The American Spectator

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Cap-and-Tirade

6.5.08 @ 12:01AM

COAL COUNTRY
Re: Willam Tucker's A Qualified "Yes" To Cap-and-Trade:

Let me see if I understand. Mr. Tucker is actually proposing, I assume with a straight face, that the federal government (he is talking about the group we have in Washington now, plus the legions of additional Democrats that are going to be sent there in November, right?) place a tax on carbon emissions, then "return" the money to us sheep? I would like to know what Mr. Tucker has been smoking and/or imbibing. Never in the history of our republic has anything like that ever occurred and it isn't going to in the future, either.

The likelihood of anything like that happening is about the same as that John McLame will appoint conservative, constructionist justices to the Supreme Court, should he be elected.

Mr. Tucker actually believes that a $4 trillion drain in the national economy will not be a problem? I would be fascinated to learn what he thinks would be.
-- Keith Kunzler

Lieberman-Warner is a crucible, though not just one about the environment. It is a consumption tax, since businesses will pass on their carbon costs. Our income tax system has damaged our economy and political culture long enough...so long that we think that just cutting it defines victory. But we need to tax what we want less of, not more of. And if we need to redistribute, let it be on the grounds of consumption, not productivity. If we demand tax neutrality as the price for Warner-Lieberman, maybe we have the step forward a national sales tax cannot achieve. And not because global warming will be impacted, if it exists at all.

Hard as it is for rational and mature citizens to concede anything to Al Gore and his acolytes, we need a consumption tax to replace the income tax...and undoubtedly Congress will turn the special terms of carbon trading and caps into a mountain of pork. But the income tax code already is that, and more -- if the "progressives" are so emotional and passionate about global warming, then maybe that emotion gets them to accept trade off of income tax elimination for a carbon consumption tax system. The progressives' passion for their carbon-use moral crusade should be played like getting extra points over the spread in a bet with a team fanatic. Tax neutrality or nothing. It might just be how John McCain sees it. Or can be made to see it.
-- Christopher Roberts

I remember when the NIMBY -- not in my backyard -- syndrome appeared. I remember its morphing into the NIABY -- no in anyone's backyard -- syndrome. And for the past few years, I believe we in the United States and elsewhere may've moved into the NIABYE -- not in anyone's backyard, ever -- era.

So can nuclear work? I hope so, but I wonder when?

As for how much we're spending on foreign oil, perhaps we could've lessened some of that burden -- perhaps significantly? -- if at least four things had occurred in recent decades; say, since the late 1960s or early 1970s.

First, Congress would've set aside its ever-growing, destructive partisanship and that body, working with presidents, had actually done something for ALL Americans, in the form of some cohesive and workable multi-faceted energy policy, rather than allowing us to become enslaved.

Second, the NIMBYists and NIABYists and their opposition to any exploration of reserves and then building of new domestic refineries or expansion of the nuclear industry -- as well as a certain political party's decade's-long attention to these special interests and the other political party's lack of spine -- might've actually had created ways for at least informed consent -- not consensus, which is an illusion -- on what needed to occur and when for our society.

Third, the regulatory frameworks hadn't become so unwieldy and the relationships between industry, regulators and so-called environmentalists hadn't deteriorated into ones filled with animosity and mistrust by all parties.

Fourth, we the people would've taken to heart that we are the government and that we needed to stand for ourselves by demanding vocally, demonstrably and at the ballot box that the first, second and third things occurred.

There's no set of clean hands in all this.
-- C. Kenna Amos
Princeton, West Virginia

The Lieberman-Warner Act is aimed at CO2, not specifically coal.

Letter to the Editor

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