Tyranny and Irony
Remember how the right wing was screaming tyranny at the election of Barack Obama and at the passage of an economic stimulus package? Remember how Michelle Bachmann thinks answering the census is tyranny? Given that the events in Iran and Honduras over the last few weeks have shown us real world examples of tyranny, will these right wingers cease their empty rhetoric (simply because it has been proven to be empty in comparision) or will they continue (because spouting empty rhetoric has never stopped them before)?
You just know it will be the latter. They cried tyranny after the Cap and Trade bill was passed, and they will again after health care is passed. For the petulant uneducated spoiled children that currently comprise the Republican Party and the right wing of this country, tyranny is not being defeated in a landslide election and then watching your victorious opponent implement his agenda. Tyranny is not voicing your opposition to this popular agenda and this popular President in public spaces throughout the country with no fear of governmental reprisal. Instead, it is irony.
Perhaps you’d be just as appalled by Karen Bass, Speaker of the California Assembly, when she claimed that it was “terrorism” for conservatives to threaten to unseat elected representatives who voted for higher taxes.
Words do get misused frequently.
I would be. We have enough examples of domestic right wing terrorism in recent months. We don’t need to make up examples.
Dana, do you condemn the coup in Honduras or do you support it?
And perhaps you might not find crap and trade quite so popular when people find out that it raises people’s utility bills about $770 a year. People don’t get any new services, people don’t get anything they aren’t already buying now; they just have the privilege of paying more for what they use now.
I never heard: did Donviti get a new job? I sure hope so, because if the Republicans can’t defeat crap and trade in the Senate, it won’t matter that people might be out of work or having reduced hours: their electricity bills will increase about $64 a month. Oh, there are “rebates” and “tax credits” to be taken to reduce the impact, but those things come once a year; getting your tax credit in April seems kind of far off when you are trying to make your October electric payment.
Don’t know. I’ve heard that President Zelaya was breaking the law in trying to call for a referendum to extend his term, and that the country’s Supreme Court ordered his removal. There are too many stories out there, many contradictory, for us to form an informed judgement.
Dana…. when you disagree with legislation, and think it will have harmful side affects, it is not tyranny no more than your dissent is terrorism. But if you think it is, then perhaps you are a terrorist. Wordplay is fun.
Yes, he got a new job.
And gee, one would think coups would always be condemned by our principled conservative brethen who always champion freedom and democracy. I am shocked….SHOCKED …. that Dana is on the fence.
Actually that cost for cap and trade works out to about $175 per year. Less, of course, if your energy usage is less.
Well, we should all be on the fence when third world countries are involved. Their Supreme Courts aren’t exactly benched by the same process ours are. Sometimes people in the US claim “money” put so and so there….banana republics it may be poverty.
Well, my default position, Joanne, is that if the country has a constitutional process for removing a President who has gone mad, then it should follow it. Defending the rule of law doesn’t mean you get to break it.
Removing a president by gunpoint doesn’t sound very democratic to me. I think Honduras should decide who its own leaders are, but this doesn’t sound like a democratic process to me.
Cassandra, from the article you cited:
OK, when you are trying to pay your electric bill in October, how much good will those “tax breaks and free allowances,” which will come around April when you file your taxes, do you? When Donviti is trying to come up with money to buy Christmas presents for all of the little Vitis he has spawned, how much will those tax breaks he won’t see for four months help reduce his December light bill?
Note that the article said:
Your electric company isn’t going to know — and isn’t supposed to know — your income; they simply bill you for kilowatt hours used. The only way that the crap and trade costs can be distributed by household income (which is what the distribution by top and bottom 20% means) is if such is done when you file your federal income taxes.
DD wrote:
Trouble is, the information coming out of Honduras indicates that it might have been the president who was out of control and broke the law. I’m not “on the fence” on this issue; I’m saying that we don’t have unambiguous facts with which to base an informed judgement.
The latest is that the newly sworn-in president is not even Constitutionally eligible to serve as president because he was born in Italy, not Honduras.
Mrs Isotope wrote:
[Snort!] 🙂
At least he wasn’t born in Kenya!
Again, from the article Cassandra linked:
Now, what does “behavioral change” mean? It means that the government is enacting things it believes/hopes will get people to change the way their live their lives through rewards and/or punishments. In this case, it is strictly punishment-driven: President Obama and the Democrats hope to get people to consume less electricity by increasing the financial pain of using electricity. While it’s possible that they’ll appreciate the tax credits they receive in April, we hold elections in November in this country, when people will be paying more for electricity while they are trying to save up money to buy the kids Christmas presents.
We Republicans will remind the voters of that. This gross over-reach by the President and the Democrats might just recreate 1994 for the GOP, all over again.
“We Republicans will remind the voters of that. ”
No doubt. Your party’s appetite for scurrilous campaigning and irresponsible governance is well-known.
Part of the idea behind Cap-and-Trade is to end the externalization of costs. We have been paying for power generation in our electric bills, but paying for clean-up of superfund sites, restoral of lost rivers, and storage of spent fuel rods with our taxes. We have also been paying with all sorts of infrastructure to get fuel to power plants (canals, river dredging, rail, road construction, etc.) out of our taxes, health and quality of life.
I know that we don’t want to pay for the actual cost, but it is time that we do.
For one, I wouldn’t trust the CBO as far as I can throw it. Two, You keep focusing on the household electric bill. This will raise costs for everything across the board. Everything takes electricity. This is basically a tax across everything you can think of.
Besides, this isn’t even an enviromental bill, it is a money making scheme.
You can’t spend your way out of a recession by printing money that isn’t worth anything. You can only produce your way out of a recession. And guess what, we know longer have a manufacturing base like we did during the first depression. This is all going to come back and smack us in the face. If Obama gets his ‘ideas’ through, by the end of his term we will be in a depression worse than the first one.
So liberalgeek, if your argument made any sense, we would see a reduction in our income taxes since we are paying for it directly through cap and trade. I’m for the enviroment, but not when it will rake the majority of Americans over the coals.
No, in order for my argument to make sense, the power companies will now find ways to lower their impact to gain a competitive edge. Prior to this point, there has been no incentive to do so except “being a good neighbor” which doesn’t pay by the next quarter.
Phil,
It all depends on the outcome you value. Luckily, the GOP brainwashing about the evils of taxation is much less effective now in these post GWB years.
Also, who gets the money, Phil? Sure, some goes to the government, but the vast majority of it will end up going to companies that cut their emissions.
If I pay a million dollars for a license to produce a million tons of CO2, and I can cut my emissions to 500,000 tons, I can sell my extra 500K. If the market for that CO2 is good enough, I will actually make back my investment in the technologies that allowed me to cut down to 500K.
So Dana is a crazy Birther! Believing the President was not born in this country disqualifies you from possessing any intelligence, and puts you on the fringe.
Further, Dana believes military coups are justified. Indeed, to extrapolate from his argument, if the military of the United States believed that President Obama had done something unconstitutional, Dana believes it is justified in violently overthrowing the President.
So Dana Pico possesses fringe opinions and he is in favor of the violent overthrow of the government.
Gain a competitive edge? how many power companies do you think are in this state? Power companies have a monopoly in most areas which is why they are regulated by PSCs. So where is this competition going to come from?
If things continue the way they are, with Obama’s printing and spending (I blame democrats and republicans for the spending, but this is his administration and his ideas now), there will be full blown tax riots in the next few years.
When unemployment continues to rise, people are going to become desperate. This is going to be an ugly time for America.
How many power generation facilities are there that serve Delaware through the grid? Those are the people that will pay the fee and reap the rewards of innovation. This is the good part of decoupling delivery and production.
When unemployment continues to rise, people are going to become desperate. This is going to be an ugly time for America.
You mean like Reagan’s first term? Which by the way still holds the record for peak unemployment, peak inflation, peak interest rates, and higher taxes than Obama is proposing.
Umm, no, they will do what they’ve always done when hit with a new fee or tax increase: raise rates to match.
Just wait till you get your bill when the massive inflation hits.
Take a look at M0 rate. The Fed has doubled the money supply in a matter of months. If things continue this way, wait a year or two, and Obama will have that record in spades.
Perhaps Dana and Phil don’t realize that Cap and Trade is nothing new, as it has been part of the EPA Acid Rain Program, to be fully implemented in 2010.
In fact, it has been used to curb acid rain causing sulfur dioxide for about ten years now, with over 99% compliance and costs 25% of what EPA originally estimated. You can check here for an update on the success of this program:
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkt/cap-trade/docs/ctresults.pdf
Dana and Phil should also take into account that Cap and Trade is a market based approach to control undesirable emissions and costs. Republicans should actually love it! Instead, they allow their anti-Obama partisanship to stand in the way of good sense!
Money supply doesn’t actually appear to be out of whack.
http://www02.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=money+supply+US
It could be that with the loss of credit available, the liquidity injected by the Fed is offsetting.
Given the continual violations of our constitution by this administration I could only wish our people had the guts to force them out of power.
Farsider, I have reported your email and ISP to the Secret Service. Enjoy their visit.
farsider’s comment gave me the heebie-geebies as well.
Whatever, y’all obviously don’t believe in freedom of speach, the constitution or any true american values. Good luck with your regime.
Speach? What is the freedom of Speach? Oh you mean Speech. Tell me, how has the federal government under the Obama Administration denied your Freedom of Speech?
Indeed, if I recall, all of you right wing whackjobs gathered together on April 15 to protest President Obama, and not a single one of you were arrested for just voicing your opposition and dissent.
So, I guess you are just a disgusting liar then, right?
Meanwhile, it is perfectly “constitutional” for you to threaten the violent overthrow of a government that you just don’t agree with, a government that defeated your party and your candidate in a massive landslide not seen in this country for a generation. I guess you are still just a little upset by losing so horribly. So much so that you are rushing to committ treason.
And tell me, what other violations of the Constitution do you allege? This should be good.
The unconstituional theft of assets from the Chrysler and GM bondholders to start. The theft of assets from healthy financial institutions as well. The massive giveaway of our taxpayer dollars to AIG, GM, GE, etc. You know what this government is doing, you just don’t seem to realize how wrong it is. One day you will.
I can honestly say that I have no idea what you are talking about. Those investors would have lost everything when the companies ceased to exist.
Banks and bondholders are pretty well lawyered up. If they think they are the victims of theft of assets, or Constitutional violations, they don’t need you to speak up for them.
Hahahaha. So Government bailouts are now unconstitutional. Was it unconstitutional when Reagan did it? Was it unconstitutional when Reagan demanded the government’s share of the profits from Chrysler’s restructuring and bailout? Was it unconstitutional when Bush began the bailout program in 2008? Was it unconstitutinal when Bush gave untold billions to Halliburton and the oil companies.
And what is this the theft of assets from healthy financial institutions?
Farside is just a liar who just dislikes Obama.
To answer you DD – yes it was unconsitutional and also just plain wrong in every case you state. The theft is the interest rates charged on loans that healthy institutions were forced to accept in order to obsure who the struggling banks were in the TARP program. That is theft, that is how the mafia works, there is nothing wrong with shutting down an criminal institution and the government acts make it a the largest organized crime syndicate in the country. It deserves to be shut down and replaced by one that will respect the constitution that our forefathers fought so hard to obtain.
Well then, Farsider, if you think it is unconstitutional you have every right to do the following: 1) institute a federal court case in an attempt to have these “thefts” declared as such and ruled unconstitutional; 2) lobby your federal representatives for the impeachment of the President; 3) vote against him in the next election; and 4) voice your dissent and views in protests and in the opinion pages.
You or anyone has no right to overthrow the government. If you advocate for it or if you participate in such an overthrow, you are committing treason.
Advocating is not treason.
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
As for the rest – there are court cases pending but our Supreme court has abandonded their responsibility once (failure to hear the Chrysler case) and there is no reason to expect they won’t again.
2,3 and 4 is being done as much as possible.
Advocating is giving aid and comfort.
Ah but then there is that pesky freedom of speech we hold so dear. I would maintain that this government is the enemy of the people and it is the responsibility of the people to hold it accountable or replace it with one that will uphold our constitution.
No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
farsider, me and DD got you busted if you do anything…..
“Given the continual violations of our constitution by this administration ”
What about the violations of the constitution by the prior administration? And the one before that? And the one before that?
You nutcases need to read history along with your constitution. Just because Antonin Scalia and his federalist society asshats like to whine about this doesn’t mean it’s a legitimate thing to whine about.
I think I already addressed that, as those administrations are gone we will just have to let that go. The steady degradation of our rights and freedoms has been going on for a long time, but without a time machine there is little to do about the past. Hopefully we can change the future direction before there is no freedom left here.
hey liberalgeek, not the M2, the M0. The M0 is the monetary base index.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/hist/h3hist1.pdf
They more than doubled the monetary base between Aug 08, and May 09.
Landslide victory? Historic defeat? Hardly. I didn’t know 7.2% was a landslide.
I bet that farsider laments the fact that he can no longer own slaves.
I’m with you Geezer. The far right’s obsession with the Constitution began on January 20, 2009 and end when a Republican becomes president.
M0 (that’s a zero) is a measure of physical currency. I know that that number makes your point, but it isn’t necessarily the most appropriate number.
Economists use M2 when looking to quantify the amount of money in circulation and trying to explain different economic monetary conditions. M2 is a key economic indicator used to forecast inflation.
So if M2 has been dropping due to a reduction in credit (a close substitute for money), perhaps it is wise to ensure that M0 is increased to prevent a massive reduction of the money supply as it relates to M2. A quick reduction in M2 could have dire consequences for the economy.
Last I checked it was a republic administration that ended slavery
LOL, I love it when the Radical Right has to go back 140 years to show some good they did for the country.
Yeah, and if Lincoln were alive today he’d be a Democrat.
How can it not? M0 and M2 should be closely tied. this is an unprecedented jump. All the M2 is showing is that the banks haven’t freed up that money yet, so it is not being counted by the M1 and M2.
But my graph above does not show the impact on M2, so how would you explain? Also, where does the loss of credit fall in the supply? I think it is reflected in M2, but not in M0. So the Fed’s increase in M0 may offset the loss that would be evident in M2.
I have a friend that has a doctorate in Econ and has access to the raw data. I will ask his advice and let you know what I find.
Thanks.
wow, i just noticed something about your graph. look at the scale. It changes at the top. So in a graph with a constant scale, it would be a sharp increase.
No, there are options for constant scale, check it.
Also, try setting the time limiter to less than maximum for a better view of the recent past.
It still shows a greater increase begining second quarter of ’08. Let me know what your friend thinks.
More fun:
Percentage change in M2 over time.
I’m starting to love Wolfram Alpha.
More fun:
change in M2 over a year ago.
Phil,
You must know that facts are no good here. Reason and logic are right out as well. I do wish you the best of luck in convincing those who are reading of the obvious monetary management failures of our government.
Farsider – blow me. This is a discussion. If you can’t participate intellectually, try to not be a schmuck.
OK, when you are trying to pay your electric bill in October, how much good will those “tax breaks and free allowances,” which will come around April when you file your taxes, do you?
Dana, you can’t possibly be telling me that you are over here whinging about a program that you don’t even understand how it works?
The costs are mainly in living with the emissions cap — whether you are re-engineering processes or adding pollution control technology or switching fuels or even changing operating periods. The allowances (the thing you trade) give you the right to some additional emissions above the cap. The tax breaks etc are targeted to the sources that are covered by these emission reduction targets. The allowances are what companies who want to pollute more should have to buy. The number of allowances are to be finite, so those who do the work to reduce their emissions will have an asset to sell — the allowance. As more firms no longer need their allowances, the price of the allowance gets higher for those who need more allowances to operate. At some point, though, there are more sellers than buyers and the price goes down. The SO2 markets have been at a point for a while where they are now retiring allowances — keeping abit of a marketplace for what exists, but I think I read that there are only 20% of the SO2 allowances still in play for the Acid Rain program. Definitely a success. But the tax breaks and allowances are for the emission sources, not taxpayers.
Your electric company isn’t going to know — and isn’t supposed to know — your income; they simply bill you for kilowatt hours used.
15% of the allowances will be auctioned off (the rest given away to sources). The funds from those auctions are supposed to be used to help offset higher energy prices for low, moderate income taxpayers. As in additional funds for home heating help, or some income-tested tax break for some portion of your fuel bill.
Now, what does “behavioral change” mean? It means that the government is enacting things it believes/hopes will get people to change the way their live their lives through rewards and/or punishments.
Uh, no. Cap and trade puts a price on the emission of CO2. Most businesses are going take a hard look at how to minimize and finally avoid this cost. For current sources, that would mean starting to make the investments to reduce emissions. For potential new sources, that means building so that you avoid the cost of those sources.
Nice, so you support the government ‘creating a cost’. And the trainers tell us if we avoid the cost, maybe we get something as a reward. With enough investment we can eventually reduce the made up cost to almost nothing. Not quite mind you but almost. Businesses pass costs off to consumers, that is how it works. So the poor get tax credits to compensate them for the costs the government is imposing on business. How can that even begin to be a sensible proposition ?
This entire state is at sea level. Sounds sensible enough to me.
farsider – The cost of pollution is usually paid by the public. This moves the cost to the businesses that create the incentive to stop polluting. And as Cassandra points out, most of the allowances will be given out at no cost. So there is incentive in the positive direction.
I guess you only like the free market when it screws people.
The cost is not created — it is already there and as the effects of emissions compound the costs to fix the problems created get higher. With the SO2 cap and trade program, not only did the emissions reduce, actual acid rain reduced drastically, thereby reducing any effects that had to be fixed — like vegetative die-off, certain types of fixed infrastructure damage and so on. Certainly your car’s paint finish appreciates less SO2 in the atmosphere.
Of course the cost is created, that is utter nonsense. This doesn’t ‘move’ the cost to business if that were the case they wouldn’t need the tax relief for the poor affected by the increased costs of this legislation. Worst yet there is absolutely no justification for this legislation and they well know it.
“Worst yet there is absolutely no justification for this legislation and they well know it.”
Right. All those papers in all those peer-reviewed journals have been entirely made up in a giant conspiracy to crush capitalism.
The logic behind this presumption is so preposterous only paranoid conservatives can buy into it.
Sarcasm aside you are correct. The sun is warming the planet, just ask NASA. Any government funded study that disagrees with man-made global warming is disregarded and suppressed. It is a giant power grab and theft from anyone who produces anything.
“Any government funded study that disagrees with man-made global warming is disregarded and suppressed. ”
Yet private institutions can and do undertake such research, often funded by fossil fuel interests. These papers do not debunk the basic premise, they nibble at the edges of it. They also have plenty of money to publicize this research, should it actually show what you and so many others wish it would.
“It is a giant power grab and theft from anyone who produces anything.”
Please, since you’re so knowledgeable in this, do us a favor and lay out the argument for how this “giant power grab and theft” actually works. Because, in the absence on any actual evidence of same, you’re simply parading your ignorance.
The Cap and Trade legislation is a start. A tax on those who produce mandated by those who do not. The silly insistance on electric cars and the theft associated with the bankruptcy of the car companies for failing to toe the line is another. The proponents have even dropped the term ‘global warming’ – replacing it with ‘climate change’. Why ? Because the globe isn’t warming and climate is constantly changing.
And when companies leave because they cannot afford to do business in the USA, the libs will then label them unpatriotic.
“The proponents have even dropped the term ‘global warming’ – replacing it with ‘climate change’. Why ? Because the globe isn’t warming and climate is constantly changing.”
Here’s a fact of life you would do well to heed: Just because you don’t understand something does not mean it is either impossible to understand or a plot to grab something from you.
“And when companies leave because they cannot afford to do business in the USA, the libs will then label them unpatriotic.”
Really? You think electric production will move overseas? You’re even dumber than the usual trolls.
I understand it perfectly Geezer. I understand exactly what they are doing and why. I also understand the inevitable results of their foolhardy designs. Their theory, and it is just that at best, is not impossible to understand – it is just incorrect.
There are an equal amount of experts in the field that disagree that climate change is entirely man made. Can they all be wrong? What is their agenda?
Well you must be even dumber than me if you think cap & trade will affect electricity production and no other industry.
“There are an equal amount of experts in the field that disagree that climate change is entirely man made. Can they all be wrong? What is their agenda?”
1) No, there aren’t
2) Saying that it “isn’t entirely man-made” is a far cry from “there is no global warming.” In point of fact, virtually no climate scientists make the latter claim.
3) No, I’m nowhere near dumb enough to think any industry will site its plants based mainly on its energy costs. Even you aren’t that dumb, are you? You do understand that labor costs constitute a far larger percentage of total costs than energy costs do, right? Stop playing dumb.
If it is less expensive to produce a product in say …. China, companies will move production there.
Cap & trade may kill what is left of manufacturing in this country.
Ah but with a little hard legislative work we can get those pesky energy costs as high as we need to drive industry right the hell out of here. When margins are low enough it doesn’t have to be the highest total cost item that makes the whole deal unprofitable. I guess they can always cut salaries to offset the carbon tax and increased energy costs. That should work out for everyone.
What is really fun to watch are these chicken littles who won’t even acknowledge how well this scheme worked for SO2 emissions — and that the entire SO2 emission reduction program turned out to be way cheaper than any estimates and work faster than any estimates. We’ve already done this once, folks, and it worked just fine — just as you might expect abit of American ingenuity to.
I’ll acknowledge both the problem and solution for SO2. That does not make this farce any less ridiculous.
It does make your farce that much more ridiculous. Especially since you’ve no rationale for why this may work for SO2 and not for CO2. And many of the same emissions sources are affected.
Whether it reduces out CO2 emissions is inconsequential to our lives and the planet. That is the difference. You may well succeed in the goal. The goal is pointless. You won’t change the climate.