Rep. John Dingell today admitted that cap-and-trade really is an energy tax. Unfortunately, he did so in the context of telling a lie:
Contrary to Representative Dingell’s comments, quite a few people realized that cap-and-trade is a tax. And then so did quite a few people more. And then some more. And more. And more. And more. In fact, this realization is quite common among those individuals who do not have a vested emotional or, frankly, moral need to believe the absurd and contemptuous lie made by the current administration about how it wasn’t going to raise taxes on either the poor or middle class.
It is a depressingly common quality of the so-called “Blue Dogs” and/or “moderate Democrats” in Congress that they will so stubbornly refuse to admit to any sort of personal responsibility for their actions, even in the face of a personal apocalypse. Having decided that their personal positions and committee rankings were more important than their principles, they have shown an amazing ability to rationalize away every instance where their party has successfully forced them to choose the former over the latter. Put another way: there were lots of people who knew this all along, Dingell. You should know this: after all, you helped destroy their ability to influence the relevant policy positions. But now you want to pretend that it’s all really a sudden disaster, because that way you and your colleagues don’t have to be cowards who won’t stand up to your own caucus.
Not going to happen.
Moe Lane
PS: I read this little list that you and yours are begging to incorporate into Waxman-Markey. You do realize that Waxman doesn’t give a tinker’s dam what you people think or want, right? Because, really: what were you planning to do if he ignores you?
Vote Republican?
Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Steve Maley
KnightsofMalta
This Issue Has Michigan Dems Confounded n/t
Swamp_Yankee (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 2:05PM EST (link)n/t
This Issue Has Michigan Dems Confounded n/t
Swamp_Yankee (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 2:05PM EST (link)n/t
Having personally
BlueLandRed (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 2:21PM EST (link)accepted that Global Climate Change is occurring, likely induced by humans, I do sympathize with the Democratic leadership’s desire to do something. But cap and trade seems destiny to fail and I think mostly a scam to try and avoid using the “tax”.
Quite frankly, while I find it distasteful, I suspect better results would be achieved by implementing a straight carbon tax. One that starts slowly, but automatically increases each year. That gives people and companies time to adapt.
I agree with your
LibRick (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 6:36PM EST (link)view that global climate change is occurring and that the cap and trade scheme is rife for scams, regardless of the descriptive term used. But doesn’t a straight carbon tax risk the same abuse. When has any tax not been scammed with special exemptions put in by lobbyists?
Maybe a system of straightforward tax incentives and credits would better fit the bill. Give corporations a credit for year by year energy efficiency. Accelerate depreciation for installing greener tech solutions. Give homeowners credits for installing solar panels and on demand water heaters. There are many incentives that could achieve the same goal short of a carbon tax. But it all achieves nothing if China, India, and other nations do not act in kind.
Hey wannabe tyrants!
stang (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 10:44PM EST (link)Take your little echo chamber and go advocate your economic-suicide-by- carbon-tax plans elsewhere.
Is there anything you two don’t think can be improved by more taxes and more government compulsion?
“History shows that there is nothing so easy to enslave and nothing so hard to emancipate as ignorance, hence it becomes the double enemy of civilization. By its servility it is the prey of tyranny, and by its credulity it is the foe of enlightenment”
Lemuel K. Washburn
“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.”
John Locke
Instructive thread.
redneck_hippie (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 11:12PM EST (link)Wherein we see that some think that “They really do think that we are that stupid” (see below).
And in the same thread (see tyrants above), there actually Are those who are That Stupid.
Actually, they are that ignorant of the reason for cap and tax or whatever you want to call it. The reason for the sweeping cap and tax or whatever you want to call it is Not to provide incentives or credits which would give companies or individuals some of their own money back. Cap and tax is going to pay for the nationalized health insurance (Rationed health care) and free college for all (further indoctrination of masses on political correctness and revisionist economics, history and science). If you like GM being told what cars to make, wait until a federal agency stipulates curricula, academic salaries, and right on down to the sylliabi in every class.
Please do read Mr. Krautheimer’s excellent post. Well worth discussion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/23/AR2009042302983.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
I speak against
LibRick (Diary) Saturday, April 25th at 8:33AM EST (link)cap and trade and carbon taxes and suggest a tax incentive solution which allows an individual or corporation a choice to reduce their current tax bill and you characterize me as a “wannabe tyrant.”
Your entitled to your opinion and I respect it but I am curious as to what position you think one should hold that would not be tyrannical?
You speak against liberty, LibRick.
stang (Diary) Saturday, April 25th at 12:27PM EST (link)First, you have embraced of the faulty premise of impending doom due to AGW and secondly, assumed that I agree with you. I don’t.
Second, your solution to this imaginary problem is to have the State compel acceptable behavior at the point of a gun.
“a tax incentive solution which allows an individual or corporation a choice to reduce their current tax bill”
WHICH ALLOWS a choice?! I can reduce my tax bill by acting as you (the State) would have me act or suffer the consequences? Boy now there’s a real choice. Not.
Apparently you have an issue with allowing individuals to make their own choices instead of the State doing it for them.
It’s amazing how little you so called liberals don’t understand about liberty.
“Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
“Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.”
John Locke
'Tax Incentive'
Neil Stevens (Diary) Saturday, April 25th at 12:42PM EST (link)If you’re so in favor of tax cuts, let’s just cut everyone’s taxes instead of creating new government programs.
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“I rejoice that America has resisted.” – William Pitt, the Elder
Amendment
John E. (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 2:32PM EST (link)The least John Dingle could do is cosponsor an Amendment which declares that CO2 is not a pollutant under the terms of the Clean Air Act.
Such an Amendment could take away the stick that Obama, Waxman and Markey are wielding. Wherein Markey says: “Do you want the EPA to make the decision or would you like your Congressman or Senator to be in the room and drafting legislation?”
It's a hoax
10ksnooker (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 2:53PM EST (link)Everyone knows that the cap and tax needs the AGW hoax to mislead the public, The goal is the pot of new taxes and the economic controls at the end of the rainbow.
It’s a provable hoax. Just look at the satellite data and you will see, the satellite data does not provide confirmation of what all the GCMs predict … There is no CO2 blanket where it’s supposed to be. In fact there is no CO2 blanket anywhere. Ooops facts, not something liberals want to hear.
Also in the clip
bk (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 3:53PM EST (link)Al Gore says many countries have had their economies flourish with both a carbon tax and cap and trade in place.
But I noticed he didn’t name any of those countries. I wonder why?
The BIG LIE from the Dems will be
bk (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 3:53PM EST (link)that it really saves money for poor people because they’ll give it back via universal health care.
The MASSIVE Cap & Trade Tax Makes Congress An EVIL SPECULATORpeculator
rcov092 (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 5:06PM EST (link)If you remember the outrage over what SPECULATORS did to the price of oil last year and you watch the hearings, what you you have to realize is this is about the MISSING COMMISSION.
You see Governement did not receive their “CUT’ from the run up in oil prices. The libs are lying (they occassionaly tell the truth about prices and energy,like Obama let slip). They want you to pay through the nose to burn fossil fuels, they want yout o bleed ($ 3,900 dollar a year worth).
The real impetus over Cap & Trade is that they have to make sure that the Government gets their cut for the huge massive increases in energy prices you will pay under this cleverly disguised TAX.
They also want to make sure they create a “TRASPARENT” market. Specifically one like will be provided by the electronic exchange that GE purchased from ENRON,/b>, specifically to create a market for the trading of carbon credits.
If you buy this massive massive massive bureaucratic
boondoggle of CENTRAL PLANNING, then you must have the DNA of Karl Marx..
THEY REALLY, ACTUALLY DO BELIEVE THAT WE ARE THAT STUPID. But I will admit they are >b>desparatley making every attempt to make this soiound like something completetly different. Nancy Pelosi even wants you to believe that “no one” will pay more for energy under this Cap & Trade bill.
We also should be able to recognize why they are clenching down on the financial markets. They want to make sure they are the MONOPOLY market for trading the “Derivatives” (their word,not mine). That way they will be able to drive the price even higher than the EVIL SPECULATORS that cornered the oil markets last year (their term, not mine).
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Unfortunately their belief is true for enough people to matter
bk (Diary) Friday, April 24th at 6:39PM EST (link)“THEY REALLY, ACTUALLY DO BELIEVE THAT WE ARE THAT STUPID.”