Crap-and-Tax Is a Scam (duh), But Goldman Sachs Stands to Make a Fortune Off It

O'Reilly's coverage of the Al Gore scandal is spot-on, particularly Varney's comments. O'Reilly's 'science,' not so much. The bigger picture is that Al Gore and the rest of the pseudo-scientists contrived this cart-before-the-horse nonsense. Global warming causes higher CO2 emissions, not the other way around. Watch this film, which explains it all.

Here's National Center's rundown of the Rolling Stone article.

Rolling Stone: Cap and Trade is a Carbon Tax Structured So Private Interests Collect the Revenues

Tom Borelli of our Free Enterprise Project has repeatedly warned Americans that passage of cap-and-trade will lead to the creation of a new economic bubble (see here, here or here).

Now Rolling Stone magazine is getting into the act, and it's not pulling any punches.

A sample paragraph to whet your appetite:

...cap-and-trade, as envisioned by Goldman [Sachs], is really just a carbon tax structured so that private interests collect the revenues. Instead of simply imposing a fixed government levy on carbon pollution and forcing unclean energy producers to pay for the mess they make, cap-and-trade will allow a small tribe of greedy-as-hell Wall Street swine to turn yet another commodities market into a private tax collection scheme. This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it's even collected. [Emphasis in the original]

"If it's going to be a tax, I would prefer that Washington set the tax and collect it," says Michael Masters, the hedge fund director who spoke out against oil futures speculation. "But we're saying that Wall Street can set the tax, and Wall Street can collect the tax. That's the last thing in the world I want. It's just asinine."

Read Rolling Stone's "The Great American Bubble Machine" by Matt Taibbi for the rest of the story.

We've said all along that if you actually believe human beings are causing dangerous global warming, and you honestly believe that this global warming must be fought by suppressing energy use, the only approach that has any hope of not being corrupt is increasing energy taxes. We do oppose increasing energy taxes, but would prefer that by far to cap-and-trade.

I did not expect to see this sentiment in Rolling Stone, but we welcome it to the club.