Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid played a new card. Apparently, cap and trade is no longer defined by either caps or trades anymore. “I don’t use that,” Reid said in response to a question about placing a cap on carbon emissions. “Those words are not in my vocabulary. We’re going to work on pollution.” Lindsey Graham, who is either every Democrat’s favorite Republican or every Republican’s favorite Democrat depending on your point of view, warmed to the theme as well. In an interview with Politico he said:
Controlling smokestack emissions as part of an energy independence, job creation plan has some resonance with me. Cap and trade is associated with a solution to global warming. Again, carbon pollution is bad for people, bad for the environment. But you’re not going to turn the economy upside down based on that theory.
This exercise in semantics does a disservice to what is probably the most cost-effective, least intrusive way to reduce emissions of actual pollutants, as opposed to the pretend, greenhouse gas variety. Placing an overall cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted annually, and then letting the free market work out the details, is a far better way to reduce pollution than the traditional “command and control” model. Cap and trade programs have allowed the utility industry to drastically reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions over the years and, on the local level, have been a big part of reducing smog-forming emissions in municipalities like Los Angeles and Chicago. The problem with a national cap and trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions isn’t the mechanism per se, it’s the target of the program: an innocuous, naturally-occurring gas that plays a very marginal role in determining climatic conditions.
But, having rammed a health care bill through Congress against determined national opposition, the Obama administration’s spin doctors undoubtedly feel that they can wrangle a cap and tax bill through as well, if they can just get the message framed correctly. As they gear up to have another go, we’ll no doubt see this most narcissistic of presidents making the rounds once again, bemoaning how the purity of his intentions have been so distorted by that dastardly Washington crowd, and declaring that once he has the time to explain the wisdom of his vision to the American people in more detail, everyone will come around.
The smart money still suggests that cap and trade won’t make it through this Congress, which is another way of saying that the program won’t happen at all; for it won’t have a chance with the next Congress. As the Obama administration gears up to make one, last-ditch effort to revive greenhouse gas legislation from its long coma before the election, the powers that be understand that their best hope of success is to re-label, repackage and rename a brand that America has long since lost faith in.
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He doesn't need new laws. Go read the USDA five year plan and you'll find Obama will implement everything he desires using the EPA, five year plans that emphasis "climate change" and pollution along with fines. They even will implement international agreements even if not approved by Congress (see page 9 of the USDA plan for example).
Why waste the effort when there are things like VAT hanging down from the tree?
Obama's overarching goal is conversion from capitalism to socialism and from nationalism to globalism. That process actually started under Prez Wilson, was accelerated under Prez FDR, boosted under Prez LBJ — Obama sees his role as being the guy to finalize the deal.
The unconstitutional ObamaCare deal was a brilliant first stroke, gobbling up one sixth of the U.S. economy.
Being able to implement Cap & Tax would close the deal. Implementing a VAT tax would be the final nail into the coffin, putting government into every transaction in the economy. Then we're Europe, which is insolvent by the way, as are we.
Prez Obama knows that it's better to be an insolvent socialist state than an insolvent capitalist state, because there would be more government control and less freedom, as is the case in his birthplace Kenya and his homeland Indonesia (the world's most populous Islamic nation).
He and his will stop at nothing to destroy this Country and bring it to its knees for easy takeover. His plan all along is to have America in the same economic state as Kenya, his homeland. He has done everything presidentially possible to destroy this economy and is using every dirty trick and power of his office to succeed at his "end". Saul Alinsky would be so proud of his student.
Many have, right or wrong, compared Obama's election and actions since with Hitler's.
I don't agree that Obama = Hitler in every way.
However, as a student of History, especially the period of the first half of the twentieth century, I must say that there are many similarities between now and the 1930's in Germany. And, some of the same factors led to Obama's election.
Perhaps the most glaring is the fact that, like Hitler, Obama's books published before he ran for president, clearly stated in detail his beliefs and what he intended to do! And, like the German people then, most American's either didn't believe he meant what he said, or just plain didn't read the books.
In less than two years, Obama has done more to destroy our Republic, and shatter the Constitution, than Carter did in 4 years, or Clinton in 8 years. So badly has he messed up the economy that we be witnessing the complete destruction of the middle class.
And, remember, the same period would put Hitler in about 1935.
Cap and trade would destroy the State of West Virginia, and if anyone could stop it, it would have been Sen. Robert Byrd whose death might be as fortuitous for Øbama as Hindenburg's death in 1934 was for Hitler.
“Cap and trade is dead” is an anesthetic to get the opponents to relax and stop fighting it. How many times did we hear that ObamaCare was “dead” before they shoved it down our throats? Stay vigilant because they still desperately want this legislation.
I am in my 60s and this is the first time I have seen elected representatives so not work in the best interests of the people and to ignore the majority of the people. How can anyone ever trust the dems again?
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