Even If You're a Cap and Trade Fan, Waxman Markey is a Stinker

David Schoenbrod and Richard B. Stewart: The Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade Bill is a Fraud - WSJ.com: "Progress on most or all such fronts will be needed, but when, where and how should be decided principally by a cap-driven market, not the 'red tape' that candidate Obama deplored.

This government dictation of technology would undermine President Obama's March 19 pledge that, by addressing climate change, we would become 'the world's leading exporter of renewable energy.' That requires coming up with better, lower-cost technologies than the rest of the world. This won't happen if the government picks the technologies. Recall that, in the 1980s, government established the Synfuels Corporation that spent billions to produce energy alternatives and came up with nothing. More recently, government required refiners to put corn-based ethanol into gasoline on the theory that it's good for the environment. Yet we've learned that wide-scale ethanol production can do more harm than good in regard to air quality and climate change, turn wildlife habitat into corn fields, and raise food prices."

Waxman Markey is not really a cap and trade bill. It is not designed to foster free market solutions to a post-fossil fuel economy. It is about statism, big government, central planning and maximizing power in Washington, DC. Does this sound familiar? Sound at all like ObamaCare?