Politicians Are More Reliable Wind Blowers than Nature Is

The United States has more wind power generation capacity than any nation on earth.  The 21 - 28 August 2010 issue of The Economist provides this graph of national wind power generation capacity in gigawatts (a 1,000 megawatts) of power and as a percent of the worldwide total:

What do we get for all this wind power generation capacity?  Well, it turns out that a recent event in the state of Texas is illustrative.  Texas has a big commitment to wind power with a 9.7 GW capacity, or 28% of the entire U.S. wind power capacity and just a bit less than the complete wind power capacity of India.  Nonetheless, on 4 August 2010 at about 5 PM, electricity demand in Texas established a new record of 63.594 gigawatts.  So, with a wind power capacity of 9.7 GW, wind power might have been contributing 15% of the state of Texas' need at that time.  But, according to the Texas electric grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), wind power contributed only 0.5 GW at that time.  This was less than 0.8% of that peak electric demand and only 5% of the wind generation capacity of Texas! 

Perhaps 4 August was a once in a blue moon anomaly?  Well no.  Sadly no.  ERCOT noted in 2007 and repeated the claim in 2009 that only 8.7% of the installed wind generation capacity can be counted on as dependable capacity during a peak demand period.  That number was more generous than the case of 4 August, but it is still a very small fraction of the installed wind generation capacity.  For this, the people of Texas are paying an extra $4 more per month on their electric bills to fund 2,300 miles of new electric transmission lines to carry wind generated electricity from rural areas to the cities of Texas.  They and all other American taxpayers are also contributing to the $0.022 per KW-hr production tax credit which provides the wind-energy industry with a subsidy of $6.44 per million BTUs of energy produced.  The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the Dept. of Energy says the subsidy for the oil and gas industry is $0.03 per million BTUs of energy, so the wind-energy subsidy is 215 times larger than that for the oil and gas industry.

The problem of wind power unreliability is not unique to Texas either.  The Daily Telegraph reported in January that during their extremely frigid period last winter, wind power provided only 0.2% of their power need, despite an installed capacity of 5%.  In other words, only 4% of the installed wind power capacity produced when it was most needed.

Yet in the face of this insane expense for wind power generation which is rarely available when it is needed, more than 30 states are mandating very large increases in renewable electricity production.  California, that unusually insane state, is requiring that 33% of its electricity be generated from renewable energy sources by 2020!  Maryland, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Hawaii are among many other states requiring huge renewable electric energy increases.  Solar power and geothermal will not be able to meet the requirements for such sharp increases in production, so wind power is expected to have to provide most of the increase.

Why are our politicians shoving these very expensive mandates for renewable electricity down the People's throats?  They usually claim it is to reduce man-made emissions of carbon dioxide so that catastrophic global warming will not occur.  As regular readers of this blog will know, the claim that carbon dioxide increases will cause any such catastrophe is total nonsense based on incredibly bad science and a religious commitment to ignore good science.  Any likely CO2 increases are simply additions to a very good plant fertilizer, from which an ever-growing world population would benefit.

Still, our politicians and the old media largely push for expensive renewable energy sources for our electricity.  Interestingly, the reductions of CO2 are actually much less than claimed or even non-existent!  The reason comes right back to the amazing unreliability of wind power.  Basically, a coal-fired or gas-fired electric generating power plant has to be kept on board cycling electricity to be instantly available when the wind stops blowing.  If only nature blew as reliably as politicians do.  Now, this idling power plant is much less efficient than a power plant operating at its optimal capacity.  In other words, the power plant is generating much more CO2 per kilowatt of electricity than it normally would when in this idling mode of operation, not to mention that it is costing a lot of money as well.  Additionally, it is usually a gas-powered power plant which is operating in idle mode, not a coal-fired plant.  This is because the gas-fired power plants generally produce more expensive electricity than do the coal-fired power plants.  From the standpoint of the claim that the whole point of renewable energy electricity is to reduce CO2, this is very bad, because gas-fired power plants produce about half the amount of CO2 compared to coal-fired power plants when each is operating optimally.

Bentek Energy released a study in April based on power plants in Colorado and Texas and concluded that wind power plants had almost no impact on the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere.  The repeated cycling of Colorado coal-fired power plants in 2009 caused at least 94,000 pounds of CO2 to be generated than would have been without cycling.  In Texas, the net reduction of CO2 in 2008 was 600 tons, but in 2009, there was an actual increase in carbon by about 1,000 tons due to the cycling of power plants.

A study prepared by EnerNex Corp. for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in January 2010 looked at wind generated electricity and the Eastern U.S., which uses about two-thirds of U.S. electricity.  If wind energy were to provide 20% of the eastern U.S. electricity in 2024, the savings in CO2 emissions would only be 200 million tons per year.  A commitment of $140 to 175 billion per year in capital expenses and power generation operational costs until 2024 is necessary to provide this savings, where the higher costs come with more offshore wind power generation.  This prices a saved ton of carbon at between $700 and $875!  It is insane to pay so much for carbon emission reduction!

The EIA estimated the CO2 emissions reduction due to a 25% national renewable electricity generation goal, as in the Waxman - Markey cap and trade bill that passed the House of Representatives, might save 306 million tons of carbon by 2030.  This is only 4.9% of the total 6.2 trillion tons of carbon emissions expected in 2030 and a paltry fraction of the 80% cut in carbon emissions the Obama administration is promising by 2050.  Somehow, I do not think Obama expects to be held accountable in 2050 for the failure to meet his announced goal.

In conclusion, if wind power generation were as dependable as the babbling winds that flow from the mouths of our political class, wind power generation would be more viable an option for power generation.  In reality, it cannot provide the announced carbon reductions and neither can solar or geothermal power.  Of course, it is still more important, as I have argued here, to note that there is no scientific reason to believe it is important to reduce man's CO2 emissions in any case.  But the grandiose plans for renewable energy use are the basis for subsidizing huge new industries at a horrible cost in higher energy costs, lower energy reliability, huge private sector job losses, and some combination of increased national debt, taxes, and inflation.  The political class is not just wrong, it is some combination of evil and insane.  It is also constantly trying to force the American People to join them in their evil and insane delusions while cursing them for being such dolts who do not see the world as the political class does.  But reality is even more stubbornly present and existent and many more rational Americans are taking some note of that.  Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and renewable energy are both tied together and they appear to be drowning together in the minds of more and more Americans.  Eventually, bad science and bad engineering must become apparent as they are put to operational tests.  The goals justifying renewable energy are and will continue to prove to be unrealistic.

Rural US Sites Show No Temperature Increase Since 1900

Using data downloaded from NASA GISS and picking rural sites near, but not too near, to urban sites, a comparison has been made of the temperature trend over time of the rural sites compared to those of the urban sites.  28 pairs of sites across the U.S. were compared.  The paired rural site is from 31 to 91 km from the urban site in each pair.  The result is that urban and rural sites were similar in 1900, with the urban sites slightly higher.  The urban sites have shown an increase in temperatures since then.  The rural sites show no such temperature increase and appear to be generally unchanging with only ups and downs localized in time.  Over a 111 year time span, the urban sites temperatures have risen to be about 1.5C warmer than the rural sites.  So, the much touted rising temperatures in the U.S. are due to the urban heat island effect and not due to a global warming such as has been proposed to be caused by human emissions of CO2 due to the combustion of fossil fuels.

You should find this video very interesting:



I find myself wondering how the scientists at NASA GISS have been such proponents of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis given this temperature data.  It sure seems insane that the EPA has declared CO2 a pollutant, which it will suppress vigorously with command and control tactics.  It is clear that there is no problem caused by CO2 emissions to be addressed.  Waxman-Markey carbon cap and trade type bills and EPA regulations on CO2 as a pollutant are nothing but the politics of Mass Destruction leveled upon American industries and households by the party of massive power lust, the Socialist Democrat Party.

As the fable of man-made global warming due to man's CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels continues to unravel, the American People are going to become ever more untrusting of the Democrats, the print and non-cable media, and, unfortunately, scientists.  Those who have failed to earn our trust generally have some common characteristics.  They are elitists, socialists, and man-hating environmentalists.  When these same people propose to overhaul our health care system, to regulate the financial industry, increase the minimum wage rate, promote labor unions, increase deficit spending, and increase taxes, we should be sure to remember how unreliable their judgment was on the issue of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.  Not only is there no looming catastrophe, but there is no such problem at all!  They have created a phantom problem to justify a huge power grab.

There is a dirty secret behind the scientific side of this scandal.  As the universities have become more and more hotbeds of socialism and political correctness, the scientists who receive federal funding for their research at those socialist/environmentalist/elitist/political correctness hotbeds have not wanted to be left out.  Once, they were more objective and more scientific than the so-called social scientists and the humanities faculty.  Most of this difference has now disappeared because we have so long allowed the lunatic left to run our universities and our government funding agencies.  The scientists are now about as engaged in the cause of advancing socialism/elitism/radical environmentalism/political correctness as is the rest of the faculty at our universities and our government-run laboratories and institutions.

Many say this catastrophic man-made global warming conspiracy could not possibly happen, but they greatly underestimate the power of the socialist control of our once proud institutions of objective learning and study.  They are massively corrupt now.  When we clean house of the politicians in Washington and most of our state capitals, we also need to find a way to clean house in our universities and government laboratories and institutions.  We need real scientists, not socialist pretenders.

Postscript added on 29 January 2010:

Some people have assumed that I made the video above.  This is not the case.  I was impressed by the effort and I thought it was most likely a science fair project which was unlikely to be blemished by artifices and was probably a fairly straightforward treatment of readily available data, so others could readily check up on these results.  It was a challenge to others to see if they could show the same thing as was claimed in this video.  I wish I could tell everyone who did make this video.  They deserve credit for it.

My own assessment of the bad science backing the theory of catastrophic global warming due to man's emissions of CO2 is very broad-based and is not dependent upon the reproducibility of the results in this video.  However, analyses of temperature data from many other areas of the world are showing similar results and I am more inclined to believe than not that if unbiased scientists examine the data as this father and son did, they will find that any increase in U.S. temperatures in rural areas is much less than the alarming results claimed by the advocates of catastrophic AGW.  The urban heat island effect is large and most of the data in the U.S. database is heavily affected by that.  I live and work between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, where the temperature is higher due to the urban heat island effect.  Nonetheless, the temperatures recorded at Baltimore-Washington International Airport and at Reagan Washington National Airport are commonly 2 or 3 degrees Fahenheit higher than those at my laboratory or home.

The Cost of Waxman-Markey Carbon Cap and Trade

The Competitive Enterprise Institute used the Freedom of Information Act to discover on 15 September that Obama's Treasury Department estimated the cost of the Waxman-Markey Carbon Cap and Trade Bill to be from $100 billion to $200 billion per year. The average cost per household at this total cost has been calculated and found to be $1,761 per household based on the higher end of that range, apparently. [In 2000 there were almost 106 million households and there are more now.] Of course, no such figure was ever announced by the Obama administration. If it had been, Waxman-Markey would not have passed in the House of Representatives.

The Heritage Foundation believes the cost of Waxman-Markey will turn out to be about $2,979 per year from 2012 to 2035 for a family of four and that about 1.1 million jobs will be lost on average because of it between 2012 and 2035. By 2035, there will be 2.5 million fewer jobs due to cap and trade. The average GDP lost will be $393 billion per year from 2012 to 2035, with the lost GDP at $662 billion in 2035. From 2012 to 2035, the accumulated loss of GDP will be $9.4 trillion in 2009 dollars. I expect they are much closer to being right than even the new higher Treasury Department figure as this program matures.

Media Matters for America, a leftist organ, responds that the uncovered report was based on a version of Waxman-Markey prior to the version passed, which included the 300 pages of changes dumped into it in the early morning hours prior to the vote. Many of the carbon emission certificates had to be given away in order to get the bill passed. I would not be surprised if they are right in making this claim. They also point out that Obama plans to redistribute much of this money to those taxpayers or tax filers whom he happens to favor, so many households will not pay anywhere near so much as they would otherwise.

This is beside the point really. The bill passed was just to get the government's foot in the door, so they could control the use of energy in America. That they will achieve, if they can get this bill or something like it through the Senate. To do that, there will be more horse trading. The socialists then intend to use the income from the still sizable effective tax increase to both build a further constituency of dependent voters and to bribe further industries and private companies to build up pressure to expand the reach of the carbon cap and trade bill. Remember, the cost estimates were only for the early years anyway. The bill clearly says that the carbon emission certificates will not be given away as the years go by. The cost of the program to the economy will increase at a rapid rate.

Yes, some of the money may be given back to some individual households. One way or another this is usually what happens when government spends our money. We get some service or other, often one we do not want. Someone is paid to work for the government and they pay taxes and buy goods and services from the private sector. The money filters its way back into general circulation. Unfortunately, it does so with huge waste as measured against the only valid method to make such judgments. How would each individual have spent his money if the choice had been left to him?

OK, so you and your household have $1761. Would you choose to voluntarily send it in to the federal government for the purpose of reducing the use of fossil fuel energy? Actually, it would do no such thing. The government would spend most of it on other purposes. But, of course, there is nothing keeping you from reducing your use of fossil fuels if you think that is a worthwhile thing. Ride a bike to work instead of driving. Take a train to NYC instead of flying. Put better insulation into your house. Hey, go do your environmentally conscientious thing. Just get off this kick of hiring the government to force all of your neighbors to make the same effort to achieve your environmental values. They may believe their time, effort, and money is better devoted to other values.

Besides, the global warming of the late 20th Century was not caused by man's emissions of CO2 and such emissions have not been and will not become the cause of a catastrophe. That this is so is pretty well understood now scientifically. But, the politicians and bureaucrats need every excuse they can find for expanding the power of government and for the formation of international cabals of governments, so they are doing everything they can to perpetuate the myth of man-made global warming due to CO2 emissions.

Obama is giving his first speech to the U.N. next week. It will be given at a one-day session on climate change. More than 100 leaders of nations are gathering for the event. They are laying the groundwork for the Copenhagen conference in December on climate change which is supposed to take nations around the world much deeper into reduced energy use than did the Kyoto conference. These world leaders are firing themselves up to bring more massive use of force down upon the heads of their people to reduce energy use. They will do great mischief, causing the loss of many jobs and bringing on much misery in their efforts to deprive us all of the great facilitator of comfort and action, energy.

Life is all about being able to take action to achieve our self-chosen values. To do this, we need the freedom to choose our own values. A part of the necessary process for choosing our values is to be able to freely explore our world and to experiment scientifically and with our own lives. Choosing your values is itself a long process of exploration and development. That process requires individual liberty and the recognition that each of us owns his own unique life. Having identified our values, we must act to achieve them. One of the great advances in the industrial age was the development of power sources that greatly enhanced our efficiency in action. We could travel further and therefore explore further. We could transport goods over greater distances and hence trade with many more people in many different geographical locations. We learned from them in the process. Man's ability to feed, clothe, and house himself became much easier. This gave many men more time to devote to learning and developing highly specialized skills and knowledge. Energy use to increase the efficiency of human action has become a cornerstone of modern civilized life.

We have been steadily using energy more efficiently. We now insulate buildings better than ever before. We have vehicles that use energy more efficiently. Industries use it more efficiently in manufacturing. Home appliances use it more efficiently. All the normal effects of supply and demand have worked to cause people to use energy ever more efficiently. The more developed countries use it more efficiently than the little developed countries. In some ways the government has encouraged this. In others, it has discouraged this. We have to remember that if government did not take about half of the entire economy's output from us, a substantial part of that output would have been used to further increase the efficient use of energy. Government, as usual, is surely more a problem than a solution.

We should oppose the Obama administrations energy restriction policies for all of the following reasons:

• They infringe upon our individual rights.
• The government does not have a Constitutional power to limit the use of energy.
• Energy use is a cornerstone of modern civilization.
• The redistribution of income by government is immoral.
• The claim that CO2 is a pollutant is wrong and foolish.
  
• Smaller, lighter cars are more dangerous.
• Mercury-containing light sources are dangerous.
• CO2 makes our plants grow better and allows them to make more oxygen.
• Coal-fired power plants with good scrubbers for sulfur products are less expensive and more reliable than solar power or wind generators.
• The U. S. has huge coal reserves.
• The coal industry employs many people.
  
• Biofuel is a terrible waste of farm land and resources.
• It is a mistake to give government more power. It will abuse its use.
  
• Every act Obama undertakes is to advance socialism and/or internationalism.

With such a list of reasons for opposing carbon cap and trade, it is mind-boggling that the opposition to it is not more widespread than it is. One would think that only the 15 to 20% of Americans who are hardcore socialists would favor it. Any freedom-lover or rational person should oppose this carbon cap and trade monstrosity.

The Real, Really High Unemployment Rate

The media has been happy to report to us that the unemployment rate in July 2009 was slightly improved to 9.4%, compared to a 9.5% rate in June. They also reported that the number of jobs lost was fewer than in most prior months. But this is an odd combination. For the real unemployment rate to drop, some number of net new jobs must be created, yet another 247,000 net jobs were lost in July. Some time ago, I remember that for the unemployment rate not to go up, 154,000 new net jobs had to be created in a month. So, the net number of new jobs appears to be about 401,000 jobs fewer than used to be needed to keep percent unemployed static.

Is this anything to crow about? Apparently it is not as bad as earlier in the year, but is it not awful nonetheless? Well apparently it is good if you are Obama and his Democrat Congress. It is improvement. Or maybe not. What if the recession long ago weeded out the worst employees and companies are simply reluctant to let their better employees go? And, what if the real unemployment rate is being very badly understated?

The unemployment rate does not count the underemployed or those who are involuntarily working fewer hours than they would like. It also does not count those "who have not searched for work in the last 4 weeks." In reality, no one really knows how many people want a job, but have not searched for it for 4 weeks. The government assumes that people who had been telling them they were searching for work while they were collecting unemployment benefits, but stopped doing so when their unemployment benefits ran out, are not searching for work. So they are not counted as unemployed. But, would you go down to an unemployment office looking for work for more than 26 weeks when they were not going to give you any money for doing so and when they had done nothing in 26 weeks to get you employed? Of course not. Thus, when things really get bad, the unemployment rate falls even when the number of really unemployed workers increases!

The number of people who were looking for work a while back, but have not done so recently, though they are still unemployed is estimated at 2.3 million. Adding them to the number in the official unemployment count at 9.4% unemployed, raises the real unemployment rate to 10.9%. So, Obama and the Democrat Congress now have a real unemployment rate of 10.9% and this rate is not going down!

Or, we could add in the 8.8 million workers who are on involuntary part time work. The total unemployed or underemployed would then be 16.6%. Nothing for the Democrats to crow about and hardly good evidence that the Stimulus Package is accomplishing much of anything.

In the 4th Quarter of 2008, the GDP shrank by 5.4%, in the 1st Quarter of 2009 by 6.4%, and in the 2nd Quarter of 2009 by 1.0%. Construction and manufacturing sectors have been hit very hard. They totaled 15% of jobs, but they account for 40% of the unemployment. 9.8% of adult men are unemployed, while 7.5% of adult women are unemployed. Asians are 8.3% unemployed, while whites are 8.6% unemployed, Hispanics are 12.3%, and blacks are 14.5% unemployed. All of these numbers are for the usual, under-reported statistics giving the 9.4% total unemployment rate.

Great job Obama. You really have been great at putting it to those terrible employers and wealthy investors. You scared the tar out of them even during the presidential campaign and with the known desire of the already Democrat Congress for increasing taxes and piling on regulations on businesses and investors, you made the recession worse long before you took office. Since then, your constant bad-mouthing and threats combined with those of the leadership of the House and Senate, has done a great job of keeping employers uncertain and scared. In such times, they are pulling themselves back into their shells. This is hardly surprising.

Guess what? It is all about being able to believe you will be allowed to make a reasonable profit, stupid! If you tell businessmen that they are going to taxed much more, but do not even tell them how they will be taxed, they cannot calculate whether a business operation can make money. If you tell them they will be more heavily regulated, but they do not know how they will be regulated, they cannot tell whether they can make money in those operations which may be restricted. If you tell them you will dictate management compensation, they do not know why they should bother to undertake new operations or even continue working hard on older operations. The value of the dollar is very uncertain, thanks to you. Increasing taxes and regulations are likely to make it harder for U.S. operations to make money relative to overseas operations. Besides, where will the energy come from for manufacturing and transportation and heating buildings in the U.S. with Waxman-Markey type carbon cap and trade? What on Earth are employee health insurance costs going to be when you have finished mandating many benefit additions?

It is unreasonable to expect employers and investors to hire workers under these circumstances. You must allow employers some reasonable level of certainty, but you, like FDR, love uncertainty, experimentation, and socialist redistribution and equalization. It is you who have given us 10.9% unemployment. Take credit for it and live up to it.

The Coming Energy Takeover

Amidst all the furor over the government attempt to takeover the health care industries, their efforts to take over the control of energy use is receiving less attention. The Waxman-Markey carbon tax and trade bill has passed the House of Representatives, but the Senate has not been eager to take it up. When a medical services takeover bill has been passed, Democrat pressure will mount on the Senate to return to putting restrictions on energy. They may not agree with a plan as drastic as the House plan, but they will no doubt agree to doing considerable damage to the economy and to the interests of the People. Even if they do nothing, the EPA is declaring CO2 a pollutant and will itself cause massive damage to the economy through its open-ended regulatory powers.

A front page article in the Washington Times on 17 August 2009 proved very interesting to me. Its thrust was that a huge growth of Federal bureaucracies was going to be required by the Waxman-Markey bill if it is enacted. This itself is interesting, but the most interesting point in the article was a quote of Bart Chilton, the commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. His commission will regulate the trading of carbon allowances. He is looking forward to expanding the size of his commission for the task by 31%, though I expect the expansion will be much greater than that. But, his most interesting comment was:

"It [the carbon allowances trading market] could be a $2 trillion market within five years."

Well, the entire U.S. GDP was about $14.3 trillion in 2008 and is a bit smaller in 2009 due to the recession. Slow growth is expected in the next several years. In five years when Chilton expects the carbon allowances market he will regulate to be $2 trillion in size, perhaps the GDP will be $14 or 16 trillion, bearing in mind that the health care bill which will be passed, the refusal to allow drilling, the destruction of the coal industry, the continued pandering to labor unions at the expense of investors and civil liberties, the plundering of the wealthy and productive, and the renewal of class and racial warfare generally promoted by the Democrats will be unchecked given their control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. In other words, they will be doing all the right things, if one wants stagnation, which they clearly do.

So, the critical assessment here is that a $2 trillion carbon allowance market affects business and the People just as a $2 trillion tax increase would. Sure, not all of that money is going to the government, but just as when we send our money to the government, that money will have been spent for nothing. OK, maybe 25% of the money we send to the government is spent for something of value, such as defense, some police powers, some interstate roads (the post roads of the Constitution?), etc. Now as I see it, every penny spent on carbon allowances is wasted money. Yes, that waste will prompt some companies to spend more money on energy conservation, but they could have done that anyway without the waste of the carbon allowances market. So, all of this money is wasted. The government is going to spend about $4 trillion this year, so the usual rule would say that $3 trillion of this is wasted money. Except given the bailouts, a larger fraction than usual is wasted. Projections say that federal spending over the next two years will be about $3.5 trillion. Applying the 25% rule to this, about $2.6 trillion of these expenditures will be wasted.

Adding the mandated additional waste of $2 trillion in the carbon allowances market to the $2.6 trillion in wasted money in the federal expenditures, one finds that we can expect a waste of $4.6 trillion out of a total economy of about $15 trillion. So, we are going to soon waste 30.7% of the U.S. economy, if a bill similar to Waxman-Markey is passed by Congress! Government is not going to be treading lightly on the American People. No, it is going to stomp us into the ground! Then to this we will have to add the mischief of the so-called health care reform.

Actually, this is still an underestimate of the weight of government on our economy. Freedom from government day this year was 12 August, which means that about 62% of the economy is already taken by government. This would then be (0.62) ($14.3 trillion) = $8.9 trillion! Now, if we add the $2 trillion carbon allowance market to this, we get $10.9 trillion going to government altogether or being wasted at government requirement. Of a $15 trillion economy a few years down the road, this means that government will control at least 73% of the economy!

This being the case, we will be working for government about 73% of the time in a few years if Waxman-Markey becomes law. One would think that almost anyone would have enough sense to see themselves as the slave they are under such circumstances. How could any such person even imagine they are an American? When American fundamental principles of government disappear, when our government's function is no longer to preserve and protect the sovereign rights of the individual, does America even exist anymore? Is American just a continental area and the people who happen to reside there? Or are America and the American People defined by their fundamental commitment to the rights of the individual? I think it is the latter. Everyone but Americans may find it adequate to be defined by the land on which they live and little else, but we Americans should be defined by our individualistic ideals!

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would oversee the day-to-day trading of carbon allowances and is estimating that it will need to expand its personnel by 20 - 30%. The EPA will need to expand greatly. It is supposed to regulate 6 billion tons of CO2 emissions from 7,400 facilities under the House bill. It is now regulating only 330 million of other emissions. The CBO thinks $8 billion is needed for the expansion of federal regulatory agencies to monitor Waxman-Markey over 10 years. This figure is absurdly low in my opinion. For the bill to be effective, the CBO thinks about 1,500 regulations will be needed and mandates will have to be approved by at least 21 federal agencies. No one will have a clue what is going on for years!

The huge uncertainties of how Waxman-Markey will be applied to industry, businesses, and individuals will add monstrously to the $2 trillion in new "taxes" this program will bring on. No business will be able to plan for the future. Heck, even home owners will have no idea if they will be able to heat or air condition their homes in the future.

As I have been saying: "The Democrats are the party of Mass-Destruction." How funny that this is all being done in the name of the man-made global warming farce the Democrats are so deeply embedded in. Could they ever find a way to mash their faces into more eggs? OK, it would be funny if they were not trying so hard to commit America to self-immolation and if the American People had not so completely handed the keys to the nation, the banks, industry, and our homes to them.

States Hardest Hit by Carbon Cap and Trade

The carbon cap and trade bill which passed the House and is awaiting consideration by the Senate will have a very uneven impact on the various states. A very simple formula using the % of a states workers in manufacturing multiplied times the % of the state's electricity generated from coal was used to evaluate the impact state by state of Waxman-Markey.

The twenty most badly hurt states will be:

Pennsylvania
West Virginia
North Carolina
Georgia
Alabama
Tennessee
Kentucky
Ohio
Michigan
Indiana
Illinois
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Iowa
Missouri
Arkansas
Kansas
Nebraska
North Dakota
Utah

The ten next worst hit states are:

Delaware
Virginia
South Carolina
Mississippi
Texas
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Wyoming
Colorado
New Mexico

I cannot imagine anyone in these states voting for Democrats in the 2010 election or in the 2012 election. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average family will experience an increase in their energy costs of $1,300. The impact in the first 20 states above will be greater than that. The harm the Democrats are trying to do is just too transparent, so strongly motivated by a lust for power, and in such disregard for science, that by election time in 2010 anyone not brain-dead will be in a rage against the Democrats. If the People are worthy of any respect, they will turn massively against the Democrats in at least the 20 hardest hit states and that should be enough to throw them out of power in the House in the 2010 election and both the House and Senate by the 2012 election. This is not even counting the mounting fury over the Democrat attempted takeover of the health care industries.

Obama's Energy Shenanigans

Obama has often spoken of energy independence as a goal. That goal is neither practical, nor desirable. But it is good to have many alternative sources of energy, in which I mean mostly alternative sources of oil and gas, since we have plenty of coal and can readily have as much nuclear power as we want. What we want in energy is many well-priced options. If we have that, then no one can hold us over a barrel or do very much to damage our economy.

Obama has also sought to decrease our use of fossil fuels, which the Waxman-Markey carbon cap and trade bill is designed to do. Supposedly, this bill is being put forward to save the earth from some imagined catastrophic effect of man-made CO2 emissions. These emissions are supposed to overheat the earth, cause great rises in sea level, create huge storms, cause devastating human diseases, and all manner of horrible travails for man and all other animals. It is all nonsense, but Obama is already having a major impact on our energy use, including fossil fuels by virtue of his fueling the recession and making it deeper and making it last longer than it should have.

The American Petroleum Institute reports that the total petroleum products delivered to the domestic market in June 2009 is only 94.56% of that delivered in June of 2008. In the first half of 2009, total petroleum deliveries in the U.S. were down nearly 6%. The resulting petroleum deliveries were the lowest for a first half in more than a decade. Jet fuel deliveries fell by nearly 13% from a year ago and distillate fuel oil deliveries fell by 8.6% due to lowered freight transportation demand. Gasoline deliveries fell less than 1% to reach their lowest level since 2003. Creating or extending a recession is a great way to decrease the use of fossil fuels!

On the energy independence front, we have seen little contribution from alternative fuels, but this has been a constant for decades. We have seen a decrease in the importation of crude oil and product imports, however. They dropped by 7.6% in the first half due to reduced demand and an increase in U.S. production! In the first half, U.S. production was up 3.8% from a year ago, bringing it to the highest level in four years. The U.S. oil producers are doing their part to help bring us out of this recession. They have increased production in offshore Gulf of Mexico, North Dakota, and elsewhere onshore to more than compensate for a drop in oil from Alaska due to maintenance work on the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline. Our oil refineries are chugging along at an 84.5% utilization rate in June, compared to the 64.7% rate for all manufacturing industries. Total imports in June were 60.8% of all petroleum deliveries, down from 67.8% a year ago.

This is the critical U.S. industry that Obama wishes to cripple. Ken Salazar, the Interior secretary, has stalled the bidding process for oil and natural gas exploration both on Federal lands and on the outer continental shelf. The threat of Waxman-Markey energy taxes and restrictions are also causing a decrease in domestic exploration and oil field development. The average number of active rotary drilling rigs in the U.S. as of 10 July 2009 was only 916, despite that number averaging 1,879 in 2008. The record low had occurred near the end of the oil unfriendly Clinton regime at 488 rigs. The all-time high occurred early in the Reagan administration at 4,530. The increased oil production we have had recently in the U.S. is due to the increased drilling activity of the much-maligned Bush presidency. We all know how many environmental disasters occurred as a result of that increased drilling, right?

So, Obama is shooting the nation in the leg ( Or is it in the gut?) in the name of decreasing CO2 emissions? Well, no. It must be for some other reason. First it is becoming clear that natural forces, not puny man-made CO2 emissions, control our climate. The socialist left has been screaming that these results are too late and that a consensus exists that CO2 emissions must be stopped at all costs to prevent the death of the earth. This is now clearly hogwash. The science is contrary to their assertions. Second, even if their assertions were correct, the underdeveloped world is not buying them and they are massively increasing their use of fossil fuels. Lisa Jackson, Obama's administrator for the EPA and former head of the New Jersey Dept. of Environmental Protection, told Congress that the U.S. action under Waxman-Markey would not impact world CO2 concentrations. It is an exercise in futility.

Unless, as is commonly the case with these socialists, the real reason for Waxman-Markey is something very different. It is. It has several purposes for our committed socialists of the Democrat Party:

• The collection of huge new tax revenues
• Great latitude to pick winners and losers in the private sector
• Increased campaign contributions from companies scared to death by the threat of harmful government agency regulations under the broad umbrella of Waxman-Markey
• The need to "make it effective" by coordinating actions with the countries of the rest of the world, leading to one-world government and the subversion of the hated U.S. Constitution

Obama has made it clear that he is a citizen of the world and views all nations as equals. Al Gore has stated that Waxman-Markey will increase the pressure for "global governance and global agreements." Both Obama and Gore covet the so-called "positive rights" popular in the European Union and at the United Nations. They will give them the means to totally do an end run around those provisions of the U.S. Constitution which still have a pesky way of interfering with their lust for total power.

Meanwhile, Waxman-Markey has been scored by the probably intimidated Congressional Budget Office as raising $846 billion of taxes over the next 10 years. During the prior Congressional session, the CBO estimated that a less aggressive bill would raise $1.2 trillion in taxes. The Tax Foundation estimates that 1,000,000 jobs a year will be lost due to Waxman-Markey as some of the initial credits for large companies expire. All this, so socialists, the supposed champions of the working guy, can have the power they so lust for. But, then, anyone who has bothered to study history in the least, knows that socialism is all about posing as the little guy's champion, but making him poor, miserable, and subservient in reality.

Sen. Ben Cardin's Reply to My Protest Against the Waxman-Markey Carbon Cap and Trade Bill

Last Friday I sent an e-mail note protesting the Waxman-Markey Carbon Cap and Trade bill passed by the House of Representatives to my Senators in the so-call Free State of Maryland. Sen. Ben Cardin replied as follows, with my comments added in "Investments in clean energy will generate approximately 3 times as many jobs as the equivalent amount spent on carbon-based fuel."[comment] form.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about a clean energy and climate bill. I understand and share your concerns about the impact such legislation will have on Americans. Legislation addressing this issue must be mindful of costs to consumers. At the same time, I believe that global warming is real and needs to be addressed. The good news is that a well designed climate and energy bill can be a cost effective way to address this threat and help us develop a clean and sustainable economy.

[The bad news is that an effort and a cost is affordable only if something is accomplished that is worthwhile. Since global warming has not been caused by man, is currently not even happening, and since the natural forces of long-term climate cannot be controlled by man, all of the expense and effort of the carbon cap and trade is a waste. There is no point in applying any level of hardship on anyone for such a purpose and it is not the function of Congress to do such tyrannical and evil deeds. Furthermore, CO2 is a benefit for plant growth and therefore for man. Issues of cleanliness have already been well-addressed for most of the country and adding restrictions on energy use is a poor way to address any remaining issues. As for sustainability, the economics of supply and demand does a very good job of addressing such issues, while political power does a very poor job. Finally, there is no enumerated power in the Constitution giving Congress the power to regulate energy use.]

The House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) on June 26, 2009. In addition to addressing greenhouse gases and energy use, legislators worked hard to address many of the concerns that you raised, including costs to consumers. The bill includes provisions to provide reimbursements to households, particularly low-income ones, for possible higher energy costs. As a result of these efforts, recent analysis from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the legislation will cost each household less than 50 cents per day in 2020. I am now working with my colleagues Senator Baucus (D-MO) and Senator Merkley (D-OR) in a special group to contain costs in climate legislation as it moves through the Senate. I look forward to passing legislation that curbs global warming and protects consumers.

[We should be immensely grateful that you are concerned to protect consumers by merely confiscating $0.50 of our hard-earned income a day, but for the fact that you are taking that money only for the purpose of giving it to special interests and some of us will be taxed far more than $0.50 per day. In fact, the CBO has a habit of greatly underestimating the cost of government bills, often by factors of 3 and 4. In this case the way they estimated the costs of this particular bill left out many costs, because no one yet knows what they will be. Of course, it is hard to estimate costs for any bill that affects so much of our complex society in many ways. This bill is a huge experiment which lacks any valid purpose. What is more, the restrictions on energy use are ramped up dramatically after 2020, so the costs after that time will be much worse. Meanwhile, another complicating factor will be added to our already absurdly complicated tax code. Already the Treasury Secretary cannot figure out how to do his taxes, but Congress in its infinite wisdom wants to add more complexity in the name of income redistribution through the carbon tax and trade bill. Incidentally, perhaps your response should also address all the energy using industries given temporary dispensation, while the politically naive and powerless are forced to carry the added burden the expenses of this bill.]

I believe that if this bill is done right, it will help America rebuild its economy by providing incentives for businesses to invest, create new, good paying jobs, and save Americans billions of dollars in the long run. Investments in clean energy will generate approximately 3 times as many jobs as the equivalent amount spent on carbon-based fuel. A recent report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that if emissions are reduced by 56 percent by 2030, the resulting savings on energy bills from reductions in electricity and fuel would produce net annual savings for households, vehicle owners, businesses, and industries of $255 billion. New incentives will lead to fruitful innovations, and help the United States become a world leader in a new manufacturing sector, allowing us to export our expertise, intellectual property, and products worldwide. The Political Economy Research Institute estimates that the passage of a climate and energy bill would produce 1.7 million new jobs - 26,605 in Maryland alone. These jobs will be permanent, good paying, and will help rebuild our manufacturing sector.

[After all the bad-mouthing of American businessmen during the Presidential campaign and from the start of this administration caused so much uncertainty for business planning, followed by the bailout bill debt hanging over us all with its threat of more taxes and inflation, followed by the dismemberment of the American system of bondholder security, the looting of GM and Chrysler by labor unions, the proposed takeover of the health care industry, and the energy restrictions and costs of the carbon tax and trade bill, there is no way rational thinkers can be convinced that any bill passed by Congress will produce more net jobs. Yes, Congress can create jobs, but only at the cost of killing other jobs and always at a poor ratio of jobs created to jobs killed. The free market forces of supply and demand will always create more jobs than will Congressional fiat. "Investments in clean energy will generate approximately 3 times as many jobs as the equivalent amount spent on carbon-based fuel." I am particularly fond of this statement. Yes, so-called clean energy is very expensive and not at all cost competitive. It is not surprising that it takes three times as many people to create energy in that sector as in the carbon-based fuel sector. This is why we are better off using carbon-based fuels for quite a while into the future. What you are proposing doing is the same as the Luddite idea that if we eliminate tractors, we can create many more farm jobs with people using hand shovels and hoes. Then there is the claim that if we use 56% less energy by 2030, we will spend $255 billion less on energy. Partly, this just means that as energy becomes more and more limited in supply and more expensive, people will not be able to do many of the things they would have chosen to do. Of course we may have to tear down many a building and replace it with one with better insulation, so we may spend much more on housing and insulation. This may not be a bad thing to do in some cases, but I prefer to allow the market forces of supply and demand determine when this makes sense, rather than to leave that decision to Ben Cardin, who is not all-knowing or even very intelligent, as this response letter documents. As for the 1.7 million new jobs created by this bill, the stimulus bill did not create the jobs claimed for it, which was no surprise to anyone but the most gullible. And, there is no mention of the many jobs to be lost at coal-fired power plants, in transporting coal and oil, refining oil, cleaning coal and smokestack emissions, among trucking companies who use large amounts of diesel and gasoline, in oil exploration and oil field development, in coal mining, in high energy use industries, in the travel and resort business, and the increased energy bills for every small business in America. Did you count the added traffic deaths as people are forced into smaller and lighter vehicles? Some of the jobs to be lost are in Maryland, Senator Cardin. Did you count how many of them? Perhaps you should send letters to each person to lose his job and explain that it is because you believe in anthropogenic global warming and that energy use anyway is a bad thing.]

Many of America's leading companies, including major manufacturers and utilities support a new approach to energy and regulation. The United States Climate Action Partnership is an alliance of major businesses that have come together to call on the Federal Government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. They believe this step is necessary for our future economic prosperity even in our current economic circumstances. This partnership includes major companies such as General Electric, Ford Motor Company, Shell, John Deere, DuPont, and PepsiCo.

[So, basically you hold a gun to man's head and say "your money or your life" and when he hands you his money, you claim that you did not rob him, because he gave you the money. I understand. Many of these companies opposed the AGW agenda, extreme environmental restrictions on energy exploration and development, and restrictions on energy use until the Federal Government fell into the hands of the so-called Progressive (the Luddite Socialist) wing of the Democrat Party. They then had to pretend to go along. Of course, in doing so, some or all of these big companies are also seeking to minimize competition from smaller companies with less political pull. Many are stalling for time, knowing that the AGW theory is falling apart and the people will soon understand that the Democrat Party pulled the wool over their eyes. I will also point out that the fascists and Nazis of Italy and Germany were also very good at beating up industry and forcing them to go along with their programs. This does not make these regimes seem any more moral to us now, though maybe it fooled some Italians and Germans at the time.]

If left unchecked, the impacts of global warming - increased hurricane damage, real estate losses, energy and water expenses - could cost our economy an estimated $1.9 trillion annually by the end of the century. The stakes are particularly high for Maryland. Scientists predict that warming will cause sea level in Maryland to rise by as much as three feet before the century's end. Warmer seas will produce more severe tropical storms and hurricanes-causing damage to towns along the Chesapeake Bay and more floods throughout the state. The short and long term threats global warming poses to our economy and standard of living must be taken very seriously.

[There are nothing but false claims made here. The number and severity of hurricanes goes through cycles, but there has been no long-term increase in either. The real-estate losses are known to be due to more building along the seacoasts. The Chesapeake Bay is a beautiful place to have a home and it is great to have a dock and a boat. So the affluent have built homes all along it and, yes, damage is high in bad storms. The 3 foot sea-level rising prediction by the end of the century even exceeds the wild-eyed 2007 UN IPCC governmental union prediction that it will rise by 18 to 59 cm. Oh, sorry, I had better do the conversion for you. That is 7 to 23 inches. The upper end number is less than 2 feet. Mid-range is a mere 15 inches and each UN IPCC prediction has been less than the previous one. Each has been recognized as an exaggeration. Of course, land masses will rise in some areas and sink in others and the total amount of liquid water may increase or decrease somewhat, as they always have due to natural causes beyond your control.]

A central element of H.R. 2454 is a cap and trade program to control harmful carbon dioxide emissions and lower costs of the overall bill. Unlike a carbon tax, the cap and trade model provides businesses and corporations with the most flexibility, enabling market-driven forces to minimize overall costs and achieve maximum efficiency in reducing emissions. This model has been successful in curbing other pollutants in the past. The Acid Rain Program, established under Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, utilized a cap-and-trade program and dramatically reduced sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions at a cost far less than estimated. The Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush estimated the benefit-to-cost ratio of the sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade program at 40-1. Praised by businesses and environmental groups alike, cap-and-trade programs offer a pragmatic approach that meets both our economic and environmental goals.

[It makes sense to reduce real pollutants that cause health problems, enhanced corrosion, and visibility problems. Those programs bear no resemblance to the issue of CO2 emissions, which is not a pollutant, is emitted by all of us as we breathe, and is plant food which provides us with more food and more oxygen.]

Frankly, I am appalled by the ignorance of the counter argument offered up by Senator Ben Cardin. This man is simply not up to the task of being a Senator in a Congress whose powers are highly limited by the Constitution, where he might focus his attention on a much smaller number of issues and actually have a chance to learn something about them. As a member of a Congress which ignores all of the limits to its power placed upon it by the Constitution he has placed a much, much greater burden of understanding upon himself than he is up to. This man has abrogated the powers of a God unto himself and his oligarchical partners in power, but he is not even a man of remarkable wisdom and knowledge. This is a tragic situation for the sovereign people of these United States of America.

The Framers of the Constitution, being much better men than Ben Cardin, had a wise understanding of their limits and the limits that could be expected of our federal legislature and, for that matter, the presidency in the future. They would not give themselves anywhere near the amount of power that Ben Cardin and his like have taken upon themselves. They knew that Ben Cardin was a problem and they did their best to give us a Constitution which would prevent his rise to power. Americans have failed those wise men who gave us this great gift by refusing to understand this relatively easily understood document and by refusing to live by its principles of good government. A democracy of ignorant, unprincipled people will always fall into a state of tyranny, ruled by the likes of Ben Cardin and then later by the likes of even worse men.

The Washington Times - The rise of the carbon oligarchs: Washington fat cats grab for even more power

The Sunday 12 July 2009 Washington Times had a particularly hard hitting editorial on the carbon cap and trade swindle underway in Washington. The editorial was called "The rise of the carbon oligarchs - Washington fat cats grab for even more power." That title pretty much tells you the story, which unfortunately too few people are hearing. Here are a few of the juicier parts of this editorial:

If passed, the cap-and-trade bill will centralize an inordinate amount of power in Washington and generate vast fortunes for people with friends in high places. On the "cap" side, 85 percent of the "carbon credits" will be given away to power generators; oil and natural gas concerns; the auto industry; various energy-intensive industries such as cement, glass and paper manufacturers; and a variety of "carbon-capture," deforestation-prevention and other dubious special interests.

Because the credits will be distributed by the government, the key question is who will decide who gets them. As we have seen recently with the stimulus bill, Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailouts, the automotive fiasco and the federal budget generally, only those with friends in high places will have a place at the trough. Those with pull will profit; those without will be run out of business.

On the "trade" side, influence peddling will focus on the question of "carbon offsets." A number of sticky questions have arisen, such as whether farmers can claim offsets for the plants they plant, or paper companies for the trees they grow. Perhaps homeowners should get credit for their lawns. Ultimately, the number, type and -- most important -- market value of the so-called offsets will be determined in Washington, which places more power in the hands of politicians and their cronies.

The editorial even compares the cap and trade bill to the voucher systems used in the former communist countries to 'privatize' industries, which made a few connected buyers sudden billionaires.

These people will make vast fortunes on this legislation by trading influence and rule-making that benefits them at the expense of the rest of us. These energy brokers and carbon-offset middlemen will produce nothing and make no contributions to society but will become rich based on political preference and other insider influence.

Some of the wording here makes it pretty clear the writer has read Ayn Rand, doesn't it?

Wall Street Journal on Cap and Tax Fiction

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the foolish assessment of costs of the Waxman-Markey carbon cap and trade bill passed by the House of Representatives. The Congressional Budget Office put out an estimate of cost saying the law would cost the average household only $175 per year. But,

To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO's analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to "offset" their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.

The CBO analysis did not consider the year to year decrease in GDP that this bill will cause and admits that in a footnote. What will the real results be?

• The Heritage Foundation considered the complete effect on the GDP and calculated that it would cost $161 billion in 2020 or $1,870 for a family of four. But, as the more stringent restrictions are applied, it will cost a family of four $6,800 by 2035.
• Manufacturing states will be hurt more than service states.
• Coal-producing states will be hurt more than those using more natural gas, hydroelectric power, or nuclear power.
• Low income families use more of their income for energy needs than higher income families, so they will be hurt more.

In Great Britain, carbon-reduction programs are already costing the average family $1,300 per year and they make less than American families do. But the Democrat Party has promised the cap and trade energy tax will not hurt American families. How firmly they believe this is to be discovered in their response to Republican amendments which proposed the program if

• gasoline reached a cost of $5 per gallon.
• electricity prices exceeded a cost more than 10% greater than in 2009.
• unemployment rates hit 15%.

Wow!!!! So, this bill is a good thing according to Democrats even if gasoline costs $5 per gallon or unemployment is 15% or more. What universe do these people come from? Apparently, they believe it is quite possible that unemployment will reach 15% and if it does, they would still rather reduce harmless CO2 emissions than allow people who want desperately to work to do so! Personally, I hate it with a passion when gasoline hits $3 a gallon, let alone $5 a gallon. Even $3 per gallon gasoline puts a very painful dent in my ability to pay my bills, which are highly inflated due to educating daughters in colleges controlled by these same out-of-this-world Democrat elitists.

Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade Compared to Smoot-Hawley Tariff

Tom McClintock, Republican Representative of California, gave a speech to the House of Representatives after it had just passed the Waxman-Markey Carbon Cap and Trade taxation scheme to limit CO2 emissions. The speech is posted at IBDeditorials.com. He says it is known what the effects of this law will be because California passed Assembly Bill 32 for the purpose of limiting CO2 emissions and we can examine its effects.

McClintock says they are:

• Before January 2007, CA's unemployment tracked the national average closely. Since, its unemployment has increased at a rate sufficient to cause an increasing divergence with the national unemployment rate. It is now 2% greater than the national rate, the highest it has been since 1941, this despite the fact that Gov. Schwarzenegger promised many new green jobs, just as Obama has.
• The city of Truckee, CA was about to sign a long-term power contract with a coal-fired power plant in Utah, but AB32 prevented it and their electricity costs doubled.

He says the cap and trade bill has

profound implications for agriculture, construction, cargo and passenger transportation, energy production, baking and brewing — all of which produce enormous quantities of this innocuous and ubiquitous compound. In fact, every human being produces 2.2 pounds of carbon dioxide every day — just by breathing.

Then he compares the Waxman-Markey bill to the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff that did so much to bring on the Great Depression:

When you discuss the folly of the Hoover administration — how it turned the recession of 1929 into the depression of the 1930s, the first thing that economists point to is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that imposed new taxes on more than 20,000 imported products.

Waxman-Markey is our generation's Smoot-Hawley. In fact, it's worse, because it imposes new taxes on an infinitely larger number of domestic products on a scale that utterly dwarfs Smoot-Hawley.

Never forget that this nonsense constraining our lives has been brought to you by the Democrat Party in the name of socialism. The Republicans too often are willing to join in the destruction of the individual's sovereign rights, but they do not do it anywhere near as well as the Party of Mass Destruction.