The ‘Cap And Tax’ Dead End

My favorite line of this op-ed by Sarah Palin: “The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.”


There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, “poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity.”

We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.

In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.

Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama’s plan will result in the latter.

For so many reasons, we can’t afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.

Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?

Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama’s energy cap-and-tax plan.

The writer, a Republican, is governor of Alaska.

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Forgetting Sarah Palin

Liberals beware… Citizen Palin will have far more leeway than Governor Palin.


Sarah Palin has deeply disappointed her enemies. People who hate her guts feel she’s really let them down by resigning.

She’s like the ex-girlfriend they’re SO over, never want to see again, have already forgotten about — really, it’s O-ver — but they just can’t stop talking about her.

Liberal: Ha, ha … Sarah who? She’s over, she’s toast, a future Trivial Pursuit answer, nothing more.

Normal person: Whatever. How about the North Korean missiles?

Liberal: Can you believe she just resigned the governorship like that? What a quitter!

Normal person: Speaking of quitting, how’s work?

Liberal: Did you hear she might get a TV show? There’s no way Sarah Palin’s getting a TV show! No way! I can’t believe stupid Sarah Palin could get her own stupid TV show now. Well, I’m sure not gonna watch it — that’s for sure!

Normal person: Have you seen all the Michael Jackson coverage on TV?

Liberal: How does she think she can run for president in 2012 if she can’t finish her term as governor of a Podunk state? She’s finished.

Normal person: OK, then! You won’t have to vote for her.

Liberal: I was never going to vote for her! But now I’m not going to vote for her twice. And I will never watch her TV show. I am so over her.

Reporters had already written their stories on Palin’s press conference — “rambling!” “incoherent!” — before she even stepped to the podium.

Whatever you think of Palin, her argument for resigning was the opposite of “rambling” and “incoherent.”

Palin’s basketball analogy couldn’t have been clearer, even to prissy liberal pundits who get uncomfortable when the subject turns to sports: She decided to destroy the other team’s game plan, which has been to obsessively focus on her, by resigning.

This is particularly apt here — she’s passing the ball to a fantastic right-wing lieutenant governor, who shares her principles but doesn’t set off the left’s neuroses.

This is better for him, better for the state, better for the conservative program and better for Palin personally, whose family is sick of all the crap. Now she can make a lot of money and promote conservatism on a national stage.

It certainly won’t be held against Palin by people who don’t already loathe her. (On the other hand, her approval ratings among people who think she’s worse than Hitler are down to 48 percent.)

With the left frenetically filing ethics complaint after ethics complaint against Palin, costing her state millions of dollars and her personally half a million dollars, citizens of Alaska must be asking, “Can we please have our state back?”

But to read the news reports — which actually were rambling and incoherent — you would think Palin was speaking in tongues.

The truth is liberals are furious they won’t have Sarah Palin to kick around anymore — at least not with Palin’s hands tied behind her back by her public office.

Something tells me Keith Olbermann isn’t going to be pulling any big numbers this summer attacking Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann. I don’t anticipate any sudden outbreaks of “Mitch McConnell Derangement Syndrome.”

Soon we’ll only hear about Keith when his creepy e-mails using his mother’s death to hit on chicks start making the rounds again. (Tip to Keith: When a girl refuses to give you her phone number, her assistant’s phone number or her personal e-mail address, and only gives you her assistant’s e-mail address, you’re not halfway in the sack.)

Bonus: If Olbermann gets canceled as a result of Palin’s resignation, that will put her in a really good position for 2012.

But instead of being honest and saying, “Oh well, it was a good ride while it lasted,” liberal chatterers indignantly demand: “Is this not the greatest betrayal a public servant ever committed against the people?”

On one hand, liberals are enraged at the heinousness of Mark Sanford — whom they didn’t vote for — for not resigning and, on the other, they’re enraged at Palin — whom they also didn’t vote for — for resigning.

The peculiarly venomous hatred of Palin is driven by women of the left and their whipped consorts. All that needs to happen is for a feminist to overhear two Nation readers saying, “I hate to admit it, but Palin is kind of hot” and …

WHAT??????????? YOU CALL THAT HOT? I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW WE’VE GOT A MEGA-SUPER HOTTIE IN DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. AND NEED I REMIND YOU AGAIN OF THE RAW SEX APPEAL OF RACHEL MADDOW?

Democrats are a party of women, and nothing drives them off their gourds like a beautiful Christian conservative. (How much money has that other beautiful born-again, Carrie Prejean, been forced to spend on lawyers to respond to liberal hysteria?)

So the motives are clear, but the money is not. Who is paying the rent for the losers filing all these frivolous complaints against Palin?

At least when Richard Mellon Scaife was funding investigations of Bill Clinton, we knew who Scaife was, he was an American citizen, and his money was accessible to U.S. tax authorities and not stashed in offshore accounts like a certain Hungarian Nazi-collaborator I can name.

How about some modern-day Scaife investigate the investigators?

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