Tag Archives: cap and trade

The Looming Carbon Tax

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On Sunday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the Democrat’s plan to determine the amount of energy used in the production of goods.

The article reports:

Fresh from the looming trainwreck that is the deal to increase the debt limit, four Republican senators recently signed onto legislation that would require the Biden administration to study the feasibility of . . . a national tax on energy that would be collected at the gas pump and in electricity and heating bills.

The four Republicans — Senator Cramer (R-ND), Senator Cassidy (R-LA), Senator Graham (R-SC), and Senator Murkowski (R-AK) — joined five Democrats in asking Team Biden to determine the amount of energy used — and carbon dioxide emitted — by various countries in the production of essentially everything that makes modern life possible (aluminum, iron, steel, plastic, crude oil, batteries, etc.).

Eventually, the information would be used to impose tariffs on those countries who — in the view of the Biden crew — emitted too much carbon dioxide while creating those products.

The article notes:

Unfortunately for American consumers — and this is the important part of the story — the process will lead inevitably to the federal government setting a price for carbon dioxide in these United States.

That means only one thing: a nationwide tax on carbon dioxide, which is, of course, really a tax on energy in all its forms. Such a tax would be incredibly regressive, would damage the economy, and make everything grown, made, or moved more expensive.

The sad, sick part of this story is that the Republican senators are fully aware of that conclusion; they are in fact counting on it. Senator Cramer told the Washington Post that: “We spend so much time as Republicans saying hell no to people who want to tax carbon . . . . this is the low-hanging fruit of climate policy or trade policy or whatever you want to call it.”

In August 2010 , I posted an article about carbon trading in America. The article was about the failure of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a trading place for carbon credits. The only thing you really need to know is who lost money when Congress failed to pass Cap and Trade legislation that would have necessitated the existence of the CCX.

I reported in August 2010:

“The biggest losers have been CCX’s two biggest investors – Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs – and President Obama, who helped launch CCX with funding from the Joyce Foundation, where he and presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett once sat on the board of directors.”

Green energy is about money–not about ecology.

Moving Toward The Country The Founding Fathers Envisioned

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On October 13th, CBN posted an article about an important Supreme Court decision that got lost in the chaos of the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion.

The article reports:

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade it was easy to miss, but the court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA delivered a major blow to the federal bureaucracy.

The case considered the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. President Obama couldn’t get his plan to drastically change the nation’s power grid known as “Cap and Trade” through Congress, so he famously acted on his own.

“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward,” the president said before a 2014 cabinet meeting and on a number of other occasions. 

Working through the EPA on executive authority he expanded the Clean Air Act, written in the 1960s, to reduce toxic emissions. Instead of addressing individual power plants as the law had been applied, Obama went after the entire fossil fuel industry in a way that would have transformed the U.S. power grid, and for that, the Supreme Court called a foul.

“The court said Congress has to say specifically what they want EPA to do if they’re going to do something that has such a monumental impact,” said Derrick Morgan, executive vice president of The Heritage Foundation.

He says the court’s action is significant as presidents increasingly wield their executive pens to get their agendas passed around Congress.

Essentially, this forces Congress, elected by the people, to make the laws and be held accountable for the laws they make. The President has the choice to sign or veto the laws and should also be held accountable. This may help deal with some of the garbage regulations coming out of Washington. This ruling may also serve to protect the free speech rights that many in Congress are trying to limit.

The article concludes:

Also, look for more guidance from the Supreme Court. Chad Squitieri, an expert in administrative law at The Catholic University of America, says the court seems primed to examine whether the administrative state has drifted too far from the separation of powers which is a bedrock of America’s Constitution.

“The Major Questions Doctrine which was applied in West Virginia v EPA is sort of, I like to say, scratching at the non-delegation itch. It’s not the full-fledged non-delegation doctrine, but I think it’s something of a halfway measure and I think these types of questions – looking at different ways courts may police how Congress delegates authority to the agencies – is going to be a recurring theme in the years to come,” he told CBN News.

“I think it’s because the current court is more prepared than courts in the past to enforce the original understanding of the Constitution – what we would call the original public meaning of the Constitution, particularly the separation of powers and federalism,” he continues.

It will be a relief to many Americans who want to be governed directly by the people they elect and are eager to rid themselves of what they see as a gross overreach by unelected bureaucrats.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. This is a really good decision.

Cap And Trade Comes To America

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In 2010, the Democrats were talking about passing a Cap and Trade Bill. Their efforts were futile.

As I reported in 2010 (article here):

Informed sources are predicting that if the Democrat party loses the House of Representatives in the November election, there will be lame-duck session of Congress after the election to pass some of the legislation that the Democrats can’t seem to get passed now.  The logic is that since many members will have been voted out and thus not have to worry about being re-elected, they will be willing to vote for some of the more unpopular bills–Cap and Trade, Card Check, and tax increases.  I suppose that is possible, but it really would be political suicide for the Democrat party.  When I thought about that, I wondered why, even after the global warming scandals, the Democrats would still be pushing Cap and Trade.  Well, I think I have my answer–follow the money!

There was a very interesting article at the American Thinker yesterday.  The article reported that the Chicago Climate Exchange is running out of money and laying off employees.  What is the Chicago Climate Exchange?   It is a company that trades ‘carbon credits.’

The American Thinker pointed out:

“The biggest losers have been CCX’s two biggest investors – Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs – and President Obama, who helped launch CCX with funding from the Joyce Foundation, where he and presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett once sat on the board of directors.”

As usual, follow the money.

Well, Cap and Trade is back. The Conservative Treehouse reported the following on September 15th:

Deep inside the legislative language of the falsely titled “inflation reduction act”, aka The Green New Deal legislative vehicle constructed by lobbyists and passed by congress, people are now starting to realize a carbon-trading system was created.

Ultimately, a carbon trading system has always been the holy grail of the people who run the western financial system and want to create mechanisms to control wealth by using the ‘climate change’ agenda.

A carbon trading system is a very lucrative financial transfer mechanism with a potential scale to dwarf the derivative, Wall Street betting, market.  Secondarily, such a market would cement the climate change energy policy making it very difficult to reverse.  The new creation as explained by the Wall Street Journal, holds similarities to the EPA ethanol program.

On September 14th, The Wall Street Journal reported:

A brand-new market for green tax credits is taking shape as bankers and advisers figure out how to funnel tax breaks from energy companies that generate them to profitable corporations eager for smaller tax bills. 

The market is forming because Congress last month expanded renewable-energy tax credits and made them transferable in the law known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which also lowers prescription drug prices and imposes new taxes on large corporations.

The tax-credit sales mark a shift in the U.S. strategy for attracting public and private capital to renewable-energy projects, and they will happen alongside existing climate-finance markets such as carbon offset purchases. The deals won’t start in earnest until 2023, but lawyers and financiers are already structuring transactions. They are discussing arrangements in which credits would be sold at discounts from face value, and they are determining how to cushion tax-credit buyers against potential risks. 

The bottom line here is simple–the federal government is going to have more control over who prospers and who doesn’t. At the rate we are going, we can pretty much assume that companies with the correct politics will be allowed to flourish and companies with incorrect politics will be hampered in their ability to grow. Yuck.

Elections Have Consequences

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The election of Virginia Governor Youngkin has already had an impact beyond Virginia. Heeded or not, the election was a wake-up call for the radical leftist agenda being pushed in Washington, D.C. The election itself was important, but the policies that Governor Youngkin enacts will also have an impact on America’s future.

On Saturday, Fox News reported the following:

Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has signaled his intention to pull the state out of a climate compact that many small businesses there are glad to see go.

Youngkin has made clear his intention to pull Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The interstate compact places penalties on entities that exceed emission regulations set by an organization representing all member states.

The article concludes:

The RGGI currently boasts eleven member states in the initiative, all from the northeast: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia.

The RGGI is currently being courted by Pennsylvania for membership. It boasts itself as the “first market-based, cap-and-invest regional initiative in the United States.”

The Cato Institute puts out an index of personal and economic freedom annually. The Sixth Edition (2021) has a list of states according to the “Miscellaneous Regulatory Freedom Score.” The least regulated state on that list is Arizona, the most regulated is North Carolina. Of the states in the RGGI, Connecticut ranks 31, Delware 29, Maine 33, Maryland 42, Massachusetts 49, New Hampshire 6, New Jersey 41, New York 47, Rhode Island 30, Vermont 14, and Virginia 20.

It appears to me that the RGGI is simply the latest cap and trade proposal put in place by the Democrats. To learn some interesting history on the cap and trade scams of the past, please read the article from August 2010 about what happened to the Chicago Climate Exchange when the Democrats were predicted to lose the majority in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, much of the talk of the environment is actually a smoke screen for hidden financial interests and governmental quests for more power.