It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Good. Then you pay for it.
The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.
A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.
One reason the bill faces an uncertain future is concern about its cost. House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated the additional tax bill would be at $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. Democrats have pointed to estimates from MIT's John Reilly, who put the cost at $800 a year per family, and noted that tax credits to low income households could offset part of the bite. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, "the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year."
Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 or 8 percent increase a year.
Because the dead zone is an annual occurrence, there’s no media feeding frenzy over it, even though the average annual size of these hypoxic zones has been about 6,600 square miles over the last five years, and they are driven by bipartisan federal agriculture, trade, and energy policies.
Indeed, as Steven Hayward notes in the current Weekly Standard, if policymakers continue to pursue biofuels in response to the current anti-fossil-fuel craze, these dead zones will get a lot bigger every year. A 2008 study by the National Academy of Sciences found that adhering to corn-based ethanol targets will increase the size of the dead zone by as much as 34 percent.
BP, joined by Enron, invented carbon cap-and-trade in the mid-1990s. Yeah. That cap-and-trade.
I know, because I was in the room.
And BP has been lobbying for it aggressively and at great expense ever since, some eight figures of which has gone to green pressure groups.
Specifically, in May 1997 I met with senior officials from BP, Niagara Mohawk Power, and others… “others” like the Union of Concerned Scientists and their ilk… in the Washington offices of a white-shoe New York law firm, putting our collective heads together strategizing on how to get the U.S. roped into a global warming treaty, and get “cap-and-trade” imposed domestically, too.
You can read some great internal Enron memos about this effort they led in partnership with BP at the Master Resource website, run by Enron refugee and frustrated internal whistleblower Rob Bradley. One particularly illuminating montage, including with links, is found here.
Read more: dailycaller.com...
BP and its employees have given more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Donations come from a mix of employees and the company’s political action committees — $2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals.
Read more: www.politico.com...
Originally posted by Merigold
We were reminded again of how our nation needs a transition to clean energy
OMG no. You mean America might actually start trying to wean herself off the oil additiction which is crippling her?
In the short term it WILL be expensive and some of that expense should come out of our pockets, for the common good not just of America, but the whole planet.
Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by realmatrix
Is not going to happen, money will do the job, keeping peoples mouth closed that is the way of corporate corruption.
The whole deal behind the BP spill is to push just one thing and that is cap and trade.
Originally posted by empireofpain
Originally posted by Merigold
We were reminded again of how our nation needs a transition to clean energy
OMG no. You mean America might actually start trying to wean herself off the oil additiction which is crippling her?
In the short term it WILL be expensive and some of that expense should come out of our pockets, for the common good not just of America, but the whole planet.
Go ask spain how well that worked out for them.