WASHINGTON -- Thank God winter is almost over. It has been
another cold one. I hope Al Gore wore his hat and brought along
his galoshes whenever he made an appearance against Global
Warming. Better yet, I hope he scheduled his jeremiads in warmer
climes, say Miami Beach or Antigua. As I reported a while back,
scientists have not been able to measure any increase in global
warming since the end of 1998. That, despite their lunkheaded
computers forecasting the opposite. Over the past two years
temperatures have actually dropped by more than 0.5 degrees
Celsius. Button up!
I mention all this because 1) it is always amusing to kid Mr.
Gore and 2) the price tag for Prophet Obama's climate plan has
just jumped to $2 trillion. That is three times the White House's
initial estimate for its Cap-and-Trade monstrosity. It is also a
huge tax on corporations and consumers at a time when both are in
recession. Only government thrives. Given the fact that it is
increasingly unclear that there is such a thing as Global Warming
and the fact that Cap-and-Trade is an expensive and dubious
remedy for it might not the Prophet Obama hold back. He has
plenty else to do.
Cap-and-Trade has been tried in Europe by the signers of the
Kyoto Protocol and according to the Heritage Foundation's Ben
Lieberman, "Nearly every European country participating has
higher emissions today than when the treaty was first signed in
1997….emissions in many of these nations are actually rising
faster than in the United States." Yet perhaps the Obama
Administration has its eye on something other than limiting
emissions. Possibly it sees Cap-and-Trade as a great way to gain
control of still more of the private sector.
As mentioned above, the huge amount of money mulcted from the
private sector and handed over to the public sector has got to
please every collectivist in the White House. Moreover there is
the huge bureaucracy that will have to be set up to oversee
Cap-and-Trade. Those of us who have followed the economic crisis
and the Ponzi schemes of Bernard Madoff are familiar with the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). If the Administration's
climate legislation is passed, we shall have the Cap and Trade
Commission (CAP). It will be vast.
To begin with, CAP's agents will have to go to every factory and
office building and presumably even public buildings and decide
their allowable amount of emissions. That is to say, their cap.
Next the agency will auction off and oversee the sale of the
documents that certify emissions allowances . Call them coupons.
Then the agency will have to monitor the exchange of these
allowances and the ownership. Finally the agency will have to
monitor compliance and presumably punish those who fail to
comply.
In this setup there will be countless opportunities for
corruption as polluters try to bribe CAP's agents, or the agents
try to elicit bribes. As with the SEC, there will be incompetence
and lax enforcement. Finally, there will be senators and members
of Congress making special pleadings for corporations in their
regions, labor unions, special pleaders of all sorts.
Finally, there is the economics of the legislation. It will take
$2 trillion from the private sector and dump it into the public
sector. That is to say, a large tax on the private sector will
transfer money to the public sector. So how is the private sector
to grow itself out of this recession? The Administration's answer
is that the government will return the money to worthy endeavors,
healthcare, green technology -- again still more opportunities
for corruption and for special favors to pleading solons and
numas on Capitol Hill.
The Prophet Obama was very disturbed recently when asked if he
was a socialist. Socialism is government control of the means of
producing and distributing goods and services. What I have just
described is a powerful instrumentality toward socialism. Along
with Cap-and-Trade, the Obama Administration is calling for a
sufficient number of these instrumentalities to socialism that by
the next election the United States will be very close to being a
socialist state. There is no point in Obama arguing against that
observation. He ought simply to come out and say it. He is for
socialism. What could possibly be wrong with that?
