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Rogue Fact: Palin falsely suggests poor "hit hardest" by cap-and-trade

November 14, 2009 4:39 pm ET — 4 Comments

In her memoir, Sarah Palin falsely suggests that "those hit hardest [by cap-and-trade] will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet" and that President Obama "has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to 'skyrocket.' " However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that the poorest Americans will benefit under the cap-and-trade bill that passed in the House in June -- a bill the Obama administration supported, but which Obama was not referring to in making his "skyrocket" comment.

From Pages 390-391 of Going Rogue: An American Life:

The lesson in all of this is that we can't abandon free-market principles in order to save the free market. It doesn't work that way. The cure only makes the disease worse.

One such cure: Washington's misguided "Cap and Trade" plan. But let's call it what it is: a "Cap and Tax" program.

[...]

The president has already admitted that the policy he seeks will cause our electricity bills to "skyrocket." Sadly, those hit hardest will be those who are already struggling to make ends meet. So much for the campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. This is a tax on everyone.

The poorest will benefit under House cap-and-trade bill

CBO says poorest quintile will benefit from Waxman-Markey. The CBO found that in 2020, the version of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill that passed the House in June with the support of the Obama administration would result in a $125 average annual benefit to the quintile of households with the lowest income and a $160 average annual cost to all American households.

Obama's "skyrocket" comment directed at a different energy plan

Obama was talking about a different plan causing energy costs to "skyrocket." As the Associated Press noted in fact-checking Palin's book, Obama was not talking about the cap-and-trade legislation that has since passed in the House when he referred to energy costs "necessarily skyrocket[ting]." When Obama made that statement to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in January 2008, he was describing a cap-and-trade proposal that would auction off 100 percent of available carbon allowances, and he made no mention at the time of a plan to compensate consumers for potential cost increases. But as PolitiFact.com noted, the Waxman-Markey bill initially would distribute most of the carbon allocations for free and contains substantial provisions to offset costs to consumers, and thus "should reduce costs to consumers."

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    • Author by gpp (November 15, 2009 8:47 pm ET)
         
      Ok, everyone who keeps talking about consensus on AGW.

      Here is a list of 450 peer reviewed papers supporting skepticism of man made global warming.

      http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html

      Your text to link here...

      No more talk about consensus on this blog or anywhere else from now on.

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    • Author by gpp (November 15, 2009 9:33 pm ET)
         
      This is one reason why the cap and trade legislation does not make any sense.

      Waxman-Markey's goal is just slightly more than 1 billion tons of greenhouse-gas emissions in 2050. The last time this nation had that small an amount was 1910, when there were only 92 million Americans, 328 million fewer than the 420 million projected for 2050. To meet the 83 percent reduction target in a nation of 420 million, per capita carbon-dioxide emissions would have to be no more than 2.4 tons per person, which is one quarter the per capita emissions of 1910, a level probably last seen when the population was 45 million—in 1875.

      Life expectancy was half that of today, in 1875.

      What we need is to build about 100 new nuclear plants, they dont produce CO2, and we could use the clean energy they produce.
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    • Author by gpp (November 16, 2009 10:47 am ET)
         
      The US has the longest record of tracking temperatures. Here is a map of weather stations with at least 100 years of data.
      [http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/images/GHCN-1900.gif]


      Take a look at when the US had its warmest temperatures, not in the past decade.[http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Statedecadalrecords.jpg]

      Where is all the warming? In the 1930s.
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      • Author by kurticusrex (November 17, 2009 10:52 am ET)
           
        @gpp: This is classic! Do you realize that your graph has ABSOLUTELY no meaning? There is zero, ZERO real information in this graph. Your vertical axis has no label. No label means no specificity. What was supposed to be so high in the 30s? The temp? Celsius or Fahrenheit? Rolling 12 month average? Am I to understand that in the 1900's and the 1940's the yearly mean temperature was 0? Oh, how can the label be "All-time Record Hights By State" when there is no delination of temperatures BY STATE. Seriously, this kind of 'evidence' is so blatantly coming from a Renastican troll, paid by one of Dick Armey's minions, that I can only laugh at your inability to understand just how incapable you are of effectual communication. So what do you do? Just lie. Make things up. I would laugh but the sad truth is that you probably think this "graph" actually has value.

        P.S. Have you ever met an athiest named Christian? Think on that one.
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