Sunday, July 08, 2007

Making us pay

The Game

"Many economists like the idea of a carbon tax, saying that it would
be simple to administer and could profoundly affect energy choices
."

But Mr. Dingell, in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on C-Span, suggested that his goal was to show that Americans are not willing to face the real cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. His message appeared to be that Democratic leaders were setting unrealistic legislative goals.

“I sincerely doubt that the American people will be willing to pay what this is really going to cost them,” said Mr. Dingell, whose committee will be drafting a broad bill on climate change this fall.

“I will be introducing in the next little bit a carbon tax bill, just to sort of see how people think about this,” he continued. “When you see the criticism I get, I think you’ll see the answer to your question.”

The idea behind a carbon tax is to provide an incentive to reduce the use of fossil fuels like oil and coal, which are loaded with carbon, and increase the use of cleaner, renewable fuels like solar power, wind and fuels made from plants and plant waste. - [Counting on Failure, Energy Chairman Floats Carbon Tax]


If I'm reading this correctly, Nancy Pelosi ordered House Energy Chairman John Dingell to float an energy tax.  Again, if I'm reading this right, Dingell is one of the House Democrats who think Nancy Pelosi is dumber than dirt, so he's sticking it to her.  It's a win-win for him.  Dingell's style of chairing the Energy Committee is to use it as a fund raiser.  It doesn't matter what legislation he proposes, or who he decides to investigate, lobbyists from the side about to be gored (get it?) will shower the committee member's reelection funds with moolah.  Everybody's happy.

As an aside, Dingell was the model for the crooked power committee chairman. Dick Dodge. in Eddie Murphy's 1992 film "The Distinguished Gentleman." At the time Republicans hadn't controlled the House, or chaired a committee for 38 years, but Hollywood still chose to make Rep Dodge a Republican.  Those people have no soul.  

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the Republicans weren't the stupid party, they'd jump on board and tie the gas tax to middle class income tax offsets. The dems would have to shoot that down and would then appear to be against both the people AND the environment.

Anonymous said...

Devilishly brilliant there anonymous one.

Casca

Jake said...

Notice how all of these global warming schemes means that government gets more money and the poor are the hardest hit.

No wonder the left loves global warming.

OregonGuy said...

Just a couple of steps to walk through:

Yes, it's true that the price of a thing can affect the demand of a thing. This is a hard and fast rule that lefties continually stumble over on their path to dystopia. Artificially hold prices down--gasoline, housing, taxi fares--and the supply of a thing disappears.

Conversely, artificially raise prices and the demand for the thing drops making replacement technologies harder to accomplish the necessary levels of capital accumulation to bring new technologies to market. Because you have induced a pricing artifice that hides the production cost, resulting in outcome one, above.

Imagine pricing oil with a "disincentive tax" while hoping to take advantage of shale or sand deposits.

Environmentalists, having closed the market for nuclear power in this country, now want the mandated power source, coal and oil, replaced with an energy source yet to be named. The fact that the lefties don't see their actions as having impact on our energy choices is not surprising. They're still trying to figure out how that white ball makes all those other billiard balls move.

It's a mystery.

Anonymous said...

Oregon guy,
Wouldn't placing a $2 per gallon tax on gasoline with the revenue used to offset income taxes encourage alternate energy source development by making it more affordable while also reducing use of gasoline and reducing pollution?

Anonymous said...

What I wanna know is who's gonna tax the volcanoes and forest fires and mid-Atlantic ridge and all those CO2 sources, not to mention China, India, virtually all of Africa and South America, Indonesia, and other places which add up to about 80% of the world's population and use wood fires to cook with.

Anonymous said...

Where in the Constitution is Congress authorized to manage behavior via taxation? The income tax required an amendment, so should this.

Anonymous said...

Last time I was in D.C. I say a WHOLE LOT of SUVs and limos around the Capitol building, not green machines.

Methinks the Democrat from Michigan is slinging a whole lotta poo....

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