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Obama/Waxman push $3,100 per-family tax by Memorial Day! From the Desk of: Steve Elliott, President, Grassfire.org Alliance Our sources are telling me that President Obama and Rep. Henry Waxman are pushing for a key vote on the Carbon Tax BEFORE Memorial Day -- a tax that studies show will cost each family $3,100 each and every year. Last week, Obama met behind closed doors with House Democrats to pressure them to pass the Carbon Tax. Now, Waxman is even contemplating skipping the Subcommittee hearing on the $2 trillion Carbon Cap and Trade Tax and fast-tracking this new tax straight to...

Internal Obama Administration Memo---> Regulating CO2 Will Hurt Economy Until early January Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. Then Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group's congress in Greece was still available. The group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the organization's action arm...

The great global policy push for massive climate control laws and big fat taxes on carbon appear to be heading into a brick wall. From Australia to British Columbia, from Washington to Copenhagen, there are growing signs that the much anticipated replacement for the Kyoto Accord will be as dead as Kyoto before it arrives. If signed, it will be called something like the Copenhagen Accord, after meetings later this year in that Danish city. But the global and national divisions over a new climate pact to reduce carbon emissions, visible everywhere, suggest there is little ground for common cause....

...The president and his allies have decided that man-made carbon dioxide is a witch's brew that's killing the planet, and they think that just because the cap-and-trade cure stings doesn't mean we shouldn't have to swallow it. Their solution is embodied in the Henry A. Waxman-Edward J. Markey global warming legislation...Its proponents call it "back to the future." They're not kidding, either........you can test drive Waxman-Markey by sailing down to Haiti, because current CO2 emissions are where Waxman-Markey wants America's to be in 2050. Radical environmentalists think such a CO2 level will be heaven on Earth, but the place that...

Finally, the United States appears ready to be a leader rather than a sullen nonparticipant when it comes to global climate policies. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are the latest to lend their voices to a dramatic change in the U.S. approach to dealing with greenhouse gas pollution. The old standoff ways of former President George Bush are being put in the waste bin by the Obama administration. On Monday some of the world's largest polluters met to discuss how to deal with harmful emissions from coal-fired power plants and other facilities that foul the world's...

These days, it seems that everyone -- even those elusive "super-rich" billionaire moguls -- has lost a tremendous amount of money due to the current world-wide financial meltdown. But at least one creative entrepreneur has managed to enrich himself handsomely over the last eight years and even keep his future money-making prospects sky-high. It is Sir Richard Branson? George Soros? Oprah? Nope. Al Gore. According to the blog Pro Patria, Gore's "Big Green" business ventures and personal appearances have put nearly $100 million in his pockets during the last eight years: So just what has Al Gore gained from his...

The days of slavery are back. No not the archaic 17th and 18th century physical type, this is the new 21st Century high tech economic variety. And ironically it’ll be ushered in by a Black man.

Pelosi: Climate bill will pass in House By: Patrick O'Connor April 21, 2009 04:56 PM EST Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised again Tuesday the House would pass a climate-change bill by the end of this year, despite the entrenched reservations of moderate Democrats. Even if the Pelosi muscles a bill through the House, few expect that legislation to go anywhere in the Senate, which will soon be bogged down in a major health care debate. Despite that hurdle, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) reiterated his own promise on Tuesday to move major legislation through his committee by...

India has thrown down the gauntlet to developed nations in the latest round of climate change talks, saying the developing world wants to see pledges of cash before it is prepared to discuss emissions curbs. The move draws battle lines between rich and poor countries and threatens to halt progress on climate change: rich countries insisted that they cannot name sums before getting commitments that future emissions will be reduced. Shyam Saran, special envoy to the Indian prime minister, said at a UN meeting in Bonn: “The question [of developing country curbs] should not be divorced from what financial support...

Is the carbon dioxide that humans exhale a public danger? Yes, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has released an endangerment finding on carbon dioxide. The finding will allow the gas to be regulated under the Clean Air Act, something the Act was not intended to do when it was enacted over 30 years ago. Aggressive cap-and-trade measures are being debated on Capitol Hill and, if enacted, are rumored to rake in trillions of dollars for the federal government and raise the cost of living for Americans by thousands of dollars. Dan Simmons, the director of state...

His numbers, not mine. It still stuns me that anybody voted for this guy.

Protectionism is always bad policy. But protectionism during an economic downturn, after taxes have already risen, and in addition to a massive $2 trillion tax on energy consumption is, well, not good.Yet that is exactly what Energy Secretary David Chu seems to be edging towards.In response to the notion that American companies will move overseas when CO2 is capped, Secretary Chu suggested that the U.S. simply levy a carbon tariff on imports.This is why Secretaries of Energy should stick with energy and not economic policy. This is why free-markets work and command and control economies do not.At any rate, the...

WASHINGTON -- A top White House economic adviser told Senate staff a proposed cap and trade system could raise "two-to-three times" the administration's existing $646 billion revenue estimate, according to five people at the meeting. This could mean the cap and trade system could actually generate between roughly $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion between fiscal years 2012 and 2019. Jason Furman, deputy director of the National Economic Council, offered the estimate at a Feb. 26 meeting on Capitol Hill with a bipartisan group of staffers, most of whom are attached to the Senate Finance Committee, according to five Senate aides...

The head of the UN body charged with leading the fight against climate change has conceded that Barack Obama will face a "revolution" if he commits the US to the deep carbon cuts that scientists and campaigners say are needed. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said domestic political constraints made it impossible for the US president to announce ambitious short-term climate targets similar to those set by Europe. And he questioned the value of a new global climate deal without such a US pledge. His words come as scientists at the Copenhagen conference said...

How should Republicans respond to Obamanomics?Because of the breathtaking speed and size of the new president's proposals, critics have yet to coalesce around any clear, single narrative. This is a problem, since six different responses to Obamanomics are almost the same as no response at all. Worse, Republicans have tended to fall back on old, time-tested framings that sound, well, old.Republicans say: The stimulus package/new budget expansion is "pork"; it contains something called "earmarks," they tell the American people. It is "wasteful" government spending that drives up an abstraction called the "deficit." Obama we fear is engaged in "class warfare,"...

http://ecoworld.com/blog/2009/03/04/carbon-taxes-public-sector-pensions/

http://ecoworld.com/blog/2009/03/04/carbon-taxes-public-sector-pensions/

Jim Rogers is not happy with the Obama administration. Ever since the White House unveiled its costly climate program, the CEO of Duke Energy has been arguing the proposals amount to nothing more than a tax. Indeed. Mr. Rogers belongs to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, about 30 companies that decided to [cooperate on] global warming legislation. The group demanded a "cap-and-trade" system, figuring they'd craft the rules so as to obtain regulatory certainty, with little upfront cost. At the time, Mr. Rogers explained: "If you don't have a seat at the table, you'll wind up on the menu." ......

At the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Obama Budget yesterday, Republicans vociferously objected to President Obama’s devastating new taxes on energy found throughout the budget that would drive our already fragile economy down. Crippling taxation on the small independent oil and gas producers and Obama’s “cap and trade” policy would at once burden families across the country with staggering gasoline and electricity costs, drive manufacturing jobs overseas and sound the death knell for domestic oil and gas production at a time when there is no transitional source of energy. Ranking member Dave Camp (R-Mich.) told me in...

Despite consistently describing the economic situation as being dire, President Barack Obama is rapidly moving forward with policies that have the potential to seriously harm American industry. He has tasked Vice President Biden to promote the cap-and-trade program that the envirolobby has been seeking after for over a decade. The Vice-President, armed with a new study purporting to claim that cap-and-trade would promote green jobs—via government t subsidy—is working to allay fears in industry-heavy states, many of which were instrumental in Obama's victory. The study, produced by the liberal environmentalist group Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), reveals a large number of...

From a "What's Up With That" AGW discussion about Arctic Ice coverage: Which satellites now measure with 2008 and 2009 at the second highest and third highest ever plotted. Data goes back only till 2000, but that sounds significant, doesn't it ? (Aside: Notice that Anti-AGW bias in reporting bare facts can go both ways? 8<) ------- "With Lake Superior frozen over in 2003 and 2009, that puts this rare event (every 20 years or so) occurring more frequently even with our alleged AGW. Notice that if you Google "Lake Superior Ice Cover" (or something similar) almost all the hits...

Passing off the Carbon Tax as "climate revenues," Obama hides largest tax increase in bloated big-government budget CHESAPEAKE, Va., March 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While some media outlets are reporting more than $1 trillion in new taxes in the Obama budget, Grassfire.org has identified more than $1.6 trillion, and possibly as much as $2.2 trillion. "The President's 'carbon tax' is the single biggest tax-increasing item in his budget, and the largest in history," says Steve Elliott, President of Grassfire.org. According to Grassfire.org researchers examining the official published documents on the budget, the $645 billion in carbon taxes pushes the total tax...

This week's Barron's had a number of articles on the Obama administration's desire to pass "Cap and Trade" legislation.  For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, it essentially means that the government will levy a tax on companies whose operations produce carbon emissions and provide credits to "green" companies.  These environmentally friendly companies can then turn around and sell the credits that they have earned to "dirty" companies.Senate Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid is in the process of drafting a huge new energy bill that should be officially unveiled some time in the next several months.  Part of this bill...

The “Climate Security Act”, also known as Cap-and-Trade or the Lieberman-Warner Bill was being debated in the US Senate last year and came close to becoming law. For a bill that will literally ruin our economy forever, it did not get near the attention it deserved. Thanks to a Republican filibuster by Senator Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, Larry Craig and a promise of a VETO by former President Bush it was stopped, but after the election everyone can expect it to raise its ugly head again. Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, Patrick Lahey, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Barack Obama,...

President Obama on Saturday struck back aggressively at critics of his $3.6 trillion budget proposal, casting himself as a populist crusader whose "sweeping change" has angered Washington's entrenched special interests, and promised to fight them. "I realize that passing this budget won't be easy. Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington," Mr. Obama said in his weekly video and radio address. Mr. Obama's language was combative and confrontational, as he promised to fight for "American families." "I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists...

WASHINGTON -- The chief executive of Duke Energy Corp., one of the nation's biggest power companies and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, said Friday that a proposal by President Obama to place a price on carbon emissions would drive up electricity rates in some areas of the U.S. by 40% and warned that it could also lead to "a redistribution of wealth" from Midwestern industrial states to coastal states. Duke Energy CEO James Rogers said he was also concerned that some of the roughly $646 billion that Mr. Obama hopes to raise by making companies pay for the...

Will a cap-and-trade system, the centerpiece in President Obama’s budget, really manage to address climate change and end U.S addiction to oil? Well, it depends whom you ask. A new report from the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas, for example, states that there has been little indication that cap-and trade will lower emissions. http://www.examiner.com/x-1109-Dallas-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m2d26-Capandtrade-system-insufficient-to-prompt-renewable-energy-roll-out-part-1-of-2

President Barack Obama's first budget includes $15 billion a year for renewable energy programs and an ambitious plan to raise $646 billion from a carbon reduction proposal. "Because our future depends on our ability to break free from oil that's controlled by foreign dictators, we need to make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy," Mr. Obama said Thursday morning. "That's why we'll be working with Congress on legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy." The plan uses money from a cap-and-trade program — which would allow companies to...

GENEVA – Antarctic glaciers are melting faster across a much wider area than previously thought, scientists said Wednesday — a development that could lead to an unprecedented rise in sea levels. A report by thousands of scientists for the 2007-2008 International Polar Year concluded that the western part of the continent is warming up, not just the Antarctic Peninsula. Previously most of the warming was thought to occur on the narrow stretch pointing toward South America, said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and a member of International Polar Year's steering committee. But satellite...

Pelosi: U.S. Must Change the Energy Marketplace @ 12:40 pm by Michael O'Brien The United States must be a force to change the energy marketplace, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday. "We must change the energy marketplace so we can save our country and our planet," Pelosi told attendees of the National Clean Energy Project Roundtable held Monday in Washington. "It is a moral, environmental and health, economic, and national security issue." Pelosi touted Congress's work under her leadership to address environmental issues, including provisions in the most recent stimulus package, and the establishment of the Select Committee on...

Barack Hussein Obama will propose a massive business tax on greenhouse gases in his FY 2010 federal budget to be presented this week.The massive tax increase and power grab was buried at the end on article on Obama's forthcoming budget proposal in The New York Times:On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020. Since companies would pass their...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Energy Secretary Steven Chu has floated the idea of a carbon emissions tax to fight global warming, in an interview with The New York Times Thursday. During the US presidential campaign, the notion was kept largely on the back burner as candidates were reluctant to promote the idea of costlier energy at a time when gasoline prices were soaring. But since President Barack Obama's administration took office in January, Congress has been working on setting up a system for swapping greenhouse gas emissions quotas similar to the one used in the European Union. And Chu said...

http://ifglobalwarmingisrealthenwhyisitcold.blogspot.com/

While a carbon tax is nothing new to those leading the charge for anthropogenic, or man-made, climate change, it is a new concept to many of us in the United States. The idea is simple. A carbon tax is a fee paid to emit greenhouse gases. Unless you are completely self- sustained on your property and in your travels, you will be impacted. Companies that generate electricity will feel the pinch of a carbon tax for burning natural gas or coal to generate power. Steel mills will be impacted for burning fossil fuels to keep their furnaces hot. Automobile manufacturers...

Everyone on the planet could get identical greenhouse-gas emission rights as part of a drive to halve emissions by 2050, according to a study by Chinese scientists. The work was presented on the sidelines of a UN conference on fighting global warming that is currently taking place in Poznan, Poland. It would force nations such as the US, which have used the most fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution to buy emission rights from poor nations. "Developed countries [should] take the lead in reducing emissions," said Su Wei, head of climate change at China's National Development and Reform Commission. The...

Abstract: President-elect Barack Obama said attacking global climate change is a "matter of urgency" that will create jobs as he got advice from Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the issue. Obama made clear he would adopt an aggressive approach to global warming when he takes over the White House on January 20. He and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met for nearly two hours with Gore at Obama's presidential transition office in Chicago. Obama hopes addressing climate change can create the kind of jobs that will help pull the U.S. economy out of a...

CHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday praised former Vice President Al Gore's ideas on the environment as one part of helping the nation's struggling economy recovery.Obama, Gore and Vice President-elect Joe Biden met privately at Obama's transition headquarters here for almost two hours. Obama said they discussed so-called green jobs as a way to boost employment across the country, improve national security by reducing reliance on foreign oil, and reduce energy costs.Obama said global warming is "not only a problem, but it's also an opportunity.""We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this...

Abstract: Recent historical Northern Hemisphere tropical cyclone inactivity is compared with the strikingly large observed variability during the past three decades. Yearly totals of Northern Hemisphere ACE are highly correlated with boreal spring sea-surface temperatures in the North Pacific Ocean and are representative of an evolving dual-gyre, trans-hemispheric correlation pattern throughout the calendar year. The offsetting nature of EPAC and NATL basin integrated energy and the strong dependence of combined Pacific TC activity upon ENSO suggest a hypothesis that overall Northern Hemisphere TC behavior is largely modulated by global-scale, non-local climate variability. Fact: There has been one Category 5 Tropical...

Election '08: The United Nations prays for an Obama victory so its collectivist agenda can be fulfilled. High on the list is climate change, as Obama prepares to declare our breath a pollutant. The definition of socialism includes government ownership and control of the means of production, and the Obama administration is prepared to sign agreements and carry out policies that in effect will do just that. The U.N. couldn't be happier. An informal survey of U.N. officials by the Washington Post found overwhelming support for the former Illinois state senator. One American U.N. employee was surprised that he was...

It looks like the financial wizards at Goldman Sachs are betting that the U.S. government is going to impose a cap-and-trade system for global-warming emissions sooner rather than later, despite the financial crisis shaking up the corridors of power from Wall Street to Washington. Goldman is announcing today that it will partner with Salt Lake City-based carbon-offset project developer Blue Source LLC. The company, backed by big-time private equity investors First Reserve Corp. and Och Ziff Capital Management Group, sells carbon credits. Neither Goldman Sachs or Blue Source would comment on the size of the investment, other than to say...

Remember when Liberal leader Stephane Dion unveiled his carbon tax plan earlier this year? The green lobby was thrilled. It had finally found a mainstream politician ready to fight an election on a promise to implement a tax on heating fuels, diesel and other traditional sources of energy that households consume. Environmentalists were convinced voters would rally around the plan, particularly since the carbon tax and ensuing higher energy prices would be offset with tax cuts targeted to low-and modest-income earners. Canada was set to become a world leader in the climate change debate. Dreams of a carbon tax are...

Liberals pretend that only President Bush is preventing the U.S. from adopting some global warming "solution." But occasionally their mask slips. As Barack Obama's energy adviser has now made clear, the would-be President intends to blackmail -- or rather, greenmail -- Congress into falling in line with his climate agenda. [Review & Outlook] AP Jason Grumet is currently executive director of an outfit called the National Commission on Energy Policy and one of Mr. Obama's key policy aides. In an interview last week with Bloomberg, Mr. Grumet said that come January the Environmental Protection Agency "would initiate those rulemakings" that...

If you live in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont, the price you pay for energy will soon include a new tax: carbon credits. Energy consumers in ten northeastern States are going to see their bills rise and probably not even know why. They will assume that it is tied to the cost of oil, natural gas, or coal, but it does so only obliquely. If you believe that the use of these energy sources are producing huge amounts of carbon dioxide (C02) and other greenhouse gases that will doom the...

The media needs to start asking hard questions. Here is where they need to start. If you look at page 180 of the 451-page monster bailout bill that easily passed the Senate yesterday (PDF here), you will see that it includes at Section 116 language about the tax treatment of "industrial source carbon dioxide." It also provides, at Section 117, for a "carbon audit of the tax code."

Having tolls removed from a major route in British Columbia, Canada, has taken some of the sting out of the cost of operating a trucking business in that province, but there’s still plenty of sting to go around. In late September, the government removed a $20 truck toll and $10 passenger vehicle toll from the Coquihalla Highway, which connects the city of Hope to Kamloops, B.C., in the Canadian West. Provincial officials said that truckers were pleased with the move, and they were. “Given the price of fuel, truckers are very happy with this,” Bridgitte Anderson, spokeswoman for British Columbia...

In the race for a more environmentally friendly world, countries have taken a variety of different approaches to saving the planet. C urrently the countries of Oceania are taking new and interesting approaches to the cause, though not without controversy. Last year, New Zealand politicians passed a bill accepting a proposed emissions trading policy, aka "the Scheme." In this system, greenhouse gas emissions are taxed with the hope that such measures will change investment and consumption behaviors by New Zealanders and build a more environmentally-conscious economy. The system basically works by taxing "points of obligation," including any entity that emits...

Sneaky: Current credit bailout bill contains carbon tax provisions! If you look at page 180 of the 451-page monster bailout bill that easily passed the Senate yesterday (PDF here), you will see that it includes at Section 116 language about the tax treatment of “industrial source carbon dioxide.” It also provides, at Section 117, for a “carbon audit of the tax code.” What could a provision about the tax treatment of “industrial source carbon dioxide” and another provision about doing a “carbon audit” of the tax code possibly have to do with restoring confidence in Wall Street’s troubled credit and...

From page 180 of the Bailout bill: 1 SEC. 116. CERTAIN INCOME AND GAINS RELATING TO IN2 DUSTRIAL SOURCE CARBON DIOXIDE TREAT3 ED AS QUALIFYING INCOME FOR PUBLICLY 4 TRADED PARTNERSHIPS. 5 (a) IN GENERAL.—Subparagraph (E) of section 6 7704(d)(1) (defining qualifying income) is amended by in 7serting ‘‘or industrial source carbon dioxide’’ after ‘‘tim8 ber)’’. 9 (b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendment made by 10 this section shall take effect on the date of the enactment 11 of this Act, in taxable years ending after such date. 12 SEC. 117. CARBON AUDIT OF THE TAX CODE. 13 (a) STUDY.—The Secretary of...

...Granholm was asked how to get the public on board the push to more alternative energies. She said some members of the state Legislature aren't enamored with government mandates on environmental issues. If you can't woo them with wind turbines, she said, point to all the jobs that are being created by pushing for alternative energy. Granholm covered numerous other topics: She said there needs to be a "carbon tax'' on coal, oil and gas to help reduce carbon emissions. "That's a good thing,'' the governor said. Granholm said she was in Japan and saw high-speed rail service. "Why don't...

Stephane Dion has officially let the protectionist cat fully out of the Green Shift bag. From the day his ambitious plan for a federal carbon tax was announced, the potential effects on international trade have been perhaps the most important corollary remaining to be addressed in detail by the Liberal leader. ... It would be a shame if we responded by placing control of our foreign policy in the hands of an economic masochist who is not even content to wait for American political action before he tries to impose what he bizarrely imagines to be American environmental values --...