The Day In Politics, 7/1

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Jul 1 2009, 7:30 pm by Chris Good

Today, we learned that South Carolina Democrats are calling on Gov. Mark Sanford to resign; so are a host of others; and Sen. James Inhofe predicts no more than 35 Senate votes for the cap and trade bill.

We also pondered what Al Franken will be like as a senator; some more thoughts on Obama, Truman, and Don't Ask, Don't Tell; a court fight over detainee confessions obtained through harsh interrogations; and the recent Vanity Fair piece on Sarah Palin.

Tomorrow: President Obama departs for Camp David for the Fourth of July.

Comments (1)

Rmoen July 1, 2009 11:02 PM

America needs clean, cheap energy—not clean, expensive energy. I am a Democrat who thinks Congress is overplaying its hand. I fear their cap and trade legislation will double our energy costs over the years—even faster for gasoline. Plus, we’re going to see a lot of other unintended consequences. At 1,500 pages the bill is just too complicated, with too many moving parts. Why? There were 770 lobbyists registered to lobby on the bill and their fingerprints are all over the it.

Cap and trade will enrich a new class of financial speculator and cost Americans billions. It will also drive-out manufacturing of every description for competitive reasons. Even non-polluting Microsoft says it will move jobs overseas because cap and trade “makes U.S. jobs more expensive.“ It is worse than a tax because only 15% of the proceeds from auctioned permits go into our national treasury.

And the kicker? We’ll never even know if cap and trade ever worked.

If instead the United States had a national mandate to replace coal generation plants with natural gas and nuclear energy, plus if we replaced our commuter cars with battery-powered electric cars, we would drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce CO2 emissions faster and beyond the proposed cap and trade targets.

— Robert Moen, www.energyplanUSA.com