The Story of the Energy Bill: We are Screwed
by Christopher Byrd | November 9th, 2009
I didn’t read Douglas Turner’s 11/01 column on the Energy Bill until today…it is good one.
From it:
A big reason congressional Democrats are so blithely eager to push the 2009 version of President Bill Clinton’s carbon tax is that they never have to pay for gasoline.
Flunkies drive them everywhere in big cars leased at your expense. They get picked up and dropped off at airports, chauffeured to fund-raisers.
On rare times when members drive themselves, they pay for gas out of their generous office accounts. If overdrawn there, they tap their fat campaign treasuries collected by lobbyists.
So senators and House members don’t think about the additional 66 cents a gallon that their climate, or energy bill, or cap-and-trade bill, or whatever you want to call it, will impose on you and me.
Impose on you and me…that’s the ticket.
More from the column:
The energy bill is the best example of the campus elitism, the snobbery that infects the once-populist Democratic Party. It imposes a regressive carbon tax on our poorest citizens and on struggling farmers for an unproven theory and a new gimme for Wall Street.
The way the bill is designed is to artificially create a market where it costs businesses more to do business based on their use of fossil fuels and emissions.
This is where you and I come in…the costs will filter down the food chain where we will ultimately make up the difference to support a supposed greener and meaner way of living.
Though we must find a way to be environmentally smarter, the inevitable impact of the bill will be felt simply in terms of dollars and cents extending down to us bottom feeders of the economy…we will pay more for everything from food we put on our tables to the toilet paper we use. The kicker is that there is literally no way to gauge the impact any of it will have in making us greener and meaner.
If the money truly went to all things environmental that would be one thing, perhaps a positive. However government seems to find ways to dump the money into the general fund and spend it on other stuff.
the intended effect is to curb the use of fossil fuels. we use about 7.12 billion barrels of oil a year, and the amount of oil in the ground is dwindling just at the time the middle class in China and India are coming on-line. all the while, we send our troops to hostile nations to die so the oil can keep flowing our way (while we waste it once it arrives). this horrible cycle needs to stop soon.
currently the price of a gallon of gasoline in central Europe is around $7.46/gallon, and they live in dense walkable cities with great public transport. maybe if gas were more expensive here we would think twice about living in useless sprawling wastelands, or at least going for a walk to the corner store. the higher the price of gas, the better.
@MVC
I have no problem with much of what you say…my problem is getting there on the backs of people who can’t afford to pay for the gubment’s grand ideas.
i see your problem with it on its face; but how does one start to change the way we live? the manner in which americans choose to live is what is breaking us, NOT the gub’ment. 5 more years of affordable oil is the model that most honest economists are projecting-thats it. FIVE.
i have a real problem with that editorial because it assumes we have the birthright to cheap energy and to live in any manner we choose without having to pay the real price. higher gas or not, the thruways and highways alone are bankrupting us (every state is coming to that conclusion), and if the everyday american were shown the honest state of affairs, i think they would choose to be more responsible. live in sprawl and pay $ for it, or choose dense walkable neighborhoods near our jobs and have cash in your pocket. that is the reality we are slowly waking up to (very slowly).
BTW- i read your site all the time, KEEP IT UP
Thanks MVC for reading…I agree…where do we start…it at times seems like we have dug ourselves into hole and the only way to climb out is by drastic measures only…it does bother me that it will hit most people hurts the most.