Evil, yes. Stupid, no

It is the end of April.  Two feet of snow today in New York.  High of 35 here in Gunnison tomorrow.  So let's talk about global warming.  Like I wrote in a previous post about redneck snow skis, I know that cold weather halfway through spring does not mean that global warming isn't true.  But surely ten years of cooling temperatures does.  And false data by leading climate change (global warming is sooo 2009) researchers should make even the most rabid Al Gore sycophants wipe off their Kool-Aid mustaches.  

Then there's the cost.  The president himself says that under his plan, electric rates would "necessarily skyrocket."


So what exactly is cap and trade? Manufacturing produces carbon.  Carbon, according to the global warming "experts," leads to warming temperatures.  So, something must be done to discourage manufacturers from producing carbon.  Under this plan, a manufacturer would have a set amount of carbon emissions allowed as a by product of their business.  They would receive a certificate for that amount carbon emission.  If they go over the amount covered by their certificate, they can buy another manufacturer's certificate.  


Let's say that Cathy and I decide to go into the potato chip business.  We register as a potato chip manufacturer and receive our certificate to produce 2 tons of carbon dioxide.  Well, we are not really that into potato chips, so we only make a couple of batches of chips a year.  We didn't produce even an ounce of our allowable emissions.  Frito Lay, on the other hand, is realllly into potato chips.  They have produced all the carbon they are allowed, and they want to make even more chips.  They are selling a lot more chips than Cathy and me.  But they aren't allowed to make any more.  They have no more carbon certificates left.  Well, I'm smarter than the average rock, I'll sell them my unused carbon certificates.  Frito Lay is more than happy to buy them from me.


Small problem.  Who decides how much the certificates are worth?  How does Frito Lay find Larry and Cathy?  Where do they find even more?  It's not like there's an exchange similar to the New York Stock Exchange for carbon certificates.  Now, there would be a money making idea!  Guess what?  There is one!  It's the Chicago Climate Exchange or CCX!  Now there's some forward thinking folks.  If global warming weren't such a scam, I bet they could make some major bucks matching certificate buyers to certificate sellers, and of course taking their commission.  We are a capitalist society after all.  They could sell the certificates of manufacturers in third world countries to U.S. companies and basically give them boatloads of money (minus CCX's cut of course) for producing nothing!  CCX estimates they would process $10,000,000,000,000 in transactions.  A year.  That's $10 trillion a year.  That will buy a pretty nice house, won't it, Al Gore?  What's Al Gore's connection to this $10,000,000,000,000 a year business?  Oh, just a little thing.  He's on the board of a British company that owns a 5% share of Chicago Climate Exchange.  So, that's how he can afford such a non-environmentally friendly estate.  Compare Gore's estate to that of a nature-hating, let's melt the icecaps I love heat anyway George Bush.  When you stand to get even a piece of a 5% share of $10,000,000,000,000 a year, you can stand a little skyrocketing electric cost.

Nice story, but no one is forcing companies like Ford and DuPont, or local governments like the city of Chicago and Miami-Dade county to participate in this wonderful Enron-style scheme (they are already buying and selling certificates voluntarily so they can advertise as "carbon neutral"), right?  Not yet.  But that's the very basis of cap and trade legislation in front of Congress right now!  Requiring companies and local governments to participate.  Forcing the cost of their goods and services to skyrocket.  Amazing.  

So how does a start-up like Chicago Climate Exchange get started in 2003 with no cap and trade legislation on the horizon?  Through charitable, almost untraceable grants from a wonderful foundation called the Joyce Foundation.  They were supported by a Joyce Foundation board member who secured the funding for them.  The board member who was such a forward thinking visionary?  An up and coming Illinois state senator.  His name?  All together now, Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm.


Now that should give you something to think about.  Here's a link detailing all the viper's nest of ties to the United Nations (where most of the global warming "research" came from).  Just for grins, let's throw in 5 CCX board members from Goldman Sachs, a 10% share in the company to Goldman Sachs, and a compleeeeetely coincidental link to Fannie Mae.  No conspiracy theory.  Facts.  It's mind-boggling.  Almost as mind-boggling as the fact that no U.S. newspaper or news organization has mentioned any of this.  The link refers to a Canadian Free Press site.  Free press, remember when America had one of those?  Another fact, NBC is owned by GE.  General Electric.  Think they might have a stake in this game? 

Thank God for Texas!!

When we moved to Arizona in 1993, it was the first time in my life that I lived outside of Texas.  When we were renting our house, the lady we were renting from told us where all the county offices were in Prescott.  She said we should get an Arizona license plate as soon as possible.  She said if we did not, expect to get stopped a lot by the local police.  They don't like people from out of state, but especially not those from Texas.  We kind of laughed it off, but did get new plates fairly quickly.  Didn't want to tempt fate or the local police department.  We were in Arizona for a few years before moving back to Texas - Amarillo.  No one recommended that we change our Arizona plates quickly.  We moved back to Arizona in 2005.  I started work on Monday.  Thursday afternoon when I went outside for a break, I found a note on my windshield from the local sheriff's department.  It detailed the local requirements for updating your vehicle registration within 30 days after moving and told the fines possible if you did not.  I did not see it as an anti-Texas practice, just a revenue enhancer for the county.  My belief was justified when another new hire came on from Oklahoma and received the same note within a week.  And no one resents Okies.

Then I moved to Colorado and what a difference!  I heard the usual jokes and good-naturedly took them.  It's easy to take the jokes about your perceived natural superiority when you know that you really are superior!  The first comment that was not good-natured joking came from a local hunter when I was selling him a hunting license.  A license for the first elk hunting season came to about $175 and he started complaining about those *@! Texans making the price of licenses go up.  Well, the same license for a non-resident cost almost $500!  And the state is using money from out of state hunters to actually keep the cost down for in-state hunters.  Not to mention the sales tax I collected from them on the ammo, sleeping bags, tents, firewood, propane, gasoline, coats, orange hunting vests, gloves - what exactly did they bring with them???  I probably threw a little fuel on his fire when I mentioned that our little town was actually part of Texas at one time.  Along with Denver and Cheyenne and everything in between.  He just lived in the part of the country that original Texans decided they had no use for.

Next came negative comments from Raelynn's 5th grade teacher about Texans in front of her class.  Raelynn was upset, so Cathy let the teacher know that Raelynn lived in Texas and still has a lot of family in Texas and she should be careful who she is ridiculing in front of the class.  The comments stopped, but so did any other conversation or interaction with the teacher.

We moved to Gunnison, which is a friendlier area.  It has to be, since it gets a huge chunk of revenue from out of state skiers, summer vacationers, and students at Western State.  Like most prejudices, they are softened with exposure to people from a different background.

I started seeing news stories a couple of weeks ago about conservative views being re-introduced into school curriculums in Texas.  Since Texas is the largest non-California market, what is taught in Texas is rolled out to the rest of the country since publishers go for the biggest market.  And California is so far off the chart that no one will follow them.  According to the news stories, the conservatives were successful in rolling back almost all the progressive changes, especially to history, that occurred beginning in the early 1970's.  So the media and progressive educators started sniping.  An editorial cartoon in this Sunday's Denver Post (yes, I am one of the 156 people that still read the newspaper) showed a copy of the Constitution with sticky notes saying things like "mention the 2nd amendment here," "can't we work Reagan in here somewhere," "talk about capitalism here," etc.  Like requiring students to memorize and recite the preamble to the Constitution is a bad thing!  And the 2nd amendment is in there!  And Reagan was a president!  And Texas and United States has actually featured English-speaking white men!  It's Texas history!  We won the Texas revolution.  Don't really care why Santa Ana decided it was necessary to kill everyone at the Alamo.  Just that he did and he got his butt kicked at San Jacinto.  And Sam Houston did not have all his gun-toting rednecks kill all the Mexicans.  He let them live and go back home to Mexico.  He didn't even decide to go conquer more territory.  Same with the American revolution, WWI and II, the Cold War, capitalism vs. communism/socialism/fascism.  We won.  Get over it.  America is blessed and exceptional.  Our kids need to be taught about the good things their country has done and is doing.  It is not necessary to go around bowing to foreign despots and apologizing for our success.

Years ago when I had the book store, I noticed a paperbook published in the early 1970's or maybe even the late 1960's, called The Super-Americans.  Its premise was that the reason other Americans dislike Texans is the same reason that people in other countries don't like Americans.  We know we are right, and don't really care to hear what you think about it.  As Emmitt Smith told Kevin Greene of the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XXX, "look at the scoreboard."  That's all that matters.  Deal with it.  

First the education reforms, then being one of the first states to say they will challenge the health care takeover in court, to being one of the few states whose economy is not in complete freefall.  Now, take a look at this nightmare of a news story from Washington.  It's just unbelieveable how far we have fallen as a country.  About half the comments say that the mother in the story is wrong.  She should have no say in the matter.  What the school did was legal.  In 1995, Texas repealed the law that would allow the schools to do this in Texas.  So maybe California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Washington, Colorado, and D.C. should just close their mouths and take a look at the scoreboard.  Follow the example of a successful state.