Just What Is Cap-And-Trade?
Essentially, "Cap-and-Trade" is being deceptively peddled as a system to encourage businesses to engage in "environmentally responsible activities."
But in actuality, it has little to do with the environment and instead is a means to deprive you of your income, control your behavior and repress your liberties.
Remember when President Obama said:
"We can't drive our SUVs, and eat whatever we want, and keep our homes at 72 [degrees] all the time, whether we live in the desert or the tundra, and keep consuming 25% of the world's resources with just 4% of the world's population... That's not going to happen."
Little did we know that he was deadly serious when he made that radical statement on the campaign trail last year?
Under "Cap-and-Trade," the government would issue "pollution credits." Once allocated (as the government sees fit) those who use less than their government-imposed allocation can sell them to those who have exceeded their government allocation.
Peter Ferrara, the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Institute for Policy Innovation, writing for The American Spectator explains "Cap-and-Trade" this way:
"Under this policy, every business involving CO2 emissions will have to buy permits from the government for the amount of such emissions, which will be sold in open auctions, where the permit price will be bid up. But the government will limit the number of these permits, and consequently the maximum amount of CO2 emissions allowed. Indeed, over time the government will clamp down on the amount of CO2 emissions allowed by the permits, with the emissions to be reduced by 80 percent by 2050."
And how will "Cap-and-Trade" policies change your standard of living for the worse:
Ferrara explains:
"These increased costs are effectively a new tax on the American people, even though Obama promised in his campaign that there would be no tax increase for the bottom 95 percent of income earners."
Of course, in the strictest sense, "Cap-and-Trade" is not solely a "tax." It's something much worse.
When the government taxes you, it openly confiscates your income and that income goes directly into government coffers to fund some actual or perceived need.
Under "Cap-and-Trade," no one in the government reaches directly into your pocket... nothing new is withheld from your paycheck... no new lines appear on your 1040 Form that you send to the IRS.
Instead, the government, which is already taking de facto control of the banking and automotive industry, will have yet another tool in its arsenal to effectively take control of every other company or sector of industry that produces CO2... and that's just about everybody.
And when you complain that your standard of living has gone down, you can be certain that President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and liberals in Congress will simply point the finger at "greedy industry" when they know full well that they were the ones that gave this monster life.
In short, "Cap-and-Trade" has nothing to do with the environment, it is nothing more than a mechanism that the government can now use to force others to pick your pocket, and diminish your standard of living in this already queasy economy.
