GOPe trying to throw the mid-terms or something. DISGUSTING.
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Anti-Trump GOP Establishment Seeks $1 Tril National Gas Tax
PETER J. FERRARA
7/05/2018
investors.com
Just when the Democrat Party has gone socialist, the old line, anti-Trump, GOP Establishment is flipping out too. Two former GOP Secretaries of State, James Baker and George Shultz, have teamed up to support what they are calling a national carbon tax, which would basically be a trillion dollar national gas tax, and a new tax on electricity and all other forms of traditional energy.
That would amount to a death grip on the American economy.
They have formed a front to advance this mayhem called the Alliance for Market Solutions. They call this new trillion-dollar tax on working people and the middle class "pro-growth," as they explain in a book, "Carbon Tax Policy: A Conservative Dialogue on Pro-Growth Opportunities". But there is nothing pro-growth or conservative about this burdensome, intrusive, Big Government, anti-growth tax.
Before you can have a market solution, you must have a problem to solve. "Carbon pollution" is not a problem, because there is no such thing as carbon pollution. That term refers to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which come from burning the fossil fuels — oil, natural gas, and coal — that powered the Industrial Revolution. That economic revolution produced the sustained, long term, economic growth that created the modern world.
CO2 is a natural substance found in the environment, essential actually to the survival of all life on the planet. CO2 enables plants to grow, feeding animals, which feed other animals, including humans. Without CO2, plants would die, and so would all other life on the planet, scientifically labelled "carbon-based life forms".
This is why CO2 can never be referred to as "pollution." As CO2 emissions have increased the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the planet has flowered with greenery that can be observed from satellites orbiting the planet. This is why very high concentrations of CO2 are pumped into actual greenhouses, to promote rapid growth of plant life.
The double peer-reviewed "Climate Change Reconsidered II," published by the Heartland Institute, explains, "At the current level of 400 parts per million (that is 0.04% of the atmosphere, 4/100s of one percent, a minuscule amount), we still live in a CO2-starved world. Atmospheric levels (of CO2) 15 times greater existed during the pre-Cambrian period (about 550 million years ago) without known adverse effects," such as catastrophic global warming. (emphasis added).
CO2 falling below 250 parts per million is considered the starvation threshold for plant life, which would be the real catastrophe for the human race. See e.g. Princeton Physics Professor Will Happer.
And as the industrial revolution's economic growth has built the modern world, billions have been lifted out of poverty. Global poverty is now slated for extinction. The middle class has been created, now spreading worldwide. Food supplies have burgeoned. Fatal diseases have been slaughtered. Human health and longevity have skyrocketed.
Carbon Tax = Bigger Government
In the movie series "Planet of the Apes," stupid apes originally took over the planet from humans by cutting off the electricity supply, which they were smart enough to know was the foundation of the modern world. Now come the privileged, GOP elites who would do to American and western prosperity what OPEC boycotters did in the 1970s, by raising the price of energy.
Naïve Washington "savants", as they have called themselves, tell us that with the gusher of revenues from the carbon tax, we can give the money right back to the people with revenue neutral rebates. We can finance income tax cuts, and roll back energy squelching regulations.
But who could be silly enough to think we could run trillions of increased taxes through Washington, without seeing it eaten up with increased, wasteful, counterproductive government spending. It wouldn't even reduce the deficit. And President Trump is already rolling back energy-squelching regulations, on his way to American energy dominance, beyond just independence.
We don't need to fuel the Washington bureaucracy, and further flood the Washington swamp, pouring oil on the bonfire with trillions of increased taxes paid by the middle class, the poor, and working people. That would be the true "Bonfire of the Vanities."
Ferrara, senior fellow for legal affairs at the Heartland Institute, and senior policy advisor for the National Tax Limitation Foundation, teaches economics at Kings College in New York City. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan. He also served as associate deputy attorney general of the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush. |
