From the Monday, Aug. 30 Wall Street Journal (Page A4)

The [Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement] has issued only three new permits to start wells in shallow water since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, according to the agency’s website. The agency issued three to six permits a week prior to the accident, industry officials say.

Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, Scott Angelle, who has participated in talks with Mr. Bromwich’s agency, said the government was effectively shutting down shallow-water drilling.

“Someone is slow-walking this deal,” Mr. Angelle said, referring to shallow-water permits.

The Obama administration says that there is no moratorium on shallow-water drilling…

Despite the fact shallow-water rigs have had no spills and a stellar safety record, radical green activists have targeted them — and the jobs they provide — for extinction.  The elimination of offshore energy exploration would not only send a shattering new ripple of unemployment through an economy already broken by radical green activism, but would send gasoline prices even higher.

Under legislation sought by Western Tradition Partnership, Washington bureaucrats would no longer have the unchecked power to simply make up their own regulations.

For everything else, there's Discover

Following up the Obama video bragging about skyrocketing electricity prices, we found this very simple explanation about just how much Cap and Trade will cost everyone from the everyday Joe Six-Pack to the EEEEVIL “Big Electric (spelled r-a-t-e-p-a-y-e-r-s):

According to Bob Zubrin, American aerospace engineer and author (The Case for Mars, 1996): “Burning one ton of coal produces about three tons of CO2. [Added weight of oxygen in combustion, I assume. - Ed.] So a tax of $15 per ton of CO2 emitted is equivalent to a tax of $45/ton on coal. The price of Eastern anthracite coal runs in the neighborhood of $45/ton, so under the proposed system, such coal would be taxed at a rate of about 100 percent. The price of Western bituminous coal is currently about $12/ton.

This coal would therefore be taxed at a rate of almost 400 percent. Coal provides half of America’s electricity, so such extraordinary imposts could easily double the electric bills paid by consumers and businesses across half the nation. In addition, many businesses, such as the metals and chemical industries, use a great deal of coal directly. By doubling or potentially even quadrupling the cost of their most basic feedstock, the cap-and-trade system’s indulgence fees could make many such businesses uncompetitive and ultimately throw millions of working men and women onto the unemployment lines.”

It doesn’t get much simpler than that!

And another easily digested tidbit (would go great with a nice Chardonnay): Earth’s atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_2000_yrs.html

"Robbin' hoods" in Congress

WTP has learned that fifteen pages of the 1,201-page H.R. 2454 (“Cap and Tax”) concern the new “Energy Refund Program” — a redistributive welfare program based upon complex formulas regarding energy welfare eligibility.

According to Section 431 of the legislation, “The Secretary (of Health and Human Services) shall formulate and administer . . . the ‘Energy Refund Program’ . . . under which eligible low-income households are provided cash payments to reimburse the households for the estimated loss in their purchasing power resulting from the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.”

In Congresspeak, “Loss of purchasing power” equals an admission of massive cost increases. The radical environmentalists and their cronies in Congress and the White House are doing the classic three-step: 1) Jack up the cost of everything (especially energy) for everyone; 2) Subsidize the hit to the welfare class and 3) Make others (primarily the middle class) pay for it all.

Section 431 provides that households earning 150 per cent of the federal poverty level or receiving other forms of welfare such as food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (which includes such “permanent disabilities” as crack addiction, alcoholism, and having a limp) or Medicare are eligible for “energy refunds.”

Translation: if you are already ON welfare, you are AUTOMATICALLY going to receive more public largesse. Eligible households will receive their “energy refunds” monthly through direct deposits, state electronic benefit transfer systems or other mechanisms approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

For anyone else to qualify, a two-person household would have to earn $21,855 or less to meet the income threshold, while the income of a three-person household could not exceed $27,465, per 2009 federal poverty guidelines established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

We can expect more of such revelations as the details of this legislative monstrosity make themselves available to those actually inclined to READ the bill…

We can’t possibly add to this one…but note this is January 2008.

Now the Dems are selling Cap & Tax as a low-cost boon to jobs.

From Bucksright.com: Mary Katharine Ham notes that Greenpeace, the ultra-left Global Warming hoax hysterics, have come out in opposition to the massive Cap and Tax energy bill expected to be voted on in the House of Representatives today.

Greenpeace thinks the mammoth 1,200 – 1,500 page bill, the latest law being shoved through Congress on the premise that the world will end and things will never be the same if we don’t do it right now, is too soft.

Hey, we’ll take opposition where we can find it.

“This legislation sends a strong and unmistakable signal to the world that the United States is not yet ready to show the leadership necessary to reach a strong agreement at Copenhagen in December.  Already, we are seeing the impact of this signal as one country after another retreats from the aggressive targets needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.

We call on the Congress to reject this bill and begin immediate and urgent work on legislation that treats seriously the dire threat of climate change.  We call on President Obama to move beyond rhetoric and deliver on his commitments to “restore science to its proper place” and to lead the world in addressing climate change…”

There is still time for constituents of Congressman who appear on the list of Cap and Trade undecideds and leaners to hit the phones and fax machines and stop this monstrosity.

I just got off the phone with our our Congressional insider contacts who seem to be saying that the scuttlebutt on the Hill is that at the 8 Republican “Cap -and-Traitors” from New Jersey who voted for the bill did so as a political favor for the NY/NJ-centric commodity and stock traders (as in Cap and TRADE) who throw a lot of money around.

One angle not being covered in the mainstream press is that Cap and Tax relies upon the lethal combination that brought us the mortgage mess: Wall Street traders + government bureaucrats.

This fits, as one of the entities that helped develop the Cap and Tax trading scheme was ENRON, and the “carbon credits” that will be supposedly traded on the open market (after they are doled out by government bureaucrats, of course) will be bought and sold by investment banker types who hail from companies like Bear Sterns and Goldman Sachs, and…

…WAIT A MINUTE. The carbon credits that are at the heart of “Cap and Tax” are going to be handled by market traders connected with big Wall Street firms and investment bankers? Hmmm… if I could just get my hands on some carbon credits byu contributing to the right Congressman, maybe I could use them to pay my mortgage…