The insanity of cap and trade

In his iconic 1964 "A Time For Choosing" speech, describing the potential demise of America, Ronald Reagan said, "History will record with the greatest astonishment that those with the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening."

What we see today is worse even than that. If the leftist government in Washington succeeds in passing it's Waxman-Markey "cap and trade" legislation to "fight global warming," prosperity and free enterprise as we have known them for centuries will be gone. And it won't be because those of us with the most to lose did the least to prevent it, it'll be because those of us with the most to lose legislated it intentionally.

The Wall Street Journal describes Congress' "cap and trade bill" as the single largest tax increase in the history of the United States (counting another strike against President Barack Obama's "not any tax" campaign promise).

Facing difficulty jamming the 900-page proposal (which almost nobody has read) through the House of Representatives, today the potentates in Congress bribed a few members with a 300-page amendment (which almost nobody has read). With the promise of a few sweetening handouts (which almost nobody has read), Waxman-Markey passed on a 219-212 vote.

Even Mr. Obama's hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, says the bill (supported by the Obama Administration) is far too radical. Careful analysis of cap and trade shows that, 25 years from now, it will cost a family of four as much as $6,800 a year. (For those keeping score at home, $6,800 is a lot.)

For a moment, consider what government is capping and trading: Carbon emissions. Everything we do emits carbon! Driving cars, turning on light switches, riding buses, Twittering, cooking, washing laundry, operating electric shavers, even breathing. What insanity has so enveloped Washington that it thinks it can morally tax all that? And what stupidity has struck it that it thinks doing so won't be an economic disaster?

Government twits won't advertise that they intend to tax every second of every day of our lives, at least not at first. But when the income tax was established in 1913, it was 1 percent. The beta version of this tax will be its most affordable version.

All this to stop "global warming" -- the left's most bizarre concoction since its insistence that the ice age was coming. Now that the man-made global warming hysteria has been rejected by everyone with a brain (and by many countries that tried and failed to change the weather by fiat, and then realized they were wasting their time and harming their citizens), leftists in the American government are hoping to enact the most idiotic, restrictive, expensive "anti-global-warming" plan yet.

Yes, it's embarrassing. But more than that, it'll do far more damage to America than all the carbon emissions in all the history of the world.