Capped, Traded, and Changed Out of Existence

You may not have heard of the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, sometimes also known as the Waxman-Markey bill after it's Democratic sponsor congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. You more likely have heard of the term "cap and trade" being thrown around by the news media.

It's all the same stuff, it was passed by Congress last week and is now being considered by the U.S. Senate, and what it all means is a bigger tax bill and higher prices for every single American citizen during these already tough economic times.

No matter what anyone on either side of the issue will tell you, they will never be able to adequately describe for you in just a short article the full scope and impact of Waxman-Markey, or 'cap and trade', but it will absolutely result in more money being taken from the pockets of every single person who is reading this article.

The main announced intent of the increasingly socialist Obama administration with this bill is to forcibly move the United States into 'green' solutions for what it believes to be a man-made global warming problem, and to move American industry towards 'cleaner' and more environmentally friendly processes, particularly where energy-usage is concerned.

The problem is that by forcing both companies and private citizens into compliance, the government is raising the cost on all in order to make the changes to meet new standards. These higher costs when pointed towards businesses will result in reduced wages and layoffs, or higher prices for consumers, or both, as business passes along these increased costs to the public through higher prices, or reduces work forces to cut expenses, or both.

All of this forced 'change' from the Obama administration and its Democratic congressional cohorts, resulting in fewer jobs, high prices, or more likely both, comes while the country is already mired in a deep economic crisis that shows no end. And now he wants a massive taxpayer-funded, government-controlled healthcare plan as well, a measure that will further increase expenses and cripple the economy.

But why? Why would the President and Democrats in congress want to push legislation on the citizens of the country that will hurt them in the pocketbook during already tough times? There must be incredible societal and environmental benefits to these programs, right? Not really.

Most reasonable experts on both sides believe these already massive public programs are only a small percentage of what would be needed to realistically do any good. The odds are that, like every single large-scale government program ever run, they will grow out-of-control over the years without ever supplying the hoped-for benefits.

So why is the government passing these programs? Why are they buying up interests in banks, insurance companies, automobile companies? Why are they taking over control of the tobacco industry? Why are they forcing businesses and homes to convert to 'green' technologies that will provide negligible benefits to the environment? Why are they trying to create a new public healthcare program that is universally agreed will be massive and back-breakingly expensive for our economy?

It has nothing to do with improving peaple's lives, or saving the planet, or stopping global warming, or providing cheaper energy. It is all about one simple word: control. The Obama adminstration and the majority of the Democratic party leadership has become socialist in thinking and acting, albeit unwilling to embrace the truth of that term as an identity.

What this means to you is that, directly because of 'cap and trade', because of government-run and influenced industries, because of universal healthcare, you will take home less and less money in your paychecks, if you are among the fortunate to even continue to have a paycheck to bring home.

People need to wake up and realize that they did not vote for a President and party leadership that would hug trees and save whales with them. They did not vote for a President who will protect them from outside agressors who continue to threaten our way of life. They did not vote for people who care about them as Americans.

They voted for a group that thinks it knows better than you what is best for you and your family, and that is actively moving to take away, not protect, the freedoms that were previously guaranteed to us as individual free citizens.

Waxman-Markey, 'cap and trade', or better yet 'tax and raid' is one more in a series of inappropriate and even dangerous moves by the Democratic power structure as it takes over the country and turns it from the greatest economic machine and military power that the world had ever seen into a Euro-trash nation on the brink of extinction.

That is not an exaggeration. If the current pace is allowed to continue much longer, the United States of America as most of us has known and loved it for the vast majority of our lives will no longer exist. Obama and the Dems have even more interference planned for your lives coming soon.

But don't believe me. If you are smart, stop accepting that Barack Obama is somehow brighter than you, and do the research on the actual details of these issues and how the outcomes will directly affect you and your family. Don't blow me and others off as simple political scare-tactics using opponents with a wave of your dismissive hands. Research the actual issues in full, then decide.

Those of us who love the real America have to hope that the blinders come off, and that the 2010 congressional elections will begin to turn our country back around, before it becomes too late for our grandchildren to know the greatness of the once God-fearing and God-blessed nation known as the United States of America.

100 Devastating Days Down

The good news about the 'First 100 Days' of the Barack Obama administration is that there are 100 days behind us, and so we are 100 days closer to the end of this disastrous administration. The bad news is that there remain 1,362 more days in which the President, his policy wonks, and his political allies can do even further damage to the very fabric of the United States of America. Those of us who are Republicans, and particularly those of a more conservative bent, are expected to say things like that. We didn't vote for Obama, will not vote for Obama the next time around, and in fact can see no reason to support any Democrat at this moment, so entrenched is the control and power of the ultra-liberal wing of their party. So for one of us to make such dark, gloomy, negative statements about the Obama administration can easily be written off by his supporters. But there is just one problem for those supporters. They themselves are finding it more and more difficult to actually express the reasons that they support him and his party. It was all so easy just six months ago, when they all had George W. Bush to hate. Bush-bashing was all the vogue and had been raised to an art form thanks to the constant, repetitive, relentless negative coverage given the Bush Presidency by the liberal mass media. Americans, especially Democrats, and even more particularly liberals, wanted 'Change' from Bush and from what they perceived as the negativity of the previous eight years. Had they only stood back and let their brains do the thinking instead of allowing the liberal media, as well as Hollywood and music industry celebrities, they would have been hard pressed to find a real reason to vote for Obama. They would find that presumptuous of me, and would ask what right I had to say that they didn't use their brains in the first place. To that my reply would be that they were simply being disingenuous. I talked to liberals around the time of the election. I never once heard anyone speak of any particular policy or plan of Obama's that they liked, just that it was time for a change, or they would ask me in return about the Bush administration and what had been so great about it. Never mind that the point was moot, that Bush wasn't running. The one thing that they did know was that Obama was going to stop the war in Iraq. So here we are, three months into the Obama administration, and our troops are still solidly in Iraq. Oh, there is a future plan to remove some troops down the road, of course dependant upon the Iraqis being able to fend for their own security. But the fact remains that Obama could bring home every troop tomorrow from the Middle East, and that would not end the war. What the liberals fail to realize is that it takes two sides stopping to end a war, and the radical Islamists have no intention of ever stopping. All our liberal friends need to do is to actually do any amount of serious study in relation to radical Islam, and they would understand this, but they simply refuse to look past their pie-in-the-sky idealism at the sober reality of the situation. In his 'First 100 Days', Barack Obama, the man that they elected for 'Change', has begun to change America at its very core, and not for the better. Obama has seriously handcuffed American intelligence gathering and worsened morale in the military and intelligence infra-structures, thus seriously jeopardizing our very safety. Because he refuses to keep America's military presence active and strong in the Middle East, despite some tough talk on Afghanistan, it is only a matter of time before either Iran actually has a nuclear weapon, or Israel attacks it in what would be a necessary but devastating pre-emptory self-defense bid to avoid annihilation. It is also only a matter of time before the Taliban or some other radical Islamist group takes over Pakistan, already a nuclear power, and thus places the nightmare scenario of an Islamist regime in control of full-blown weapons of mass destruction. Closer to home, he announced the imminent closing of the terrorist holding facility in Guantanamo Bay, yet made no provision for where the dangerous individuals being held there would be released. He knows full well that the vast majority will not be accepted back into their home countries, and that no reasonable nation on earth will take most of them because, well, they are dangerous terrorists. In other words, there is every likelihood that many of these individuals will be released right here into the American population next year. Nice. He went on a Euro-tour and bad-mouthed and blasted our country, much to the delight of the America-despising Europeans, then went to the Middle East and bowed down in deference to the Saudi king, and finally on to South America where he exchanged good will and gifts with one of the most virulent anti-Americans on earth in Hugo Chavez. He is dragging our nation by the hair away from freedom and capitalism and into full-blown Socialism, with the Federal government extending and deepening its reach and effect on every facet of our lives. His handling of financial matters has perhaps amazingly been even worse and potentially as or more destructive. He is pushing a 'cap and trade' plan to limit carbon emissions that would cost every single American household over $3,100 per year, thus destroying his promise of no taxes to the middle-class. He is doing this to prop-up the ultra-liberal 'green' movement that is all feel-good and no substance. The real science says that the earth has had many periods of warming and cooling in its history, and thus will have them again, but also that we are now in a period of cooling, not warming. So what is all this fuss about going 'green', and why do we need billions of dollars of new taxes and fees on Americans to support it? The simple answer is that we don't, and that while natural conservation is an excellent idea to foster for general environmental cleanliness sake it is nowhere near the apocalyptic need that has blown up under the tutelage of Al Gore and his super-liberal supporters. President Bush set a horrible precedent towards the end of his administration by bailing out some financial industry entities with federal dollars rather than letting the market work and letting them fail. Rather than start his administration with a reversal of this Bush error, the Obama administration has taken the idea and run with it, pushing the nation into a series of massive 'stimulus' bailout schemes that will now leave my grandchildren trillions of dollars in debt after Obama himself is long gone. By forcing industries from banking to automobiles to take federal money in exchange for federal control and oversight, the Socialist agenda pushes deeper. All this, and he names an acknowledged tax cheat in Timothy Geitner to be his Treasury Secretary. In his own house, Obama has had a horrible time in trying to fill many other important positions, including the embarrassment now of having a full-blown pandemic hit the world while he has not yet filled the position of Health & Human Services Secretary in his cabinet. No single President in the history of the United States has done more to harm the very heart and fabric of America than this President has done in his first hundred days. It is disheartening to realize that he still has over 1,300 more in which he can do far more substantial damage to our nation. There is some hope that if the country can get a Republican congressional majority elected next year that we can put a brake on some of this, and limit the damage. If not, the dangers both within and without that the Obama administration has opened us up to are frightening to anyone who cares to look past the liberal and administration rhetoric that such talk is simple political demonizing and negativity and at the reality of these Obama administration actions. Still, such political change may become more difficult as Obama has moved control over next year's U.S. Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House in an overt attempt to control the results by political means. Since Census results determine congressional allotments, this is a huge attempt at making a long term power grab by the Democrats. President Obama will take to the airwaves tonight to address the nation, field questions from a majority of reporters representing liberal media organizations, and feed the feel-good lines to his Kool Aid-drinking supporters. But the truth will be that it is 100 devastating days down, and 1,362 truly disheartening and possibly frightening days to go under a Barack Obama administration that it's messianic leader will find more and more difficult to sell with any credibility.