The Conservative Bulwark

Have you ever gotten a sour taste in your mouth that just won't go away?

Well, the news cycle over the past 48 hours has me believing that I've sucked down a bag of lemons.

Where to begin? The new energy legislation passed by the House is a good place to start.

I have it on good authority that U.S. Senate offices as well as members of the U.S. House of Representatives were flooded with faxes and phone calls regarding this legislation. The majority of those correspondences were overwhelmingly against it. It did pass narrowly, by a vote of 219 - 212. The 1200 page document barely made it out alive...so now it'll make its way to the U.S. Senate. So what exactly is in the behemoth? What does it do?(Don't ask a politician...since the vast majority of them didn't even read it.)

This bill is an attempt to curb greenhouse emissions by certain companies. Those companies are electric utilities, oil companies, natural gas producers, and some industries that produce energy on site. That's a noble goal right? Well remember the old adage reflecting how many 'good intentions' are used in paving the road to Hell? Good...because it applies here.

The Obama administration is claiming that this is going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. How they came to this conclusion, I'm not sure. What I do know is that when these energy companies are continuously squeezed by these emission caps, they are going to do two things:

1. They will close operations down here and move them overseas, thereby jacking up the unemployment rate.
2. They will jack up the prices of the energy they sell to cover the costs of the new taxes.

Either way you look at it, jobs will be lost and less energy will be produced here. Which means more oil will have to come from somewhere else. Also remember that one of the contributing factors of the importation of so much oil into this country is due to the fact we haven't built a new refinery in over 30 years. With this legislation as law, the tax burden would force 1 in 6 present refineries to shut down. So that's another 16% loss to our production.

Lets also not forget the following quote from Obama during the campaign:

"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."

Now some are going to argue that we should eliminate all of these energy uses, no matter the cost. This is done in the name of the environment and curbing "global warming". Those same people are also morons. This can be masked as an attempt to help the environment all day long, but in the end its another grand attempt to completely destroy economies based on market freedom and further advance the rapid growth of the U.S. government. The administration just recently shot down a study from its own EPA, questioning the reality of man-made "global warming".

So what else is in this thing? Another claim made by the administration is that this will create a lot of new jobs. Funny. If its going to create so many jobs, why is Title IV, Subtitle B, Part 2, Section 436 even in it?

"An eligible worker (specifically, workers who lose their jobs as a result of this measure) may receive a climate change adjustment allowance under this subsection for a period of not longer than 156 weeks…80 percent of the monthly premium of any health insurance coverage…up to a maximum payment of $1,500 in relocation allowance…and job search expenses not exceed[ing] $1,500.”

So basically when these industries start laying off people left and right, never fear! The U.S. government (i.e. the U.S. taxpayer) will come to the rescue for up to 3 years! Yay!

There are also measures that would eventually allow the feds to move into a more complete role in monitoring home and small business energy use. Which of course would allow more bureaucrats to be hired to enforce these new codes for "our own good".

But hey! Why should you worry about this thing? It's politics. And Washington, DC is boring...only a place where old stogies go to die, right? At least Simon Cowell got his $144 million offer. These things have no real impact on us at all. Obama is too cool...that's all I know.