Showing posts with label carbon tax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carbon tax. Show all posts

Monday, February 18, 2013

Carbon Taxes & Cow Patties

Because carbon is produced by virtually all human activities, the ability to punish carbon production is the ability to impact, if not control, all economic activity. A tax on carbon "pollution" would provide an inexhaustible source of revenue for the government. Thus the far left, the radical greens and the watermelons - to the extent that those three classifications have any distinguishing features from one another - have been seeking a carbon tax in the U.S. for decades.

The sole and ostensible justification given for a carbon tax is the dire threat of global warming - a threat that has little if any basis in reality. This from Paul Driessen at WUWT:

Average planetary temperatures haven’t budged in 16 years. Hurricanes and strong tornadoes are at or near their lowest ebb in decades. Global sea ice is back to normal, Arctic ice is nearly normal, and the Antarctic icepack continues to grow. The rate of sea level rise remains what it was in 1900.

And yet, President Obama and many politicians, newscasters and alarmist scientists continue to insist that carbon dioxide emissions are changing Earth’s climate, and we need to take immediate action to prevent storms like Hurricane Sandy and avert catastrophes predicted by IPCC computer models and alleged “scientific consensus.”

Senators Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders have struck first, introducing a so called "fee and dividend" carbon tax. This from SF Gate:

The Sanders-Boxer bill would impose a $20 per ton tax on carbon or methane equivalent, rising 5.6 percent each year for 10 years, on the nation's largest fossil fuel producers. Imported fossil fuels from countries that do not impose a similar tax would also pay.

The tax would raise an estimated $1.2 trillion over a decade and reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent from 2005 levels. Three-fifths of the tax would be rebated to "every legal U.S. resident," which might make it more politically feasible than if it went to the government.

The rest of the money would go to incentives for clean energy and research.

The give back to the legal resident - note, not U.S. citizens - is a nice touch. The problem of course is that, while these people would get back three fifths of the tax, they would be paying for all of it. Moreover, the havoc such a tax would work on the economy and jobs would be substantial and regressive.

Moreover, this would leave $480 billion to permanently fund the world's biggest slush fund for far left and green causes. The record of Obama green energy "investments" to date has been, to put it kindly, a failure. It is rife with cronyism, waste, and fraud. And yet, Obama and the left want to "double down." I use the term figuratively because Obama spent, if I recall correctly, $100 billion over his first four years on "green energy investments." This would more than doubling down.

So there you have it. If the left succeeds in imposing a carbon tax, they will get their mitts on the biggest potential cash cow in our nation. The rest of us will get the cow patties.







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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Links On Saturday


Doug Ross has continued his work on Dealergate. Despite what you have read, this one is far from done yet. And Doug even gets some surprising help from Olby.

Doug Ross was also kind enough to include me in his collection of links. Do please pay him a visit.

Pirates Man Your Women, taking stock of the calamity of the first six months, asks of Obama, "what is next burning the Constitution using the Flag?" Heh.

You can read my post below on the Nancy Pelosi and the left's plans for a massive expansion of government and taxation using the excuse of limiting carbon emissions. I include in there a mention of the internationalists who want to soak the U.S. with a carbon tax payable to the UN for redistribution to third world countries who have supposedly suffered injury due to global warming. And here is a story today on the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) who plan to move this issue to the top of the list at the next IPCC / UN Summit in Copenhagen. They claim 315,000 deaths last year due to global warming. Given that the world has been on a cooling spell for the last seven years, excuse me if I might think the numbers a bit cooked and the motivation not quite as stated.

And in a couple of related notes, across the pond, Bishop Hill actually goes behind the story to see how the numbers were cooked. A.J. Strata notes that "Global warming BS is popping up everywhere." Meanwhile, the boys at Crusader Rabbit have taken a look at their local forecast (brrrrrr) and are now casting about to find something to burn, hoping to release more carbon dioxide in their local atmosphere.

The Paragraph Farmer offers some cogent thoughts on the religion in America and the rewriting of history. You can also find an exceptional speech on the canard of a "wall between church and state" and the damage it has wrought by the brother of William Buckley.

Ted Leddy documents with distate the return to sectarianism in Ireland, telling the story of the 49 year old father beaten to death by a gang of hooligans following a Catholic versus Protestant soccer match.

I wonder, when I see things like this, if the Brits think doing away with the death penalty was a good thing.

Stop the ACLU notes that even the NYT is a bit miffed at Obama's naked cronyism in choosing ambassadors.

Peace through superior firepower at Ace of Spades HQ. It beats the hell out of the M203 Grenade Launcher.

At A Corner of Tenth Century Europe, there is a fascinating discussion of ancient coinage and economies.

Darwinism proven in the negative at the Whited Sepulchre.






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