What will cap and trade mean for American consumers?

The Heritage Foundation posted this summary of the top ten points regarding cap and trade.

Cap and Trade Top Ten List
1. Cap and Trade Is a Massive Energy Tax
2. It Will Not Make A Substantive Impact on the Environment
3.
It Will Kill Jobs
4. It Will Cause Electricity Bills and Gas Prices to Sharply Increase
5. It Will Outsource Manufacturing Jobs and Hurt Free Trade
6. It Will Make You Choose Between Energy, Groceries, Clothing or Haircuts.
7. It Will Be Highly Susceptible to Fraud and Corruption
8. It Will Hurt Senior Citizens, the Poor, and the Unemployed the Worst
9. It Will Cost American Families Over $3,000 a Year
10. President Obama Admitted “Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket” under a cap-and-trade program. (January 2008)

I can help with number 4: the energy price increases for consumers are right here, courtesy of Michele Bachmann.

Their post goes on to list and analyze the effects of various legislation proposed by Democrats in terms of number of jobs lost and amount of money confiscated from the private sector for the government to spend. It’s amazing how many times Democrats tried to destroy the economy while Bush was President. And now they will finally be able to do it!

The article also mentions how many jobs will be lost by the proposed green jobs programs, as well as how many jobs will be outsourced to China and India, who will enjoy a manufacturing boom since they are not capping their emissions at all.

That’s right, let’s be clear on that:

The Ultimate Outsourcing: India and China have repeatedly said they would not match U.S. environmental goals in order to protect their economies. Cap and Trade will merely move manufacturing jobs to China and India.

There are people I know who voted for Obama who are worried about their jobs. They complain to me about outsourcing. They do not understanding that Obama causes outsourcing by taxing “the rich” and regulating “greedy corporations”. What a tragedy! Defeated by your own ignorance!

The 10 part series on cap and trade

The Heritage Foundation has also started a nice series of 10 posts about what cap and trade will do to the economy. In this series, they are going into a lot more detail than in the summary posted I talked about above.

Part 1 is called Cap-and-Tax is a Jobs Destroyer.

They explain cap and trade:

It works like this: Policymakers set a cap on the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that can be omitted into the atmosphere. Each power plant, factory, refinery, and other regulated entity will be allocated allowances (rights to emit) six greenhouse gases. However, only a certain percentage of the allowances will be allocated to these entities. The remaining percentage will be auctioned off or distributed to other emitting entities. Most emitters will need to purchase at least some allowances at auction. Emitters who reduce their emissions below their annual allotment can sell their excess allowances to those who do not–the trade part of cap-and-trade. Over time, the cap would be ratcheted down, requiring greater cuts in emissions.

So this is basically a tax on energy production. Yes, Democrats think that we produce too much energy, employing too many Americans, and that we sell it for too little money. According to Democrats, we need less production, fewer jobs and higher consumer prices for electricity. And other companies who use energy will have to pay more for it as well.

Take a look at this graph showing projected job losses under the Liberman-Warner cap and trade bill:

Jobs lost from Lieberman-Warner bill
Jobs lost from Lieberman-Warner bill

Click the image for a bigger version.

Now let’s take a look at Part 2, which is called Cap and Trade will force you to make budget cuts.

Again, Heritage explains how cap and trade transfers money out of the private sector, where money is used to produce goods, into the public sector, where money is wasted by bureacrats on bicycle paths and gold monuments to Obama.

…if President Obama were to sign a cap and trade bill into law, he would have to call for familial budget cuts much greater than one dollar. (For a brief explanation of how cap and trade works, go here.) As recently acknowledged by a top White House official, a global warming tax could generate as much as $1.9 trillion in tax revenue over eight years, which amounts to a nearly $2,000 tax every year for every American household.* Add this up over the period of a few years and we’re talking about trillions of dollars in lost income for the entire U.S. economy.

And here’s the chart:

How much will cap and trade cost you?
How much will cap and trade cost you?

I hope the people with low income who were hoping to become rich under Obama won’t be too shocked to find that the poor do better under capitalism not socialism. I mean, I hope they don’t drop their television remote controls and doughnuts.

Save us Michele Bachmann!

Actually, she did save us on that mortgage cramdown bill that I blogged about while back. So my pleading is not in vain.

UPDATE: Good news! Michelle Malkin says the cap and trade tax is in trouble! It turns out that the Democrats in manufacturing-intensive states are aware of what the tax will mean to their unemployment rate.

Yesterday, I noted Henry Waxman’s debate-evading maneuvers to try and facilitate passage of the massive eco-tax/”climate change” bill.

The NRCC sent out a helpful fact sheet outlining why the radical green plan is really in trouble. You can thank opposition from Democrats in manufacturing and energy-producing states.

Michelle has all the citations from the Democrat politicians who are never going to vote for this mess. So, good news!

UPDATE: My post on the fraud involved in the “polar ice caps are melting” myth.

How do Democrats plan to improve health care?

I think it’s important to be clear about what their goal is for their seizing control of reforming health care.

The Heritage Foundation says this:

Earlier this month in Chicago, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) told a rally of government-run health care supporters: “I know many of you here today are single payer advocates and so am I … and those of us who are pushing for a public health insurance don’t disagree with this goal. This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there and I believe we will.”

And let’s be clear about how they mean to do it:

Recent SCHIP expansion and additional Medicaid funding in the stimulus package made a substantial down payment on major expansion of government run health programs. Established research shows that a public health plan will ”crowd out” private insurance, forcing millions of Americans off their current plans, and away from their family doctors. A public health plan, coupled with Comparative Effectiveness Research, would engineer artificially lower prices for medical services through the imposition of Medicare-style price controls. Such Medicare-style payment levels would undercut the market share of existing private health plans, and, combined with a mandate on employers, stack the incentives against workers in private employer-based health insurance by encouraging their employers to dump them into a new government-run health plan. Watch the video of Rep. Schakowksy’s statements on The Foundry. She clearly admits that the purpose of the government run option is to kill private insurance so everyone eventually is forced into government-run health care.

And the result is also known:

Moving all Americans into a government-run health care system will not only bankrupt our country, but will lead to less innovation in the health care sector and lower quality care for all Americans.

This is what people who vote for Democrats will get. It’s not what they expected, but it’s what they’ll get.

Audio debate: Did Jesus even exist?

This debate features James Patrick Holding one of the experts on the question of whether there is sufficient evidence outside the New Testament writings to answer the question of whether Jesus ever existed. Note that debate on the Unbelievable radio show start at about 15 minutes into the podcast.

The wacky thing about this debate is the topic of course. No PhD historian has ever taken the position that Jesus never existed in a research publication or book.

This is the last debate in my series of 4 wacky UK debates. I hope you enjoyed them!

Note that debates on the Unbelievable radio show start at about 15 minutes into the podcast.


Unbelievable? 2 May 2009 “Did Jesus exist?”

While non-Christians may doubt the miracles and resurrection of Jesus, few doubt his actual existence.However, Ken Humphreys believes the evidence for Jesus’ very existence is scant and that Christian belief in him is the result of “late and fake” accounts. JP Holding is a vociferous defender of Christian history and doctrine and believes Ken’s scepticism is unfounded and biased.They examine the evidence both in and beyond the Gospels for Jesus’ existence.

For JP Holding see www.tektonics.org

For Ken Humphreys see www.jesusneverexisted.com


If you want to see more debates on weird subjects, featuring fringe atheists, let me know.