BuckeyeBlog

Judging by the product it passed yesterday, the US House Committee on Commerce and Energy would that we in Ohio have neither commerce nor energy. In a WSJ op-ed last week, Indiana’s Gov. Mitch Daniels weighed in on the politics behind this bill from a Hoosier perspective that applies just as well from here in Ohio.

Quite simply, it looks like imperialism. This bill would impose enormous taxes and restrictions on free commerce by wealthy but faltering powers — California, Massachusetts and New York — seeking to exploit politically weaker colonies in order to prop up their own decaying economies. Because proceeds from their new taxes, levied mostly on us, will be spent on their social programs while negatively impacting our economy, we Hoosiers decline to submit meekly.

I’m sure you’ve noticed, but Obama has been getting some pretty bad press lately. From his bloated stimulus plan to his 60 Minutes appearance to his patently offensive Special Olympics comment on late night television.

But bad news for Barack – the press isn’t going to get any better, especially with his new cap and trade plan now on the table.

The plan entails selling permits to emit carbon, which businesses may pay for at the outset, but the cost of which will quickly be passed on to consumers.  What Ohioans need to take note of is how deeply unequal these costs will be distributed across regions and income groups.

Ohioans receive roughly 86% of their electricity from coal. Our neighbors Indiana (94%), Pennsylvania (56%), and West Virginia (98%) are in similar situations. This means we’ll get hit especially hard, and during a time when we’re already feeling the pain.

To put it in real terms, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the average household in the bottom income quintile will spend $680 more every year to pay for Obama’s plan.

One leading electricity utility executive predicts a 25% increase in Ohio’s electricity rates under the initial $20 ton ”cap and trade” carbon tax proposed by President Obama.  This burden would not be shared evenly across the country as electricity in espcially Ohio and Indiana is generated largely from coal while other states get theirs from nukes, hydro and natural gas not so burdened by this plan.  

Nor is there realistic hope of the benefit of the $645 billion coming out of our pockets and going into the government’s being reasonably redistributed back to what would be a devastated Ohio economy.  As Duke’s Jim Rogers notes:

“My view is they’ll try to use the money from Ohio and Indiana to subsidize the West coast and the Northeast and to use it for purposes that are different from addressing the climate issue,” Mr. Rogers said Friday in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“Ya think?”  With anything proposed by Obama going through Rep. Henry Waxman (D – Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Malibu CA), Chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, despite believing in neither?

Let’s hope that Governor Strickland will appeal to the President to forgo this cap-and-trade plan with the same alacrity with which he went after “stimulus” money in recent weeks.