Free Republic

On Tuesday, four Democrats in Congress unveiled a brand-new proposal for a carbon tax. The set-up is simple: The U.S. government would slap a fee on fossil-fuel emissions and refund the revenue back to the public. But there’s a twist: The precise details of the carbon tax have yet to be thrashed out. The four lawmakers are soliciting public comments for how big the tax should be and how best to rebate the money. The proposal is being put forward by Reps. Henry Waxman and Earl Blumenauer, as well as Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Brian Schatz. Here are the key...

Taxes: The president may try to satisfy both environmentalists and pro-growth blocs by tying the shovel-ready project curiously left out of the State of the Union to just-introduced carbon-tax legislation. Having failed to lower the sea levels in his first term, President Obama, in the first SOTU of his second term, highlighted the need for fighting climate change and proposed an Energy Security Trust Fund to siphon off money from those who actually produce abundant and useable energy to fund alternative energy sources which constitute a rounding error in the percent of energy produced by various sources. Two days later,...

Energy: The president's proposed Energy Security Fund will stifle the private energy sector boom and provide permanent funding for future Solyndras and electric cars that nobody wants. And what about that pipeline, sir? A nonexistent crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and in justifying his proposal for a cap-and-tax scheme, President Obama claimed in his State Of The Union that "the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15." He was lying. The fact is, according to new data released quietly last October by Britain's Met Office, the world's natural post-Ice Age warming trend stopped...

NEW: Edison bailed out CA Cap & Trade auction The facts slowing coming out about the state’s first Cap and Trade auction seriously question whether the system is already being gamed by government, together with electric utilities. Edison International made an announcement on Dec. 20, 2012: At California’s first Cap and Trade auction held back on Nov. 14, 2012, it offered to buy 21 times more pollution permits than allowed. Edison’s overbidding error ended up amounting to 72 percent of all the bid offers and bailed out the Cap and Trade auction from failure. About a month later, Edison’s unregulated...

Ever since the Senate rejected President Obama’s cap-and-trade scheme in 2009, his administration has been hard at work to find other ways to implement a radical, environmentalist agenda. Obama made these intentions clear at a press conference in 2010 when he explained, “Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat. … It was a means, not an end, and I am going to be looking for other means to address this problem.” And this is a promise he’s doing his best to keep. With the help of the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments, this administration has...

BENICIA -- Rumors are swirling that Valero is putting its two California oil refineries on the market, including one in Benicia that is the city's largest employer. The speculation follows a Wall Street Journal report last week that said the San Antonio-based company has enlisted Citigroup Inc. to help find a buyer for the facilities. The article cited unnamed sources familiar with the matter. Valero operates a 78,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Wilmington outside Los Angeles and a 132,000-barrel-a-day refinery in Benicia. Together, the plants represent about 10 percent of the company's U.S. refining capacity. Valero, which has been critical of California's...

President Obama is among the slickest practitioners ever of the Washington Wink-Wink -- what professional politicians in both parties do when they say one thing while planning to do something else entirely. There was, for example, Obama's 2008 campaign promise to "cut the federal deficit in half." And that "net federal spending cut" he would achieve by the end of his first term? Anybody think he didn't know then that his first term would explode the deficit and spending to historic highs? Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sees more...

California's top air pollution regulator issued a spirited defense today of the state's new cap-and-trade greenhouse gas market, rejecting pleas from businesses to make significant changes to the program. Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, said the carbon market is designed to minimize the impact on businesses. Big business groups, like the California Chamber of Commerce, were scheduled to testify later today about their objections to the cap and trade market, the centerpiece of the state's global warming law, AB 32. Businesses say the market amounts to a $1 billion-plus annual tax that will destroy jobs and...

Come November, California will open North America's first full-scale carbon market, in which companies buy and sell the right to emit greenhouse gases from their factories, power plants and oil refineries. It's a major undertaking involving hundreds of companies and - potentially - billions of dollars. Success or failure could have big implications for California's fight against climate change, not to mention the state's fragile economy. So on Thursday, California officials plan to stage a dress rehearsal. The California Air Resources Board will hold a practice auction, giving future players in the carbon market a chance to see how the...

Extraordinarily smart people at the California Air Resources Board have taken to using the term "leakage" as they go about devising the experimental cap and trade system for reducing greenhouse gases. Homer Perez, head boiler mechanic at Pacific Coast Producers' tomato cannery off East Main Street in Woodland, might use a word that is more familiar to the rest of us: "layoff." The cannery has been operating under one owner or another since the 1920s. A cooperative of 16 growers in Yolo, Solano and Sutter counties owns it now. Perez has worked there for 28 of the past 29 years....

Pending auctions of greenhouse-gas permits will benefit only California’s government. It's probably no coincidence that Gov. Jerry Brown recently launched a website to scare Californians into embracing his global-warming hype. The state is about to launch a cap-and-trade scheme that potentially will raise billions of dollars for the government, ostensibly to fight global warming.In reality, the money is likely to be diverted to more mundane political uses – like backfilling the huge budget hole perpetuated by Mr. Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

We got a phone call this morning from an Orange County businessman who had attended a conference this week in which a university professor lauded the benefits of cap and trade. Obviously, this prof doesn’t work in an industry that will have to directly assume the burden of this added tax, disguised as a fee. But our caller does. Our caller and the prof do share this in common – their cost of living as consumers will go up as California state government ratchets up its taxes through cap and trade auctions, ostensible to rid us of horrid CO2 emissions,...

  As I’ve written before, I’ve actually shared the dais with Mr. Van Jones and have been keeping up with him ever since.  Glenn Beck did his best work in discovering that Van Jones has been in leadership of key radical Leninist organizations  including the Ella Baker Center, which sent an appeal to allocate 10% of the new global warming tax (cap and trade) for Van Jones slush fund.  The “SNAP� line is here: African Americans in Los Angeles are nearly twice as likely to die from a heat wave than other Los Angeles residents. HUH?  I’m sure the predominantly...

In January 2008 Barack Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle: “Under my plan of a cap and trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.” He promised that his plan would cause electricity rates to skyrocket. He wasn’t kidding. Now thanks to Barack Obama’s radical energy policies, electricity rates are skyrocketing across the country and coal plants are shutting their doors. New regulations by the Obama Administration is forcing Arch Coal, Inc. to lay off 750 workers in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.

A coalition of environmental groups is alleging that California's Cap and Trade program violates the 1964 Civil Rights act. The groups filed a complaint Friday against the California Air Resources Board charging that minority groups will be disproportionately harmed by the program that allows polluters to discharge more emissions by buying credits from other less-polluting industries. The complaint alleges that African-Americans, Latinos and Asians are more likely to live in the low-income neighborhoods near refineries and power plants and will not receive the benefit of emission reductions intended under Cap and Trade.

The Los Angeles Times published an article last week about Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad's efforts to recruit California businesses to his state, citing complaints about California's business climate.Gov. Jerry Brown's spokesman, Gil Duran, told the Times in response, "This is a Republican myth that is often repeated yet simply not true. Reputable studies have shown that businesses are not fleeing the state for the cold, empty and desolate hinterlands."The response typified the Capitol's dismissive attitude toward any suggestion that we have become economically uncompetitive. . . . Making California hospitable to that job-creating investment should be Job No. 1 in...

With the state budget mired in deficits, Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators, especially his fellow Democrats, are searching under every fiscal rock for money to spend. That search has spawned an odd syndrome involving what could be three big pots of money – a competition among liberals over how they should be spent if, indeed, they materialize. The pots: • What could be several billion dollars a year in "cap-and-trade" fees that industries must pay as part of the state's anti-greenhouse gas crusade. • Another billion-plus bucks that it's believed would appear were the state to change taxation of multi-state...

Limbaugh’s Climatologist Defends Newt’s Past Position + Romney says Coal Plants KILL PEOPLE | @PolitiJim's Rants | http://bit.ly/IV0n8i

For the past 10 years, California has struggled with huge budget deficits and wrenching cuts. Suddenly, however, the state is poised to raise billions from an unusual new source: the proceeds from its landmark global warming law. The windfall could come as soon as this fall, when state officials are set to begin auctioning off pollution credits to oil refineries, power plants and other major polluters as part of a new "cap-and-trade" system. The amounts are potentially enormous: from $1 billion to $3 billion a year in 2012 and 2013, jumping to as high as $14 billion a year by...

Hey, take a look at what I found on the EPA's website (Yes, I have a life. Really. I do. Promise.): ********************************** "Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies. Meaningful involvement means that: (1) people have an opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that may...

New rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions will make it nearly impossible to build new coal power plants The Obama administration effectively blocked the construction of any new coal-fired power plants on Tuesday, introducing rules to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the next generation of plants. The proposed new standards would cut carbon dioxide emissions on new power plants in half and will, over time, help move America away from the carbon-heavy plants that currently produce nearly half of the country's electricity, Lisa Jackson, the head of the environmental protection agency, told a conference call with reporters. "Right now there...

If you thought gas prices will never stop rising, just wait until you see what happens to electricity after the Barack Obama’s EPA gets its way.  The agency will deliver on Obama’s election promise to bankrupt any new coal-fired electrical production in its first-ever regulations on greenhouse-gas emissions, the Washington Post reports.  The new regulatory regime will all but guarantee that new coal-fired plants won’t be built to replace others shutting down: The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants as early as Tuesday, according to several people briefed on the proposal. The move...

The EU’s carbon agenda has launched a trade war that has China blocking purchases of Airbus’s troubled new jumbo jets; now word comes that the EU climate agenda is beginning to fall apart at home. The European Union’s ambitious low carbon plan collapsed yesterday when Poland vetoed plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically after 2020. The move is the latest stage in the ignominious failure of EU carbon policy that has seen a grandiose carbon trading system bog down in a quagmire of scandal and price collapse. Europe will meet its current carbon reduction goals less because of any...

Will Mitt Romney flip-flop on climate change if he’s elected president? Some big donors are betting on it.Romney and his super PAC have taken millions from funders with strong green streaks — despite the fact that the former Massachusetts governor has run to the right in the primary, proclaiming doubts about global-warming science and trashing President Barack Obama’s greenhouse gas emissions policies.Julian Robertson, founder of the Tiger Management hedge fund, helped put cap-and-trade legislation on the map with $60 million in contributions over the past decade to the Environmental Defense Fund. Now, Robertson has given $1.25 million to Romney’s Restore...

The state's independent Legislative Analyst's Office warns that Gov. Jerry Brown relies on too much money from cap-and-trade taxes to shore up the state's beleaguered budget. In his 2012-13 budget, the governor overestimates how much relief he can expect from businesses forced to buy "credits" beginning in August to permit greenhouse gas emissions. The 2011-12 budget fell billions short of Mr. Brown's projected revenue, despite his boast last year that it was balanced....

The state of California has made a full-blown commitment to reducing reliance on fossil-fuel energy and other limited resources. Utilities are required to use solar, wind and geothermal sources for a third of their electricity supply by 2020, while owners of homes and businesses are being urged to install solar panels. The state is mandating that automakers dramatically ramp up sales of battery-powered and other low-emission cars. It is imposing new cap-and-trade emission controls on business with hefty fees. Essentially, the state is trying to force California into an entirely new economic structure, claiming, in Gov. Jerry Brown's words, that...

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has touted himself as the staunch conservative to Republican primary voters, and when it comes to the environment his views are informed by his Christian faith, or rather his interpretation of it. "We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit, not for the Earth's benefit," Santorum told an audience in Colorado last week, according to the Colorado Independent. Santorum has argued that climate change is beyond human control, and any attempts to mitigate it are part...

SANTA FE – The state Environmental Improvement Board voted 5-0 Monday to repeal a controversial cap-and-trade regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nullifying a struggling program before it got off the ground. A partnership of seven states originally envisioned to participate in the cap-and-trade program had dwindled to two, board Chairman Deborah Peacock said. “The intent was that all these states would be doing this cap and trading, and everyone’s dropped (out) except for California and New Mexico,” she said. “That, to me, was very significant.” The ruling reversed a 2010 decision of the previous board appointed by then-Gov. Bill...

The debate over global warming is now entering the classroom and its proponents are alarmed. It seems the “dogma” of the existence of global warming is running into problems as boards of education in several states have established a standard that requires the presentation of climate change “denial” as a valid scientific position. Legislators in other states have introduced bills that require equal time for climate change skeptics’ views in the classroom. With new national science standards from kindergarten through twelfth grade due by the end of 2012, we can expect to see a heated debate over climate change appear...

Actual title is : It’s baaack! The plan to kill talk radio. Group advising White House wants to restore controversial policy An organization that helped to craft President Obama’s environmental policies has recommended the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, purportedly as a method of silencing critics of the theory of global warming. The Presidential Climate Action Project, or PCAP, last year released an extensive list of recommendations for the White House in a 75-page paper entitled, “Building the Obama Administration’s Climate Legacy.” Primary among the PCAP’s recommendations is that the Department of Energy should join the U.S. Department of Housing...

In a brazen denial of the obvious, Gov. Jerry Brown now insists the proposed California high-speed rail can be built for much less than its own business plan stipulates, and wants to use anti-global-warming carbon taxes to underwrite the proposal, whose price tag has nearly tripled in the three years since voters approved it. The governor seems intent on demonstrating how California's state government has burdened taxpayers with mounting debt, while overspending to create consecutive years of budget deficits. . .

Gov. Jerry Brown said Sunday that cap-and-trade fees could help pay for high-speed rail, and that the cost would be well under the $100 billion forecast by the California High-Speed Rail Authority just three months ago. “It’s not going to be $100 billion,” Brown said. “That’s way off.” The voter-approved project would create a 220-mph train from San Francisco to Anaheim with eventual connections to Sacramento and San Diego. According to a transcript of the interview in the Sacramento Bee, Brown said, “Phase 1, I’m trying to redesign it in a way that in and of itself will be justified...

"For example, application of the catch-and-trade system to global whaling can be used to eliminate commercial whaling — whoever has the most money wins. But is this an ethical approach to resource allocation?" Rothschild wrote in an email to the Times. "Many of our resources are owned by the 'public,' or by 'society,' or are 'the common heritage of mankind (such as national parks and air space),'" he added. "Should they be for sale?" Others agreed. "This 'market proposal' to saving the whales is just another example of the commercial privatization of our oceans for the benefit of private enterprise,"...

Goldman Sachs countered the negative tone set so far with big-bank earnings, beating Wall Street expectations and sending shares higher in premarket trading Wednesday.

Although the faux science behind global warming alarmism has been amply exposed for its pretensions and errors, the warmists don’t much care. They have their regulations in place. They no longer have to resort to this tactic... Brace yourself. “Gov. Jerry Brown has found a new pot of money to help him fill a $9-billion hole in his proposed budget: $1 billion from auctioning credits to allow California companies to emit greenhouse gases,” reports today’s Los Angeles Times. And you thought it was about saving the planet? It’s always been about money and control. Your money, their control. . ....

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal includes nearly $500 million in spending from the proceeds of California's first-in-the-nation cap-and-trade program, but the plan is raising questions about whether the governor is using the new money to cut the budget deficit instead of promoting new greenhouse-gas-reducing programs. The controversial cap-andtrade program essentially puts a price on carbon emissions by limiting the amount of CO2 that can be produced by the state's largest polluters. They have to purchase credits from the state to cover the amount of carbon emitted. While the program went into effect Jan. 1, the state's first auction to sell...

During the late eighteenth century, momentous developments materialized in the West which now define modern life. Living conditions improved yielding unparalleled comfort, sanitation, and even entertainment. People lived longer with better health and more plentiful opportunities. Previously, spare a few spurts of progress and pockets of wealth, man enjoyed minimal advancement beyond what the ancients experienced. Most of the world remained mired in subsistence agriculture, helplessly dependent on the vagaries of weather. Summer droughts, frigid winters, meager diets, and vulnerability to disease rendered life short and harsh. Today, in the West, even our poorest are comparatively well off. Menial laborers...

NEWBERRY, S.C. -- Cathy Gibbons is a one-woman focus group for Republican attitudes toward Newt Gingrich. Back in the '90s, Gibbons grew tired of Gingrich when he was Speaker of the House. But this year, after watching Gingrich at Republican presidential debates, she sees him as a different man -- and the best candidate in the field. "I've heard them talk on the news about all the baggage, but I don't see that any more," says Gibbons, of McCormick, S.C. "He's not the same person. They say people can't change when they become adults, but I think Newt has." Still,...

Hillary Clinton's "3 a.m. phone call" ad could have been a devastating attack on Obama's competence and experience. It failed to have an impact on voters because it ran four years too soon. Against the backdrop of a sleeping child, the ad's narrator says there's something going on in the world, and a phone is ringing in the White House. He asks, who do you want answering the phone? Someone who knows the military, world leaders, and is tested and ready to lead? Unfortunately for Clinton, almost no one was interested in competence or national security in the last presidential...

Right now the staffs of Rick Perry and Herman Cain are assuring their candidates of the sourness of the vineyard of the Union Leader endorsement. Why no one in Manchester, New Hampshire, reads that rag, right? But even as the staffs of all the other candidates not named Mitt Romney tell their bosses it does not matter, they are preparing their resumes, hoping that maybe they can land a job with Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney. Some big money likely will come off the sidelines and into the campaign coffers of Newt Gingrich. As Lucianne Goldberg wrote: “This is a...

Gingrich’s Endorsement And The Failings Of The Conservative Media By Jennifer Rubin The conservative punditocracy is all aflutter today about the Union Leader’s endorsement of Newt Gingrich. Both the newspaper’s publisher, Joseph McQuaid, and those chattering about the endorsement offer the latest evidence to the conservative media being downright daft in this primary — a result, I suspect, of their increasingly self-segregation, which abets tone-deafness. Let’s start with the endorsement itself. The editorial board’s rationale is based on the conviction that Gingrich is “bold” — I kid you not — and that he should be recognized for “bringing in the...

Gregory asked Abramoff - who finished a jail stint over a year ago on influence-peddling charges and has been promoting his recently-published book - about the strategic counseling fee of over $1 million that was paid to Newt Gingrich by housing giant Freddie Mac. "What do you make of all that?" Gregory asked. Abramoff replied, "This is exactly what I'm talking about. People who come to Washington who have public service and they cash in on it. And they use their public service and their access to make money, and unfortunatley Newt Gingrich is one of them who have done...

New Mexico has already been passed over for some gas and oil projects because of regulatory uncertainties, a witness for opponents of the state’s cap-and-trade rule told the Environmental Improvement Board on Tuesday. The board, which concluded three days of technical testimony, also heard from a climate change expert who said the science is still in flux and that its impacts on New Mexico health and resources can’t be predicted with accuracy. John Christy, an atmospheric science professor and contributor to United Nations reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said cap and trade would have no meaningful impact...

Results from new poll of GOP primary voters from Democratic firm Public Policy Polling: Newt Gingrich (28 percent), Herman Cain (25 percent), Mitt Romney (18 percent), Rick Perry (6 percent), Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul (5 percent), Jon Huntsman (3 percent), Rick Santorum and Gary Johnson (1 percent). One particularly interesting note from PPP: “There’s reason to think that if Cain continues to fade, Gingrich will continue to gain. Among Cain’s supporters 73 percent have a favorable opinion of Gingrich to only 21 percent with a negative one.”

By now it is abundantly clear that Newt Gingrich is the best debater among the Republican Presidential Candidates. Some of Newt’s critics will grudgingly acquiesce to this fact, but still brush the legitimacy of the Gingrich candidacy aside, noting that he is an unserious candidate. However, Newt’s magnificent debating skills, his unmatched knowledge of American and political history, his tremendous command of the issues and his eloquent oratory skills should not be taken lightly

It may be time for California to formally apply for membership in the European Union. Its taxing, borrowing and regulatory policies are already more in line with the southern tier of Euroland than with other U.S. states, and the Golden State has taken another lurch in the Euro-direction by becoming the first jurisdiction in the nation to adopt a full-scale cap-and-trade tax to combat global warming. The new taxes and regulations will require a nearly 30% reduction in carbon emissions from power plants, manufacturers, cars and trucks by 2020. This green tax was signed into law in 2006 by then-Governor...

California claims many proud “firsts” – first Disney theme park, first motion picture studios, first state governed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Soon it will add: first state to commit fiscal suicide by imposing cap-and-trade regulations. No wonder poppies are California’s state flower. Fact No. 1: California has more debt than any state in the union. This distinction is bestowed by State Budget Solutions, a non-partisan group that reports annually on states’ financial posture, factoring in oft-hidden items such as future pension obligations and unemployment trust fund loans. Under this approach, California owes $612 billion. Fact No. 2: California’s financial woes are...

The Weather: Regulations finalized by the California Air Resources Board establish the nation's first state-run cap-and-trade regime. Despite Solyndra, the state will gather solar panels while it may. The 262 pages of regulations implementing California's 2006 global warming legislation, Assembly Bill 32, approved by CARB last Thursday, will probably reduce employment more than it reduces emissions. The only thing it will cap is economic growth by bleeding a patient that is already hemorrhaging red ink. Signed into law in 2006 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the cap-and-trade regulations are intended to force California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels...

California's plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on carbon is set to take effect without delay on Jan. 1 after the Air Resources Board today voted to make final adjustments in the regulation. The board first approved the cap and trade program last December, but in an unusual move the board took up the final pieces of the nation's only comprehensive limit on greenhouse gases. It is the last major regulation the board considered to meet the requirements of AB32, California's greenhouse gas reduction law.

California formally adopted the nation's most comprehensive so-called "cap-and-trade" system Thursday, an experiment by the world's eighth-largest economy that is designed to provide financial incentives for polluters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. State officials said they hoped other states and Washington, D.C., would follow suit, calling the plan a "capstone" among the suite of tools California can use to reduce the pollution linked to climate change and cut dependence on foreign oil.