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Cap and Trade is So Much More Than a Tax

It's also a dessert topping...

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  June 28th, 2009 at 10:56 AM  | 

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With all due respect, it’s not news that Cap and Trade is a tax on energy. Its proponents have never advanced an argument that it proposes to do anything for the environment or global climate. Cap and Trade is insidious because it creates a new entitlement, so once it’s in place it will be next to impossible to kill.

If it were just a tax, it would not be a big deal. Damaging to the economy, and bad for the country perhaps, but we could undo it with legislation. Example: Jimmy Carter’s Windfall Profits Tax never raised much revenue for the general fund; it was counter-productive and hard to administer. Within a few years, Reagan’s decontrol of energy prices brought crude oil prices down, which obviated the justification for the WPT. It died with a whimper in the late 80s.

Cap and Trade has been compared to the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which many blame for bringing about worldwide depression. Cap and Trade has the same disastrous potential, but it only took 10 years of Depression and a World War to snap the country back from the unintended consequences of this ill-conceived initiative.

No, the Waxman-Markey mess won’t be so easily undone. The legislation contains tax rebates – income redistribution – which will become, in effect, a new entitlement for the “poor”.

Entitlement programs are nearly impossible to unwind. History shows that people like money a lot, but the money they like best, and will fight to the death to maintain, is the money that government gives them & that they do not have to work to earn.

We survived the Windfall Profits Tax. We survived Smoot-Hawley. We may not survive Waxman-Markey.

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  • pilgrim

    Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and Edward Markey just to name a few. I’m hoping to see an article some time soon that details the business investment plans some of these folks have been doing to make a whole lot of money at everyone else’s expense.

    • pilgrim

      http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9629

      • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • redneck_hippie

    to include a wealth distribution component in every spending bill. Thus, he silences dissent on the basis of hurting the disadvantaged. This last statement only works when the unemployment figures are ignored. The stealth bomb will be people on the streets because there is no work to be found in the new green economy.

    Blame Bush has expired. You can’t stay warm in the winter with piddly tax credits when your rent is unpaid. Is there a planning group in place for forcing people onto collective farms yet?

  • janis

    the panel was discussing the cap and trade and whether or not it will go to the Senate this year at all. Their take was that the votes just weren’t there, particularly after all the arm-twisting and pork it took to get the 219 votes in the House.

    So my question is—did they just pass this POS in the House in order to piggyback health care onto to it because of the funding for health care in this bill? Has anyone worked out yet if that’s even possible for a bill that hasn’t passed the Senate? Geez, the longer this goes on, the more labyrinthine the behavior gets.

    • redneck_hippie

      that the whole vote was a test for the left to see what support they could garner right away, and if there seemed to be problems, then they would cook up an alternative way to fund “free health care.”

      Gonna be hard to pass taxation remunerative enough to give insurance to all those who can’t pay for it. That is why it is such a leftist emergency. As costs rise, the taxation required rises at X times that amount of cost increase, which is necessary to compensate for the bureaucratic waste and corruption which are built into any large government benefit program. And, of course as we have already seen televised to the entire world via cable news, the egregiousness of the taxation and tyrrany required to force this on America, necessarity means that bribery and coercion on the reluctant legislature adds to the tax burden.

      • janis

        see these people at work, the more this whole progressive construct resembles a stack of crockery plates and bowls stacked higher and higher until there is no stability whatsoever. The whole thing is going to come crashing down without a doubt.

        And that’s what is so different about conservatism vs. liberalism. There is a solid foundation under our principles and when we make sure that those principles govern our actions, then our decisions are sound and productive and will endure if left to work in their original form. Current liberalism is constructed on a tissue of lies and fantasy about what works. In its simplest form, conservatives can say what they mean to do out loud and follow through to achieve that. Liberals have to hide the truth of what they mean to do right from the start and that’s why so many sound incoherent so much of the time.

        • redneck_hippie

          I most detest about the left is their subterfuge. That and their pesky habit of stealing crockery from those who have it in order to make their stupid stack of crockery which is nothing but an illusion.

  • http://theadmiralsbridge.blogspot.com/ Stephen Halsey

    Crap and Tax should it become law. And it won’t be the vehicle to fund a government single payer health care program or the vehicle to rebate to the poor the amount their energy costs skyrocket under this draconian bill that would kill us.

    It’s the national energy code/regulations in the bill that would kill us. I’m an architect and to think that the federal government would/could impose California zoning regulations on the rest of the country, or establish a national energy code that would cripple the development and construction in this country just boggles the mind. Just the residential implications alone would destroy what’s left of our housing market. Having to perform an energy audit on your existing house and expend personal capital for improvements such as windows, roof, HVAC, etc… to bring an existing house up to national energy standards in order for a national inspector to bless your house before you could sell it would be the death nail to this country. People simply wouldn’t move. The housing market would collapse, taking the mortgage industry with it. Mobility in this country would cease. My business requires this mobility in order for communities to need schools and other building types and community improvements associated with growth. If this bill were to ever become law, we’d see malaise in this country that we’ve never seen. It would make the Carter years look like the Roaring 20′s.

    • TNJim

      “It would make the Carter years look like the Roaring 20?s.”
      And make the Great Depression look like the Minor Inconvenience.

    • larueladue
  • izoneguy

    Cap-and-trade energy taxation New Zealand may go bust over Global Warming

    http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=148196

    Based on U.S. and Australian discussions, a 500-cow dairy might have to pay $250,000 per year for cattle emissions and manure handling permits, plus a hefty increase in its costs for low-carbon electricity and diesel. An Argentine dairy would pay none of these increased costs and every dollar of cost differential would be a further incentive for Argentine dairymen to expand their exports at the expense of New Zealand.

    That would leave Kiwi cities like Auckland and Christchurch without visible means of support.

    I said this recently to several New Zealand government ministers and business leaders at a private dinner in Wellington. My message was not welcomed. John Keys new government seems to understand that New Zealands economy would be at terrible risk from carbon taxes but its voters apparently dont realize it.

    The Clark government told New Zealand voters that the cost of leading the world with a carbon tax would be about $150 per year. That figure is laughably low. The British government now admits its new carbon tax law could cost as much as $27,000 per UK family.

    The Key government has temporarily suspended the cap-and-trade, but has not dared repeal it. Meanwhile, Australias Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is installing his ow cap-and-trade, and playing footsie with President Obama on solidarity with a U.S. carbon tax. If Australia and the U.S. agreed on some benchmark carbon tax, most New Zealanders would expect their country to join in.