Everyone is up in arms this week about healthcare reform. Healthcare is never going to get passed and the only reason we are focused on healthcare is to take our focus off 2 pieces of legislation that are going through right now:

#1 - Cap and Trade will pass the House on Friday.

#2 - The Senate will pass card check legislation this week.

These are both huge bills that need to be argued in the public, but instead the focus is on the polarizing topic of healthcare.





rouse(?) , rouge(?) - whatever, you get the point.

Healthcare reform seemed inevitable until just recently, and is certainly something people want, so I don't really think it was a trick, y'know. Democrats in Washington weren't sitting around twirling their mustaches being like, "yes yes, focus on healthcare reform, and meanwhile we'll destroy your industries... mwahahahahahaha!" But, y'know, I suppose you never know, right? Or, to be less sarcastic: healthcare reform was not a ruse.

Now, as for cap and trade, it seemed like it had a good degree of support from both commercial and environmental interests. But, of course, you can't expect the folks who fill the pews in the church of the almighty dollar to make even the smallest sacrifice in terms of the economic status quo in the public interest. Minimizing negative externalaties would be completely out of line, and sometimes the costs of products just need to be shucked off on those who never agreed to bear them, and who derive no benefit for taking upon such costs . Because let's be honest here. The folks strongly opposing cap and trade would strongly oppose pretty much any attempt to prevent the public at large from shouldering such expenses.

And of course, people will say that whatever costs you impose upon a business will ultimately be covered by consumers, and they will be if the business makes a profit, albeit specific increases in costs can be absorbed by a business. Nevertheless, why shouldn't consumers cover all the costs of what they consume? If an farmer in Argentina has his crops devoured by insects whose numbers exploded because of environmental change, then it would seem he is taking upon the expenses involved involved in someone else's success, given how comparitively little he probably contributed to carbon emissions. Is that fair?

Capitalism is not a zero sum game, and two parties can both come away winners in a transaction, and they certainly don't have to do so at the expense of an external party. But they certainly can do so at the expense of an external party. A cap and trade system would seem to minimize such extranalities, which I'd say is a good thing. Do opponents of the system (beyond environmentalists who oppose it for not going far enough) have a proposal of their own for how to eliminate extranalities, or do they simply advocate the status quo whereas unwilling and unwitting parties cover the expenses involved in the gain of others?

ruse - I couldn't remember that to save my life.


When you have legislation that nobody is in favor of, the only conclusion I can come to is people who want it passed are orchestrating a diversion to get it through. Really, the opposition to cap and trade has been fairly severe for the last several years. The people that have been so vocally against cap and trade only seem to be talking about ObamaCare. Makes me a conspiracy nut, so be it. I just don't see any other explanation.



Raise taxes in a recession. Does anyone see a problem with this idea?

Sounds like you listened to Beck today too

It's the ol' bait and switch. They are basically trying to distract the American people with health care... I'm on to their game tho. It's like a magician, watch the hand they aren't using to see what they really are doing.

Card check will cut the other leg off the auto industry basically and investors will flee... thats a no brainer.

Cap and trade will regulate everything in your life down to your BBQ grill which emits CO2 all based on a hoax to soak the taxpayers in this country to pay for an already mismanaged government... too bad people won't see its effects until after it's passed. The days of performance cars, BBQ's, lighting your chimney on a cold winter night, and running your lawnmower without paying a tax are over. R.I.P. personal liberty if god forbid this gets passed.

America + cap in trade + card check =

And to back up the suggestion that folks oppose cap and trade, you demonstrate that how folks respond to a poll depends upon how the poll is phrased? The question in that poll you posted is just ridiculously leading. It's not so much a question as a pitch followed by a question. If the only way you can get poll results showing that people oppose cap and trade is to do that, then I'm going to have to go out on a limb and say there isn't massive opposition at all.

I see nothing wrong with the phrasing. The question has to be specific because a lot of people do not know what cap-and-trade is. Which is another reason it would be nice to debate the issue instead of push it through.

Here's another one from zogby that has similar results:
Obama Administration Gets Negative Marks in First 100 Days

yeah, I was floored. I haven't really kept up with things, but today was the first time I'd heard that cap-and-trade was getting voted on. I can't believe this huge tax is getting put through and there's no opposition or debate. On freak'n global warming none the less?!? What gets me is its becoming more apparent that NOBODY in Washington really cares at all about saving/creating jobs. Shutting down GM dealers, taxing energy companies, restricting oil development...

The question was leading, as is the one you posted in that post. For one thing, citing the average cost is misleading because mean averages are heavily skewed by outliers. For example, if 9 households were to have to pay $10 more, and 1 would have to pay $10,000 dollars more, the mean cost per household would be $1,000. The median cost per household would be $10: a number more reflective of what someone answering the poll is likely to have to pay. The author of the study from which the $800 figure is taken, estimates the increased cost to the typical family in 2015 to be $80, but even that figure is probably high given the study in question analyzed a generic cap and trade program, as opposed to the one being proposed, and furthermore was based on optimistic estimates about the price of gas and decidedly pessimistic estimates about the growth of renewables.

Exclusive: MIT Professor says GOP, Weekly Standard “misrepresentation” of his April 2007 study to project costs for Waxman-Markey is “inappropriate,” “silly” and “just wrong”

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I've read the summary of the bill in question (which implements more than just a cap and trade system, btw), and also found this:

-http://energycommerce.house.gov/Pres...epasummary.pdf

Bush screwed up the economy, Obama gets stuck with the aftermath, and the Right Wing develops a case of amnesia?

Oh, and since this thread is at least partly about government-run health care, you should know that only 20% of Americans oppose the idea:

Wide Support for Government-Run Health

But yeah, the old Democratic diversion trick, how well it works. Good thing Americans are too stupid to follow more than one story at once.

I didn't notice that quoted bit. Waxman-Markey isn't a tax increase, and furthermore much of the legislation in it doesn't take effect for years and years, by which time we'll presumably be out of the recession.

If you want a really close look at government-run health care, you should pay a visit to some VA hospitals. The health care personnel are great, but the system is so overloaded that there aren't enough personnel, or enough beds, or enough medications to serve all the individuals who are waiting in ever-increasing lines. It's not unusual for a patient who drastically needs an operation to have to wait many weeks, months or in some cases even years. This is exactly what is going to happen to every one of our hospitals and medical facilities in a government run operation.