Introductory Comments by Joseph D’Aleo, CCM
Having spent 6 years as a college professor in the beautiful Green Mountain State and bringing my family each year to vacation during fall foliage season, Vermont is one of my favorite places.
The state is called the Green Mountain State and is regarded by many as ground zero for the Green movement. You may recall we reported that back in 1979, the Vermont town of Winooski wanted to put a geodesic dome over the town to protect them from the cold and the coming ice age. As John McClaughry reports in this Bennington Banner Op Ed, the state’s politicians see a different form of green ($) in their future and are working on new plans and Vermonters who are by nature conservationists and environmentalist will have a steep price to pay.
By John McClaughry is President of the Ethan Allen Institute (www.ethanallen. org)
The Democratic leaders of the Legislature, terrified by the Menace of Global Warming, spent most of this year’s session trying to find one or more taxes to increase to pay for a new government “thermal efficiency” utility. This entity would spend $6 million a year to send its employees around the state to explain to Vermonters that if they would just curb their consumption of heating fuels, they would save money! They finally settled on taxing the electricity produced by the state’s cleanest, most reliable, lowest-price provider of electrical energy, the Entergy Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Senate leader Peter Shumlin, ardently anti-nuclear, cleverly noticed that Yankee’s sales to Vermont utilities are under contract at a very favorable (for consumers) rate until 2012. Thus the new energy tax would have fallen upon out of state utilities that buy the remaining 20 percent of Yankee’s output, or upon Entergy’s shareholders who don’t happen to live in Vermont.
In announcing the new contract Speaker Symington said that a tax on Vermont Yankee is now off the table. So where else to find $25 million to fund the thermal efficiency utility? There’s one very logical answer: the carbon tax.
The bill to impose the carbon tax is already in the Ways and Means Committee (H.365, sponsored by Rep. David Sharpe of Bristol.) It would impose a retail sales tax of nine cents per gallon of gasoline and fuel oil, ten cents a gallon of diesel, six cents per gallon of LPG, and one twentieth of a cent per cubic foot of natural gas. A tax on burning wood mercifully — if illogically is not included.
Of course, some selfish people who aren’t so willing to sacrifice to save the planet will object to a carbon tax. For instance: home owners, renters, car drivers, truck drivers, equipment operators, manufacturers, farmers, ski areas, restaurant and lodging businesses, service businesses, contractors, sportsmen, local governments, hospitals, volunteer fire departments, soccer moms. Read more here.
According to the Drudge Report on Wednesday notes from CNN’s Monday news meeting network president Jon Klein tells employees to use the California fire tragedy to “push” their “Planet in Peril” special, but warns reporters not to “irresponsibly link” the fires to “Global Warming.” Meanwhile as Dr. Scott Campbell has posted below, congress followed suit.
More Politicization
By Dr. Scott Campbell, VP Technology, SCI Engineered Materials
The very liberal leader of the U. S. Senate recently made this statement about the grassfires that are ravaging communities in Southern California: “One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday, stressing the need to pass the Democrats’ comprehensive energy package.
The true statement should be “The main reason why we have the fires in California is the prohibition against clearing up accumulated brush from the areas surrounding housing developments that were instituted at the insistence of the Sierra Club and other environmental groups.” California has always had grassfires. The environmental groups are the true cause of the catastrophic losses in the communities affected by these fires. However, staying true to Marxism, it’s the capitalist who are to blame not the holy and righteous actions of the government.
The American public seem to be catching on to this however. The leadership Pelosi and Reid have yielded the lowest approval ratings for congress in the history of poll taking in this country. Only 11% approve of their performance.
By Patrick J. Buchanan, WorldNetDaily
The scaremongers are not always wrong. The Trojans should have listened to Cassandra. But history shows that the scaremongers are usually wrong. Is then global warming – a steady rise in the temperature of the Earth to where the polar ice caps melt, oceans rise 23 feet, cities sink into the sea and horrendous hurricanes devastate the land – an imminent and mortal danger?
Put me down as a disbeliever. 
Like the panics of bygone eras, this one has the aspect of yet another re-enactment of the Big Con. The huckster arrives in town, tells all the rubes that disaster impends for them and their families, but says there may be one last chance they can be saved – but it will take a lot of money. And the folks should go about collecting it, right now.
This, it seems to me, is what the global-warming scare and scam are all about – frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster. Read more here.