In the Pipeline: 11/14/12

After decades of government interference, capitulation, inaction, stupidity, and outright lies, the U.S. will soon return to its rightful place as the number one energy producer in the world.  Man, I want to be a fly on the wall at the Sierra Club, CAP, NRDC, Defenders, 350, and Al Gore’s private jet and/or mansion on that very special day. Bloomberg (11/12/12) reports: “U.S. oil output is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia’s in the next decade, making the world’s biggest fuel consumer almost self-reliant and putting it on track to become a net exporter, the International Energy Agency said.”

Try to remember that the President talked about running the most transparent Administration in history.  Of course, Secretary Geithner also had trouble with his taxes, so, not everything works out like it should. Washington Examiner (11/12/12) reports: “A conservative Washington think tank will file suit Tuesday seeking to force Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to make public more than 7,300 internal emails circulated in recent months among senior executives in his department about a carbon tax proposal officials say taxpayers don’t need to know about.”

The author of this document was Terry Dinan.  She spent yesterday with her pals at AEI trying to figure out how to sell this disastrous idea. Congressional Budget Office (November 2012) Working Paper: “For example, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that a policy that set a price of $28 per metric ton on CO2 emissions (roughly $103 per ton of carbon) would impose a cost of $425 dollars per year on the average household in the lowest income quintile and a cost of $1,380 per year on the average household in the highest income quintile (note that those annual costs were measured based on the size of the economy in 2010). That cost would account for 2.5 percent of after-tax income for the average household in the lowest income quintile, compared with less than 1 percent of after-tax income for the average household in the highest quintile.”

The automobile mandate will not save money, not reduce oil consumption, and not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.  What it will do is increase the cost of a car by an average of $3200 (according to EPA), result in more deaths, price six or seven million people out of the new car markets, and expand the scope and power of a rapacious government. NYTimes (11/11/12) reports: “For the United States, some of the best recent steps serve to save money, promote energy security and reduce air pollution. A good model is provided by rules from the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency, widely supported by the automobile industry, which will increase the fuel economy of cars to more than 54 miles per gallon by 2025.”

Norquist: ‘No conceivable way’ carbon tax matches pledge. Politico(11/13/12) reports: “Don’t even think about supporting a carbon tax, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist told congressional Republicans on Tuesday. Norquist blasted out a statement saying a carbon tax would almost certainly violate the pledge many Republicans took at his group’s behest not to raise taxes.”