Cap and Trade: Smoke and Mirrors

That $400 tax credit you're going to get this year will come at a price someplace else. Probably at the smokestack of your friendly, local power generating station. If the Obamalites have their way, a carbon tax is in the offing.
Talk about smoke and mirrors.

There are two things wrong with this idea:

1.) Companies will have to buy a permit to emit effluents. That's euphemia for "tax." And you know what happens when businesses are taxed? They pass the additional expense down the line, ultimately to you and me.

Don't believe me?
What happened last Summer when fuel prices hit $4/gallon?
Pizza deliveries and UPS shipments magically grew "fuel surcharges" on their invoicing.

Not only did you and I personally pay more for fuel in our cars, we also paid for the additional cost to fill the tanks of the delivery cars and trucks. Double whammy.

It didn't stop there...
Airline tickets added fuel surcharges and baggage fees.

Now that fuel is back down around $1.70/gallon, have those surcharges been relaxed?
Not on your life; and now, the airlines are thinking of charging you extra for blankets, plastic ware, and for needing to bleed your bladder in-flight. A pee tax, basically.

2.) The notion of capping carbon emissions and then being allowed to trade for "credits" to continue to pollute is ludicrous.

On the one hand, the Government is going to tax businesses who pollute, ostensibly as a disincentive to do so, while on the other hand allowing those who must pollute above and beyond their "cap" to trade credits with other, less-fouling businesses.
What ecological hypocrisy!

Cap and Trade does nothing to clean the air. The only thing Cap and Trade is going to clean is the bottoms of our pockets. The spewing of God knows what into the air will continue. We'll just be paying more for the privilege.

And companies in other places on the planet--where the local regimes do not exact a premium for polluting--will continue to blissfully billow smoke from their stacks as they always have.
I love the smell of things burning in Mexico, wafted on the breeze into South Texas in the mornings, don't you?

We the People, the United Chumps of America, get to pay for the same thing. For a lousy $400 tax credit next year.

Wonder if we could cap the crap coming out of Washington, and trade those guys for a batch of fellows with a little more common sense?