Bormann skeptical about carbon tax rebate plan, negative impacts of global warming

Vox Pop

That was certainly a magnanimous gesture on the part of retired Ashland attorney Bill Bussey to offer the Taylor County Board the opportunity to sign on to the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. Such legislation would stall economic growth, increase energy costs through taxes, give the east coast financial sector another way to rape the American public through cap and trade legislation, and allow elites to push people around with an additional government legislated burden. The county board was (thankfully) not buying into what Mr. Bussey was selling. Perhaps he should have sweetened the deal with a free root canal, early transmission failure on the way home from work, or a pound of head cheese.

The math in the article does not pencil out. The article states that the act (H.R. 763) would give “a rebate of $45 per person per month, for a family of four, this would be close to $300 per month.” Thanks to the fact I attended Holy Rosary Catholic School and the Medford Public School system (before Common Core) I come up with $180 (45 x 4 =180). This tax burden is not going to end with the consumer. Corporations don’t pay taxes, they just pass them along to the end consumer. Throw in a vast bureaucracy administer this mess and there is no way this could be a gain to the American public.

Our government has a long history of collecting taxes for one thing and spending them on another. Taxes collected for Social Security are spent for current expenditures. Former governor Jim Doyle famously raided the Wisconsin transportation budget to support pet spending projects.

Now, before you call me a climate change denier and send privileged Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg to my house to castigate me for not drinking the climate change Kool Aid (I would be in double trouble as I plan to have a hamburger for supper tonight), let me say I am a climate change skeptic. And in this day and age, a healthy amount of skepticism of what you see and read in the main stream media is a good idea.

We are just a mere 10,000-12,000 years past the last ice age. That would certainly be climate change. The earth has heated and cooled throughout its history. Also if you offer groups millions of dollars to find a conclusion you are looking for from the start, those groups are going to find it for you.

This is not to say that coal and petroleum are ideal substances. But remember that the automobile was hailed as a blessing in New York City as horse manure would dry out and blow all over. But what I don’t see in this whole climate change talk is good old fashioned conservation. Perhaps the climate change protagonists would have better success promoting their cause through conservation actions rather than radical ideas such as banning cars, air travel, and coal fired electrical generation. Something as simple as planting more trees could trap more CO2 from the atmosphere.

It’s interesting to note that hedge fund manager, climate change activist, and Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer was invested in coal production previously. Move along now, nothing to see here.

As us conservatives used to say when Barack Obama was president, “I’ll keep my guns and money, you can keep the (climate) change”. — Bryan Bormann, Medford