Cap & Trade = Corporate Welfare + Pay More, Get Less

From our friends at the Orange County Register:

"The House of Representatives is preparing to vote Friday on a massive "cap and trade" bill purportedly designed to address global warming - though they call it "climate change" now since the globe hasn't warmed in the past few years - that will probably not be finished until minutes before voting begins."

Great.

(*SNORT*)

Once again our elected representatives will be voting on a bill which I'm willing to bet not one has actually read sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, page by page - all 1,201 pages that is.

"...proponents are still buying votes from moderate Democrats with special-interest favors and sweetheart deals....Last week HR2454 was 946 pages long. As of Wednesday morning it had burgeoned to 1,201 pages, as various constituencies made backroom deals with House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and his cohorts. That blatant vote-buying and sweetheart deal-making is why environmental groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, and the open-government organization the Sunlight Foundation have come out against the bill."

Politics as usual, right? No. Not really. There's nothing "usual" about the scale of this latest governmental boondoggle. Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warns that...

"Waxman-Markey is a 1,201-page economic suicide note. Those Members of the House who vote for it are voting for long-term economic decline and for turning the United States into a second-rate economy."

Based upon my own readings and analysis I share Ebell's conclusion.

A recent op-ed carried by The Hill, penned by Robert E. Murray, chairman, president and CEO, Murray Energy Corp., also sounded the alarm, stating...

"Perhaps the most destructive legislation in our country’s history will soon be voted on in the House - the Waxman-Markey tax bill in the guise of addressing climate change. It will have dire consequences for every American. It will raise the cost of energy with little or no environmental benefit. Independent experts estimate that it will cost Americans more than $2 trillion in just over eight years."

Is Murray a disinterested party? Certainly not. Are estimates of the actual costs of cap and trade all over the map - ranging from less than $200 per year per American household by "pro-cap" estimators to almost $4,000 per year by "anti-cap" estimators - yes. I'll leave it to readers to wade through the competing claims, but as a starting point, I respectfully submit the following link to an op-ed from today's Wall Street Journal. (For supporting data click here.)

Now... back to today's Orange County Register op-ed...

"Most carbon emissions result from the use of hydrocarbon energy sources (mostly petroleum-based). Since 85 percent of U.S. energy comes from hydrocarbons, almost all use of energy would become more expensive due to the necessity to buy permission to emit a constantly declining amount of carbon dioxide every year. Thus the system would be a hidden tax on energy that would cost every American, including the middle class and lower-income people that President Barack Obama promised he would never tax."

Anyone care to argue with either the facts or the analysis? Oh, and "best" of all...

"The kicker, of course, is that, assuming carbon dioxide emissions caused by human beings cause global warming - still more theory than fact - the highly respected Institute for Energy Research has estimated that the controls in this bill would reduce the global temperature by one-half of 1 degree Fahrenheit. Not very impressive."

No. Not very impressive at all. And even this forecast reduction in global temperature of a measly one-half of 1 degree Fahrenheit is of course only a guess, based upon what we can only hope is accurate computer modeling based upon valid data entry - a hope those familiar with the... er... "modeling problems" of the past would likely not place much faith in.

Folks... mark my words... if Waxman-Markey (HR-2454) passes the House, gets through the Senate, and is signed into law by the President... you and your children and grandchildren will end up paying the cost directly and indirectly while the politicians and their special interest partners will reap the artificial economic benefits of the politically rigged "game" they're attempting to speed past you.

As the Orange County Register notes...

"[T]he bill has become a festival of rent-seeking, the economists' term for the search for privilege and gain through the political process....There wasn't enough support for a pure cap and trade bill, so they decided to give away credits to some groups represented by reluctant Congress members. So rural electric cooperatives, states that want to increase mass transit, algae-based biofuel producers, farmers, ethanol producers and others were granted free credits - with a market value. That process attracted a number of big businesses, like Duke Energy, Shell Oil, DuPont, Alcoa, Applied Materials and others to trade support (and the ability to advertise themselves as "green") for freebies at the expense of taxpayers."

Folks... we're the taxpayers...!!! If We want to stop this then WE need to get our butts in gear.

I've already called my Congressman's office. I suggest you (yeah, YOU... the guy or gal reading this!) call your own Member of Congress and sound off. (All Members of the House may be reached via the House switchboard at 202-224-3121; or, simply click here to find out who your Member is and how to contact him or her directly - I recommend through his or her district office which is closest to your home address.)