It is important to remember this maxim when considering anything Democrats do or say. There is never enough of someone else’s money. Never. The government can never be too big or meddlesome. There is no limit to the amount of money it should waste on progressive friends and family. You cannot spend too much; therefore, you cannot tax too much.
Any talk of spending or taxes that hints at less of either is an act of fraud. A lie or a bait and switch. Democrats do not know how to run a government that does not increase spending annually or – if allowed -exponentially in each budget cycle. Nor are there any examples of this not being the case.
New Hampshire’s neighbor, Vermont, has a category of its own on our pages in part because it became the fast-spreading virus of unobstructed Democrat rule. A petri dish under a microscope though which we could observe the rapid decline of nearly everything under the weight of Democrat rule.
Crime, drugs, homelessness, bureaucratic overreach, rising taxes, declining opportunity, deteriorating main streets, and a devotion to policy make getting by increasingly tricky for regular working-class people.
Vermont has wasted an absurd amount of time and money pretending to mitigate emissions by offshoring them or ignoring them while trying to litigate reparations from energy companies they don’t like. Last year, the state began its pursuit of “Big Oil” under the auspices of legislation (S.259 – Climate Superfund Act) empowering the state to find a way to punish oil and gas companies for lying to Vermonters about their threat to the climate.
There is no lie. No one made Vermont use gasoline, propane, natural gas, coal, or oil. Nor is Vermont’s Government implicating itself for the obscene benefits to productivity and profit it has taxed for a century that wouldn’t have existed were it not for the fossil fuels it burned. But Democrats spend, so they must fish for revenue to pay for it – getting sued in the process.
As the headline suggests, Democrats in New Hampshire – identical to their Vermont Counterparts, just on the other side of the Connecticut River – introduced legislation to do the same thing Vermont did, in the Granite State. HB106 established “a commission to determine the monetary costs of climate damage to the state of New Hampshire and the best means of recouping such costs.” The bill makes for an amusing read if you’ve got the time and need a laugh, but boiled down, the goal is to concretize a fantasy for the purpose of legalizing grift. The commission would,
The likely scope of damage to New Hampshire, its people, cities and towns, rural areas, natural resources, infrastructure, industry, agriculture, tourism, and other relevant industries.
(c) The likely adaptations needed to prevent these scenarios.
(d) The financial estimates of such scenarios and preventative measures.
(e) The best means of recouping costs accumulated by the state in preventing and responding to climate-related damage, including municipal bonding, insurance, legal action, fees, and other methods.
Translation:
Promote massive spending on expensive, unreliable alternatives (without any serious mention of their carbon footprint of the emissions offshored despite how important that is to their premise).
Overestimate blame, damage potential and costs to maximize fear and opportunity for jackpot justice claims whose costs will be borne by the middle and lower classes.
Justify the suing “big oil” for compensation – as much as possible, even though the odds of a court victory are nil (the bit about bonding and insurance is a fluffy cover for the primary goal of a path to suing fossil fuel companies blind).
Were such a commission to constitute and produce legislation that resulted in law, the Petroleum Institute’s response in its lawsuit against Vermont would suffice.
It claims the law is preempted by the Clean Air Act, which was enacted in 1963, because it “seeks to impose liability for global greenhouse gas emissions from sources well beyond Vermont’s borders.”
The plaintiffs wrote that the state is not home to any of the energy producers it seeks to fine, saying this could lead to increased energy costs in other states while Vermont could “reap” financial benefits.
“Vermont has thus exceeded the bounds of its authority, inserting itself into an area of law that is and has historically been controlled only by federal law, upsetting the careful regulatory balance the Clean Air Act establishes, violating the extraterritorial restraints of our federal system and transgressing the bounds of due process and other constitutional protections,” says the lawsuit.
The state lacks standing and jurisdiction and would waste a significant sum on legal fees, so Granite Staters will be happy to know that the Republican Majority in the NH House, for whatever reason, killed it on Thursday 207 to 149.
This is not, by any means, the only effort by local proglodytes to ‘Vermont’ New Hampshire. Every Democrat bill is a small or large left step in that direction. They don’t know any other way to govern. And while I’d not want them to waste time on this, how about a committee to explore the cultural and civilizational benefits of fossil fuels and their systemic effect on lowering poverty and improving health, productivity, and general welfare, from which states and the nation have profited – some would say in excess – through fees and taxes which it would be in the best interests of all…to mitigate?
Just a thought.
