Who Needs Congress When King Obama Can Bankrupt The Coal Industry On His Own?

The Obama administration is apparently considering using the EPA’s regulatory authority to bypass Congress in implementing a cape-and-trade system. Meaning that Obama could implement policy that would limit the productivity of just about every business in this country without even having that policy voted on by the elected representatives of the people in Congress.

President-elect Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats might bypass major congressional debate and begin to construct a national cap-and-trade mechanism through regulation at the Environmental Protection Agency.

For an idea of just how problematic this is, remember that everything we do emits carbon. The act of merely exhaling emits carbon, and while the idea of the EPA monitoring and regulating the exhalations of a given business’ employees (I doubt even President-elect Hope ‘N Change – the man who once glibly promised the bankruptcy of the coal industry through cap and trade – has the political capital for that), it’s not within the realm of possibly that even business with a couple of company cars or a carbon-emitting heating system could soon be forced to buy carbon credits from the government.
Now, liberals will claim that this system isn’t so bad because certain big-business types love it, but let’s remember that big business only loves cap and trade because they know that it will stagnate their smaller competition. A big multi-national corporation can afford to comply with carbon credit regulations. That multi-national’s smaller, regional and local competitors may or may not be able to.
And before anyone talks about exempting small businesses, let’s remember the trickle down effect. How many small internet entrepreneurs are dependent on delivery services like FedEx and UPS to bring their goods to their customers? What do you think happens to those entrepreneurs when their shipping costs double because FedEx and UPS have to start buying enough carbon credits to cover their respective fleets of delivery and shipping vehicles?
Cap and trade isn’t just bad policy. It’s more than that. It’s a backdoor to socialism. Remember that socialism is a system of government where the government itself owns the means of production. Well if nobody in this country can produce anything without having first bought the permission to do so from a government agency, is that not socialism?
What’s worse is that we’re considering this madness because of a trumped up hysteria about global warming, which may not even be caused by human activity in the first place.