Rusted Sky

Realistically, that's what it's amounting to.

Obama implores Senate to pass climate bill - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON – Hours after the House passed landmark legislation meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions and create an energy-efficient economy, President Barack Obama on Saturday urged senators to show courage and follow suit.

The sharply debated bill's fate is unclear in the Senate, and Obama used his weekly radio and Internet address to ratchet up pressure on the 100-seat chamber.

"My call to every senator, as well as to every American, is this," he said. "We cannot be afraid of the future. And we must not be prisoners of the past. Don't believe the misinformation out there that suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and economic growth."

There's a contradiction between economic growth and taxing the hell out of the country in the guise of 'investing in clean energy'.

The Club for Growth has 15 reasons to be against this.

1. An extra 'tax' on energy of about $3000/yr/family. Don't know about you, but I'd rather use that money on something else.

2. Makes the recession worse, costing millions of jobs and devasting the economy.

3. In some years, the national energy tax will cost about 2.5 million jobs.

4. Rural areas get screwed, money will go to CA, WA, and NJ. Big surprise, eh?

5. Emissions reductions (remember, the real cause of all this?) won't be reduced... if the rest of the world doesn't sign on. And China won't.

6. Spain's tried this. 2.2 jobs were destroyed for every 1 'green' job created, and 9 out of 10 of THOSE were temporary.

There's others - but the real reason that this is so beloved -

"Bloated Bureaucracy: The bill establishes a myriad of new federal agencies intertwined between at least 21established agencies with the mission of reallocating trillions of taxpayer dollars in a supposedly fair and efficient manor. According the U.S Chamber of Commerce (PDF), the bill will impose 397 new federal regulations that require traditional agency rulemakings."

In essence, Obama - in a time of recession - is asking the country to voluntarily commit economic suicide.

And the reason - to help curb 'global warming' seems to be kind of moot at this point. (Never mind the fact that the science is far from settled, and we may be in for global COOLING for the next decade or more, due to a low-output period from the sun...) All this bill does is shuffle money around to a point where it can be skimmed out of the system, and then in ten years when nothing's been done, the economy's cratered, and energy prices are through the roof, the 'progressives' (a name which seems to be completely contrary to their actual results) will insist that MORE sacrifices need to be made, that MORE must be demanded from the 'rich' - which will probably be anyone who is actually still employed by that point.

Hope for change, baby. That's about all we're going to have left.

Obama's got a grand vision for the US. More and more it seems like he wants a pretty corpse in a coffin, something he can point at and go "Doesn't it look healthy?" while not even paying attention to the fact it's no longer alive and kicking...