Cap it Now
Cap and trade. Sounds like something that would be at home in the new Yankees Stadium (and not the floor of the US Senate). Thankfully, some folks understand it has no place in the Senate. Michelle Malkin notes that Senator Thune, among others are still holding out:
GOP Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, and John Thune of South Dakota pushed back. President Obama, the Republicans noted, said last week that the cap-and-trade component of his budget is “non-negotiable.” This global warming reduction proposal amounts to an unprecedented national energy tax on every man, woman, and child. Every household. Every business. Far-reaching and regressive, the White House’s own budget officials first pegged the price tag at $646 billion – but admitted to Senate staffers that the actual number would be “two-to-three times” that figure. Which means an estimated $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion between fiscal years 2012 and 2019 by the Obama number-crunchers’ (or rather, number-cookers’) own calculations.
It would appear as though certain members of the current political establishment (the President and his backers) are bound and determined to:
- Implement every policy dreamed up by (to use Mark Levin’s term) Statists since the beginning of the Industrial age.
- Make sure that everyone is dependent on the government for those things which are necessary to exist.
- Thumb our national nose at countries who have told us our policies are not encouraging anything but debt and fear.
The list could go on, but I’m having trouble–trouble going on that is. While not depressed (clinically speaking) given the current state of affairs, I confess to being mightily discouraged. In my present frame of mind, I do not think the 2010 elections can come soon enough.
The problem with government is that it is very like a large ocean liner: Once moving in a given direction it requires substantial time and energy to get it going in even a slightly different direction. One only hopes that we can change course before beaching what was once the leading republic in the world.
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6 Comments, Comment or Ping
Chet
02 April 2009, 9:36, UTC
The problem with government is that it is very like a large ocean liner: Once moving in a given direction it requires substantial time and energy to get it going in even a slightly different direction.
Right, which is why it makes total sense that, in the three months of the Obama administration, he’s succeeded in turning the country from a capitalist paradise into full-on socialism.
Do you expect anyone to take your nonsense seriously? The way you contradict yourself every other post I’m beginning to think this is all a put-on.
wolfman87
02 April 2009, 12:54, UTC
I have to disagree with you on this one CC, gov. is not so much like an ocean liner as a mountian. We start at the top, and when we give the gov. power, we slide down a little, the problem is, the government will take power as fast as it can, but it is exptremely slow going trying to take the power and give it back to the people.
That is how Obama and his support crew have done so much damage so quickly, they have taken power, and convinced people to give them more and more, now we have a long, up hill battle to get it back.
Chet
02 April 2009, 13:53, UTC
What damage, specifically? Cite policies that were actually Obama’s and have actually taken effect. Imaginary Obama Youth breaking into your house to subvert your thermostats don’t count.
Michael Woodring
02 April 2009, 14:56, UTC
Wolfman,
Analogies are useful only insofar as they permit us to view something from a different perspective–but none of them (including ocean liners) are perfect. My problem with the mountain analogy is that we have slipped down so far we are already in the valley.
Wolfman87
04 April 2009, 4:25, UTC
Michael, (by the way, my middle name is spelled the same way)
That is true enough, no analogy is perfect, Kenneth Burke does a really good job of explaining the use of analogies in one of his books where he talks about perspective by incongruity, I will get the citation for you because I recommend Burke to anyone. I guess my point was, it doesn’t take long for the gov. to take power, usurp rights, and bureaucratize things they never should have gotten into in the first place, it is relatively easy for them to do this if they have no problem tricking people to do it. The really difficult thing is to get them out, to get your rights back, to reduce the gov.’s power, that is the nature of the beast.
Now Chet, as far as citing the bill number, I can’t do that because I don’t’ know them off the top of my head. But to more specific than I have, some examples would include (but are not limited to…): The bailouts that he ok’d, his budget, the damage he has done to our relations with other countries, jacking up taxes, playing a key role in the Fed taking over the free market so now it is a Fed market… and if I had enough time I could probably think of some more. (I hate to use this as an excuse but I am at work and only have a limited amount of time to comment.) The thermostat situation, is something he (Obama, and no I am not going to cite the paragraph from his teleprompter that he read it from) said he plans to do because of the energy situation. (You know, the “We are running out of energy sources and must not use fossil fuels” deal, to be more specific.)
Wolfman87
Chet
05 April 2009, 13:30, UTC
The bailouts that he ok’d, his budget, the damage he has done to our relations with other countries, jacking up taxes, playing a key role in the Fed taking over the free market so now it is a Fed market…
1) The bailouts are Bush policy.
2) The difference in percentage between Obama’s budget and Bush’s last budget is about the same as the rate of inflation over the same period.
3) Our relations with other countries are far better now than at any time since 2001, largely due to Bush no longer being in the White House.
4) Obama has not raised taxes, but lowered them.
5) The Fed has not “taken over” the free market; rather, it has made loans to and paid for stock in a small number of key industry leaders, in order to save your job and the jobs of countless other Americans.
These things are a matter of historical fact, easily discerned from a legitimate newspaper or news program. Put down the conservative revisionist sources and educate yourself.
The “thermostat situation” is a figment of your paranoid imagination.