Market manipulation matters in Dem energy scam

Thomas Friedman:

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Have no doubt, the president is off to a terrific start: His stimulus package will provide an incredible boost for all forms of renewable energy. The energy bill being drafted by House Democrats Henry Waxman and Ed Markey contains unprecedented incentives for energy efficiency and clean-tech innovation. And the ruling from Mr. Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency saying that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that threatens public health was courageous and historic.

But while all of that is hugely important, we must not fool ourselves, as we have done for so many years: Price matters. Without a fixed, long-term, durable price on carbon, none of the Obama clean-tech initiatives will achieve the scale needed to have an impact on climate change or make America the leader it must be in the next great industrial revolution: E.T., or energy technology. At this stage, I’d settle for any carbon price mechanism — cap and trade, fee-bates, carbon tax and/or gasoline tax — as long as it real and provides consumers and investors a long-term incentive to shift to clean cars, appliances and buildings.

Bob Lutz, a vice chairman at General Motors, offers a useful example of why price matters. When Congress demands that Detroit make smaller, lighter, better mileage vehicles, but then refuses to put a higher price on carbon — like with a gasoline tax — so more consumers will want to buy these smaller cars, said Lutz, it is the equivalent of ordering all American shirtmakers to make only size smalls while never asking the American people to go on a diet. You’re not going to sell a lot of size smalls.

Have no doubt: From right-wing tea parties to coal states to manufacturers, there is going to be a no-holds-barred campaign to kill any carbon price signal, including cap and trade. A vast army of lobbyists is already working against it. Only President Obama can blunt this. Only he has the platform for framing and elevating the issue properly and taking it to the American people with the passion and clarity needed to move the country. It will take more than one speech.

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If the oil companies were trying to manipulate prices like this people like Friedman would be screaming bloody murder. In fact people like Markey and Waxman do just that every time market prices rise on their own. That is because greedy Democrats want to skim the money off the top and give it to people whose products are not as efficient or useful. If they were, there would be no need for these carbon scams.

So they have decided that the way to go is to introduce mechanisms that would get a stock broker thrown in jail if he tried them. Friedman is all for this fraud on the market place. Some of these scams are supposed to provide rebates back to consumers. if they meet the control freak agenda of people like Markey and Waxman. It is part of the left's anti freedom agenda.

Global Warming or climate change as they like to call it now fits neatly in their scheme to control both business and our lives. Personally, I would rather be warm and free than cold and controlled.