Last week the House voted 219-212 to pass HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, whose intent is to “create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.” I’ve only had time to browse the 1,092 page bill and sincerely believe it will not achieve a single one of its purposes.
The creation of clean energy jobs is very vague and the parts that are clear center not on industry but on educating people about global warming – this appears to signal the creation of a new class of bureaucrat-teachers, not industrial jobs.
Energy independence? Transition to a clean energy economy? Get real, there is nothing of substance in the document that details such a plan, and this is a pipe dream for government to create this. What will you ask? Only a free market, driven by the consumer and free from government interventions can do so, in my opinion.
“Reduce global warming pollution?” Somehow I missed the scientific debate where the global warmers square off against the global coolers and those who believe that ‘the weather just changes, weather you want it to or not’ as I suggested here “Anthropogenic Global Warming or an Ice Age, Which Is It? (PART 2/2)“. Is carbon dioxide really a pollutant? Don’t plants need it to live and don’t we all respire it? It would be a lot cheaper and a lot more useful than HR 2454!
My own private analysis of HR 2454 can be summarized up with:
- Inefficient energy sources will instead be propped up and buffered from free market competition by the government.
- The taxed companies will pass down the taxes to We the People, and energy costs will rise for us, the consumers.
- The State will subsidize and hence sponsor, mandated education that “global warming” is fact, stifling debate.
- Wall Street will have a great time doing all the carbon credits trading using derivatives with “underlying assets” that are literally in many cases, just hot air.
Or, in three words, as “Crap ‘N Trade”
On the last point above, let’s ask the question, “Cui bono?” Who benefits?
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GOVERNMENT SACHS – THE BUBBLE BLOWERS
Goldman Sachs recently announced that RECORD bonuses will be generated in 2009. The $10 billion dollars in bailout money will be returned, although undisclosed amounts lent to GS by the Federal Reserve via the discount window and other off-balance sheet transactions will not be discovered until the FED is audited by Ron Paul’s bills HR 1207 and S 604. How can this be?
Goldman Sachs are our country’s premier inside traders – former Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson and his appointed lieutenant Neel Kashgari are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of GS alumni in government. They are aware of, and even exercise control over, the next steps our government will take.
This means in upturns as well as downturns, it is possible to profit. Some say it’s even easier to profit during downturns, as Catherine Austin-Fitts discusses in the latter half of this June 26 interview with Max Keiser.
In a recent Rolling Stones piece entitled “The Great American Bubble Machine,” Max Tiabbi does us all a great service by – sarcastically but realistically – detailing the history and prior bubbles of this firm. Tiabbi’s next prediction for a bubble (mine, for the record, is still the U.S. Treasury and gold markets, where GS plays a vital role as well) is that of carbon credit trading. He details how GS has promoted this legislation and how they will profit from this market – which, bottom line, is a government-created tax market where the carbon credits issued to energy producers increase in scarcity year after year. (Photo courtesy Steve Ford Elliot License)
Who will deliver these ‘mandated profits’ to Goldman Sachs? That’s our job as the energy consumers!
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A “First-Class Democracy”??
In a seething conclusion, Tiabbi finishes with:
“It’s not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there’s a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can’t really register the fact that you’re no longer a citizen of a first-class democracy, that you’re no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.
“But this is it. This is the world we live in now. And in this world, some of us have to play by the rules, while others get a note from the principal excusing them from having to do homework until the end of time, plus 10 billion free dollars in a paper bag to buy lunch. It’s a gangster state, running on gangster economics, and even prices can’t be trusted anymore; there are hidden taxes in everything you pay. And maybe we can’t stop it, but we should at least know where it’s all going.“
Here is where, in my opinion, Tiabbi grasps part of the truth, but makes a fatal mistake, the same made by many Americans. Let me attempt to correct it briefly.
Tiabbi relates that most Americans think we live in a “first-class democracy,” and fervently believe this is beneficial. It’s not. Democracy is a Greek word from demos (the majority) and -cracy (rule), or literally “rule by majority.” Search the both the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution for the term and you will not find it. Our founders – to a man – recognized the dire dangers of democratic rule. This is why they created for us a nation of laws protecting the natural rights of the individual – a constitutional republic, a union of nation-states, consisting of checks and balances, with both democratic and special-rule elections or appointments, and both democratic and special-rule voting practices. This is why:
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
- Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the Declaration of Independence and 3rd President of the United States
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
- John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
“A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way… Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism… Democracy pollutes the morals of the people before it swallows up their freedoms.”
- Fisher Ames, U.S. Congressman 1789-1797
A choice between a “gangster state” or a nation of laws should be an easy one for most to make. For the Republic!
10 comments ↓
Jake,
You are right with your democracy critique and the position of the founding fathers. The problem is that with full democracy an ignorant and uninformed majority is easily manipulated by a few (the banking cartel, et al. in our case.)
Good luck in your run for Congress. Perhaps you, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and others can finally effect a change.
Jan Getting
If it is the free market that will achieve energy independence, then why has it failed so miserably at it? The free market does not only resolve problems; additionally, it can create problems. Why are Americans migrating to the Southwest, when the most abundant fresh water resources are positioned in the Northeast? Why have people migrated to the suburbs, creating sprawl – which results in transportation and energy inefficiencies – when it would be more economically advantageous to live in the city? In these instances, the free market has not operated rationally, and based upon its history, why should we expect it to manifest rational outcomes when it comes to energy policy?
I am not saying we should have centralized economic management. What I am saying is that in some instances the market is not the best solution, and that public policy needs to be used in order to correct these undesirable outcomes.
You are certainly right to assert that plants need carbon dioxide. However, you are missing the point. It is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is problematic and is attributed as a causation of global warming. As far as an ice age is concerned, this is a scientific theory that has been falsified.
With respect to climatology, the theory of an oncoming ice age has been disproven and replaced by the more accurate theory of global warming. It was once largely maintained that the sun revolved around the earth. However, I do not think many people would cite this fact as a compelling reason not to accept modern astronomical accounts that insist that the earth revolves around the sun.
Your arguments are so simple mined that they would make me hesitant to support your candidacy even though I agree with you on other issues.
It is true that GS and Gov't bureaucrats are in the same bed together. Have solid info that many if not most GS employees are ex-CIA and FBI types right out of Govt'. They are on both payrolls. Are we surprised??
there's a "free market" in existence? and it's failed at achieving energy independence? Russell – with all due respect – that's a nearly absurd statement.
There is no free market in America, and failure to achieve energy independence, then, cannot be blamed on it.
The market in this country is highly regulated, and is far closer to a corporatist – or possibly mercantilist – economy than a market economy.
thus, the blame should be put squarely on corporatism, which is the inevitable outcome of an over-centralized state.
Although my preference is free choice and voluntary exchange, I would far prefer even a localized syndicalist economy to the nearly fascist one we have in this country today.
hi mike,
this is an interesting point that you make. obviously, it comes down to semantics. however, i should point out that the entirely notion of a free-market misleading. there is always going to be an institutional economy regulating the behaviors of those who are participants even in a "free-market." the institution of property, for instance, is based upon cultural conventions that have been institutionalized in the juridical mechanisms that adjudicate disputes between private individuals. Further, laws concerning contractual agreements are predicated upon statutes defining who, how, and for what a contract can be agreed upon that is legally binding. in most states, for instance, no one under 18 can enter into a contractual agreement. even the institution of inheritance is based upon cultural conventions that have been institutionalized in our civil codes. I guess my point is that the idea of a free-market is chimerical, because there are always going to be fixtures belonging to the institutional economy. However, this does not impact your argument, because whether the optimal outcome would be actualized by you model of the free-market is an empirical question, which I would not dismiss.
Matt's right on as usual…
Re Goldman,
See my Article from December, 2007 -
"Is Goldman Sachs President?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_kent_wel_...
Kent Welton,
PublicCentralBank.com
Thomas Jefferson said,
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Alexander Hamilton was the exponent of close cooperation between government, banking, and business. Simplified, banks loaned money to the government which paid business to support it. The loans were paid back to the banks by taxing the "people of no particular importance." The result? The banks got richer, the businesses prospered, and the government gained power, but only through supporting the othe two sides of the triangle. The people got poorer and deeper in debt.
Hamilton said,
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
and,
"In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will."
and,
"It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government."
And to the origins of Faux News, he said,
"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic. "
Jefferson fought Hamiltonian fiscal policy with all his might. Jefferson lost, Hamilton won, and now we have Goldman Sachs, et al.
Enter text right here!
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!!!!
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