"Scam" is Spelled C A P A N D T R A D E

If it is true that “there’s a sucker born every minute” you can bet your bottom dollar that the current administration and the backers of Cap and Trade are banking on there being 300 million suckers in the United States. Read this post by RS McCain:


Less than six months after the 2008 election, and just past the 100-day mark of Barack Obama's presidency, liberals have begun congratulating themselves on the triumph of their ideas. Paul Krugman on global warming:

The 2008 election ended the reign of junk science in our nation's capital, and the chances of meaningful action on climate change, probably through a cap-and-trade system on emissions, have risen sharply.But the opponents of action claim that limiting emissions would have devastating effects on the U.S. economy. So it's important to understand that just as denials that climate change is happening are junk science, predictions of economic disaster if we try to do anything about climate change are junk economics. . .


So if I’m understanding Krugman, and I am, he’s basically dismissing those who worry about the costs associated with Cap and Trade, and the effect of those costs on an already struggling economy, as a bunch of yahoos who are too simple-minded to know what is best for them. Well, before I bow to my “betters” on this I want a little more information.

Drudge linked to an interesting article on the subject today. According to Rep. John Boehner, using data from a study at MIT, Cap and Trade will cost each American household $3,100 per year. Before you pull out the old checkbook and start figuring out how your going to come up with an extra $258 a month, ask yourself, “what exactly am I paying for?” Here’s where it starts getting sticky because all we’ve been told so far is that this money is for the additional cost of heating and cooling our homes and for the inevitable rise in gas prices for our cars. Won’t it also increase the heating and cooling costs of our schools, libraries and other municipal buildings? Wouldn’t the transportation costs rise for our school buses, police cruisers, fire trucks and other county vehicles? How will those additional costs be paid for? Where I live additional costs to the county are passed on to me in additional property taxes. What about the increased cost of doing business to your local grocery store and other merchants you frequent? Do you think they will absorb the increase or pass it on to you, the consumer?
But we should look at both sides if we are going to make an informed decision.

This is what CarbonTax.Org has to say:

Many of these regulations and programs appear positive, but they can only go so far in the absence of clear price signals on CO2 emissions. As Yale economist William Nordhaus noted recently:

Economic participants-thousands of governments, millions of firms, billions of people, all making trillions of decisions each year - need to face realistic prices for the use of carbon if their decisions about consumption, investment, and innovation are to be appropriate… without a strong price signal, there is simply no hope for making the vast number of decisions in a remotely efficient manner… Raising the price of carbon is [thus] a necessary condition for implementing carbon policies in a way that will reach the multitude of decisions and decision makers over space, time, nations, and sectors.

In English, the price of Cap and Trade must be so expensive that individuals and businesses are forced to curtail their use of carbon. Hold that thought for a moment.


Both CarbonTax.Org and Henry Waxman, (D) Ferengi, make mention of reducing the cost to “some” consumers through the use of rebates. How much faith do you have in that? Don’t forget, there has already been talk that the cost of nationalized healthcare will be paid for from the proceeds of carbon taxes. But beyond that, if in order to reduce carbon output the price of carbon must be increased, what is the net result of the government taking money from carbon producers and giving it to consumers in the form of rebates who in turn give it back to the carbon producers? Somebody has to be on the losing end of the scheme or it won’t work.


And that is how a scam works.


h/t The Other McCain, Drudge


Update: For those of who made it all the way through the CarbonTax.Org post without your head exploding, God bless. For the rest of you, please take a gander at this snippet:

In Larson’s bill, the carbon price is pre-determined and rises gradually. The approach in Rep. Doggett’s (D-TX) “Safe Markets” bill is to set up an agency (italics mine) to actively manage carbon prices by buying and selling allowances as the Federal Reserve does with currency. Rep. McDermott’s (D-WA) “Stable Energy Market” approach would have Treasury (again, the italics are mine) set the carbon price and raise it as needed to meet an EPA-certified emissions trajectory.

Well, here we go. Our choices are: a) yet another new government agency, complete with a “Czar”, no doubt or, b) put Tim Geithner in charge. Sounds like a lose/lose situation to me

Update: Found in my inbox, and yes, I should read my mail more often, the Heritage Foundation has a series on Cap and Trade that is well worth the read.