What do you think about "Cap and Trade" and how will it effect Wyoming? (Cheyenne: house, neighborhood)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
In today's Wash Post ... a new report that Carol M. Browner, the assistant in charge of the prez's energy policy ... is working with congressional leaders to have an energy bill put together by Memorial Day.
The issue they're trying to resolve at this time is whether the "cap and trade" auction program will go in full effect immediately, or if they're auction off part of the credits and give a portion of them away over the next few years. The intent is to "phase in" the costs of the credits more gradually so that the power generation industry and major polluters can have some time to adjust to the new costs. In theory, it would also give them time to add more emission controls to their plants so that they would be less impacted by the cap and trade auction costs.
Browner has been meeting with almost all the cabinet level members of the president, as well as top energy committe members in congress to draft the bill.
So much for "their isn't a bill in congress right now" on this issue as a means of disregarding the impending goal of the president ....
I believe you just pointed out they were "working on a bill" that is not the same as having a document that can be analyzed and voted upon - that is a draft. No one knows what the bill will include at this point. There are many drafts on many subjects in Congress right now. Few will actually come up for a vote and even then are subject to changes.
On this "impending goal" which YOU have posted "Especially in light of the prez's comments that he'd destroy the coal power industry". Would you please post your source where it shows the President actually said those words? Not someone else saying they thought that is his goal. The research assistants have not been able to locate anything close to this comment.
I believe you just pointed out they were "working on a bill" that is not the same as having a document that can be analyzed and voted upon - that is a draft. No one knows what the bill will include at this point. There are many drafts on many subjects in Congress right now. Few will actually come up for a vote and even then are subject to changes.
On this "impending goal" which YOU have posted "Especially in light of the prez's comments that he'd destroy the coal power industry". Would you please post your source where it shows the President actually said those words? Not someone else saying they thought that is his goal. The research assistants have not been able to locate anything close to this comment.
This is an extreme rationalization of trying to deflect the possibility of "cap and trade" when that's the stated purpose of the legislation now being drafted by the prez's top staffer and friendly top congressional leaders who are known to agree with this intended direction of energy management.
But, more to the point ... you must not know how to use "google" or any other source of public forum stuff. In my case, I "googled" "obama destroy coal industry" as my subject line and came up with thousands of hits.
OK, let me help you a little bit, if that's possible ... with two sources that have the "YOU TUBE" interview with (the then candidate) Obama in January 2008, where the quotes are recorded for posterity in his own voice and his own words. No mincing around, he absolutely asserts that he will impose "100% cap and trade" on the coal industry. He further asserts that "anyone can build a new coal plant if they want to, but they will be taxed to bankruptcy". HIS WORDS, ON VIDEO, ... not hearsay, not rumour, not a casual stray thought misinterpreted by those sources you would "pooh-pooh" as "gloom and doom" or alarmist. I repeat: it's on YOU TUBE, and the interview was conducted for the San Francisco Chronicle, a very friendly to the candidate paper.
Further into the interview, he states without mumbling or mincing words:
"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."
What part of that statement do you not understand about the prez's attitude toward a major sector of the economy?
So, here goes ... are your ready? Links to the YOU TUBE interview are at both sites, where you can hear the prez make these statements:
Keep in mind that these are just TWO of the thousands of sites that have this documentation, links to the YOU TUBE interview, and other repeated supporting statements made by the prez about the coal industry, cap and trade, energy costs, and his intent to destroy the coal generation power business ....
I still get the impression that you think the rest of us are misguided, don't understand plain english spoken by a "great orator", or that we get our information only from radical right wing extremists who you despise because they don't share your adoration for the prez. Got news for you, clay lady ... I don't need to have the information "filtered" by any of those sources you despise ... I can listen to the man himself and his published statements and know what he's saying and trying to do. Further, it's clear by the choices of his cabinet and upper level staffers that he fully intends to implement his stated policies, and they're working on this specific issue right now. Why don't you try looking at the article reported today in the Washington Post? they're clearly in the prez's camp, so it's not like it's some off-the-wall radical right wing rag that's attempting to defame your beloved leader. Oh, and if you need a link to that article, because you apparently can't use your computer very effectively, go to the Drudge Report and they've got the banner link to the Washington Post today.
Apparently he said this during an interview with the SF Chronicle on January 17, 2008, but it is not included in a written transcript of the interview. I'm at work right now and can't check it, but I remember him saying this. It should be on the audio on this link.
Cap-and-Trade will completely destroy what is left of this country. I really fear what it will do to my area since we are very dependent on refineries and chemical plants here, and have so far escaped any effects of the recession. It's just sickening; I am trying to do what little I can to express my complete opposition to such a plan, but Washington has already proved that they don't give a **** what the public thinks. We should vote every incumbent out in the next election.
Oh, and the person Obama has heading up the cap-n-trade deal
Carol Browner. Former head of the EPA under the Clinton administration is running Pres. Obama's effort on cap-n-trade, as well as other "climate" efforts.
She was formerly on the board of "Commission for a Sustainable World," which was a group under Socialist International.
After Obama named her as the head of his climate change working group, the Socialists scrubbed their web pages of all mention of Browner.
Here's a URL to the DC Examiner story which pre-dated the Washington Times story on Browner:
After the Washington Times article ran on the 12th of January, the Socialist International website scrubbed all mention of Browner off their site.
Since her position in the Obama administration requires no Senate hearings and is unaccountable to anyone but the POTUS, she has a free hand.
I remember her quite well from the Clinton administration. As she was going out the door with the Clintons, she put into effect settlements of lawsuits with environmental groups that gave the environmentalists everything they wanted on pesticides - and much, much more. The cost to the ag industry has been substantial, which has been passed down to the consumer in higher food prices in the last eight years.
The You Tube video segment that NVDave posted has a lot of the "cap and trade" advocacy of obama ... but it didn't continue on to the statement that he made about "energy costs skyrocketing", which was a later portion of the interview. The prez is not ignorant of what his intended policies will do, he's aggressively seeking to bankrupt this country to no discernable benefit for it's citizens, businesses, or well being.
Sorry, ClayLady ... but there's a lot of us out here who have the facts and not the left-wing feel-good idealization of peace and prosperity and stupidity all wrapped up into one surprise cake. You're not going to kill off the fundamental structure of our society without paying serious consequences, and the problem from my standpoint is you're intending to take us all down with your serendipity ship.
If it was just you and a few of your ignorant fellow travelers who were going to live in the woods, sleep in the dirt, and eat rocks while you freeze to death, then I'd be happy to accomodate your desires and visions of hippy "live off the land" communal happiness and whatever it is you want to smoke or ingest to blur the reality of what you're experiencing. The problem here is that your idols are doing this in such a way as to destroy us all.
Even our famous inhabitant of "Walden Pond" was accustomed to taking his laundry back to town, and buying his groceries from the stores there, along with his clothes and the other neccessary items of life .... the perception of "independence" by his "simple life" he wrote about was a sham and a fallacy. And you can bet your butt that if he'd needed medical attention, it was available in town ... not at the pond.
It isn't even the gullibility that bothers me any more...
I used to rail at the child-like gullibility of environmentalists. I have sat in public meetings with them for so long in Nevada that I've come to accept that they're ultimately well intentioned people. The expression we used over and over again was "Well, their hearts are in the right place." They're just gullible. They're like little kids who still believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or a whole host of endearing, but ultimately non-existent fictions. You could see it on their faces - they'd eliminate grazing on some alottment, thinking "Now that we've eliminated those greedy ranchers, Mother Nature will restore this piece of ground..."
And then we'd see them look like a child who's been told the truth about Santa Claus a few years later when this chunk of ground would be burned bare and there was only a bit of ash being blown around on bare ground. So much for "habitat restoration."
Almost none of that bothers me much any more. That's like getting mad at a dog for whizzing on the bushes. It is what dogs do, so getting mad at a dog for doing it isn't terribly logical. The unctuous solipsism of many of the more preachy types grates on me, but as I get older, I've gotten more witty in my piercings of such things.
No, what really riles me up now is how these people want to demonize industrialists for "making money at the expense of the environment" on the one hand, while being clueless tools for outfits like Goldman Sachs on the other.
Who do you think is the majority shareholder in the Chicago Carbon Exchange?
A little side-note: While people are being stirred up in a piece of showpiece theatre over AIG bonuses (which amount to no more than about $180 million, whereas we've pumped in $180+ billion into AIG), the largest beneficiary of our taxpayer largess into AIG has been Goldman Sachs, who received at least dollar on the dollar for every counterparty position from AIG. Goldman is so politically connected that they're able to warp everything that happens in DC into a profit for themselves.
While environmentalists are bad-mouthing local power utilities and coal mines for "making a profit off the environment," advocates of cap-n-trade are just unwitting tools for Goldman.... who will be (drum roll please) making a profit off the environment. The money is just going to be transfered from rural people in places like Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc to billionaires who work for Goldman.
Oh, and before we hang any hopes on Pres. Obama blowing the whistle on this, guess who funded the studies and initial development of the Chicago Climate Exchange? The Joyce Foundation.
And who was on the board of 12 directors of the Joyce Foundation when it did this?
Barack Obama, before he ran for the US Senate.
I'm not cynical just because cap-n-trade is going to raise my electric bill. I'm cynical because I also already know where the extra money off my electrical bill is going to go.
The You Tube video segment that NVDave posted has a lot of the "cap and trade" advocacy of obama ... but it didn't continue on to the statement that he made about "energy costs skyrocketing", which was a later portion of the interview. The prez is not ignorant of what his intended policies will do, he's aggressively seeking to bankrupt this country to no discernable benefit for it's citizens, businesses, or well being.
Sorry, ClayLady ... but there's a lot of us out here who have the facts and not the left-wing feel-good idealization of peace and prosperity and stupidity all wrapped up into one surprise cake. You're not going to kill off the fundamental structure of our society without paying serious consequences, and the problem from my standpoint is you're intending to take us all down with your serendipity ship.
If it was just you and a few of your ignorant fellow travelers who were going to live in the woods, sleep in the dirt, and eat rocks while you freeze to death, then I'd be happy to accomodate your desires and visions of hippy "live off the land" communal happiness and whatever it is you want to smoke or ingest to blur the reality of what you're experiencing. The problem here is that your idols are doing this in such a way as to destroy us all.
Even our famous inhabitant of "Walden Pond" was accustomed to taking his laundry back to town, and buying his groceries from the stores there, along with his clothes and the other neccessary items of life .... the perception of "independence" by his "simple life" he wrote about was a sham and a fallacy. And you can bet your butt that if he'd needed medical attention, it was available in town ... not at the pond.
If you could see me and a few girl friends in our fur coats and "Too Rich To Care" tees, you could clearly see how wrong you are about me. Your rudeness is beneath any further comment from me.
I see I did open a can of worms, but I do agree that what is coming isn't too far down the pike. Just pray for a miracle that during the next 1502 days Obama has left in office there will be some sensibility found in Washington.
So if/when this plan effects the Wyoming coal industry, I am gathering that it's a possibility that state income taxes might have to be implemented to offset that loss of revenue? Or some other means of taxing people... like a tourist tax, or increased property tax? As I watch the gas prices creeping up again even though they say energy use is still way down... I just have to wonder if Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu will make good his plans, regardless of what Obama may claim he feels:
" Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work. "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September."
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $53,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
