What Was Voted On By The House Today

Obama was voted in to fix the economy. Instead, he is warring against it. He has done nothing to fix the original causes of our economic problems. Instead, in the midst of the deepest recession our economy has faced since the Great Depression, Obama and Speaker Pelosi have skirted the democratic process to force through possibly the most ill conceived attack on our economy in the history of our nation.



What the vote on Cap and Trade today actually was:

- A vote to enact perhaps the largest and most regressive tax in our nations history. It will hit hardest on our nation's poor and lower middle class.

- A rushed bill that Pelosi pushed through in a way that cynically circumvented our democratic process.

- A bill that not a single representative read cover to cover. Update: See this from the Strata-sphere discussing John Boehner's identification of some of the last minute changes put into this massive leftist power grab.

- A vote to creates a massive new bureaucracy.



- A vote to create a massive windfall for rent seekers such as Al Gore and his ilk who will grow fabulously wealth off this legislation while producing nothing of value.

- A vote to vastly expand the reach of federal government into every aspect of our economy and private lives.

- A vote to drive jobs overseas.

- A vote that will harm our infrastructure.

- A vote that will drive the cost of virtually every good and service in America skyward.

- A bill that will bring to a halt the building of new fossil fuel plants that our country requires to meet growing energy needs and to replace aging plants.

- A vote for a bill that requires tarrifs on countries that do not impose carbon regulation, thus making a trade war all but inevitable. Consider this the Obama/Pelosi version of the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tarrif that greatly exacerbated the Depression.

- A vote for a bill that punishes traditional sources of energy at a point in time when not a single form of alternative energy has been proven cost effective or workable at scale.

- A vote that virtually insures that we will become ever more vulnerable to a true energy crisis that is all but inevitable.

- A vote for a bill based on highly politicized science falsely portrayed as settled.

- A vote to control carbon even as the last seven years have proven the falsity of the proposition that global temperatures rise with the increase of carbon.

- A vote to do all of this just as we are in the middle of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Indeed, all major economic indicators are actually worse today than they were at the same point in time after the start of the Great Depression.

And For What:



This piece of economic sepuku passed the House 219 to 212. Eight Republicans voted for this abortion. They are:

Mary Bono, 45th Dist, Calif.
Michael Castle, Del.
Mark Kirk, 10th Dist, Ill.
Leonard Lance, 7th Dist, NJ
Frank LoBiondo, 2nd Dist., NJ
John McHugh, 23rd Dist, NY
David Reichert, 8th Dist., Wash.
Christopher Smith, 4th Dist., NJ

They deserve to be drummed out of the Republican Party.

Update: Michelle Malkin provides a "Wanted" poster for the eight individuals and wonders what they could have been promised in terms of earmarks to get their vote. R.S. McCain says something entirely appropriate - until these eight are gone, "not one red cent" to the N.R.C.C.

Update: EU Referendum notes the vote as a sign that "insanity rules" on this side of the pond as well as their own.

This is a dark day indeed. I am almost tempted to say that the Republicans should cease all opposition to this bill. Letting it into law will do more to spell the death knell for the far left than a thousand floor speeches will do.

Prior Posts:

25 June 09: What Was Voted On By The House Today
22 June 09: Making Pravda Blush
18 June 09: Depression (& Depressing) News
11 June 09: The Looming Crisis In Energy Costs
9 June 2009: Fiddling While Rome Freezes . . . And Crops Fail
8 June 2009: Of Villians, The Economy & On-Rushing Trains
3 June 2009: Road To Ruin
28 May 2009: A Bit Of Honest From Speaker Pelosi
22 May 2009: Beware The Climate Change Industrial Complex
16 May 2009: Cap, Trade & Theft
14 May 2009: Heading Towards A Self-Inflicted Depression
13 May 2009: EPA's Latest On CO2 - Bizarre, But Hardly Unwelcome
13 May 2009: Internal Dissent On Regulation Of Carbon Dioxide
12 May 2009: Cap & Trade - Back To The Future
29 April 2009: More Green Blasphemy
25 April 2009: Our Drive To A Green Nirvana
19 April 2009: Throwing Green Fuel On An Economic Fire

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Beware the Climate Change-Industrial Complex

Other than politicians who would use regulation of carbon as a means to vastly expand the reach of government and use it to reshape the U.S., the most vocal proponents of climate change and the need to immediately act are people and entities that stand to make a windfall from such programs. For example (starting at 2:46):



And let's not forget Al Gore, who has parlayed his position as a global warming shill to increase his net worth by five thousand percent in the past nine years. It gives a whole new meaning to "going green." To all of this, the WSJ warns, beware the Climate Change Industrial Complex:

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets.

The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the "military-industrial complex," cautioning that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He worried that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

This is certainly true of climate change. We are told that very expensive carbon regulations are the only way to respond to global warming, despite ample evidence that this approach does not pass a basic cost-benefit test. We must ask whether a "climate-industrial complex" is emerging, pressing taxpayers to fork over money to please those who stand to gain.

This phenomenon will be on display at the World Business Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen this weekend. The organizers -- the Copenhagen Climate Council -- hope to push political leaders into more drastic promises when they negotiate the Kyoto Protocol's replacement in December.

The opening keynote address is to be delivered by Al Gore, who actually represents all three groups: He is a politician, a campaigner and the chair of a green private-equity firm invested in products that a climate-scared world would buy.

Naturally, many CEOs are genuinely concerned about global warming. But many of the most vocal stand to profit from carbon regulations. The term used by economists for their behavior is "rent-seeking."

The world's largest wind-turbine manufacturer, Copenhagen Climate Council member Vestas, urges governments to invest heavily in the wind market. It sponsors CNN's "Climate in Peril" segment, increasing support for policies that would increase Vestas's earnings. A fellow council member, Mr. Gore's green investment firm Generation Investment Management, warns of a significant risk to the U.S. economy unless a price is quickly placed on carbon.

Even companies that are not heavily engaged in green business stand to gain. European energy companies made tens of billions of euros in the first years of the European Trading System when they received free carbon emission allocations.

American electricity utility Duke Energy, a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, has long promoted a U.S. cap-and-trade scheme. Yet the company bitterly opposed the Warner-Lieberman bill in the U.S. Senate that would have created such a scheme because it did not include European-style handouts to coal companies. The Waxman-Markey bill in the House of Representatives promises to bring back the free lunch.

U.S. companies and interest groups involved with climate change hired 2,430 lobbyists just last year, up 300% from five years ago. Fifty of the biggest U.S. electric utilities -- including Duke -- spent $51 million on lobbyists in just six months.

The massive transfer of wealth that many businesses seek is not necessarily good for the rest of the economy. Spain has been proclaimed a global example in providing financial aid to renewable energy companies to create green jobs. But research shows that each new job cost Spain 571,138 euros, with subsidies of more than one million euros required to create each new job in the uncompetitive wind industry. Moreover, the programs resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs for every job created.

The cozy corporate-climate relationship was pioneered by Enron, which bought up renewable energy companies and credit-trading outfits while boasting of its relationship with green interest groups.

. . . The partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners truly is an unholy alliance. The climate-industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everybody. We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act. Spending a fortune on global carbon regulations will benefit a few, but dearly cost everybody else.

Read the entire article. Also, Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye has a similar take on this problem, discussing it in his post that I highly recommend, The Doomsday Industry.

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