To the Editor:
    I sure wish Nancy Pelosi and our president would chat every now and then.

    Candidate Obama vowed to not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. Yet Pelosi’s House of Representatives just passed the “Cap and Trade” Bill which will double your electric bill, and increase gasoline and natural gas by 55 percent according to economic experts at the Heritage Foundation. In fact, nearly everything you buy will become more expensive.

    Just hope your not one of the 1.1 million jobs that will be lost. They’ll be outsourced to nations like China and India - who have no intention of ham-stringing their economies like we are. Farmers will especially suffer; in higher gasoline, diesel, electricity, and natural gas-derived fertilizer costs, which will erode their profits by 57 percent. But hey, what’s $9.4 trillion among friends? That’s how much poorer America will be by 2035.

     Speaking of the poor - they will be hit the hardest. The bill actually admits it, throwing a paltry bone to low-income workers in tiny subsidies that won’t begin to cover skyrocketing costs. I use the word “skyrocket” because I am quoting what Mr. Obama said his energy plan would do to electric bills. Jason Furman, the deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council, even admits the plan will cost three times what they originally thought - increasing energy costs by $250 billion a year, a 50 percent hike.

     And those rosy Congressional Budget Office numbers you keep hearing about? Turns out they didn’t bother factoring in the economic costs, including higher unemployment and reductions in wages, only accounting for how the government plans to collect their money. In a footnote the report admits, “The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap… including reductions in real wages and potential reductions in the productivity of capital and labor.”

     How’s that for transparency?

     And why are we purposefully killing the economy during a horrible recession? Global warming, of course. Because everyone knows global warming is the greatest threat to mankind.

     Or do they? According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of skeptics is swelling. More than 700 scientists officially disagree with the now famous U.N. climate summary -- 13 times the number who authored it. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to the report, now calls it, "the worst scientific scandal in history." Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." And despite what you’ve heard, the earth has actually gotten cooler since 2001, not warmer. In fact, the four leading agencies that track the earth temperature say we’re currently at 1930’s levels. Did you know 96 percent of greenhouse gases come naturally from the oceans? Are we going to drain the oceans next? And did you know that carbon dioxide makes crops and forests grow faster? Paleontologists tell us that dinosaurs lived just fine for millions of years with carbon dioxide levels 18 times higher than they are right now – and no one is claiming they died because of it. 31,000 scientists (including 9000 with Ph. D.s) have recently signed a petition rejecting human-made global warming, asserting that an elevated carbon dioxide level would actually help the planet with higher crop yields that would feed the starving masses.

    Where’s Democrat presidential candidate Paul Tsongas when you need him? He was famous for his common-sense “don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg” line. President Clinton was wise to follow his advice, and didn’t bust the Reagan boom that lasted well into the nineties. And did you know JFK actually cut taxes, which propelled the economy and added money to the federal coffers? Cap and Trade is a huge tax on every American. It will hurt the poor more than the rich. With it, the federal government will manipulate the cars you drive, the size of your refrigerator, the voltage of your light bulbs, the temperature on your thermostat, etc… In short – everything that allows you to live a prosperous, modern life.

    If you want to pay $4  at the pump and live in a tree, then you should start dancing in the discarded streets. If not, I suggest you call your Senators.

    And by the way, kudos to Lance Pailer, who refused to leave his fellow veteran behind.
Dave Belton
Buckhead
Via e-mail