Dissecting Waxman Markey

One of the good (or bad depending on your point of view) of the Legislature pushing through Waxman-Markey without the transparency that the Speaker and President Obama promised during the last campaign. It gives us a look at just how corrupt the people writing our legislation today are.

The stimulus bill was the legislative equivalent of the famous cantina scene from Star Wars, an eye-popping collection of the freakish and exotic, gathered for dubious purposes. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, known as ACES (the American Clean Energy and Security Act), is more like the third panel in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights — a hellscape that disturbs the sleep of anybody who contemplates it carefully.

Two main things to understand about Waxman-Markey: First, it will not reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, at least not at any point in the near future. The inclusion of carbon offsets, which can be manufactured out of thin air and political imagination, will eliminate most of the demands that the legislation puts on industry, though in doing so it will manage to drive up the prices consumers pay for every product that requires energy for its manufacture — which is to say, for everything. Second, it represents a worse abuse of the public trust and purse than the stimulus and the bailouts put together. Waxman-Markey creates a permanent new regime in which environmental romanticism and corporate welfare are mixed together to form political poison. From comic bureaucratic power grabs (check out the section of the bill on candelabras) to the creation of new welfare programs for Democratic constituencies to, above all, massive giveaways for every financial, industrial, and political lobby imaginable, this bill would permanently deform American politics and economic life.

The House of Representatives, famously, did not read this bill before passing it, which is testament to either Nancy Pelosi’s managerial incompetency or her political wile, or possibly both. If you take the time to read the legislation, you’ll discover four major themes: special-interest giveaways, regulatory mandates unrelated to climate change, fanciful technological programs worthy of The Jetsons, and assorted left-wing wish fulfillment. We cannot cover every swirl and brushstroke of this masterpiece of misgovernance, but here’s a breakdown of its 50 most outrageous features.

I'm not going to list all 50, but I did want to highlight a couple of the more egregious ones. First I am going to combine #1 & #3 so that we can highlight just WHO really is the party of big business (hint - not the party in the minority this year)...

Eighty-five percent of the carbon permits will not be sold at auction — they will be given away to utility companies, petroleum interests, refineries, and a coterie of politically connected businesses. If you’re wondering why Big Business supports cap-and-trade, that’s why. Free money for business, but higher energy prices for you....
With its rich menu of corporate subsidies and special set-asides for politically connected industries, Waxman-Markey has inspired a new corporate interest group, USCAP, the United States Climate Action Partnership — the group largely responsible for the fact that carbon permits are being given away like candy at Christmas rather than auctioned. And who is lined up to receive a piece of the massive wealth transfer that Waxman-Markey will mandate? Canada Free Press lists:

Alcoa, American International Group (AIG) which withdrew after accepting government bailout money, Boston Scientific Corporation, BP America Inc., Caterpillar Inc., Chrysler LLC (which continues to lobby with taxpayer dollars), ConocoPhillips, Deere & Company, The Dow Chemical Company, Duke Energy, DuPont, Environmental Defense, Exelon Corporation, Ford Motor Company, FPL Group, Inc., General Electric, General Motors Corp. (now owned by the Obama administration), Johnson & Johnson, Marsh, Inc., National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, NRG Energy, Inc., Pepsico, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, PG&E Corporation, PNM Resources, Rio Tinto, Shell, Siemens Corporation, World Resources Institute, Xerox Corporation.

One major group of recipients of the free money being given to industry in the form of carbon permits are the electric utilities, represented in Washington by the Edison Electric Institute. Along with the coal and steel businesses, the utilities are positioned to receive a huge portion of the carbon permits — some of which will be disguised as measures for consumers — and have become one of the nation’s highest-spending lobbies, working to ensure that their interests are served by cap-and-trade.

Emphasis mine. For my MN readers Rio Tinto is the global corporate parent company of Kennicott Copper Mining here in Utah. Those who claim to be looking out for the interests of the poor are now writing legislation designed to help out corporate interests! Nice....

Briefly to continue on a theme, 10 & 11 point out that...

Rural electrical cooperatives are demanding that the offsets be awarded in proportion to historic emissions, and they probably will prevail.

The farm lobby will be rewarded for practices that do little or nothing to reduce greenhouse gases.

Number 13 lists out more corporate beneficiaries of Waxman-Markey...

David H. McCormick of the Treasury Department recently gave a speech on the establishment of an $8 billion fund for that purpose; those who showed up to gets the specs on this new gravy train included Sequoia Capital, the United Steelworkers Union, the Clinton Climate Initiative, Ernst & Young, Duke Energy, SunPower, Honeywell, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Credit Suisse, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, and Goldman Sachs.

15, 16, & 17 have some interesting tidbits...

The renewable electricity standard is the big one here. This would require utilities to supply 20 percent of their power from renewable energy sources (or “increased efficiency”) by 2020...
The bill would create a system of renewable electricity credits similar to the carbon offsets mentioned above — utilities that cannot meet the standard could purchase credits from other utilities.
The renewable standard excludes sources of power like nuclear and coal gasification, and perhaps that’s to be understood. Even though these sources are cleaner than traditional coal-burning plants, they violate a number of green taboos.

21 through 23 have very interesting implications to everyone out there who lives indoors....

The bill regulates every light fixture under the sun... There are rules governing fluorescent lamps, incandescent lamps, intermediate base lamps, candelabra base lamps, outdoor luminaires, portable light fixtures...The bill extends its reach to cover appliances as well. Clothes washers and dishwashers, portable electric spas, showerheads, faucets, televisions — all these and more are covered specifically in the bill...Appliances will be required to come with “carbon output” labels, and retailers will get bonus payments for marketing those that are certified “best-in-class.” The bill sets up a payment schedule to reward the manufacturers of these “best-in-class” products: $75 for each dishwasher, $250 for each clothes washer, and so on...

Hey - how about a "bonus payment" for the consumers who choose to do the environmentally friendly thing? Why are we giving more and more to big business?

Then there is #24....

The bill requires the EPA to establish environmental standards for residences, meaning a federally dictated one-size-fits-all policy for greening every home in America.

For more on the governments plan to totally kill the housing market and get rid of the notion of "affordable housing" see this Reuters article. The Feds are set to usurp yet another local power...local building codes....

The bill would affect commercial properties, too. In fact, all buildings would be governed by a “national energy efficiency building code”...Businesses and homeowners will pay twice — once to retrofit their roosts and again when the energy bill arrives.

Another hit to federalism comes from #29...

The bill undermines federalism by prohibiting states from creating their own cap-and-trade programs.

So all you pesky state legislators - give up YOUR RIGHT to regulate your state...

We all saw what happened last summer when the price of gasoline went through the roof and the demand for ethanol went up....so did the cost of food. Well Waxman-Markey wants to INCREASE the mandates for ethanol - increasing starvation in 3rd world countries as well.

Then there are the dozens of different new goernment agencies that will be created by this bill.

Waxman-Markey will create yet another raft of government dependents, but of a different sort — bureaucrats. The bill creates: a new United States Global Change Research Program, a National Climate Change Adaptation Program, a National Climate Service, Natural Resources Climate Change Adaptation Strategy office at the White House, and an International Climate Change Adaptation Program at the State Department.

And since everyone else who doesn't pay taxes gets a check...

Bambi gets one, too, in the form of money for “domestic wildlife and natural resource adaptation.”

Waxman-Markey, a bill that was sold on the premise of "jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs" and Speaker Pelosi is right - it will create more jobs...

Waxman-Markey will create a lot of jobs for Wall Street sharps, Big Business rent-seekers, ACORN hucksters, utility-company lobbyists, grant-writers at left-wing organizations, college administrators, light-bulb-policing bureaucrats, and an army of parasitic hangers-on...

But no jobs for the ones that need it the most - the 467,000 hard working taxpayers who (last month alone) lost their jobs even after being promised that if the stimulus package passed would be saved. If the stimulus bill (which was passed without being read) didn't do what it was supposed to do (save jobs) and did nothing more than line the pockets of bureaucrats, why should we believe that Waxman-Markey would do anything different?

Shouldn't we be holding these elected officials accountable FINALLY for their actions?