HR 2454 Passed…

The bill went through Patriot Act and bailout style, including a 300 page amendment filed at 3:09 AM the day of the vote. The original was 15 pages shy of Lord of the Rings. I’m a fast reader, but there’s no way to get through the final version, including the amendment while checking it against existing US code, in less than 24 hours.

It’s supposedly meant to create energy independence, jobs and less pollution. From what we had time to find out, it does the opposite.

Here are the highlights –

1)       Its proponents say it will cost everyone, taxpayer or not, approximately $2,500 per year.

2)       Fuel costs will jump by approximately 74%, excluding inflation coming down the road.

3)       We have to cut carbon emissions, including carbon dioxide (life giving gas) and carbon monoxide (the actual pollutant) whereas China, India and others must do nothing.

4)       All remaining industry will be driven out of business.

5)       Federal building codes.

6)       Additional housing inspections.

7)       It increases burdens for state and local governments in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

       It creates more Madoff style speculation in carbon credits, including carbon credit derivatives.

9)       It means selective enforcement of sanctions and selective disbursement of government funds to select industries and firms.

10)   It preempts local and state law.

11)   Higher electricity costs, as if we don’t pay enough.

12)   Zero protections for low income families, who are hit the hardest by current inflation and job losses.

13)   It’s an expensive way to produce a result equivalent to giving all homes and businesses free fluorescent bulbs (too simple, can’t let it happen).

14)   It increases housing costs.

15)   According to the Congressional Budget Office, the original bill would cost $821 billion alone at the federal level.

16)   It ships US money in the form of carbon credits around the world, as if we have plenty of it.

17)   It’s a bipartisan failure – the Republicans could have stalled this.

18)   Profits a very few at the cost of the many via government intervention.

19)   A multitude of offices and swarms of officers to eat out our substance. Sound familiar yet?

I’m not sure what everyone’s conversation was at dinner, at the office water cooler, in the bars, at the local VFW or wherever on June 26^th. But if it was Michael Jackson, something is terribly wrong here. Congress just voted to tax your entire life.  

If I were Rep. Boehner, I’d have been talking about it all night instead of limiting myself to three hours, which he could have. The Republican party deserves an equal amount of contempt for enabling, if anything, the very fashion in which this bill was passed by setting the precedent when they were in power. They alienate their rank and file members who stand for fiscal restraint just as much as Democrats alienate their rank and file who oppose the war in Iraq.

Add this latest outrage to $99.1 trillion in unfunded Medicare and Social Security obligations. Add this to the bailout, which has already exceeded the total amount required to pay off every mortgage and credit card bill in the US. Now, Congress has voted that we become carbon offset sharecropping debt serfs.

This is in a country where we’re told that change and hope come from indebtedness to moneyed interests.

They dare to ask this of a people whose jobs were actively off shored under NAFTA, CAFTA and GATT. They have created a system that deprives the sick and dying of potentially life saving treatments as it gouges doctors and patients, but that’s not enough. They dare to ask this of a people whose median income has not seen an inflation adjusted increase since 1973. And they do it in the name of environmentalism while ignoring the very real environmental dangers this centrally planned system has created.

Americans need to stand united against looting. This is why a transpartisan coalition among left, right, centrist, libertarian and even statists are coming together on July 4^th. It’s long overdue.