Bureaucrats Will Carry Out Mandatory Home Inspections Under Climate Bill

The controversial climate bill that is set to be taken up by the Senate on Monday after its passage in the House will legislate home inspections by government regulators who will demand to audit every aspect of your property under the threat of substantial and repeated fines if their visits are denied or their demands not satisfied.

The climate legislation is written in a manner that automatically assumes that global warming is taking place and that it is attributed to rising CO2 levels, despite the fact that this is a highly contentious question and is being rejected by more and more scientists as time goes by.

As Tony Pacheco writes in his excellent article today, the bill will “audit every aspect of your home and life”.

The bill states every home owner will receive an energy audit. What is a home energy audit? It is an intrusive visit made by the bureaucrats at the Home Energy Team or a similar group. They will examine and report the way you live your life directly to RESNET (Residential Energy Services Network) . Light fixtures, socket types, spas, hot tubs, windows, appliances, walls and roofs will all be under review. Energy tests will be conducted throughout your house. At the end of the visit you will receive a report and a rating. The report will focus on the changes you need to make and the rating is called a HERS rating (Home Energy Rating System). RESNET will perform the audits through authorized contractors. RESNET has adopted the Mortgage Industry National Home Energy Rating Standards. The standards set the national procedures for home energy ratings.

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Cap and Trade Equals Fraud and Tax

.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 will result in a totalitarian centralization of the American economy in the administrative agencies of the federal government, especially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This 1,300 page horror is a prime example of congressional modus operandi -- no one in Congress actually had the opportunity to read the bill which was, incidentally, being amended as it was debated on the floor. As H.R. 2454 shows, this axiom still holds true: the more benign the title of a congressional bill, the more draconian its contents. After all, who could be against clean energy or security? The real goal of H.R. 2454 has nothing to do with either of these; it is a power grab, pure and simple.

While we have all heard much about the tax implications of H.R. 2454 and that every American family could see a $3,000 a year increase in their energy costs, H.R. 2454 does much more than that. H.R. 2454 is a fascistic fait accompli, giving the government expansive powers to regulate, subsidize, and tax more sectors of the economy. The bill authorizes more federal government control over the electrical grid, state and local building codes, lighting and appliances, industry, the financial markets, and, perhaps most ominously of all, the health care system. In addition, it includes wealth redistribution measures and would allow increases in foreign aid.

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Liberty and Tyranny: Bachmann Warns Against Cap-and-Trade

Cap and Trade Was Never About Climate

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel reports today that the businesses in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership are beginning to realize that the cap and trade was never about global warming:

“People are learning,” says William Kovacs, vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which has been cautious about embracing a climate plan). “The Obama budget did more to help us consolidate and coalesce the business community than anything we could have done. It’s opened eyes to the fact that this is about a social welfare transfer system, not about climate.”

Nothing makes this more clear than President Barack Obama’s budget. Obama’s budget promises to raise $650 billion in revenues by selling carbon permits (which are the exact same thing as an energy tax). Only $150 billion of that pot of money will go to alternative energy production. The rest goes to pay for income redistribution in the form of income tax “cuts” for people that don’t pay income taxes.

But that is just the beginning. That $650 billion total low-balls the amount that a cap and trade system could raise if 100% of credits were auctioned off at the levels of carbon reduction that Obama wants. The Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation analyzed the economic impact of the less aggressive Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade. We found that total value of the allowances (the government auctioned permits whose cost is passed along to energy consumers) would be at least $1,622,848,000,000 for the years 2012 to 2019.

In other words, if 100% of the permits were auctioned off, the left would have almost another trillion dollars to spend on new social programs. Or as Obama’s budget euphemistically puts it, the money be used “to further compensate the public.

Source

Peter Schiff - Cap and Trade Bill Is A Giant Tax on Productivity

Career Suicide for Cap and Trade "Yes" Votes?

It comes down to this: Each "representative" that voted to pass Cap and Trade has violated their Congressional Oath of Office to "well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office." How on earth can you--in good faith--fulfill the duties of the office by voting to pass 1500 pages of legislation YOU HAVEN'T READ?!