Cap-and-Trade Looks Like Imperialism
Imperialism: The acquisition of colonies and dependencies, commonly associated with the policy of direct extension of sovereignty and dominion over non-contiguous and often distant territories, the indirect political or economic control of powerful states over weaker peoples.
The carbon cap-and-stifle bilge currently festering in Congress is an exercise in the dominion of populous states, mired in the economic doldrums of their own welfare excesses, over less populous but productive, wealth-creating states.
There is no other purpose to the cap-and-stifle bilge. It will not affect global temperatures in any measurable way, and indeed the proponents do not even bother to make that claim any longer. Their stated goal is to extract wealth from politically weak states and deliver the extractions to vampire states bloated with millions of welfare junkies.
Obama wants to hike energy costs by the $trillions to cover a portion of the tens of $trillions in deficit spending he has foisted on the Nation (with the help of the Welfare Junkie Party).
Global warming is a hoax, a scam, an imperialist power and money grab, non-different from the manufactured forest fire crisis — which has nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with deliberate incineration by the government of public and private, rural and urban land.
It’s your standard, ugly, hurtful, shameful, grossly tragic imperialism, the same venomous credo perped by ancient Rome and modern fascists like Hitler and Stalin.
In my opinion. Which is shared by Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, among others. From today’s WSJ:
Indiana Says ‘No Thanks’ to Cap and Trade
No honest person thinks this will make a dent in climate change
By MITCH DANIELS, Governor of Indiana, The Wall Street Journal, May 15, 2009 [here]
This week Congress is set to release the details of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill that purports to combat global warming by setting strict limits on carbon emissions. I’m not a candidate for any office — now or ever again — and I’ve approached the “climate change” debate with an open-mind. But it’s clear to me that the nation, and in particular Indiana, my home state, will be terribly disserved by this cap-and-trade policy on the verge of passage in the House.
The largest scientific and economic questions are being addressed by others, so I will confine myself to reporting about how all this looks from the receiving end of the taxes, restrictions and mandates Congress is now proposing.
Quite simply, it looks like imperialism. This bill would impose enormous taxes and restrictions on free commerce by wealthy but faltering powers — California, Massachusetts and New York — seeking to exploit politically weaker colonies in order to prop up their own decaying economies. Because proceeds from their new taxes, levied mostly on us, will be spent on their social programs while negatively impacting our economy, we Hoosiers decline to submit meekly.
The Waxman-Markey legislation would more than double electricity bills in Indiana. Years of reform in taxation, regulation and infrastructure-building would be largely erased at a stroke. In recent years, Indiana has led the nation in capturing international investment, repatriating dollars spent on foreign goods or oil and employing Americans with them. Waxman-Markey seems designed to reverse that flow. “Closed: Gone to China” signs would cover Indiana’s stores and factories.
Our state’s share of national income has been slipping for decades, but it is offset in part by living costs some 8% lower than the national average. Doubled utility bills for low-income Hoosiers would be an especially cruel consequence of the Waxman bill. Forgive us for not being impressed at danglings of welfare-like repayments to some of those still employed, with some fraction of the dollars extracted from our state.
And for what? No honest estimate pretends to suggest that a U.S. cap-and-trade regime will move the world’s thermometer by so much as a tenth of a degree a half century from now. My fellow citizens are being ordered to accept impoverishment for a policy that won’t save a single polar bear. …
