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Commentary

Sarah Palin crushes cap-and-trade in the Washington Post

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Sarah Palin’s op-ed in the Washington Post is called “The ‘Cap And Tax’ Dead End”. (H/T Watts Up With That, Gateway Pundit, Stop the ACLU)

Excerpt:

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

…The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, “poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity.”

Meh. It’s merely excellent. Somewhat superlative.

Not nearly as good as Michele Bachmann could do, and Michele is conservative on vouchers and illegal immigration, unlike Sarah. See, Sarah writes about supply-side economics once in a while, but Michele gives passionate speeches about supply-side economics every day:

And Michele likes Christian apologetics more than Sarah! Sarah probably doesn’t even know who William Lane Craig is! Michele should be President, Sarah can be Secretary of Energy.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air comments on Sarah’s article:

We need to make all of this clear.  Cap-and-trade rations energy production, which means there will be less of it for a long time.  Alternatives are not ready for the kind of mass production that would allow a complete replacement of energy, and probably won’t be for decades, if ever in some cases (notably wind power, as GreenChoice showed and as T. Boone Pickens finally realized).  That means a lower standard of living that will impact America regressively, with the lowest income earners getting hit the hardest.  The drain on the economy from high energy prices means less jobs and higher retail prices for goods and services, again a regressive consequence of energy rationing.

Obama and his Utopian allies promise that government will help close the gap by offering more services to the unemployed and the poor at the expense of the “rich”.  What will that do?  It will further handicap the economy by keeping capital out of the markets.  Even worse, it will vastly expand the dependent class in America who have to go on the dole to survive.  And many of those ardent liberals will be pretty happy with that outcome, too.

We need to stop this thing. It’s good that Sarah came out against it.

Commentary

Understanding what cap-and-trade actually does

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I thought I would put together a few snippets to help everyone understand what Obama’s cap-and-trade energy tax actually does.

It’s a massive government intervention in the free market

The Heritage Foundation explains the point of cap and trade.

One of the most contentious provisions in the bill is the use of offsets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, in which “a manufacturing plant in, say, Gary, Ind., that is exceeding its ‘permitted’ expulsion of CO2, could continue to commit this sin against humanity by paying for a Brazilian farmer to plant some trees in the rain forest…. Of course, to guard against some nefarious polluter trying to cheat Uncle Sam and the world by claiming bogus ‘offsets,’ here must be a monitoring mechanism. Enter the ‘Offsets Integrity Advisory Board’ — yet another group of scientific ‘experts’ that would be tasked with compiling a list of qualifying offsets around the globe.”

Cap and trade is a regulatory nightmare that would hand over more power and money to the government with the intention of reducing global temperatures. The problem with that, however, is the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill will only reduce temperatures by an amount almost too small to measure. The bigger problem is that consumers’ pocketbooks will be hit hard by this bill. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that by 2035, gasoline prices would increase 58 percent, natural gas prices would increase 55 percent, home heating oil would increase 56 percent, and worst of all, electricity prices would jump 90 percent. After all, the goal of cap and trade is to drive up energy prices so high that people will use less. Yet in Missouri, state legislators are considering a bill that would charge consumers for saving electricity.

That’s enough to scare the snark out of you, but there’s much more to it than that.

The bill provides opportunities for corruption

Consider this National Review Online post, which counts 50 reasons why cap-and-trade is bad. (H/T Club for Growth)

I cannot excerpt the 50 points. I read through them and each one is more horrible than the last. Any of the 50 would be sufficient to cause an honest man to cry like a baby. (The print version of the article is easier to read – please send it to all your friends, too!)

The Democrats didn’t even read the bill

And remember, none of the Democrats who voted for the energy tax actually read it.

Excerpt:

Recall the passing of Waxman-Markey by the House, which had 300 pages added 18 hours before the floor vote–almost certainly going unread by most members of Congress. Furthermore, the nonplussed responses from administration backers and Democrats in Congress–when pressed to read the legislation they vote on or support–should be infuriating to anyone in favor of transparency and responsibility in government. As CEI Adjunct Fellow Fran Smith noted, some on the left went as far to claim that members of Congress uncomfortable with voting for climate change legislation in the dark were guilty of “treason against the planet.”

Yes, there’s that vaunted leftist morality again. Cutting missile defense is good, but not passing an energy tax is treason.

Commentary

Exploding the myth of “Deadbeat Dads”

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Dr. Stephen Baskerville e-mailed met to let me know about an important article in the Washington Times about the new show on the anti-male “Lifetime” network. If you want to understand why men don’t want to be husbands and fathers any more, read this entire piece.

Excerpt:

More than 90 percent of fathers with joint custody paid the support due, according to a Census Bureau report (Series P-23, No. 173). So deadbeats are in the minority. Also, most so-called deadbeat dads actually are dead broke. Two-thirds of men who fail to make child-support payments earn poverty-level wages, according to the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement. Most of the others are unemployed.

Bruce Walker, executive coordinator at the District Attorneys Council in Oklahoma City, who ran the state’s child-support enforcement program for three years and jailed hundreds of fathers for nonpayment, told the Newark Star-Ledger in 2002: “These men are seldom the mythical monsters described by politicians.”

“Many times I prosecuted impoverished men,” he told the Star-Ledger. “I prosecuted one deadbeat dad who had been hospitalized for malnutrition and another who lived in the bed of a pickup truck.”

On his blog, Dr. Baskerville links to some responses to the article, including his own:

Two powerful letters in response were published Wednesday:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/20/the-demonization-of-dads/
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/20/love-and-divorce/

My own letter was published Thursday (full letter below):
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/21/the-agony-of-child-support/

All three are worth reading because they are full of statistics that will shock you. Here is the best bit from the third:

Ostensibly created to recover welfare costs, child support enforcement on the federal level has failed and now costs taxpayers more than $3 billion annually. More seriously, it pays mothers to divorce or forgo marriage, thus creating the very problem it is supposed to alleviate.

Mothers are not the only ones who profit from fatherless children. State governments generate revenue from child support at federal taxpayers’ expense. By paying states according to the amount of child support they collect, federal programs give states an interest in more fatherless children. The more broken homes there are, the more revenue for the state.

Don’t forget to read the facts on the lack of male teachers in the schools, which undermines men’s ability to achieve and to be responsible. And when you’re done with that, you can read about the problem of no-fault divorce and the family court system. (A shorter version is linked here)

For those of you who are pro-life or pro-traditional marriage, I want to advise you that this issue is also a very important, although under-reported, issue for social conservatives. Fathers matter, and the state has policies in place that are discouraging men from their traditional role in the family. In the case of a divorce, fathers almost never get custody, and sometimes they do not see their children for years.

Before, I wrote about the fact that 40% of new births are to unwed mothers. Generous benefits provided by the government ensure that fathers are dispensable. Over 20 million children in the United States are raised without a father in the home. And I’m sure you know the social costs to young men and women: violence, anxiety, promiscuity, unwed motherwood, teen pregnancy, abortion, suicides, depression, drug addiction, etc.

And don’t even get me started on the false allegations of rape, harassment, etc., such as the recent Duke University lacrosse scandal. Women who make these false allegations are almost never punished! Over two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women for “irreconcilable differences”. You have to understand that thoughtful men notice these things, and they will make decisions accordingly.

Surprise! Men don’t like being treated poorly by the state. Treat us poorly enough and we’ll find other things to do with our lives than get marriage and raise children. To see what that might look like, take a look at this article on birth rates in countries that are further along the marxist-feminist agenda than the United States.

More in my series on how Democrat policies discourage marriage: Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here and Part 3 is here.