It has been common lately for the local socialist community ? bloggers, think tanks, etc. ? to suggest that it is false concern when organizations like ours, on the political right, point out that environmental legislation is regressive and hurts the poor. The suggestion is that only leftists can truly be concerned about the poor.
This is not because they give a greater proportion of their own income to causes that help the poor ? they clearly do not ? but because they are willing to give away more of other people’s money to causes that help the poor (actually I think that’s the left wing definition of charitable). We on the free market right show our concern for the poor by standing foursquare against socialism in all its forms, which is a philosophy that, historically, has grown through oppression of the poor in the name of an elitist worldview. There is no greater example of this than the left’s support for the Lieberman-Warner cap and trade bill in particular, and the idea of a cap and trade program for CO2 emissions in general. This includes proposals for the state of North Carolina. Here’s what the Congressional Budget Office concludes:
“Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently high prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households.”
But the left, both nationally and in the state, is completely silent on the regressive nature of these programs. I suspect that the reason for this is that given the choice between helping the poor by opposing cap and trade and vastly expanding the socialist goal of government control of every aspect of our lives, as cap and trade would do, the left is happy to throw lower income folks under the bus. After all, as socialists from Russia to Germany and from China to South Korea and Cambodia have told their people throughout the 20th century, it’s for your own good.
Oh yes, and with regard to enacting such legislation just when we might be going into a recession, Barbara Boxer sums up what could be considered the paradigm leftist attitude. It is being reported that in a speech on the floor of the Senate she proclaimed that a recession is the precise time to enact such legislation because “it will bring us hope.” Notice that she didn’t say it would bring us any noticeable slowing of global warming ? because it won’t.
