Bluegrassrivals

[INDENT]Do we really need this?

[I]A study from the George C. Marshall Institute tries to quantify the costs of a cap-and-trade plan to reduce carbon emissions. They're not small, to say the least: And although this study uses 2008 as a baseline, the Obama plan would hit in 2012 and could come in combo with a hike in investment and incomes taxes for wealthier Americans and the creation of a special healthcare tax:
The authors find that the constraints posed by the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade approach is equivalent to a constant (in percentage terms) consumption decrease of about 1% each year, continuing to 2050. Put another way, the cap-and-trade approach is the equivalent of a permanent tax increase for the average American household, which was estimated to be $1,100 in 2008, would rise to $1,437 by 2015, to $1,979 in 2030, and $2,979 in 2050.[/I]
Reviewing a host of recent studies, Buckley and Mityakov show that estimates of job losses attributable to cap-and-trade range in the hundreds of thousands. The price for energy paid by the American consumer also will rise. The studies reviewed showed electricity prices jumping 5-15% by 2015, natural gas prices up 12-50% by 2015, and gasoline prices up 9-145% by 2015. As an illustration, gasoline would suffer a 16 cent price increase per gallon at the low end of the estimates to a $2.58 penalty at the high end (using the January 2009 reported retail price of $1.78 per gallon).
[/INDENT]



http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-comm...t-you.html

More doom and gloom from the right.

DevilsWin Wrote:More doom and gloom from the right.

:eyeroll: ......surprise, surprise just more of the same from the left. :eyeroll:

DevilsWin Wrote:More doom and gloom from the right.

Are you always the last to catch on? Electricity bills in southern states are much lower than the rest of the nation. That is all over with, with the cap and trade. Wake up man, we will be hardest hit of all around here. This is common knowledge!:HitWall:

That's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make if it will better the country.

DevilsWin Wrote:That's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make if it will better the country.

Giving all your money to the government doesn't better the country. More money in the hands of businesses and the American citizens betters the country.

jetpilot Wrote:Giving all your money to the government doesn't better the country. More money in the hands of businesses and the American citizens betters the country.

Hoovers policies failed, FDR and the New Deal saved the country.hh:

DevilsWin Wrote:Hoovers policies failed, FDR and the New Deal saved the country.hh:

And another view shared by many is that the New Deal prolonged the depression and WWII jump started the economy.hh:

DevilsWin Wrote:That's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make if it will better the country.

How will this help the country?

jetpilot Wrote:And another view shared by many is that the New Deal prolonged the depression and WWII jump started the economy.hh:

Yes, but that view would be incorrect.:biggrin:

lawrencefan Wrote:How will this help the country?

That's not my field of expertise. I trust they will do the right thing.

Below is a article by Christopher Horner, that I thought was interesting.

Obama's 'Cap and Trade' Plan Imposes Huge Tax

In his February 24 speech, President Obama asked Congress to send him “…legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.” But by “market-based cap” he means that the government would mandate carbon dioxide emission permits – which are essentially permits to use energy – that companies would then be able to sell among themselves.

His budget assumes a staggering $650 billion in revenue from this scheme. But who picks up the tab? Who ultimately pays the cost of buying these slices of global warming baloney, and why would industry support such a scheme?

The answer is that you and I do, as does everyone who buys anything requiring energy, just like we pay the cost of all the other taxes paid by manufacturers. It’s a tax, folks. Plain and simple, Obama’s “market-based cap” plan is a tax on American business.

Industry is actually behind this massive tax, having sold their support so that the tax is not merely passed through to consumers, but it allows companies to skim the scheme for a profit, again at your expense.

This tax, however, is nearly twice the size of the failed BTU tax which Al Gore still attributes the Democrats’ loss of Congress the next year.

The BTU tax was offered in the name of deficit reduction. Obama’s global warming tax is expressly to pay for new middle-class welfare entitlements, even though it takes away from the beneficiaries about the same amount they will fork out in increased energy costs (if not the entire inflationary impact). The important point for his movement, however, is that more money is run through the state, creating dependency.

With BTU, the then-new “rock star” Democratic president Clinton was rebuffed by a Democratic Congress once the public fought back. This was only after the House had passed the tax by one vote – cast by Rep. Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky (D-PA), who tearfully marched down to change her vote after being singled out for flipping by the White House. As she shuffled back up the aisle, a prescient Republican caucus loudly waived “bye, Margie!” knowing the gift she had given them. She was among many BTU-tax supporters later driven from office.

Then business successfully “Swiss-cheesed” the tax proposal by lobbying and achieving so many carve-outs that the tax simply collapsed. With an insufficient business constituency, Democratic Sens. Bennett Johnston, John Breaux and David Boren could not justify so angering the public and instructed the new president how the world would work.

There are two lessons here.

First, as Al Gore confessed to the Financial Times, going through the front door of a direct energy tax is too risky. Hence the cap-and-trade rationing scheme; it’s a tax but a non-transparent one, also making it vastly less efficient (more expensive) according to economists at, for example, the Congressional Budget Office. The message to lawmakers is to worry about one job: yours. Hide the tax. The part about also doubling the tax seems to be all Obama’s idea.

Second, cap-and-trade shows that business has also learned how to sell its support in return for additional schemes to further pick your pocket, siphoning of some of the cost to themselves. Cap-and-trade provides them billions of your dollars in return for playing along.

It’s still so ugly that some senators are exploring ways to actually ram through the scheme itself – and not just the assumptions of revenue from it – on the filibuster-proof budget process. This means they need just 50 votes plus Veep Joe Biden, not 60. It also means there would be no public development, meaning “exposure”, of the scheme.

So there remains a chance that the administration and industry have managed to lock this deal down without the taxpayer represented in the room.

If business is going to pass on the tax to consumers – as they always have to do – are businesses supporting this plan to curry favor with Obama? Of course they are. But who are “they”?

Top Companies Behind Obama’s “Global Warming Tax”

General Electric – the folks who brought you the expensive “energy-saving” light-bulbs by government mandate also bought Enron’s windmill business, that being the company which originally hatched this scheme. Beyond windmills GE has redesigned its business lines to capitalize on the energy-scarcity agenda, with little luck to date but counting on a lobbying budget bigger than “big oil”, combined. And, just by the way, they’re the owners of MSNBC and one of the few American companies that still trades with our most dangerous enemy, Iran.

Utilities – Cap-and-trade creates what is essentially a carbon cartel, restricting the supply and raising the price of fossil energy and thereby creating windfalls for the lucky holders of emission credits. It is surely a coincidence that companies caught engaging in illegal market manipulation -- Enron, and electric utilities American Electric Power, Cinergy, Entergy, and Calpine -- have been among the most aggressive lobbyists for the Kyoto Protocol or kindred emission trading schemes.

Cinergy’s CEO James Rogers is a Ken Lay protégé who, after merging with and taking the reins of Duke Energy, has added even more muscle to the global warming lobby.

Wall Street -- Among the most influential lobbyists for Kyoto-style policy are Wall Street firms planning to make commissions on the purchase and sale of carbon credits. Again surely a coincidence, the players most heavily invested in profiting from a cap-and-trade scheme were among those mostly heavily implicated in last year’s collapse (e.g., Lehman Bros., JP Morgan Chase). The crumbling Bank of America, naturally, is also a leading cheerleader of the scheme.

These firms are the first cohort of what we will continue to identify for you as the companies lobbying for Congress to stick you with a “global warming” tax.

You are now faced with the question of whether to allow your elected representatives to approve one of the largest tax increases in history, raising $650 billion over eight years from mandating then selling “cap-n-trade” carbon dioxide ration coupons.

Under the Obama scheme, billions of dollars of those rationing coupons will be given away to companies supporting the scheme, and their “cost” nonetheless priced into your energy costs. This is precisely how it has worked in Europe, at great economic cost.

Yet all businesses are on the hook for their sheepishness in the face of this long-running, cynical ploy by businesses underwriting the campaign of environmentalist hysteria proclaiming the end of the earth. Some, like NEC Electronics America, have just announced with a sigh that, with California having just adopted a version of this scheme, it appears that their operations there will be pulled back to Japan.

There’s not enough room on that island nation to ship all of our jobs, though China, India, Mexico, South Korea and others have made clear they are waiting to accommodate the rest. The one thing we do know is that if this doesn’t prove politically to be BTU redux for the Democrats, there’s no room for manufacturing here.

With a 13% increase my electric bill would go up about $45 per month or $540 annually. I guess we should consider ourseves lucky that Barry's promised a tax cut for 95% of us instead of a tax hike.
Here is an interview with Duke CEO Jim Rogers
But Duke CEO Jim Rogers, who supports the carbon cap, says Obama is wrong to insist that those allowances be initially auctioned to carbon emitters. Rogers calls an auction a “carbon tax” that would be passed on to consumers, with most of the burden placed on coal-dependent states such as the Carolinas.
“He's going to create a market that's going to dramatically drive up the costs for allowances,” Rogers said Monday. “It's going to be a feeding frenzy.”
Allowances auctioned for $15 each would raise Carolinas rates 13 percent in 2012, when the system could go into effect, Duke estimates. A $30 auction price would raise Carolinas rates 27 percent, it says.
Obama's proposed budget assumes allowances would go for $20 each. Most of the proceeds would be returned to taxpayers as payroll tax credits, with the rest supporting solar, wind and other renewable-energy technology.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/busines...72553.html

Old School Wrote:With a 13% increase my electric bill would go up about $45 per month or $540 annually. I guess we should consider ourseves lucky that Barry's promised a tax cut for 95% of us instead of a tax hike.
Here is an interview with Duke CEO Jim Rogers
But Duke CEO Jim Rogers, who supports the carbon cap, says Obama is wrong to insist that those allowances be initially auctioned to carbon emitters. Rogers calls an auction a “carbon tax” that would be passed on to consumers, with most of the burden placed on coal-dependent states such as the Carolinas.
“He's going to create a market that's going to dramatically drive up the costs for allowances,” Rogers said Monday. “It's going to be a feeding frenzy.”
Allowances auctioned for $15 each would raise Carolinas rates 13 percent in 2012, when the system could go into effect, Duke estimates. A $30 auction price would raise Carolinas rates 27 percent, it says.
Obama's proposed budget assumes allowances would go for $20 each. Most of the proceeds would be returned to taxpayers as payroll tax credits, with the rest supporting solar, wind and other renewable-energy technology.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/busines...72553.html

Liberals must try to grasp the fact that corporations do not pay taxes. They just pass the cost on to us.