The REAL Intent Of Cap-And-Trade: Bringing Global Governance

I have longed believed that global warming was based on an agenda intended to bring about the socialist redistribution of wealth and create the one-world order long feared by conspiracy theorists and believers in the Book of Revelation.

I don’t have to “believe” any longer, though.  Because Al Gore spilled the beans on the socialist boondoggle.

From the Climate Depot:

“I bring you good news from the U.S., “Gore said on July 7, 2009 in Oxford at the Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by UK Times.

“Just two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate bill,” Gore said, noting it was “very much a step in the right direction.” President Obama has pushed for the passage of the bill in the Senate and attended a G8 summit this week where he agreed to attempt to keep the Earth’s temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C.

Gore touted the Congressional climate bill, claiming it “will dramatically increase the prospects for success” in combating what he sees as the “crisis” of man-made global warming.

“But it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.” (Editor’s Note: Gore makes the “global governance” comment at the 1min. 10 sec. mark in this UK Times video.)

And, yep, they want that socialist redistribution of wealth, too:

The environmental group Friends of the Earth advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations during the 2007 UN climate conference.

“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

And how else do we redistribute the wealth but by taxing the bejeezus out of the people who produce wealth so we can take the fruits of their hard work and success away from them and give it to the non-productive?

In addition, calls for a global carbon tax have been urged at recent UN global warming conferences. In December 2007, the UN climate conference in Bali, urged the adoption of a global carbon tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, said at the 2007 UN conference after a panel titled “A Global CO2 Tax.”

Schwank noted that wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.” The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”

It doesn’t matter that the U.S. isn’t the worst polluter any more. Not even close.  China now has that distinction, and is expected to continue to pull away from all other competitors for the title.  China is building 500 new coal plants, averaging one every four days.  The U.S. is now second, and will very shortly be third, behind India.

The fact that neither China nor India want anything to do with hamstringing their economies for the sake of an increasingly obvious bogus global warming theory is utterly beside the point.

And whether the theory is true or not is really besides the point for the supporters of such hard-core environmental measures, anyway.  Just ask former Colorado senator Tim Wirth, who said:

“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

It’s the thought that counts, after all.  Now matter how much that thought counts, or how many American people’s lives are negatively impacted by it.

It doesn’t really matter that the science tells us that we haven’t had any “global warming” for a minimum of five years now, and that we can actually expect global cooling for the next 20 years.  The science increasingly is telling us something that your average nursery school kid could have told you (get ready for this): THE SUN WARMS THE EARTH!!! But if the facts get in the way of our socialist redistributionist global warming theories, dammit, then so much the worse for the facts.  When will you get that through your thick heads?

A C-SPAN transcript of James Inhofe as entered into the Congressional Record is a fun read for former conspiracy theorists who are now simply reporting the plain facts:

Jacques Chirac said:

“Kyoto represents the first component of an authentic global governance.”

That is not me. That is Jack Chirac. It answers the question why are these countries over in Europe so interested that we do something in this country that is going to hurt our economy. The answer came from Margot Wallstrom, Minister of the Environment for the European Union. She said:

“Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big business worldwide.”

Yes, there are other countries that would love to have America be overtaxed and have all these economic problems that we don’t have right now. It could inure to their benefit; there is no question about that. No one would deny that.

There’s nothing new about foreign countries wanting to undermine America by seeing it destroy itself with stupid and useless energy policies.  What is NEW is that we elected a president of our own country who wants to undermine America by seeing it destroy itself with stupid and useless energy policies.

Barack Obama, in a candid moment during a speech to supporters in San Francisco:

“The problem is not technical, uh, and the problem is not mastery of the legislative intricacies of Washington. The problem is, uh, can you get the American people to say, “This is really important,” and force their representatives to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires them understanding what is at stake. Uh, and climate change is a great example.

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

Obama also said he’d bankrupt coal plants, with coal being America’s number one domestic energy resource responsible for half of our nation’s electricity.  And refusing to use the resources God gave us when there is clearly nothing even CLOSE to being as cheap or as efficient is hardly the way to improve our national sovereignty.

It comes as no surprise to those who have been following Obama’s radical leftist agenda that his own choice for “climate czar” would be a documented socialist and member of a group that calls for “global governance.”

These are people who LOVE to take advantage of any “crisis” they can find to ram home their agenda.  Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said it; Obama’s Secretary of State said it.  And when they get their crises, they use them to ram home their socialist global governance agenda.

Thomas Jefferson, understanding how truly marvelous and exceptional the nation he helped create truly was, said to those who would have us look toward Europe, “The comparisons of our government with those of Europe are like a comparison of heaven and hell.”

Unfortunately, too many liberal elites such as Barack Obama are now trying to bring that hell to our shores.

As Economy Continues Toward Toilet Bowl, Don’t Forget True Cost Of Failed Stimulus

There is increasing evidence mounting that Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill (the euphemistically-titled “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” as opposed to “The Porkulus Act of 2009” or “The Generational Theft Act of 2009) has utterly failed to deliver anything that Obama promised.

As I reported in my article, “Obama Wreckovery Act And Stimulus ‘Employment’: The Pathetic Reality,” it has utterly failed to produce jobs.  In rushing the bill through Congress when unemployment was at 7.2%, Obama promised the country something that is now laughable: his administration assured America “that the economic stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising above 8 percent.” It is now over 9.4%, and is expected to enter double-digit territory before the end of the year.

At the time that Obama was arguing that we needed a stimulus plan to avert total disaster, and assuring the country that his stimulus plan would keep unemployment under 8%, the Congressional Budget Office said that unemployment would only go to 9% by 2010 if we did absolutely nothing.  Which is another way of saying that not only has Obama’s stimulus not helped, but it has actually HURT the economy:

New jobless claims jump unexpectedly to 627,000; continuing claims rise to 6.74 million

By Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
On Thursday June 25,The Labor Department data released Thursday show jobs remain scarce even as the economy shows some signs of recovering from the longest recession since World War II.

The department said initial claims for jobless benefits rose last week by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 627,000. Economists expected a drop to 600,000, according to Thomson Reuters.

Several states reported more claims than expected from teachers, cafeteria workers and other school employees, a department analyst said.

The number of people continuing to receive unemployment insurance rose by 29,000 to 6.74 million, slightly above analysts’ estimates of 6.7 million.

To make it even more laughable, many of the very jobs that Barrack Obama had heralded as “saved” – including private sector jobs at Caterpillar and government sector jobs at the Columbus, Ohio police department – are the ones being wiped out.

But even though Obama’s stimulus has hurt the economy, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re still going to have to pay the bill for it.

And that bill WON’T be for $787 billion; it will be for $3.27TRILLION.

Stimulus Verdict: A $3.27 Trillion Porker

By: David A. Patten     February 14, 2009

The gargantuan stimulus bill Congress has rubber-stamped with virtually no Republican support contains tens of billions of the very spending projects that made the legislation a lightning rod for criticism.

And although the bill is generally described as costing $787 billion, the Congressional Budget Office reports the actual figure is now closer to $3.27 trillion.

That stems from the $744 billion it will take to pay for the additional debt the legislation will create, and $2.527 trillion in increased spending from the new and expanded programs the bill will spawn over the next decade.

The bill now spans more than 1,000 pages. While Democrats removed some provisions that fiscal conservatives objected to, most of the pork remains. Among them:

The plan has more than $3 billion in “neighborhood stabilization” and Community Development Block Grant funding, much of which may go to benefit ACORN, a low-income housing and voter registration “community” organization that is under federal investigation for its suspicious voter registration practices. $1.3 billion to bailout AMTRAK, the perennial money-loser railroad. $1 billion for educational programs, including courses on sexually transmitted diseases. $30 million for restoration of wetlands to be spent in the San Francisco Bay Area – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district. The money will go in part to protect the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse. $200 million for a low-pollution, coal-fired power plant in President Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois. $45 million for ATV four-wheeler trails, and government office renovations, according to RNC Chairman Michael Steele. $200 million to provide computers to community colleges. $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts. Over $650 million in coupons to help consumers buy digital TV converter-box coupons. A reported $300 million for hybrid vehicles and electric-powered cars. According to the Washington Times, this item will include buying golf carts for federal workers.GOP Sen. John McCain summed up his view of the bill: “This measure is not bipartisan. It contains much that is not stimulative.”Some of the criticisms of the bill, however, center on policy rather than cost.The Heritage Foundation, for example, reports the bill reverses the bipartisan welfare reforms achieved during the Clinton administration.Also, opponents have slammed the bill for being “anti-religious,” because it expressly prohibits the use of stimulus funds for faith-based schools, schools of divinity, facilities used for “sectarian worship,” or places of religious worship.

Heritage Foundation has an image of the CBO’s scoring:

So while the media continues to report “$787 billion stimulus” to mask the actual devastating cost of this mess, in point of fact we’re not talking about a colossal $787 billion boondoggle; we’re talking about a mega-colossal $3.27 trillion boondoggle.

There are a whole lot of questions about whether Obama is creating any jobs with his massive government spending (beyond his fairy tale “saved” jobs that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has said can’t be verified – and can you even imagine the mainstream media allowing President George Bush to hype job numbers that he couldn’t verify???), but there is no question at all that the trillions of dollars being spent are all-too-real. And there is no question that a great big giant lead anvil will fall on the US economy due to the near doubling of the national debt as Obama adds a projected $9.3 trillion to the $11.7 trillion hole we’re already in (which doesn’t count the tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded mandates from Social Security, Medicare, etc).  Obama is borrowing 50 cents on the dollar as he explodes the federal deficit by spending four times more than Bush spent in 2008 and in the process “adding more to the debt than all presidents — from George Washington to George Bush — combined.” And most terrifying of all, Obama’s spending will cause debt to double from 41% of GDP in 2008 to a crushing 82% of GDP in 2019.

What will be the result of all this insane spending, and not very far off? A quote from a CNS News story should awaken anyone who thinks the future will be rosy:

By 2019, the CBO said, a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will go to pay down the national debt. This means that in future years, the government could owe its creditors more than the goods and services that the entire economy can produce.

Now you have to add to that the fact that the Democrats are pushing a $3.5 TRILLION health care bill that will socialize – on top of a big chunk of the economy that already HAS been socialized (e.g. banks, auto companies) a further 1/6th of the US economy.

And you have to add in the staggering future costs to our economy that will be imposed by the Waxman-Markey (or as I prefer to call it, the Wackjob-Marxist) cap-and-trade bill that will result in capping productivity and trading away our prosperity: $6,800 per family of four by 2035, even as our energy costs skyrocket (or to quote Obama himself: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket“).  And as energy costs (and therefore production) increase dramatically, do you think employers will hire more workers, or fewer and fewer?

All that staggering hyperinflation-creating debt-funded government spending, along with the simultaneous nationalization of our economy and the systemic undermining of our productivity, and about the only jobs that are being created are for washing cars and running errands for politically-connected Democrats.

By the time the American people understand what has happened to their economy and to their way of life, it’s going to be too late to undo the damage that will have been done.