Posted on 11/03/2008 8:50:56 AM PST by pissant
It could have been a classic presidential debate moment, John McCain turning to Barack Obama and saying, "Isn't it true that you want Americans to pay higher energy prices?" Right in the middle of an economic downturn, that's the last thing most of us want to do. But that is exactly what Obama wants us to do.
Here is what Obama told Iowa public television last year (courtesy of Little Green Footballs): "I think it is important to send some price signals to change behavior. It's not going to be painless. Power plants are going to have to adjust how they generate power. They will pass on those costs to consumers.... A lot of us who can afford it are going to pay more for a unit of electricity; over time the electricity bill goes back down as technology catches back up."
Me: See, Obama's little-discussed cap-and-trade plan would raise costs on businesses for using energy, like the entire coal industry—and they would then pass on those costs to you and me. Those "price signals" effectively are $100 billion a year in energy taxes, which would wipe out Obama's middle-class tax cut/credit.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
I’m glad the news is out, but where was the McCain research team on this? This would have had a major impact during the final debate or even last week. I hope two days is enough for the word to get out...
There was an article quoting Mike Carey of the Ohio Coal Association. I emailed him to communicate my support for him and the coal industry (keeps electricity prices down). You can email him, too, if you like at mcarey@ohiocoal.com. It would be quite a story if he got few hundred thousand emails today voicing support.
Will we see this in the NYT, the LAT, the broadcast media? What’s that homily about a snowball? ...when you can hit a flying pig with a snowball on a hot day in H**L.
http://www.fe.doe.gov/aboutus/history/syntheticfuels_history.html
(snip)
In 1952, Americans elected Dwight D. Eisenhower as the 36th President of the United States. Carrying 39 states and winning the electoral vote 442 to 89, Eisenhower brought "modern Republicanism" into the conduct of domestic affairs. He called for reduced taxes, balanced budgets, a return of certain responsibilities to the states (including title to valuable tideland oil reserves), and a decrease in government control over the economy. The Republican Party also won control of Congress by a slim margin.
Industry Builds Its First Coal-to-Oil Plant
The same year, the nation's first privately built and operated coal hydrogenation plant began operating at Institute, West Virginia. Constructed by the Carbide and Carbon Chemical Company (later to become Union Carbide), the Institute plant could process 300 tons of coal daily. From 1952 to 1956, the plant produced chemicals from coal, and hence its hydrogenation conditions were milder than those used in the Bureau's plants. Nonetheless, the Institute plant was a symbol to many in the Eisenhower Administration and the Congress that large-scale synthetic fuels plants should now become the responsibility of the private sector.
In March 1953 when the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee opened its budget hearings, its first official act was to kill funds for the Louisiana, MO, synthetic fuel plants. The cost of synthetic fuels was too high for the government to bear, the Committee stated. Estes Kefauver, then out of Congress but later elected to the U.S. Senate, claimed that the nation's oil companies had been behind the Committee's action because they did not want the competition from coal. A short time later, the Committee voted to cease funding for all the programs authorized under the Synthetic Fuels Act.
Within 90 days, the Missouri plants were closed and turned back to the Department of the Army. The coal hydrogenation plant returned to making ammonia.
For the remainder of the 1950s and into the 1960s, the Bureau of Mines coal and synthetic fuels research was relegated to low-priority fundamental studies. The Bruceton research facility stayed in operation, conducting small-scale, fundamental studies on coal-to-oil processes, but emphasizing its original mission of mine training and safety. The Morgantown site also remained open largely because other Interior Department research programs in petroleum and natural gas and a federal coal mine health and safety inspections group were added to supplement the facility's coal gasification mission.
The nation's first high profile program in synthetic fuels research was over but, largely unnoticed by the public, federal scientists at Pittsburgh and Morgantown continued to study the basic properties of coal. The knowledge they gained during this period would prove extremely valuable when West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd decided in 1961 to rejuvenate the nation's coal research program by pushing through legislation to create a new Office of Coal Research in the U.S. Department of the Interior.
What is THAT supposed to mean? Everyone's power rates aren't going up? Progressive power rates based on how much you make?
Increasing power rates is a really, really big deal given how big a percentage of a normal family's budget the power bill is...much more so than gasoline and we have seen how an increase is gas has played out.
More likely, the taxpayers will SUBSIDIZE lower energy rates for those who “can’t afford it.”
I knew that. So our own rates will probably double or triple and then there will be a special excise tax of probably 20% more to pay for SOMEONE ELSE’S BILL.
Yep, Obama will eliminate the disparity between the “rich”, i.e. the people who don’t need government assistance, and the poor by making us all equally poor.
Son of Satan intends to destroy America: it is dual imperative from his Islamo-handlers (Saudi prince via Mansour via Sutton) and his Commie handlers (Comintern via Davis, Stanley, Alinsky & Ayers LLC).
Disarm, destabilize, cripple, take the guns, chill dissent, fund the Acorn storm troopers ("a civilian security force")--
--he is as dangerous as the Little Corporal.
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