A Cap and Trade bill with lipstick

As the Wall Street Journal explains, the Kerry-Lieberman energy bill is essentially the same as the Cap and Trade bill passed by the House last year, but with lots of sweeteners and distractions added. The bill’s authors (including Lindsey Graham before he dropped out) are so dishonest they don’t even refer to the fact that the bill is about reducing atmospheric carbon; they call it an “energy independence” bill. You can’t help suspect that a Democratic version of Frank Luntz hired by Kerry-Lieberman-Graham formed focus groups around the country and got people’s reactions to the words, “Cap and Trade” and “global warming,” and their responses were so negative that he told the senators that politicians favoring Cap and Trade laws to stop global warming must avoid using those words at all costs, the same way that liberals must never refer to themselves as liberals, and socialists must never refer to themselves as socialists, and people seeking transnational government must never refer to transnational government—except of course to question the sanity of people who warn about transnational government. To be a liberal is to commit oneself to a lifetime of the most profound bad faith.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 17, 2010 08:56 AM | Send