RGG-Die! - Granite Grok

RGG-Die!

I’ve had a thing or two to say about RGGI.  Just drop my name and ‘RGGI’ into a search engine and start counting.  If you start reading you will notice a trend.  RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas initiative, is a broad based tax or fee on all energy and all persons who use it.  This tax could increase without anyone every holding a vote, or having a hearing. It was passed by the Democrat majority legislature with that in mind, during New Hampshire’s political experimentation years (democrats were left in charge of everything), and signed by then-and-God-only-knows-why-he-is-still-Governor John Lynch.

(I never call RGGI Reggie, by the way.  This makes me think of Reggie Mantle from The Archie’s, which makes me think of Veronica Lodge, who was kind of hot in a post-pre-pubescent animated sort of a way, which might explain my fondness for dark haired women, but probably not.   Maybe Isis from the Shazam Isis power hour, or how about Wonder Woman?  Did I mention that I don’t call it Reggie?)Reggies revenge

RGGI’s proponents claimed it would be good for the environment, which was only true if the "environment" was one littered with taxpayer financed slush funds whose purposes were as ephemeral as the lefts idea of rights or  justice.  And Carbon trading to reduce emissions was already a well known lie that ten years of cap and trade in Europe had already proved demonstrably false.  If we just assume the folks who claim to be the smartest people in every room had to know this–being so damn smart–then this was obviously meant to be yet another large slush fund to be raided by current and future Democrat majorities, all but for two fortuitous events that got in the way of pay day.

First, the left’s nationwide social engineering experiment with housing rights collapsed the economy before the program got up to steam, making the RGGI carbon credits worth progressively less until they are now almost completely worthless.  Second, we voted the left-wingers out of office for a ruinous spending agenda and their chronic inability to balance the books despite scores of new taxes and fees, and laying siege to every pile of money within view, public or private.

We wont even get into the left wing law firms that lined up to manage the grants and the distribution of funds for approved projects, or the list of Democrat friendly recipients.


So RGGI was doomed from the start.  But that was hardly motivation enough for a super majority of non-democrats to undo the dastardly deed.  Given the opportunity to free us from RGGI that August body of Jugheads known as the New Hampshire state Senate took the House-passed bill and balked. I guess that is what you do with an unjust tax and a super-majority of Republicans in your Caucus. You take the super-majority House passed bill and ink a compromise that only allows us to exit the Crap-and-Trade-broad-based-tax-scam if the People’s Republic of Massachusetts cries uncle first..  Live Free or Die, you know–if it’s Ok with Massachusetts, for dying is not the worst of evils.  I’m not feeling it.

This invertebrate act was sold as the only way to salvage a bill with the words RGGI in the title, and from which we might eventually begin to consider looking for a map, which could lead to the key, that unlocks the door, through which we might leave RGGI, if it was alright with someone else–Pretty please and hopefully not to offend.  This is like saying, "we’ll protect your right to self defense as soon as the Brady campaign gets back to us."  You might as well have not bothered. Massachusetts and New York are two of the most liberal, panty-waist, nanny-state, troublemakers in the entire republic.  If RGGI dies–(more on that in a moment)–they’ll probably just keep on taxing energy providers so they can use the trimmings to fill the holes in their mystical, debt ridden excuse for a state budget. 

Needless to say I and a few others were not impressed with the terms, but they passed it anyway because they didn’t want all the money spent on credits to go to waste.

Enter Irony.

It looks like inertia may do what reluctant or misinformed legislators will not.  An article posted by the Heartland Institute, forwarded to facebook by State Senator Jim Luther, suggests that the complete failure of the scheme to attract continued interest will undo it before too long anyway.  Just imagine the musical, "What if you had a carbon scheme and no one came?" 

This is good and bad.  Should the system collapse the hundreds of millions in credits purchased by every state will be worthless.  This loss will be passed down to rate payers and consumers which only sounds bad if you fail to realize that this was going to happen anyway. The irony, of course, being that we lose no matter what so why stick around and lose more?

Gosh, Betty I can’t think of a reason to stay either.

So here lay RGGI, in its evolutionary decline. A first generation left-wing social-engineering mutation meant to serve as the model for the nation, and we could put a stake in its heart.

New Jersey is out at the end of the year.  New York is being sued to force it out.  It’s like settled science.

“I believe this signals the beginning of the end of RGGI and the end of cap-and-trade here in the United States. It’s just a matter of time until the entire RGGI scheme collapses of its own weight,” …

So what, we want to be standing under it when it collapses? 

 

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