AIP Column: Obama’s Utopia
posted at 2:15 pm on July 2, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/0...obamas-utopia/
This week’s AIP column riffs off of yesterday’s Obamateurism, which I think deserves wider dissemination as a look into the poor judgment of President Obama. If anyone wanted to pick a worse example of a state managing its economy, California would be hard to beat.
And yet Obama held up the Golden State as an example of what can happen when government imposes heavy-handed energy policies:
Quote:
Does anyone at the White House ever brief the President on the economic crisis? California’s unemployment has been higher than the national average for years, thanks to a flight of capital from the state’s onerous taxes and workers-comp regulations. This year, though, the problem has been particularly bad. The state has had double-digit unemployment since the beginning of the year, which means less energy needed for economic production, and the economy of the state teeters on depression.
As for its energy usage, the Washington Examiner explains how the state has reduced its need, and it wasn’t through smart planning. California has lost 21% of its manufacturing base since 2000, which produced a sharp drop in energy usage – as well as a big drop in revenues for the state and higher unemployment. Energy costs in California are much higher than in the rest of the nation, as much as 50% higher for residential rates than the average.
That amounts to a big tax on California residents, which is one reason more people are fleeing California than entering it.
This brings us back to the cap-and-trade bill that just passed the House. Eventually, the costs of such a system will place the same kind of tax on everyone in the nation for energy consumption, and not just on electricity. The cost of refining gasoline will increase as refiners have to buy carbon credits. The same will happen to heating oil in parts of the country.
|
Bottom line: if you liked the inflation and eroded buying power of last year’s gas-price spike, you’ll love cap-and-trade’s taxation on all Americans.
California should serve as a warning to others, not as an example of public-policy success. One would think that obvious when the state in question is issuing IOUs instead of paying its bills, but Obama apparently can’t buy a clue.
Don’t forget to check out the rest of the AIP crew, too. Lorie Byrd looks at the lack of urgency to treat patients that comes with single-payer health care.
http://www.americanissuesproject.org...alth-care.aspx Nick DeLeeuw needs a Presidential hug, too.
http://www.americanissuesproject.org...decisions.aspx John Hanlon discusses what it will take to make the US Post Office profitable.
http://www.americanissuesproject.org...t-part-ii.aspx Be sure to read it all!
http://www.americanissuesproject.org/blogs/
Quote:
|
This week’s AIP column...
|
http://www.americanissuesproject.org...ic-policy.aspx
Quote:
|
... yesterday’s Obamateurism ...
|
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/0...of-the-day-68/
----
Miserable Failure
That's the Obama administration's "stimulus" plan, which mainly stimulated Democratic constituencies with great gobs of pork. The web site Innocent Bystanders has done a service by plotting the actual unemployment rate against the Obama administration's prediction of what would happen with and without the "stimulus." Here is the latest, updated through June;
http://michaelscomments.wordpress.co...s-by-only-0-1/
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive...mb-410x250.gif[/
The administration's forecast provides a benchmark against which we can
judge the success or failure of the $700 billion porkapalooza. The result is obvious: it was a failure. The best thing Congress could do is to cancel the rest of the program--the large majority that remains unspent--and let the economy recover without being hampered by government-imposed inefficiencies.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../07/023957.php