An article in the Oil and Gas Journal reveals the thinking processes of some of our leaders on Capitol Hill. And it’s not a pretty sight.

Speaking at a forum on energy and climate policy co-sponsored by Newsweek magazine and the American Petroleum Institute, Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), Chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, and co-author of the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Bill said:

“The measure is analogous to what we did in telecommunications,” Markey said, noting that Congress passed bills in 1992, 1993, and 1996 that launched, respectively, the modern cable, wireless, and broadband systems while creating 2 million new jobs. … Emerging energy technologies could lead to a $2 trillion domestic industry if the US decided to actively support them, Markey said.

Well, no, not really, Ed.

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Now that the elections in NJ and VA are over - and now that there’s going to be some really critical votes coming up on cap-and-trade and health care rationing - I just wanted to greet some members of the two states’ Congressional delegations.

• Robert Andrews, NJ-01 (Burlington/Camden/Gloucester)
• John Adler, NJ-03 (Burlington/Camden/Ocean)
• Frank Pallone, NJ-06 (Middlesex/Monmouth/Somerset/Union)
• William Pascrell, NJ-08 (Essex/Passaic)
• Steven Rothman, NJ-09 (Bergen/Hudson/Passaic)
• Donald Payne, NJ-10 (Essex/Hudson/Union)
• Rush Holt, NJ-12 (Hunterdon/Mercer/Middlesex/Monmouth/Somerset)
• Albio Sires, NJ-13 (Essex/Hudson/Middlesex/Union)

(Link)

• Glenn Nye, VA-02 (Accomack/Northampton)
• Robert C Scott, VA-03 (Charles City/New Kent/Surry/Henrico/Prince George/Hampton/Newport News/Norfolk/Richmond)
• Tom Perriello, VA-05 (Greene/Campbell/Bedford/Albemarle/Nelson/Fluvanna/Buckingham/Cumberland/ Appomattox/Prince Edward/Charlotte/Lunenberg/ Franklin/Henry/Pittsylvania/Halifax/Mecklenberg/Brunswick)
• Jim Moran, VA-08 (Arlington/Alexandria/Fairfax)
• Rick Boucher, VA-09 (Lee/Wise/Dickenson/Buchanan/Scott/Russell/Tazewell/Washington/ Smyth/Bland/Giles/Grayson/Wythe/Pulaski/Montgomery/Carroll/Craig/Floyd/ Patrick/Allegheny/Roanoke/Henry)
• Gerry Connolly, VA-11 (Fairfax/Fairfax/Prince William)

(Link)

Hi!

WE SEE YOU.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

‘Senator’ capitalized because the insecure often require that special little emphasis. In this case, SENATOR Boxer is demonstrating same by making a fairly pointless gesture that’s apparently fueled by pique:

Barbara Boxer may not only force her climate bill through the Environment and Public Works Committee without any Republican votes; aides say she could also do it without any Republicans in the room at all.

Boxer (D-Calif.) could exploit a loophole in committee rules that will allow her to approve the bill with a simple majority of the 12 Democrats on the committee, even if no Republicans are present. Republicans have vowed to boycott the proceeding.

This end run around Republicans — ignoring the usual rules that require at least two Republicans to be present for a quorum — could further hinder the chances for an already troubled cap-and-trade bill.

The problem here is that Senate Republicans are tired of Democrats forcing through legislation without analysis, deliberation, or in some cases, an opportunity to even read it; so they’re going to boycott the markup until they get a full EPA analysis. No attendance, no quorum, no markup. But SENATOR Boxer wants a bill to impress all those sophisticated Europeans at Copenhagen in December, so she’s going to alter the rules so as to force her version of the bill out via a rump committee.  As the Politico article notes, this has other Democrats swearing, because: a, there was little likelihood of cap-and-trade being passed in a SENATOR Boxer-friendly form to begin with; b, there was not previously much chance of any version of cap-and-trade being passed by December anyway; and c, there is now effectively zero chance of either happening before the New Year.  It’s trivially easy to slow legislation down to a crawl in the Senate, and there are now several motivated Republicans to demonstrate how to do that.

Marvelous work, SENATOR Boxer.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

In the October 2, 2009 Virginia Attorney General’s debate, my opponent and I had the opportunity to ask each other one question regarding our top priorities. His top priority - “global warming,” which of course comes along with a raft of legislative and regulatory burdens and taxes. At the federal level, this legislation is called “cap and trade.”

The (so-called) “Cap and Trade” legislation is meant to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from industry, mainly carbon dioxide from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas. A better name for this legislation would be “Ration and Tax.” This is because under this bill, the government would require anyone who uses electricity, who drives a car, or who runs a business to hold a “ration coupon” for his or her emissions, with the number of coupons being reduced every year to force a reduction in emissions, thus producing higher energy taxes for the average citizen. The net effect of this “Ration and Tax” would be economic harm and a loss of jobs for our citizens, and all without having a noticeable positive impact on the global climate. The coal industry, which provides over half of Virginia’s electricity, would be particularly hard hit by this bill.

The economic costs of “Ration and Tax” are well documented. This year’s House bill was estimated by the Heritage Foundation to lose 2.5 million net jobs by 2035. The loss of economic output: $9.4 trillion. The jobs lost in Virginia: 52,700. The report also stated that by 2035, Virginian’s will see their electricity prices rise by $1,031.73 and their gasoline prices rise by $1.31 per gallon solely because of “Ration and Tax”. Peter Orszag, President Obama’s current budget director, forecast the scheme would cost $1 trillion over the next 10 years and $5-$7 trillion through 2050. The fact that the Senate version of this legislation requires an even bigger cut in emissions than the House version means that the negative impact of the Senate legislation is likely to be even greater.

Now, some say that “green jobs” created by “Ration and Tax” are going to offset these losses. However, all of the credible studies show that the NET jobs lost are substantial. A study for the Teamsters and Sierra Club – both allies of those advancing “Cap and Trade” – found: “Wage rates at many wind and solar manufacturing facilities… fall short of income levels needed to support a single adult with one child.” In Spain, the experience has been 2.2 real jobs destroyed for every “green job” created.

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The Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas W. Elmendorf, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that the House-passed Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade tax climate change legislation – would slow the economy and would cause “significant” job losses in fossil fuel industries:

We want to leave no misunderstanding that aggregate performance — the fact that jobs turn up somewhere else for some people — does not mean that there are not substantial costs borne by people, communities, firms in affected industries and affected areas. You saw that in manufacturing, and we would see that in response to changes that this legislation would produce.

Director Elmendorf also testified that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax would cut the nation’s gross domestic product by 0.25 to 0.75 percent in 2020 compared with “what it would otherwise have been,” and by 1 to 3.5 percent in 2050.

Elmendorf’s testimony undercuts the current position of President Obama and the Democrats’ congressional leaders, who claim cap-and-tax would help revive the economy. They make that claim despite the fact that presidential candidate Obama said his cap and trade plan will cause electricity rates to “necessarily skyrocket” and will bankrupt anyone who builds a coal-powered plant.

When you’re rich, really eight-figure inherited/married wealth rich, a recession means you might opt for the pre-owned Gulfstream IV over the new. If only to let the little people know that you feel their pain.

When you’re poor, bad times threaten your job, your family, your health, or your life. Bad times hurt people at the margins.

The liberal ruling class displays an astonishingly callous disregard of the human cost of bad economic times on the huddled masses whose interests they claim to safeguard.

But even the most clueless patrician among our elected elite would never suggest that a recession is a good thing.

Would he?

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The cap and trade national energy tax is being sold to the American people as a free-market answer to environmental problems. Dressed in green as it is, people are led to believe that it was a scheme hatched by the environmentally conscious. The truth is that cap and trade is a product of the very same minds that gave us subprime loans and market bubbles, credit default swaps and the financial meltdown. Cap and trade is actually a child of Wall Street. But, nowadays, that doesn’t help in the marketing, does it?

Cap and trade is based on government setting a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally. Companies will then be allowed to buy or sell permits to emit carbon dioxide. So, at a time when Congress is already grappling with the appropriate solution for restructuring our nation’s financial regulatory system, Congress also wants to simultaneously introduce a new, and potentially the largest, commodity market into the mix? As Tyson Slocum, director of energy for Public Citizen, has stated, “You have to ask yourself if it is wise policy to create a new derivatives market on the heels of the collapse of derivatives markets.”

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I don’t know, psychologically, what it is that compels a man like Barack Obama to systematically throw under the bus every person who helps him. But he has done it again.

This will have devastating reprecussions for the House Democrats. Having pushed as hard as they could to get Cap and Trade passed in the House, the United States Senate has blocked consideration of the legislation until, at best, next year.

In a just released memo from the White House that was actually prepared months ago, turns out the White House knows cap and trade will amount to a massive tax increase on middle class families.

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”

Barack Obama has known since November of last year just how devastating his cap and trade legislation would be and he didn’t bother telling Congress.

But what is more troubling is that he knew how much harm to the economy cap and trade would do in a recessionary period and he still chose to pursue the policy.

What does that tell you? The man, facing a devastated economy, chose to pursue a policy he knew would hurt it even more.

Whoever is President of the United States is not dumb. You cannot be dumb and win the Presidency. But you can be malicious and you can lack good judgment. I am beginning to think Barack Obama has both characteristics.

You don’t have to be an economist to understand the economic situation.  Unemployment has hit double digits in many states and is growing (in Ohio: 340,000 jobs lost since Ted Strickland and Lee Fisher took office) and everyone is paying the price.    The stimulus has accomplished nothing (Again, in Ohio, in the neighborhood of 100,000 jobs lost since its passage) and yet the Democrats in Congress are intent on making a bad situation worse by passing legislation that would cripple American businesses and devastate families.

The focus lately has been on health care, and for good reason, but energy is an issue that should not be lost in the debate about the economy.  Because Cap and Trade (H.R. 2454, the Waxman- Markey bill) is a dagger aimed at the heart of our economy.

More below.

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With everyone focused on the health care debate, Democrats are hoping we’ll all forget about another of their many boondoggles thus far in the Obama Presidency; Cap and Trade (lovingly known as H.R. 2454 - “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009″). This bill, like the Health Care bill(s) being bandied about just now on the Left, promises to deepen the deficit, increase taxes, eliminate jobs, and cost the taxpayers billions upon billions of dollars. Cap and Trade passed the House in late June by a slim margin (219-212), and (via Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air) is slated to be taken up in the Senate in September. The good news here is that passage is not YET a foregone conclusion.

As Erick pointed out a little while back, this bill is in trouble…in large part because the Democrats can’t seem to agree even amongst themselves. It’s also in trouble because, on the merits, it’s just a bad piece of legislation and people are starting to figure out why:

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

What is it about Democrats that make them choose to rule us by punishing us where it hurts us most in order to make us do what they think is “good for us”? We’re already 9 TRILLION dollars in the hole with 10 percent of us sitting this fiasco out, what MORE do they want from us?

Groups (similar to the Tea Parties and the “mobs”) are starting to form hoping they, too, can have their voices heard. Rallies are starting to be held across the country trying to get the message out about all the things wrong with this bill and its longer-term impact on America. As expected, however, counter-protesters (our fuzzy little friends, the global warming alarmists) are catching on that their brainchild might be in trouble, and are starting to fight back.

One can’t help but wonder how long it will take for someone ELSE to take abeating for exercising their free speech rights.

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Erick and Dan both pointed out last week that Cap and Trade legislation was meeting resistance from Democrats. This week, we have some revealing commentary from former Democratic Senator from Colorado, Timothy Worth. Worth was a “climate-change negotiator” during President Bill Clinton’s administration and currently runs the UN Foundation. Worth is a supporter of cap and trade. Let’s let him tell us about it in his own words. From Bloomberg:

“The Republicans are right — it’s a cap-and-tax bill.”

“That’s what it is because they are raising revenue to do all sorts of things, especially to take care of the coal industry, and it makes no sense.”

“What has happened is it’s gotten out of control.”

What? Democrats are using a climate scare as an excuse for government intrusion well beyond the scope of the issue at hand, broadening their power and diminishing that of the private sector and the individual? Come on.

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Barack Obama and Harry Reid are having trouble getting cap and trade passed through the Senate. And it is not the Republicans who are the problem. Even with a filibuster proof Democrat majority, Democrats cannot get cap and trade passed.

Why?

Democrats are beginning to admit Barack Obama’s environmental agenda will destroy the economy.

“The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said in an interview last week. “I see the cap-and-trade being a real problem.” . . . .

Ben Nelson of Nebraska and North Dakota Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan joined Lincoln in suggesting that the climate measure be put off.

The problem though is Barack Obama has set up a catch-22 situation. His Environmental Protection Agency has asserted its power to regulate carbon dioxide if Congress doesn’t.

So one way or the other, our economy is probably screwed.

Democrat Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska say the Senate should abandon efforts to pass cap-and-trade this year.

Cap-and-trade legislation will require 60 votes to pass the Senate. According to Bloomberg, at least 15 of the Senate’s 60 Democrats have said the House-passed version — the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade tax climate change legislation — would hurt the economy and must be changed before they can support it. Most Republican Senators oppose the cap-and-trade measure.

The resistance by Senate Democrats Lincoln undercuts President Obama’s plan to cap carbon dioxide emissions and establish a market for trading pollution allowances. A plan that presidential candidate Obama said will cause electricity rates to “necessarily skyrocket“ and will bankrupt anyone who builds a coal-powered plant.

Does Obama’s cap-and-trade tax, face the same fate as President Clinton’s BTU energy tax, which died in the Senate?

Last week, President Obama received a letter from ten Senators, most of them liberals and all of them Democrats, who are looking for reassurance that the Cap and Trade legislation pending in the Senate contains language “to ensure that manufacturers do not bear the brunt of our climate change policy.”

That’s interesting. We’ve been reassured that Cap and Trade has been designed by the Smartest People in the World to avoid penalizing domestic manufacturers in terms of global competitiveness, but here we have Democratic Senators from states like Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia who are less than sanguine with all the sweet talk.

“We must not engage in a self-defeating effort that displaces greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them and displaces U.S. jobs rather than bolstering them,” wrote the Senators.

So, 1) Cap and Trade doesn’t help the environment all that much, and 2) it will hobble our economy, especially with respect to China and India? Who knew? (Hint: Maybe the folks who refer to it as the “Let’s-Hogtie-The-Economy-And-Throw-It-In-The-Ditch act of 2009″.)

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Many on the Left are livid with the Blue Dogs because rather than fall in line in support of the Obama agenda, they have slowed consideration of both cap-and-trade and the health care overhaul. There is certain to be real anger at the report that their efforts are being rewarded with an unprecedented cash haul from affected industries:

So far this year, the political action committee attached to the fiscally conservative House Democratic voting bloc is on track to shatter all its fundraising records, raising more in the first six months of 2009 — more than $1.1 million — than it did in the entire 2003-04 fundraising cycle.

Nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC’s haul this year comes from the energy, financial services and health care industries, up from 45 percent in 2004, according to analysis of CQ MoneyLine data by the Center for Public Integrity.

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The Hill newspaper is reporting that Speaker Pelosi is finding that the tough slog that the healthcare debate is having in the House of Representatives is the “price” she is paying for the arrogant rushing of the Cap and Trade bill that the Democratic leadership earlier forced through the House. The way that bill was rammed down the throats of Democrat moderates rankled them and they are getting payback by slowing progress, even opposing parts, of the healthcare bill.

Pelosi rushed the climate bill through without giving her own members time to read the bill and come to understand it. The result was a vote that has gotten moderates beaten up pretty well by constituents that were never given an opportunity to voice their opinions before their representatives voted.

Since the climate bill, moderates are “once bitten” on rushing to vote on an issue before they’ve had a chance to digest the thing and bring it back home to get a feel from their voters as to which way they should go. With that experience, they don’t want to rush into healthcare in the same way they did the climate bill that has caused so many of them so much heartburn.

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[UPDATE]: I’m hearing that Scott Rigell will be working with the NRCC. Another good recruitment pickup for next year.

It’s amazing how quickly Democratic Congressmen pick up the bad habits of their older colleagues. In Glenn Nye’s (VA-02) case, shameless double-talk. The NRCC is happy to point out how you can’t really be proud of getting a cap-and-trade bill passed that you cynically voted against:

It actually gets even better than the campaign commercial says: according to this Democratic site, Rep. Nye bragged about his support and opposition to the cap-and-trade bill to the same person (via Jim Geraghty). Just in case the posts go away later, here are the screen captures:

Seldom does one see this level of self-serving nonsense by a Democratic Congressman be so brilliantly expressed.

Moe Lane

PS: He has a GOP challenger, of course. Scott Rigell, a local auto dealership owner, former Marine, and long-time Republican with one heck of a buyer’s remorse at this point. Cook has the district at Rep+5, and this one’s on everybody’s list. Remove yet another seat from the Safe Democrat list: that’s been happening a lot lately, huh?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

[UPDATE: Name typo fixed. It's late, sorry.]

Before heading back up the mountain, I promote this diary and challenge the rest of you to start adopting Democrats to track, follow, target for action, etc. And more than one of you can pick the same scoundrel. But do it! — Erick

once lived in Nashville, Tennessee, and many of my family members still do. It is a wonderful city with terrible politics. Among its politicians are reputed Blue Dog Congressman Jim Cooper. Among family members who continue to live there is my retired brother, who like me was outraged by Cap and Trade (hence, “CaT”). My brother was so torqued off, in fact, he wrote an angry letter to Cooper.

Tuesday he received a reply and emailed it to me. What follows is a fisking and my formal adoption of Cooper as a pet project, per Erick’s request. I’ll leave out any identifying information except to state my brother is a nominal Democrat. Or was. The only other bio is that my brother is retired from the energy business and knows CaT like the back of his hand. Nonetheless, the good congressman chose not only to condescend but to blatantly lie to someone who knew better…someone who has voted for him in the past.

Anyhow, here it is, with my asides in parenthesis:

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Part 4 and Part 5 of his cap-and-trade review are up.  Part 4 goes in quickly about the differences between the cap-and-trade restrictions of Waxman-Markey and the Clean Air Act (very quickly: it’s the difference between carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide); Part 5 discusses the problems that W-M is going to give Texas specifically.  Still remaining: the Chinese connection and how people can get involved.

Energy policy is going to loom rather large, running up the 2010 elections; should KBH resign her seat to run for Governor, it would be helpful to have this guy in there.  Heck, I wouldn’t mind having him in there now.

Moe Lane

PS: He’ll be at the RS Gathering.

Full disclosure: I am in regular contact with the Michael Williams campaign, and I endorse him as a replacement to Senator Hutchison, should she resign her Senate seat.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

In his December 20, 2008 weekly address, President-elect Obama set forth some soaring rhetoric regarding science:

Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources – it’s about protecting free and open inquiry.  It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology.  It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient.  Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us.  That will be my goal as President of the United States – and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.

Just words.

Contrary to Obama’s rhetoric his administration has suppressed inconvenient scientific evidence clearly showing that global warming isn’t as bad as the cap and trade advocates have been telling us.

The following video outlines the story:

Declan McCullagh reports that according to recently disclosed emails, the Environmental Protection Agency suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming:

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