Breaking news: At a meeting of the Liberal Party’s Members of Parliament today, Malcolm Turnbull was turned out as Leader and replaced by Tony Abbott on a 42 to 41 vote. Abbott then immediately called for a vote of his colleagues on the Labour Government’s cap-and-trade bill to ration energy and raise energy prices. The vote was 54 to 29 against.
A number of Liberal Members have risked their careers to stop cap-and-trade, including Cory Bernardi and Nick Minchin as well as Tony Abbott. They should all be honored for their courageous stand.
Toppling Turnbull was a necessary step, but it isn’t the end of the story. It is likely that the Senate will now defeat the cap-and-trade bill for the second time. However, a few disgruntled Turnbullite Liberal Senators could provide the votes needed to pass it. If it is defeated, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd could then call a general election of both the House and Senate. So the fight is still to be won or lost.
In today’s Politico, I take a look at one of the 397 new regulations in the House version of cap and trade legislation. If the bill passes, almost all homes for sale would be required to undergo an environmental inspection. The home cannot be sold until it is up to code.
One unintended consequence could be the end of fixer-upper homes.
Another would be lower home ownership rates. Which, of course, directly contradicts of decades of federal policy.
Your host Richard Morrison welcomes returning guest co-host William Yeatman and special guest commenter Ryan Radia to the program for Episode 61 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with the FCC’s just-announced proposal for “net neutrality,” Treasury documents that reveal the true cost of cap-and-trade legislation and the plan for getting over California’s great depression. We then move on to the G20 Summit’s potential path to prosperity and the ever-expanding scandal that is ACORN.
The global-warming industry would probably still be solely owned by assoted cranks and romantics (and the odd vice president) if it weren’t for a bunch of CEOs taking a leaf from Enron’s playbook and attempting to monetize the issue. Playing the bootleggers in a classic bootleggers and baptists alliance, these businessmen have realized that they can get the government to increase their profits by means of “cap and trade” and similar regulatory interventions, at the expense of other businesses and the paying public. Ordinarily, such shenanigans would have the corporate watchdog groups in arms, but by getting the “baptists” of the green movement on their side, they have shielded themselves from public disgust.
This has to stop, and the good folks at Junkscience.com are at the forefront of calling foul. They are releasing a series of “Wanted” posters for six corporate fat cats who want to grow fatter by means of the Waxman-Markey Bill. Junkscience describes the six and their crimes as:
* Exelon CEO John Roe, the “carbon bandit,” who stands to make billions of dollars at taxpayer expense from Waxman-Markey’s free carbon allowances;
* General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, the “carbon schemer,” who would rather profit from lobbying for Waxman-Markey than innovating products that consumers actually want;
* Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, the “carbon betrayer,” who is lobbying for higher energy prices and against his own customers and shareholders;
* Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, the “carbon extortionist,” who threatens to send American jobs overseas unless Congress pays him off with free carbon allowances;
* Caterpillar CEO James Owens, who can only be considered as “carbon clueless” since he is lobbying against the coal industry, one of his biggest customers; and
* John Deer & Co. Chairman Robert Lane, the “carbon crapshooter,” who seems to be betting that he can wreck the economy and profit simultaneously.
Form that posse and go get ‘em, guys.
Even though 4 Democratic Senators are so nervous about the electricity tax called cap-and-trade they are urging their leadership to drop it from the global warming bill, no-one should count on that happening yet. More Senators need to wake up to the significant problems cap-and-trade has, and there is no better example of those than the European version of the scheme. With that in mind, my colleague Roger Abbott and I have written a piece for the American Spectator today that outlines just two of the problems the Europeans have encountered. We conclude:
To sum up, the failure of the European ETS should give pause to Senators considering a similar system for the U.S. Cap-and-trade will not result in emissions cuts. It will, however, greatly enhance the power of the government to regulate the economy. And it will lead to higher energy costs, as the costs of trading permits add to utilities’ cost of doing business.
Given these facts, why the strong push for cap-and-trade? The sad fact is that both President Obama and the Democratic Congress are misleading the public. Alternative measures such as a carbon tax have not been considered precisely because their costs are transparent and obvious to the public. By contrast, cap-and-trade allows the President and Congress to claim credit for “taking action” on global warming without acknowledging the real costs that entails — costs which the public, when informed of the facts, is rightly unwilling to accept.
Feel free to send a copy of our piece to your Senator!
A good, short, succinct summary of why Rep Lamar Smith (R.-KY) voted against Cap-and-Tax.
Hat-tip: The Chilling Effect
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBFwZUiGOWs 285 234]
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