that all three of these premises are false--we cannot, in fact, control the weather--Waxman-Markey is a suicidal monument to human folly.
SCOTT adds: And enacting Obamacare is mandatory in order to save money.
As I stated here, the Obama administratoin's operative political theory is that the American people are incredibly dumb.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../06/023792.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../06/023883.php
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Conn Carroll does the math:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/06/22/...cap-and-trade/
Most problematic is their complete omission of economic damage from restricting energy use. Footnote three on page four reads, “The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap. The reduction in GDP would also include indirect general equilibrium effects, such as changes in the labor supply resulting from reductions in real wages and potential reductions in the productivity of capital and labor).” That’s a pretty big chunk of change to ignore. In The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation, the GDP hit in 2020 was $161 billion (2009 dollars).
For a family of four, that is $1,870 that they ignore.
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I note that Congress has exempted the gas passed by farm animals from any legislation on the “greenhouse gas” issue, as farmers have convinced them that this amounts to a “cow tax,” which it does.
http://www.yahoo.com/ap/us_climate_bill_cow_tax
Why is it that Congress understands that imposing a tax on the emissions of cows (and pigs, and sheep) would lead to fewer of them, and thus higher prices on food (and leather, and wool), but, at the same time, fails to understand that taxing the emissions of power plants will lead to fewer of them, and hence less energy, and hence higher prices on everything?