Posted on 01/27/2021 5:10:11 AM PST by karpov
With Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous quip in 1980, it mattered whether he said Republicans had become “the” or “a” party of ideas.
“The” might imply that the mantle of ideas regularly shifts between parties, but history offers little support for this view. Long periods of mental stagnation seem to define both parties. No ideas are present in the climate spasms of the Biden administration, just a doubled helping of patronage handouts to established interest groups.
Ideas briefly flourished in the early 2000s, when the debate was between a carbon tax and an inferior carbon tax, known as cap and trade, which dismayed experts but pleased corporate lobbyists by bestowing an advantage on existing emitters. Cap and trade almost passed.
Then Barack Obama was elected. Al Gore debouched himself of a new edict. An alleged climate crisis no longer required any unpopular energy taxes at all. By some process not explained, the emergency had become a political free lunch, requiring congresspersons only to do what they like doing anyway, dishing out subsidies to favored constituents.
The youthful activism of John Kerry, Mr. Biden’s new climate czar, is your model here. It had little discernible impact on the Vietnam War but it did have an impact on Mr. Kerry’s career.
Suppose you actually cared about climate change. You would not throw episodic subsidies at things that can survive only as long as you are subsidizing them. You would try to set in motion long-term trends that have the advantage of being in accordance with existing trends.
Mr. Obama, instead of the climate speech he gave in 2013, would have sought to begin bargaining between Democrats and Republicans over how both could realize their tax policy goals with a carbon tax.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
later
Chuck the Schmuck wants Traitor Joe to claim a Climate Emergency through an executive order. Maybe they should make Greta Climate Czar.
The WSJ is “Corpratist”, favoring whatever its billionaire class owners and directors tell them sucks the most cash out of everyone else.
Corporatist
While I may be standing in line for my ration of $8/ gallon gas, I’ll be laughing at all those smug elites in their electric cars now stranded because the blackouts from unreliable solar farms and windmills don’t allow them a recharge.
The government has found they can move people in a certain direction by striking FEAR into them if they go the “wrong” direction.
Between 1969 and 1985, it was THE COMING ICE AGE scare caused by atmospheric Pollution! forcing the people to agree to government regulations to force industry to clean up.
Then in 1988, came the plan for more government regulation of industry by blaming a new menace, GLOBAL WARMING causing Rising Sea Levels!
Now, since 1988 till now, thirty three years, have the oceans risen? No. Are summers hotter? No.
Yet every day more young people fall for these scams brought to you by the government so they can regulate, regulate, regulate!
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