Going After the EPA

Boehner, Barton Introduce Proposal To Halt EPA Ruling on CO2

Resolution of disapproval would prevent back door attempt at national energy tax

WASHINGTON – Republican leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and 84 other Republicans today introduced H.J. Res. 77, a resolution of disapproval on the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

They said that under the endangerment finding – and the regulatory and legal red tape that flow from this expansion of government into our economic lives – the pace of U.S. economic growth will be stifled by the EPA and its controversial enforcement of environmental laws. American business owners and workers, they noted, want a clear and quick path to a robust, growing economy, not a thicket of new job-destroying regulations.

“The endangerment finding that EPA put out last year is fatally flawed,” said Barton, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We want to send a very clear signal that what the EPA has done is wrong and it should be overturned by the elected members of the House and the Senate.”

In time, the new permitting and pollution control rules would potentially slam millions of very small sources of GHG emissions – office buildings, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, churches, farms and other small businesses. EPA admits that, without regulatory action, the rules flowing from the endangerment finding would subject millions of entities to new permitting requirements, would cost hundreds of billions of dollars just to do the paperwork and processing, be administratively impossible, and do little to protect the environment. This resolution clears away this barrier to job creation.

EPA recently wrote to Barton confirming that it has not fully assessed the costs of impacts on jobs or employment of moving forward with greenhouse gas rules. The agency also confirmed that it has no evaluations prepared of possible job loss or shifts in employment that may occur because of the new or future rules.

While recognizing the total costs are unknown, EPA declined to provide assurances that the endangerment regulations would not cause major job losses.

A copy of the resolution can be found here.

Virginia AG Puts His Foot Down

EDITORIAL: Cuccinelli fights the EPA
Virginia attorney general questions global warming red tape

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took a gutsy and intelligent step Feb. 17 when he petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its ill-advised "finding" that carbon dioxide creates an endangerment for human health.

The endangerment finding would let the EPA battle alleged global warming by regulating emissions of CO2, which of course is the gas that every animal and person exhales with every breath. The finding was ludicrous from the start, and now Mr. Cuccinelli makes a reasonable case that it also was unlawful.

"Attorney General Cuccinelli believes that the EPA acted in an arbitrary and capricious fashion and failed to properly exercise its judgment by relying almost exclusively on reports from the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an arm of the United Nations] in attributing climate change to [human-caused] greenhouse gas emissions," the AG's office explains. "The IPCC is an international body that is not subject to U.S. data quality and transparency standards and the IPCC prepared their reports in total disregard to U.S. Standards."

Since the EPA finding was issued, the IPPC's reports have become subject to scandal on multiple fronts. Those scandals reached a crescendo when a British newspaper, the Daily Mail, reported Feb. 14 that "The academic at the centre of the 'Climategate' affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble 'keeping track' of the information. ... And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no 'statistically significant' warming."

Obviously, if the EPA were relying on bad data like all of the other climate-change fanatics, it ought to reconsider its plans to further strangle our struggling economy with more unnecessary red tape.

Mr. Cuccinelli argues that the EPA failed to meet its responsibility to conduct appropriate cost-benefit analysis, and that the economic harm to American citizens - including Virginians - would outweigh any purported benefits of the new regulations.

As the AG put it, "We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground." Of course, he's spot on.

100 Reasons Why Global Warming Is Natrual

** EXPRESS NEWS: 100 REASONS WHY GLOBAL WARMING IS NATURAL**


HERE are the first 10 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:

You can read the rest of them here.

1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.
2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.
3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.
4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.
5) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.
6) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.
7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.
8) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.
9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” - suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming
10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

How Cap and Trade Works

From www.congress.org:

As world leaders meet in Copenhagen to discuss global warming, the U.S. Senate is considering a bill to create a cap and trade system.

The measure under debate would put a cap -- or limit -- on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in a given year.

It would also allow polluters to trade their permits for emissions.

But how would it work exactly?

Watch a brief video explaining cap and trade on Congress.org.

Another RINO That Needs To GO ASAP

The Seduction Of Lindsey Graham
Nancy Morgan
RightBias.com
October 17, 2009

This article was first published by American Thinker on October 16, 2009

According to most conservatives in South Carolina, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has officially gone over to the dark side. Under the guise of 'bipartisanship,' Graham has signed on to one of the left's most ambitious plans to impose a socialist agenda in America - government control of the formerly free market through implementation of cap-and trade, the 1,400 plus page Waxman-Markey bill approved earlier this year by the House.

The main (scientifically unproven) premise of cap and trade is that the earth is melting and government must step in to save the world. Of course, it will be expensive, but hey, this is Mother Earth we're talking about. And its urgent and essential that the government immediately establish a $700 billion "market" for business to buy and sell "steadily declining number of permits for creating carbon emissions."

In a New York Times Op-Ed Graham co-authored with Sen. John Kerry (did you know he served in Viet Nam?) cutely entitled 'Yes We Can' (get it?) Sen Graham states "..we agree that climate change is real and threatens our economy and national security."
Huh?

Reasons 7 Thru 10 of "10 Reasons to Oppose Cap and Tax"

7. It prevents market forces from working for the environment:

The market distortions imposed by a cap and trade system would be significant. Recently, major energy companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in technologies that capture and store carbon as well as lower carbon alternative energy sources. A cap and trade system however, sets up perverse incentives that will distract these and other companies from market-based solutions to curb carbon output. Resources instead will be funneled to the artificial market for carbon allowances that cap and trade sets up.

8. It threatens to put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage with other countries:

Though the E.U. and the United States may be buying into cap and trade, industrial giants like China and India are not. Remember the lost jobs we talked about in point #4? In addition to China and India, nearby Mexico (another country where cap and trade is not even a remote possibility) are more than willing to pick up the U.S. slack and bolster their already robust manufacturing sectors.

9. It opens the door to massive fraud and corruption:

As energy companies look to game the system, cap and trade would open the door wide for fraud and corruption that could devastate U.S. investors and the economy as a whole. This has been seen already in the UK, a country currently participating in cap and trade. In a recent article by the British-based Guardian newspaper they report: “Britain’s biggest polluting companies are abusing a European emission trading scheme (ETS) designed to tackle global warming by cashing in their carbon credits in order to bolster ailing balance sheets.”

In the United States we have seen what happens when companies engage in creative accounting measures to hide losses and the staggering domino effect it can have on Wall Street investors and the larger economy. If you need more proof of this threat, look no further than this report by The Competitive Enterprise Institute that discusses Enron’s support for a cap and trade scheme that would allow them to dominate this new, made-up market for carbon.

10. It threatens to bust the federal budget at a time when the United States can scarcely afford it:

Federal spending continues at a breakneck pace. The recent passage of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill along with even more taxpayer funded bailouts looming on the horizon add to U.S. budget woes and sink us deeper into recession. And as if times weren’t tough enough, the CBO reports that cap and trade would heap additional undue pressure on our fragile budget.

According to their report, government would face the same challenges with higher energy costs that consumers do. Additionally, the fall in production for U.S. industry would lead to a loss of federal government tax revenues. Further increasing spending while decreasing revenues makes cap and trade a tough sell in the current economic climate.

Reasons 5 and 6 of "10 Reasons To Oppose Cap and Tax"

5. It is in effect a hidden regressive tax:

We’ve talked about how cap and trade causes energy prices to goup. That doesn’t just hit American industry, but American consumers as well. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) correctly notes that as these prices go up in the form of higher gasoline, heating oil, and electricity, the poor are hit hardest with what is in effect a hidden regressive tax.

President Obama promises to return revenues to vulnerable communities, families and businesses, but that leaves taxpayers at the whim of government to redistribute income rather than letting taxpayer keep their hard earned dollars.

6. It sets a dangerous precedent:

While extremist environmentalists and their liberal allies have been whining about climate change for years, most stop short of declaring cap and trade the silver-bullet solution.

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council are generally supportive of the concept of cap and trade.

However, as The Heritage Foundation has pointed out, these groups have found fault with actual proposals such as America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, criticizing them for not going far enough and willing only to endorse them as “a good first step.”

As much damage as a cap and trade scheme would cause in its own right, this posture by extreme environmental groups foreshadows even more draconian regulations in our future.

Reasons 3 and 4 of "10 Reasons To Oppose Cap and Tax"

3. It doesn’t work where it has been tried:
Speaking of Europe, let’s take a closer look at how cap and trade is fairing. As mentioned earlier, the EU is watching carbon emission levels rise despite the fact that they have had a cap and trade system since 2005.

Furthermore, the Heartland Institute reports that 12 of the 15 EU nations taking part in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a program that sets greenhouse gas reduction targets and serves as a precursor to cap and trade, are failing to meet their reduction targets, with three going over by more than 10 percent and another three going over by more than 20 percent.

In fact, emissions for all EU countries went up on average 2.1 percent between 2000 and 2004. Compare this with the United States where currently no such regulatory regime exists and yet emissions went up only 1.3 percent during the same time period. Nonetheless, President Obama has announced an aggressive set of targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promising to “work expeditiously with key stakeholders and the Congress to develop an economy-wide emissions reduction program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions approximately 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and approximately 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.”

4. It will cost Americans jobs:
This calculation is a pretty simple one. For U.S. industry to comply with a cap and trade scheme, they have to reduce their carbon emissions. There are two ways to do this:

(1) produce less – this obviously hurts jobs as companies would seek to streamline their workforce to compensate for a drop in production, or

(2) buy carbon allowances in order to keep production up – this, too, would threaten jobs as companies would be forced to devote more internal resources to allowances, negatively effecting their bottom lines and potentially putting workers on the chopping block.

In either case, the rising costs of energy under a cap and trade system, as mentioned earlier, only add to the problem. An analysis conducted by Charles River Associates in 2007 estimated anywhere from 1.2 million to 2.3 million jobs would be lost under a cap and trade scheme.

VoteVets Is Dishonest and Despicible

They have never endorsed a conservative candidate, veteran or otherwise.

From Wikki:
Initially composed of United States Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the organization views defense policy as an American priority. The stated goal of the PAC is to put in Congress Afghanistan or Iraq war veterans who are critical of the execution of the war in Iraq.

They run this ad thanking Perriello for voting for the Wacky-Marxist Cap and Tax Bill. (I'm not cluttering up our site with a bunch of videos from these asshats)

Then, they have the audacity to run radio spots encouraging Sens Warner and Webb to support the Senate version of Cap and Tax and use the sacrifices of our nations' Warriors to justify what VoteVets calls a fight "against big oil and special interests".

If they had a true American agenda, they'd be working to insure this country had resources to help returning veterans, not working to reduce or eliminate jobs in domestic energy production here in Virginia and across the Nation.

Shabby and tasteless, especially when you consider this:

Now We Know Whose Side They Are On

No Oil for Blood
Thanks to three American senators, China will be pumping Iraqi oil
by Frederick W. Kagan 09/16/2008 3:15:00 PM

If they are so concerned about the sacrifices of their brothers in arms, why do they endorse candidates who divert critical funding for fuel and ammunition to pork barrel projects?

Why are they only endorsing candidates who are against the Global War on Terrorism?

This Ain't Hell (but you can see it from here), has some more background and current information on votevets.

Priorities

Suppose you work for a veterans service organization and you have $400,000 to spend on that service to veterans. What would you spend it on? Maybe lobbying to get the President to make a timely decision about supporting the troops engaged in Afghanistan?

Maybe an outreach program to veterans who suffer from traumatic brain injuries or PTSD? Perhaps use the money to influence Congress to exempt veterans who rely on the VA or other military health care from the impending penalty for having free healthcare?

Maybe something like a memorial to people who serve? An outward-bound program for disabled veterans?

Something to let those currently deployed know that we’re thinking of them?

Well, not if your organization is named VoteVets - you’d spend your $400,000 on RADIO spots for pushing a clean energy bill.

Yeah, they’re calling it an “ad blitz” but how hard is it to “blitz” a 19th century technology? And a “clean energy” ad buy? Of course, their strategy is to perpetuate the “war for oil” lie;

FreedomWorks 2 of 10 Reasons To Oppose Cap and Tax

Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly stated that Cap and Trade will be a priority for the 111th Congress. Embraced some years ago in Europe and a few other countries, cap and trade creates an artificial market for various industries to buy, sell, and trade allowances that permit a certain amount of carbon output. It has long been on the wish list for American liberals and extremist environmentalists.

And with Democrats now in control of Congress and the White House, pssage of this monstrosity is almost a certainy. In fact, in the 2010 White House budget, President Barack Obama calls for a sweeping cap and trade program that would raise $646 billion in new revenues.

Here are FreedomWorks’ Top 10 reasons why they shouldn’t…

1. It will raise energy costs: While different nuanced approaches continue to surface, any analysis of any cap and trade scheme comes to the same conclusion; energy costs will go up. The latest serious attempt to enact cap and trade in the United States, America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 sponsored by Sens.Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), serves as a good example. An analysis of this legislation cited during a Senate hearing held by the Committee on Environment and Public Works estimated the costs to the average American household would be between $800 and $1,300 by 2015, and then increasing to $1,500 to $2,500 by 2050.

2. It doesn’t help the environment: If energy costs are going to go up for Americans, shouldn’t there be significant environmental benefit and progress towards reversing climate change?

You would think so. But even if the most aggressive of cap and trade schemes were properly adhered to, scientists that both advocate and oppose a cap and trade program widely agree that the maximum drop to the earth’s temperature would be no more than 0.07 degrees Celsius by the year 2050.

To give some sense of just how negligible this decrease would be, we cannot even estimate the absolute mean surface temperature of the earth within 0.07. What’s worse is that cap and trade actually provides incentives to emit more carbon, not less.

An article by the Christian Science Monitor explains: “By turning carbon emissions into commodities that can be bought and sold, cap-and-trade policies could remove the stigma from producing such emissions.”

In other words, if industries understand they are working within a legal framework when they output carbon, the public pressure for them to cut down is weakened.

Evidence of this can be seen in Europe where most countries have seen carbon emissions go up, even though the European Union has had a cap and trade regime in place since 2005.

Cap and Trade-A Federal Leviathan

and we have an update, courtesey of the DC Examiner:

Wall Street Journal -- Senators to Unveil Draft Climate Bill

The global warming bill from senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry is either a real effort to rekindle climate legislation in the Senate or just a vanity project. Based on the sponsors, you certainly can’t rule out the latter.

Writers Ian Talley and Stephen Power outline the ideas behind the Boxer-Kerry plan to be introduced in happy generalities today. But the lack of specifics and hugely optimistic estimates make it unlikely that any action will be taken soon.

“Unlike the House bill, the Senate's draft bill would preserve the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. Because that law generally gives the EPA limited flexibility to consider costs when setting regulations, some business groups and many lawmakers fear the agency's regulation of greenhouse gases could lead to onerous, new rules on business.

In a bid to gain support from moderates within the Democratic Party and potential Republican votes, the Boxer-Kerry draft also includes provisions to fund training of workers in the nuclear industry and development of technology that could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.”

Not Everyone Won the Cap and Trade Lobbying Battle

This bill is so bad, I've decided to rename it the Wacky-Marxist Energy Bill.

The cap and trade bill introduced by Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) and passed in the House is 1,427 pages and includes much more than a cap and trade system to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve been detailing these economically harmful provisions in our cap and trade calamities, but Kathleen Hartnett White at the Texas Public Policy Foundation provides a tremendous synopsis of the entire bill and asks many tough questions in her policy paper, A Federal Leviathan: The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

One particularly revealing part of the paper is the graph on the bottom of page three. Approximately 2,340 energy lobbyists worked on the cap-and-trade bill to do what President Obama said we shouldn’t – hand out allowances costs to utilities and other industries direct revenue to them. Opposition to this huge energy tax bill wheeling, dealing and arm-twisting to eke out the narrowest of majorities. They promised generous handouts for various industries and special interests but not everyone came out winners. The blue indicates the emissions by industry and the red indicates the allowances allocated by the government.

As shown by the graph, the refining and petroleum products industry, responsible for much of the carbon emissions from energy, receive the very little allowance allocations. White writes,

“Under the aggressive carbon caps, many U.S. industries could not compete with foreign products manufactured in countries without binding carbon limits. And increased import of goods manufactured elsewhere without carbon limits would
increase global carbon emissions. To address this “carbon leakage,” the bill provides for “carbon emission allowance rebates” to industries which meet specified levels of “trade intensity” or “energy intensity.” Petroleum refining, oddly, is excluded from those eligible.”

The other loser is, of course, me and you. The disguised energy tax will cost a family of four an additional $3,000 per year. When all the tax impacts have been added up, we find that the average per-family-of-four costs rise by almost $3,000 per year. In the year 2035 alone, the tax impact is $4,600. And if you add up the costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035, the years in which we modeled the bill, it’s about $71,500.

Giving away allowances are not an exception to the “no free lunches” adage. Giving away allowances does not lower the costs of cap and trade; it merely shifts the costs around.

Waxman-Markey is Robin Hood in reverse: it takes a lot of money from regular Americans and funnels it to Washington bureaucrats and the corporations with the best lobbyists.

Call To Arms

	Call to Arms, Virginians! Congress has passed Cap and Trade and it is now in the Senate. This week Congress is introducing Nationalized Health Care. Your country's future will be destroyed if YOU do not act NOW! Here Is What YOU Can Do: Join "We Surround Them - Richmond," the "Richmond Tea Party" and the nationwide resistance on July 17th to the Socialists' one-two punch to America's economic survival. 1- Assemble outside of either Senator's Richmond offices on July 17th at Noon to stop them from selling out our nation: SEN. JIM WEBB 507 East Franklin Street Richmond, VA 23219 Phone: 804-771-2221 Fax: 804-771-8313 SEN. MARK WARNER 5309 Commonwealth Center Parkway, Suite 401 Midlothian, VA 23112 Phone Number: 804-739-0247 Fax Number: 804-739-3478 2- Telephone ALL of our Senator's offices: SEN. JIM WEBB RICHMOND - Phone: 804-771-2221 WASHINGTON - Phone: 1-866-507-1570 DANVILLE - Phone: 434-792-0976 HAMPTON ROADS - Phone: 757-518-1674 NORTHERN VA - Phone:703-807-0581 NORTON - Phone: 276-679-4925 ROANOKE - Phone: 540-772-4236 SEN. MARK WARNER RICHMOND - Phone: 804-739-0247 WASHINGTON - Phone: 202-224-2023 ABINGDON - Phone: 276-628-8158 NORFOLK - Phone: 757-441-3079 ROANOKE - Phone: 540-857-2676 3- Email our Senators: http://webb.senate.gov/contact/ http://warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact For more information, please visit www.wst-richmond.com

Waxman-Markey = EPIC FAIL

The Cap and Trade Bill. Waxman-Markey Bill. H.R. 2454. American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The Pile of Shit.

By any name, the bill is STILL a failure. Global warming will not be affected. Neither will CO2. And our industries will flee the country.

And here is the proof:

India Rejects Any Greenhouse-Gas Cuts Under New Climate Treaty

India said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes the country reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will undermine its energy consumption, transportation and food security.

At the Bonn Talks:

Yvo de Boer, the UN climate change chief, said that a worldwide pact to prevent global warming was “physically impossible”.

China and Japan won't play along

China will not make a binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions, putting in jeopardy the prospects for a global pact on climate change.

Officials from Beijing told a UN conference in Bonn yesterday that China would increase its emissions to develop its economy rather than sign up to mandatory cuts …

Hopes that Copenhagen might deliver tougher carbon reduction targets were dashed further when Japan failed to make a significant commitment to reduce emissions.

At Pelosi's meeting in China - Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI):(emphasis mine)

He point-blank asked the Premier and other high officials if they were going to participate in whatever “process” comes out of the big Copenhagen meeting (the successor to Kyoto) in December; he was told by everyone of whom he asked that question that: No, China would not be signing on to any agreements in Copenhagen - they instead plan to set up their own standards and do things their own way. Whatever “mechanisms” come out of Copenhagen, it is clear that China, India, and many other countries simply will be opting not to participate.

Rep. Sensenbrenner’s main fear vis-a-vis the official United States participation in the Copenhagen discussions is that we will sign agreements merely for the sake of signing. (Gotta do SOMETHING! YOU CAN'T WASTE A CRISIS!)

This bill is an economic unilateral disarmament treaty. Not only is it going to destroy the coal industry, raise energy prices, force industry transfer off-shore, but, its going to let the Chinese build yet more things that we use. Our dollar is going to tank even farther.

Its going to be so bad that, even though we'll have massive amounts of cheap labor available, no one will be able to use that labor to build stuff in THIS country.

Besides, if China cuts emissions, who's going to build those millions of mercury-filled "energy-saver" bulbs?

h/t Redstate, Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg

ICECAP - If only Congress were this informed.

A round up of wonderful posts from the climate site, ICECAP.

There is no evidence for CO2 based global warming.

Let’s break down the case for human-caused global warming logically:

1) There is plenty of evidence that global warming has been occurring recently.
2) There is ample evidence that carbon emissions causes warming and that the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing.
3) But there is no evidence that carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of the recent global warming.

The alarmists focus you entirely on the first two points, to distract you from the third.

Climatologist slams warming myths.

Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. publicly rebuked the website in a June 30, 2009 article for “erroneously communicating the reality of the how the climate system is actually behaving.”

In his article titled “Real Climate’s Misinformation”, Pielke also chastised readers of Real Climate for blindly accepting the incorrect climate claims promoted on the site. “Media and policymakers who blindly accept these claims are either naive or are deliberately slanting the science to promote their particular advocacy position,...”

And my favorite....I just wish that it would be read aloud by Senator Boehner.......

On the House Vote. Here are some juicy parts.....

The supporters have uniformly been delusional imbeciles, talking about a shiny future, added jobs, reduced deficits, and saving the world. They have clearly no idea what’s written in the bill and even if you told them, they wouldn’t understand what it would mean. They’re not capable of an elementary mental activity.

(emphasis - author)
For a comparison, a pretty good bill called the U.S. Constitution originally had four pages and it allowed a great country to work well for 230+ years. Those four pages are somewhat less than 1500+ pages whose only purpose is to allow one particular green tumor to thrive for a few years, before it dies of hunger.

There's more. Go read. Its outstanding.

Now, if we could just get it imprinted on a bat and lay it upside......

AFP Update on Cap and Trade

Last week we had an unbelievably tight, down-to-the-wire fight in the U.S. House of Representatives over the massive Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy tax bill, the largest tax hike in American history and an unprecedented intrusion of the federal government into our economy and our lives.

Thank you so much for everything you did to give the side of economic sanity a fighting chance. Your calls and emails made a huge difference, and AFP members like you were clearly one of the driving forces last week.

We weren’t quiet able to win in the House (see how they voted here), but we’re confident that if we can keep educating and mobilizing regular common-sense Americans, we can beat this disastrous bill in the Senate.
Here are few reasons to be hopeful:

* Just two states, California (32) and New York (25) provided more than a quarter of the 219 total yes votes

* Democrats in several key targeted Senate states voted majority no, including Indiana (3 of 5), Arkansas (2 of 3), and West Virginia (2 of 2)

* Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, both statewide elected Democrats, vote no

Unfortunately, we also learned that the White House is willing to do anything to get this bill passed, including misleading and intimidating members. That means the Senate fight will be right down to the wire, and pressure from back home will be the only way to stop this from passing.

We also know the stakes, in the President’s own words:"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."There is no time to waste, so I’m asking you to please click here to send a strong message to your Senators to oppose this outrageous cap-and-trade bill.

Thanks for everything you do to make AFP great.

Phil Kerpen

Director of Policy

www.AmericansforProsperity.org

Some Light Summer Reading: Doing the job that CERTAIN Americans won't do.

If anyone is interested, here is the Cap Your Trade bill The Pile Of Shit.
The section on Housing starts on page 297: Title II Energy Efficiency. Be the first on your block to read it!

A round up of opinions on just one horrible mandate of the bill: Mandatory energy audits because of a National building code that OVERRIDES state and local codes. Now, how did the federal government get the power to do that? States that don't bend over and comply with the big bosses in DC won't get their share of the "sugar." "Sugar" that we don't have and that the states have been able to live without until now.

From a fellow Virginian: Blake Yount at the Norfolk Examiner: (emphasis mine)

"...the bill stipulates that state codes match the national codes, or the said state codes will be nullified, and states will lose federal funding and carbon allowances. Remember, in this new world of cap and trade, the federal government has the authority to "allow" businesses within a state or community to conduct operations and emit carbon. Thus, millions of private sector jobs would be politicized under cap and trade. This type of politicization can only be found throughout history in societies governed by tyrants."

Real Estate Blog:

"The bill forces sellers to have an energy inspection prior to being able to sell their home. Windows, appliances and insulation will have to be inspected and approved by a government inspector and modifications would have to be made for compliance before you can close the sale."

A good summary of some provisions at CNSNews:

"The purpose of such a strategy – known as the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) – would be to “facilitate” the retrofitting of existing buildings nationwide."

John Boehner gives us his take on this "pile of shit."

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I can't seem to find the authorization for these powers that Congress is seizing for themselves anywhere in my copy of the Constitution. Where in that document does it allow the Federal Government to pick and choose which industries fail and which prosper?(Yes, I know. No industries will prosper.)

DC should not be allowed to run roughshod over the rights of the states and the people. The States should not be subservient to the federal government except where that is specifically described in the Constitution.

When states stop being whores for our tax money, perhaps we might regain some freedom.

Hope you enjoy a return to the old days

The House has passed the Trade Knee Capping Cap and Trade Bill. This madness is just one result of the environmentalist movement to "reduce our carbon footprint."

Look at the 32 year old woman on the right. She had a minuscule carbon footprint. Welcome to the world that the Greens want back.

Expensive energy = more human power needed.
Expensive energy = no time saving devices.
Expensive energy = prolonged national depression.

Protein Wisdom explores the nature of these "lying, misanthropic, baby-hating Luddite.(s)"

Modern Americans have NO freaking clue as to the reality of a world with energy rationing. No freaking clue as to the reality of living in a world of little or no available gasoline.

They all think that life will be the same except that we'll all be "saving the Earth." MMMMMMmmmm. Won't that keep us warm at night. I'm sure those idiots will object to my increase use of lumber to burn when fuel and electricity prices skyrocket. I'm sure that they won't mind too much when forests are being turned into fuel. Just think of all that soot going into the air......
THAT will be helpful in cooling the planet.....

Climate Bill is a "pile of sh#t"

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) had a few choice words about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) landmark climate-change bill after its passage Friday.

When asked why he read portions of the cap-and-trade bill on the floor Friday night, Boehner told The Hill, "Hey, people deserve to know what's in this pile of shit."

Need anything more be said?

From The Hill.com

The Bill to put a Cap into our Trade has passed

Eight idiotic Republicans helped to pass this theft.
Let them know what you think:
Bono (CA) 202-225-5330 Castle (DE) 202-225-4165 Kirk (IL) 202-225-4835 Lance (NJ) 202-225-5361 Lobiondo (NJ) 202-225-6572 McHugh (NY) 202-225-4611 Reichart (WA) 202-225-7761 Chris Smith (NJ) 202-225-3765

NO Congressman read this bill. They continue to pass bills that they are not reading and expect us to know what the law is. Ignorance of the law is supposed to be no excuse. Every single one of these bastards need to be kicked out of office. Every single one of the bastards that sponsored this, supported this, or voted for this should be impeached for malfeasance.

I think that I'm going to need a lot of that tape to wrap around my head.

First, the entire bill is based on a false premise of confirmed man-made global warming. Not only has no global warming been confirmed to be man-made, THE PLANET IS COOLING!

Second, no one read this bill. 300 pages were snuck in at 3 am. And there is an unconstitutional “place holder” mentioned so that they can add more after the vote. (Khrys at Michelle Malkin.com: The GOP should explore bringing suit with the aim of declaring “placeholder provisions” make the whole bill unconstitutional. If Line Item Veto is unconstitutional, Line Item Insert sure as heck is too.)

Third, the entire premise of “cap and trade” is a proven failure. Look at Europe and Kyoto. China and India have already spoken. They are NOT going to kill THEIR economies.

Fourth, Spain is bewildered that we are following a similar plan for green jobs as theirs. Their plan failed miserably.

This bill will do nothing but hurt our economy. NOTHING will be gained, except that Al Gore’s wallet will get fatter. He owns a “carbon credit” company. Where are all the critics of Enron? This was an idea pushed by those thieves.

Reports say that the switchboards were overloaded with citizens demanding a NO vote. Including Democrats. This government is out of control. This is the greatest tax hike for the US in history. And, apparently, we don't have any representation.

Ironic that its so close to July 4th.

Rope. Tree. Politician. Some assembly required.