“The decision today by the Senate leadership to shelve flawed spill legislation is a good one. The bill proposed by the Democratic leadership is not an effective or reasoned response to the spill. Instead it will cost American jobs, threaten our fragile economic recovery and jeopardize our energy security.

“Among the legislation’s shortcoming is the elimination of the cap on oil spill liability. Unlimited liability for spill damages would force most oil and natural gas companies out of the Gulf of Mexico because they would be unable to purchase insurance. This would put thousands of American jobs at risk and reduce the energy supplies we get from the Gulf.

“A robust, workable oil spill liability program – possibly including a mutual insurance element – is achievable and would cover the cost of a large spill without shifting huge costs to taxpayers.

“The bill falls short again in seeking to impose a new layer of federal regulation on hydraulic fracturing. This technology is essential to developing America’s vast reserves of shale gas, and states already do a good job regulating its use. Superfluous federal legislation would slow development of these vital domestic supplies of clean-burning energy and hundreds of thousands of new jobs associated its development.

“We strongly believe a bill is possible that could enhance offshore safety and ensure payment of damages from possible future accidents without discouraging job creation or domestic energy development. We stand ready to work with the Senate towards this goal.”

Today, Congress once again ignored what Americans want and introduced a new gasoline tax as part of a global warming bill that also contains a cap and trade energy tax on utilities. The section on the gas tax begins on p. 361.

Introduced by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), this bill requires American oil companies to pay a fee to the government for their global warming emissions.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who helped craft the gas tax, admitted the fee “will be passed on” to motorists in the form of higher gasoline prices.

But Senators Kerry and Lieberman are offended that any American would dare call it a gas tax.

Don’t be fooled. This is a government requirement that will increase the cost of gasoline. It’s a tax. So not only will we have to pay more for gas, we have the added insult of Senators insisting that what we can plainly see as a new gas tax is not actually a gas tax.

The American people know better. And according to an American Solutions poll, 71% of Americans oppose this new gas tax, even if politicians are insisting it is not a gas tax.

In addition, this bill creates a cap and trade system that will dramatically increase the cost of residential and commercial electricity prices. 

Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says cap and trade will kill jobs and reduce American productivity.

With one bill, Congress will raise gasoline and electricity prices, raise the cost of energy, and kill jobs. This is not the way to create jobs and prosperity.

This bill is wrong for America. Will you help us defeat it?

We need to get information about this new tax to as many people as possible in the next 48 hours. Please visit our “Action Center” to forward your friends a special message about this gas tax.

Thank you,

Vince Haley
Vice-President of Policy

This one is really informative. You can see how your RAT IS VOTING.
Shortcut to: http://www.killcarb.org/

Editor’s note: Lynn Woolsey Congress needs to become Jim Judd for Congress! California’s 6th District needs him! Bring back jobs! Bring back the economy! Stop the spending! Stop overtaxation!

And after all, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth making a profit at it, right? You wouldn’t think so to hear some liberals talk. And what amazes me is the number of San Francisco Realtors who really think this administration and our Congress is doing a good job while the rest of us in the outlying areas are being put out of business.

Why do they support him? Because the really bad market hasn’t hit them yet. Yes, San Francisco sales are down, but that has happened in other years. No big deal. So again it’s a case of, “it’s all about me.” It’s selfish and it’s un-American. Being economically naive, they don’t realize that what Obama and his Democrat pals in Congress are doing and planning on doing is going to take us into that double dip recession experts have been talking about. Just because it’s not bad yet doesn’t mean it can’t get that way… and fast!

Ask me if big government and over-regulation are bad, I say yes they are. But the market is very dynamic. Eventually it finds equilibrium. Regulators have put all sorts of restrictions on business for years. Usually, once things calm down, the business figures out a way to get back to doing business. When things are stable, business owners can make plans even if the government has made bad decisions and sticks with them.

But what has happened during this administration is the constant changing of rules so that, in this chaos, none of the businesses have a chance to regroup and figure out how to turn that profit. With new Health Care regulations, Cap and Trade around the corner and a VAT tax on the horizon (even though the Senate passed a resolution against it), we could be in big trouble because businesses can’t make plans. It’s like building a house on shifting sand. It can’t be done.

Think of it. A national sales tax at every level of production, in addition to the ones already in effect, will drive up costs for everyone. After all, to stay in business, a company has to have a profit to be a going concern. A national sales tax of 0.05% doesn’t sound like much until you start talking about really big numbers. And we all know that just as compound interest can make us really rich, so can compound taxes can make us really poor.

If this bunch of politicians were purposely trying to send us into a depression, they are doing all the right things. Raising taxes during a recession will only stagnate our economy and could possibly cause it to fail. More businesses will lay people off because it will be just too expensive to keep them with the shrinking margins. Other businesses will give up and go under creating new unemployment. With people out of work, unable to pay their mortgages and property taxes, foreclosures will increase dramatically.

Short sales might be a new “industry” for Realtors, the lemonade made from lemons in this case. But what if we prefer caviar? More on this later.

FedUpEditor

Newsmax: With the battle over healthcare reform won, President Barack Obama’s allies in Congress are turning their attention to climate change legislation — and drawing opposition from both sides of the issue.

Sen. John Kerry, a proponent of Congressional action on climate change, said administration officials can now “pour their energy and attention” into the issue.

“In the wake of healthcare’s passage, we have a strong case to make that this can be the next breakthrough legislative fight,” the Massachusetts Democrat declared.

“Climate legislation is the single best opportunity we have to create jobs, reduce pollution and stop sending billions overseas for foreign oil from countries that would do us harm . . . This can happen.”

In June, the House passed a bill that would approve a “cap-and-trade” system to restrict greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. The Senate has yet to act on similar legislation.

Kerry hopes to win Republican support and is working with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on climate legislation, according to a report from AFP.

But most Republicans oppose climate change legislation, warning that it will harm the economy, and some have sought to take away the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Some environmentalists also oppose the House bill, which would curb emissions by only 17 percent by 2020 compared to 2005 levels — much less than promised by the European Union and Japan.

They also fear that a Kerry-Graham bill would likely back nuclear energy and offshore oil drilling — “anathema to some environmentalists,” AFP observed — and water down cap-and-trade provisions.

“If the senators feel it’s their job to move from what was one of the biggest corporate giveaways in American history to make something that’s even more friendly to polluting industry, that would be a huge mistake,” said Nick Berning, director of public advocacy at Friends of the Earth.

In a Newsmax interview on Monday, Sen. Kit Bond was asked if passage of the healthcare bill will embolden Obama and the Democrats to forge ahead with cap-and-trade and other items on their agenda.

“I hope it will not,” the Missouri Republican said.

“But as I believe the president has said, passage of this government takeover of healthcare — he didn’t call it that, I did — is a template for how we’re going to deal with the rest of the economy.”

API outlined its position on job creation in a news release here. I’ve also written a blog post about the topic here.

Jane Van Ryan

Man Made Global Warming Hoax Exposed – OPINION

My biggest beef with the “science” of man-made global warming is that this hoax is being used to make policies which are hurting America. If people believed it and went on about their business, that would be one thing. But they are in our government which is forcing all sorts of decisions and taxes upon us based on this lie.

It has been shown that prosperity creates a cleaner environment so why would environmentalists want to trade all that for everyone living in a hut and pooping in a compost? Sheryl Crowe wants us all to be limited to one square of toilet paper. So much craziness abounds. Why would that be?

Because if there is no crisis, there are no dollars. If the earth only has 10 years before all is lost (as was reported 20 years ago), who wouldn’t throw billions of dollars at studies to see if we could reverse the trend? Seas were supposed to boil, crops were going to burn, forests were going to become deserts. So under this pretense, what we did was throw money at the problem to try and solve it. The problem was, the crisis was created to tug at our heart strings and pull at our wallets. Plus, no progress has ever been reported, no matter how much money we seem to spend.

The media has gone right along with the hoax as willing accomplices. Even commercials have gotten into the act and jumped on the “save the planet” bandwagon. All of this reinforces the notion that global warming is really happening. The only problem is that no warming has happened for the past 10 years. And why has the sun’s activity been taken out of the discussion altogether?

When having my discussion with seemingly reasonable people about the latest discovery of the e-mails illustrating the scam being perpetrated by many in the “global warming industry”, I often come up against the argument that man has certainly made his share of messes in the world. While true, is this evidence that man is causing global warming? Or that the earth’s temperatures are really rising? I don’t think so. I admit man can make a mess of things. But how long would the destruction last if we just left that area alone to nature?

In Panama, a project we are involved in was stopped for over two years because of financial and union issues and was essentially deserted. They had to hire people to “beat back” the jungle which kept threatening to overtake the land that had been cleared and building had begun. Many of the structures that had been started had to be torn down and rebuilt because of decay and pests after construction started up again. My point is, even on a small scale, this shows how nature finds a way to reclaim what was once belonged to it. If the earth recovers when man goes away, isn’t this same recovery happening while we are standing around in the middle of it? Over time, the earth recovers because there is a greater intelligence running things.

So if we can’t count on science to tell us the truth based on the facts, then it just becomes politics. If people are ignoring facts to prove a preconceived conclusion, then they are not scientists, but manipulators. And make no mistake; these people are zealots. As with any zealot, they have their followers.

Actor Ed Begley Jr. and people like him live their whole lives around the global warming lie. They are so invested in being right, they bristle when challenged at the notion that maybe they have been lied to. As a result they become willing dupes in the propaganda. Because of their notoriety, people listen to them and believe what they are saying, even though they have no background in science. Will we ever get an apology from them? I think they are so invested in being right that they will go to their graves convinced they are right, regardless of the truth. Just like the people who believe that 9/11 was a planned event, they will not be talked out of their beliefs.

Al Gore, king of the environmental movement, has a house that consumes many times the amount of energy as a common household does in year. While flying around the world in his huge jet from appearance to appearance, he tells us we must all do our share to cut our carbon output. I say walk the talk, Al.

What really amazes me is Gore’s carbon credit scam. In Mill Valley, I see people proudly displaying “TerraPass” bumper stickers saying to the world, “I’m gullible as hell!” The mathematics of this scam don’t work out. Let me get this straight. They are paying for the privilege to pollute more than their share by buying credits from someone who doesn’t pollute as much? How does that REDUCE carbon output? It doesn’t. We are also told these carbon offset companies will plant a few trees on your behalf. Has anyone proven that the trees actually been planted? And has anyone done the math on how many trees it takes to offset the carbon footprint of one person? I just don’t believe the earth is that delicate.

- FedUpEditor

Reid’s bill has the same abortion and illegal immigrant coverage we didn’t like the first time around, the provisions they promised to take out in the House, so you know they will try and put it all back once it is in conference. They must. There is no reason to pass the bill otherwise.

Some Republican heroes are stepping to the front to challenge this massive piece of… legislation by threatening to read the entire bill on the floor of the Senate. This is almost equal to a filibuster, is it not?

I am working on letters to the editor regarding Woolsey’s cap and trade votes and post them once I have finished. I also have a take on the Hopenhagen summit that I culled from listening to Rush and reading a few news stories. All this hot air in Washington is probably doing more to contribute to man-made global warming (if there is such a thing) than any amount of car exhaust or factory emissions!

Now I know how our parents felt during the years of WWII, only they were fighting enemies on the outside of our country. Instead, we are fighting the enemies who are inside our government!

- FedUpEditor