Cap and Trade

Clear

I’m extremely clear on many things. I love my children. I know Mary Martin was the best “Peter Pan.” I return my carts at the grocery store. Turn signals are not optional. And, I am extremely clear that I do NOT want our elected officials dictating:

• how often I can bathe, or how many towels I can use after my bath;
• how I set my thermostats, or how many thermostats I can have in my home;
• how many miles I can drive in a month;
• how much money I can give to my grown children each year for birthdays and Christmas;
• how many appliances I can run at any one time;
• how many hours I can run my pool pump or how many treatments a month I can do for pristine, healthy, safe water;
• how often I can burn a fire in my fireplace;
• how much beef or corn I can eat in a year;
• how many long-distance calls I can make or how many phones I can have;
• how many lights I can have on at night or what kind of bulb can burn in them;
• how much I can spend on clothing, groceries and/or entertainment in a year; and
• how often I can have my nails or my hair done.

CLOUDY

What I don’t understand is why so many Americans are letting all of this happen by staying silent!

No. There is no bill before Congress that states how many baths you can have in a week, but, if you have energy bills that quadruple, or triple or even double, you are going to have to cut corners somewhere!

No. There is no bill that limits how often you can go to a spa or a salon, but if you have no job these luxuries will go by the wayside!

No. There is no bill that will dictate the temperature of my home, but if I can’t afford to run the heater, I’ll have to bundle up in the dark and the cold of winter.

Except for a desperate surge on the last day of the House debate and vote, not many called or emailed or faxed or signed online petitions or exercised their right to BE the government of the United States of America (or their pleas were ignored in favor of favors.) The phone lines and fax lines jammed on the final day, and the democrats kept putting off the vote on the Cap and Trade bill until they could add enough pork for those opposing it that they could “buy” the votes that they did not have at the time of the initial vote. (Why do our elected officials get to put off a vote, or call for a re-vote? If I don’t get to the polls on time, my vote/opinions/wishes/voice are not heard!)

So, I’m cloudy on why citizens are not involved with what their elected officials are doing and why the White House and Congress lie and cheat and make up their own rules to make things happen. I guess these two things go hand in hand. Children are always on their best behavior when they know someone is watching! (And, Michael Jackson died the day of the vote, so the networks, hell-bent on backing Obama, had the perfect excuse not to cover it.)

Basically the Cap and Trade bill is a 1,200+ page, complex and convoluted bill unread by most of Congress that is based on unproven, shaky science. (I taught Environmental Biology and Ecology for 25 years, and I never saw a period where the experts agreed on the results of the Greenhouse Effect or carbon dioxide or methane production. Now we have evidence that the EPA tried to hide information from us! Who meets their payroll?) The government intends to determine how much carbon pollution will be allowed, who can produce it and who can exceed it with the government’s blessing if they trade for their excess by buying rain forest acreage or some such local or… watch out…global action. Then, the government will hire people with our dollars to monitor the emissions, and will create an enforcement bureau that will be paid for with our dollars to do something that we have been steadily improving on for the last 30 years voluntarily without the tax cost or the government size growing by leaps and bounds!

Thirty years ago, my daughter would get excited as we would travel to Birmingham to see her grandmother and she could see the smog. “Oh, yea!!! We’re almost to grandma’s house!! I can see her dirty sky!” As the result of information, grass roots movements, some governmental regulations, free enterprise and capitalism enjoyed by large and small businesses alike, we got more energy efficient cars and appliances, clean water, clean air, and a greener environment.

We need to be good stewards of the Earth’s resources, but we do not have to sacrifice for other species. WE are a competing species on this planet! Species have come and gone long before man ever arrived, and they will continue to come and go. We just need GOOD science to let us make intelligent decisions about how to keep Homo sapiens here for as long as possible! When science tells us the truth, we will make good decisions. We will mulch grass and carpool and recycle cans and reduce packaging before we jump into our clean, cool swimming pools! I already installed storm windows, solar screens, and siding voluntarily to reduce my energy bills. It was my CHOICE.

This bill opens the door for the government to make your choice. It allows them to pick and choose who they want to favor and who they want to crush. And the Congressional leadership that we have now wants the power to do both. They have changed the terminology that they use to cover what they are doing, all while calling for “transparency.” (Does that mean some of us can see straight through what they are doing?) And they are trying to do it at a speed that would shame Superman! They want to shove it all through before citizens have the chance to catch on to what they are doing! Their models for environmental controls and socialized medicine have already been tried elsewhere and have already failed. It is an attempt to redistribute the wealth from average, hard-working citizens to Congress and their pocket-lining pets. It IS a tax. They just don’t call it a tax. They have dropped that word in the same trash can where they dumped “terrorism” and “war.” They spend our money to pay for air time to show infomercials that they have produced to brain wash us into going along for the ride with their charismatic figure head. (Can someone say “propaganda?”)

It hasn’t passed the Senate, yet, so get on the phone, the computer and the fax machine to let your voices be heard! You can find contact lists all over the Internet. They make it hard on us, as you must fill out an online form to email most of them, but give it an hour a day. Take an hour a day to be part of the government that is “of the people.” (An excellent site for ALL congressional contact information is: http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm) Do this long before the vote is due. Do it every day if you have the time. You can email 40 people while watching “America’s Got Talent.”)

If this Cap and Trade bill passes, hang on to your hats! Between it and the proposed national health care, we will freeze in the dark for the rest of our lives! Not because of lack of fuel, but the inability to pay for it. It will be the legacy we leave to generations to come.

If you want to 'green' America, read tomorrow's blog. It's a lesson I've been teaching since the '70s!