 
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 President Barack Obama WAS DEADLY SERIOUS when he made that radical statement on the campaign trail last year? He's actually going to do it... it's imminent. And the deceptive method being used to bring about this radical and regressive change in your standard of living is so-called "cap-and-trade" legislation rapidly making its way through Congress. Cap-and-trade is being peddled as sound, environmentally friendly energy policy. In actuality, it has little to do with the environment and instead is a means to deprive you of income, control your behavior and repress your liberties. And extreme liberals in Congress just now put the legislative wheels into motion to actually make it happen. On Monday, liberals fired the opening salvo in their quest to institute cap-and-trade legislation when Congressman Henry Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committee initiated hearings on HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. That’s right - liberal cap-and-trade prevarications are no longer just liberal pipe-dreams... cap-and-trade is now a horrifying reality. And it is now on the fast-track for passage by the Pelosi-Reid Congress. And to add insult to injury, it is estimated that EVERY family in the United States could be compelled under cap-and-trade to shell-out an additional $3,100.00 or more per year as a result of this cap-and-trade scheme. If we are going to beat this horrifying reality… if we are going to defeat cap-and-trade, the time to act is now! Use the button below to send your personalized Blast Faxes to Barack Obama and every Member of the Leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Tell them that you know that cap-and-trade is nothing more than a shell game and you do not want higher utility bills, higher prices at the pump, higher prices in the grocery store, diminished freedoms and a lower standard of living to help petty politicians achieve greater political power. Demand that they REJECT HR 2454 and all other cap-and-trade schemes now! 
If the button above does not work, please use this hyperlink. Just What Is Cap-And-Trade? 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 of pollution credits can sell them to those who have exceeded their government-imposed allocation of pollution credits. 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. Instead, our 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. The fact that you may be forced to make radical adjustments in your lifestyle and the fact that more money will come out of your pocket in the process is, for the extreme Left, a beneficial side-effect... sauce for the goose. In short, cap-and-trade has nothing to do with the environment, it is just one more way for those in government to pick your pocket (or even better, coerce someone else into picking your pocket), steal your liberty, regulate your behavior and diminish your standard of living in this already queasy economy. Use the button below to send your personalized Blast Faxes to Barack Obama and every Member of the Leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Tell them that you know that cap-and-trade is nothing more than a shell game and you do not want higher utility bills, higher prices at the pump, higher prices in the grocery store, diminished freedoms and a lower standard of living to help petty politicians achieve greater political power. Demand that they REJECT HR 2454 and all other cap-and-trade schemes now.
If the button above does not work, please use this hyperlink. Fewer Jobs And A Lower Standard Of Living.... “[L]et me get this straight, we are not going to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year, unless you use electricity. And we are not going to raise taxes on anyone under $250,000 per year, unless you buy gasoline… [or] unless you buy heating oil…[or] unless you use natural gas….And I thought to myself how dumb do they think we are that they can pretend that an energy tax is not an energy tax and…that every retired American who uses electricity is not going to pay it, and every person in New Hampshire who uses heating oil is not going to pay it, and every person who drives a car isn’t going to pay it. I just want to report to Attorney General Holder and President Obama that this is a nation of people courageous enough…to insist that we not be governed by people who won’t tell us the truth.” Here's what House Minority Leader John Boehner says about recent cap-and-trade proposals that are on the table: “Families and small businesses are struggling to get by, but the Democrats’ budget would raise taxes on every American who drives a car, flips on a light switch, or buys a product manufactured in the United States. In fact it would cost every family as much as $3,100 a year in additional energy costs through their ‘cap-and-trade’ energy tax, and will drive millions of good-paying American jobs overseas.” And the Republican Study Committee echoes those sentiments: “Currently, President Obama is working with Speaker Pelosi to implement a massive tax hike disguised as energy policy. At a time when families across the country are struggling to make ends meet, the President and his Democrat friends want to take over $3,000 in new taxes from every American family in order to appease extreme political cronies. This is not a solution. It is a recipe for economic disaster.” Ben Lieberman of the Heritage Foundation says: “By limiting the supply of fossil fuels... cap and trade means more expensive gasoline and electricity as well as net job losses in energy-dependent sectors. Senator Lieberman himself concedes costs into the hundreds of billions of dollars. And as the Congressional Budget Office has noted, such energy cost increases act as a regressive tax on the poor.” In other words, as far as Obama's promise to cut taxes for 95% of American wager-earners, forget it. It was nothing more than sleight-of-hand. But cap-and-trade is not just a shell game when it comes to your pocketbook. It has the same effect when it comes to jobs. Remember all those jobs Obama promised to create? Ferrara puts that illusion in perspective: "A thorough study on the effects of cap and trade conducted by a leading economics firm, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), concluded that cap and trade would result in job losses of between 1.2 million and 1.8 million by 2020, and 3 to 4 million by 2030. This is roughly the amount of jobs Obama claims will be produced by his economic stimulus package. Slower growth results in a loss of GDP for the American people of nearly $700 billion per year by 2030, which translates into lost household income of $4,000 to $6,750 per year by then." Make no mistake; cap-and-trade is not just a confiscatory income killer… it’s a job-killer. And, just where do you think all those jobs are going to go? They're going to go to China and India, and they have no intention of crippling their emerging economies with a ridiculous cap-and-trade scheme. Use the button below to send your personalized Blast Faxes to Barack Obama and every Member of the Leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Tell them that you know that cap-and-trade is nothing more than a shell game and you do not want higher utility bills, higher prices at the pump, higher prices in the grocery store, diminished freedoms and a lower standard of living to help petty politicians achieve greater political power. Demand that they REJECT HR 2454 and all other cap-and-trade schemes now.
If the button above does not work, please use this hyperlink. We Must Act Because Liberals Are Already Trying To Conceal The Truth. Boehner got that $3,100.00 figure from a study of cap-and-trade conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT in 2007. But one of the authors of the study, an MIT professor by the name of John Reilly, appeared out of nowhere and blasted Boehner for supposedly misrepresenting the figure cited in the study. So how did Boehner arrive at the figure of $3,100 per household? Boehner explains it in his own words: "We took MIT’s own number – $366 billion – and divided that by the number of U.S. households (we assumed 300 million people and an average household size of 2.56 people…which is 117 million households). Using this formula, you get roughly $3,000 per household ($3,128 using current Census figures, a little less if you use projected Census figures from 2015). Now, this doesn’t even account for costs resulting from higher prices for food and all other products that will cost more to produce under their program." So how could Reilly conceivably cry foul? To put it in Reilly's own words; "We assumed in the analysis we did that the revenue is returned to households." "Assumed... that the revenue is returned to households?" You've got to be kidding. Boehner said it better: "An MIT professor has questions about the $3,100 figure... he claims 'government rebates to consumers' must be factored in. But we all know that Democrats have no intention of using a cap-and-trade system to deliver rebates to consumers; they want the tax revenue to fund more government spending. Key Democrats – including Senators Reid and Conrad – have even said they want to use cap-and-trade to fund their bureaucrat-controlled health care plan." "The supporters of President Obama’s 'cap-and-trade' energy tax have gone to great lengths to conceal the true burden it will impose on the American people, as the Wall Street Journal reported. In reality, it would be a tax of up to $3,100 per family on every American family that drives a car, buys products manufactured in the United States, or flips on a light switch." So… do you believe Boehner or Professor Reilly? Use the button below to send your personalized Blast Faxes to Barack Obama and every Member of the Leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Tell them that you know that cap-and-trade is nothing more than a shell game and you do not want higher utility bills, higher prices at the pump, higher prices in the grocery store, diminished freedoms and a lower standard of living to help petty politicians achieve greater political power. Demand that they REJECT HR 2454 and all other cap-and-trade schemes now.
If the button above does not work, please use this hyperlink. Fraud And Abuse... Rewarding Political Cronies On Your Dime.. David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute is one of several commentators who see in this legislation a left-wing plot to reward political friends and punish political foes. “In the name of environmental protection, Democrats are readying just such a transfer on a scale that would have impressed the Pharaohs. Tens of billions of dollars, possibly hundreds of billions, will be shifted from American consumers of electricity to shareholders of favored utility companies in primarily blue states. Under the leadership of uber-liberal Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Democrats are determined to make their plan so complicated that taxpayers will not notice the flocks of dollars migrating from the middle of the country to the coasts.” Of course, such a dynamic has another implication. Cap-and-trade will be a rich man's game. In fact, one extremely wealthy liberal is already playing the cap-and-trade game. That rich liberal is Al Gore, and he lives in a 20-room house with eight bathrooms. His house - which looks like Tara in Gone With the Wind - burns carbon like you wouldn’t believe. Nashville Electric Service records show that Gore Hall consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year. To be specific: the Department of Energy says the average American consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours per year. In 2006, Gore consumed some 221,000 kilowatts hours. That’s more than 20 times the national average. Of course, in his Academy-Award-winning film, Mr. Global Warming told Americans to cut down on their consumption of electricity. So when some folks found him in that enormous house, they thought they detected hypocrisy. Not so, said Gore, “I’m carbon neutral.” “Carbon neutral?” Oh yes. At home, Tipper and Al and the kids can burn as many kilowatts and produce as much carbon dioxide as they please - just so long as they buy carbon offsets. And what are carbon offsets? They are “verifiable reductions in CO2” that somebody else is willing to sell. If a company has some extra carbon emissions lying around, it can sell them to Al Gore so he can cool every square inch of that monster house in the summer and heat it from basement to attic in the winter – just as carbon neutral as he can be. And which company sold Gore those carbon offsets? A company in Great Britain. And guess who owns a huge chunk of that company? You guessed it… Al Gore. As blogger Dan Riehl put it: Gore has built a "green money-making machine capable of eventually generating billions of dollars for investors, including himself, but he set it up so that the average Joe can't afford to play on Gore's terms." Clearly the Obamites have no intentions of transcending partisanship to help America. But to make matters worse, they appear willing to bankrupt even more Americans – and maybe America itself. Do America a favor. Let's defeat this liberal cap-and-trade scheme right here and right now! Use the button below to send your personalized Blast Faxes to Barack Obama and every Member of the Leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Tell them that you know that cap-and-trade is nothing more than a shell game and you do not want higher utility bills, higher prices at the pump, higher prices in the grocery store, diminished freedoms and a lower standard of living to help petty politicians achieve greater political power. Demand that they REJECT HR 2454 and all other cap-and-trade schemes now.
If the button above does not work, please use this hyperlink. 
Jeff Mazzella
President Center for Individual Freedom
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