Carbon Criminals, Waxman-Markey, and your wallet

JunkScience.com has begun a series of “Wanted” posters for American “Carbon Criminals”, CEOs who are supporting the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill as a way to steer money from taxpayers to their corporations.

Two of my most-despised corporate villains made their list, Jim Rogers of Duke Energy and Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric:

(Click on the images for larger PDF versions of the posters.)

Americans have a misperception, helped along by Democrats and their useful idiots in the dominant liberal media, that the Republican Party is controlled by corporations and that the Democratic Party is for “the little guy”.  This is, of course, utterly false.  Corporations donate money to politicians of all stripes, particularly those in power.

They cozy up to whomever can help them with their tax break, loophole, or subsidy.

They cave in to political pressure (not entirely an unreasonable thing to do when you have as vengeful a political leadership as we have with Pelosi, Reid, and Obama) such as in the pharmaceutical industry’s “deal” to help “cut costs” of drugs.  Of course, in return for this, the industry expects provisions in any health care “reform” that will increase their profits by even more, much like what happened with the tobacco companies’ settlement with the federal government which increased tobacco’s profits by killing competition.  And, not surprisingly, Pelosi and other Dems soon said there was no deal. (I don’t blame them…the White House shouldn’t be making deals with industries, but neither should Congress.)

I’ve written about Jim Rogers and his ilk before and I continue to believe they are essentially traitors to capitalism.

Some people (not me) would argue for cap-and-trade if they thought it would be beneficial to the environment at a reasonable cost.  But it will be neither.  Even supporters of Waxman-Markey don’t claim it will change temperatures by more than a small fraction of a degree 50 or 100 years from now – less than any natural annual variation.

Even worse is the cost of the plan – a cost which the government continues to try to hide from us but which, thanks to the work of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (“CEI”), we can now see the Treasury Department’s estimates for.

In THESE Treasury Documents, obtained by CEI through a Freedom of Information Act requests, there are some interesting highlights (and lowlights):

• “While such a program can yield environmental benefits that justify its costs (no, it can’t, say I), it will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of ___ dollars.”  I can not imagine on what rational, legal basis the Treasury redacted the part of the sentence which actually gave Treasury’s cost estimate.  Is that a national security risk?  Unbelievable how the “most transparent Administration” works so hard to keep information from its citizens.
• “A cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 (billion) to $200 billion annually.”  As CEI notes, the upper end of that estimate is “equivalent to a $1,761 annual tax for the average family – or approximately a 15% tax hike!”
• “Economic costs (of Waxman-Markey) will likely be on the order of 1% of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”  I don’t think I need to elaborate further on that remarkable statement except to say I’m surprised they didn’t black out that sentence as well.
• (The plan) “may result in a loss of domestic and international market shares for U.S. companies, and reolcation of U.S. firms abroad, representing both a political problem and an environmental problem.  The latter, referred to as leakage, diminishes the effectiveness of climate policies by offsetting economic activity in emissions-constrained areas with increased activity in coutries lacking suck constraints.” (Why do you think China is refusing to participate in kneecapping their own economy with such regulations while simultaneously encouraging the U.S. to take even more aggressive anti-carbon measures?)  “A few U.S. energy-intensive sectors, such as the steel, aluminum, paper, chemicals, and cement industries, where imports are ready substitutes and lower carbon technologies are not widely available, are clearly vulnerable.”
• “Domestic policies to address climate change and the related issues of energy security and affordability will involve significant costs and potential revenues, _________________________”  Again, part of a sentence which appears to lay out the Treasury’s estimate of cost to taxpayers is redacted.  And again, I ask by what standard that redaction is permitted.  Also, note that the costs are certainly “significant” while the revenues are “potential”. Furthermore, any revenues from a plan like this will simply mean higher costs to American consumers for EVERYTHING you buy.  Or at least anything that requires energy to make or transport.  And don’t forget, that includes food, both in the obvious transportation costs and in the less obvious production costs, whether for fuel for equipment or the energy component of making feed and fertilizer.
• There are several other disconcerting black-out sections of the documents, including 5 lines at the beginning of the “Key Challenges” section.

It is great to see one of the “letter networks” pick up this issue on one of their blogs.  Not just pick it up, but run with it.  Over at CBS’s “Taking Liberties” blog, Declan McCullagh not only wrote about the Treasury documents and CEI’s work in obtaining them, but then defended himself and CEI against left-wing propaganda. McCullagh also says he’s questioning the Treasury Department about the justification for the many blacked-out sections of the documents.  (He says he still hasn’t received a response.) I haven’t seen such good work by a CBS employee…well, maybe ever.

I believe that cap-and-trade is dead.  The good news of its having passed the House is that it will be a great vote to hold against the Democrats (and several Republicans) who supported it, either because they were bought off by Henry Waxman (like Marcy Kaptur) or because they’re clueless (like Dave Reichert, who admits “we can’t read all these bills”) or because they’re just typical politicians (like Mark Kirk; see also THIS).  (For those who claim that my view is simply GOP partisanship, note that two of the three I just named are Republicans, although there were only 8 Republicans who voted for Waxman-Markey.)