Global warming legislation: A warning from California

From a speech on the House floor by California Representative Tom McClintock, on the recently passed Waxman-Markey carbon tax bill:

... Three years ago, I stood on the floor of the California Senate and watched a similar celebration over a similar bill, Assembly Bill 32. And I have spent the last three years watching as that law has dangerously deepened California's recession. It uses a different mechanism than cap and trade, but the objective is the same: to force a dramatic reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Until that bill took effect, California's unemployment numbers tracked very closely with the national unemployment rate. But then, in January of 2007, California's unemployment rate began a steady upward divergence from the national jobless figures. Today, California's unemployment rate is more than two points above the national rate, and at its highest point since 1941.

What is it that happened in January 2007? AB 32 took effect and began shutting down entire segments of California's economy. Let me give you one example from my district.

The city of Truckee, Calif., was about to sign a long-term power contract to get its electricity from a new, EPA-approved coal-fired electricity plant in Utah. AB 32 and companion legislation caused them to abandon that contract. The replacement power they acquired literally doubled their electricity costs.

So when economists warn that we can expect electricity prices to double under the cap and trade bill, I can tell you from bitter experience that in my district, that's not a future prediction, that is a historical fact.

Gov. Schwarzenegger assured us that AB 32 would mean an explosion of new, green jobs — exactly the same promises we're hearing from cap and trade supporters. In California, exactly the opposite has happened. We have lost so many jobs the UC Santa Barbara economic forecast is now using the D-word — depression — to discuss California's job market. ...

Read the rest here.

Quote of the day

From Maxed Out Mama, on the House passage last week of the Waxman-Markey carbon tax bill:

At some point, the peasants will revolt. It is almost as if this bill was a conspiracy of California Democrats who feel the need to bankrupt the rest of this country so that California will have an equal chance at funding, or something like that.
...
Let's hope it can be stopped in the Senate. Even if it is, our nation has lost something here, and that something is the principal legislative body's grasp on reality. It is as if the House of Representatives suddenly passed a vote to reduce gravity by 10 percent in order to lessen the costs of obesity to putatively cut Medicare costs in the future. Truly amazing.

More here. Our descent into madness continues unabated. The surest way to destroy our economy, and thus our nation's future, is to dramatically raise the cost of energy, while our competitors on the world stage seek to lower theirs. To do so in the face of the worst recession since the Great Depression is lunacy writ large.

It's like you're running a marathon having shot yourself in the foot at the starting line. You're limping along in pain relying on your good foot, when, halfway through the marathon, you decide to shoot yourself in the good foot to "even things out", in the demented belief that you'll somehow run faster with both feet shot to bits. Here's a hint: If you couldn't run well on the one foot that was shot out, you likely still can't run well on that foot when you shoot the other foot out. Even if you're ahead of the field when you do it, you'll soon be overtaken, and you'll lose the race. Except in this case, losing the race means a life of poverty and privation for your people.

Perhaps, before destroying our nation by listening to the false prophets of the religion of Global Warmism, who apparently see our salvation in the self-inflicted destruction of our economy and its means of production, we should ponder the story of the Xhosa.

As President Reagan said in his first inaugural address back in 1981, when the country was still reeling from the Carter years,

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.

It depends on what the meaning of "state" is, I guess

Op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the unconstitutionality of the proposed D.C. Voting Rights Act:

President Barack Obama has the wind in his sails. After a decisive victory, he has launched the greatest expansion of federal government in American history. Republicans, still licking their wounds from November's election, have yet to form an effective political opposition. For now, that leaves the Constitution's structural limits on governmental power as the only potent brake on government further reshaping our society.

Accordingly, Republicans should be the first to insist that these requirements be strictly observed. Unfortunately, a number of congressional Republicans already are abandoning constitutional fidelity by supporting the D.C. Voting Rights Act. The fact that the Act's objective could easily be secured in a constitutionally proper manner makes their support all the worse.

The D.C. Voting Rights Act, which passed by a 61-37 vote in the Senate and is now being considered in the House of Representatives, would grant Washington, D.C., voting representation in that body. The District's current delegate to Congress would be transformed into an actual voting member of the House. In addition, and as an obvious sop to Republican sensibilities, the state of Utah would be awarded an additional House seat. (This would have happened in any case as a projected result of the reapportionment process triggered by the 2010 census.)

The Constitution, however, limits representation in Congress to the people of the states. This requirement applies both to the Senate and the House. With regard to the House, Article I, Section 2 provides that "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States."

Washington, D.C., of course, is not a state. Indeed, the Constitution's Framers deliberately established the federal capital as a non-state over which Congress would have "exclusive" legislative authority. ...
...
Today, Congress cannot avoid the Framers' intent, or the Constitution's plain language, by simply "considering" the District of Columbia to be a congressional district. Yet this is precisely the D.C. Voting Rights Act approach. If Congress sidesteps clear constitutional requirements, then no provision of the Constitution would be immune from such casual revision.

Congress also cannot grant the District of Columbia a voting House member based upon Congress's constitutional right to "be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members" -- an article that has been touted by the Act's supporters. This merely permits each chamber to determine whether the qualifications established by the Constitution -- with respect to age, citizenship and residence -- have been met. Congress cannot excuse or dispense any qualification, including and especially the requirement that House members be elected by the people of the states.

If the District of Columbia is to have voting representation in the House, the Constitution must first be amended. ...

Op-ed here. I sometimes wonder if our wanna-be rulers (elected servants, dammit!) even know we have a Constitution.