IMF Carbon Dreams

On Fox weekend financial news they had Ben Stein and some other folks in their usual panel format. The topic today started off with the IMF saying the USA needed to have an additional $1.40 / gallon gasoline tax. That would make gasoline here, in California, $5.50 / gallon for regular at the cheap stations. Super about $6.10 at the higher end places.

That got me wondering what other plans the International Monetary Fund might have for the USA and the world?

Well, I didn’t run into the story du jour on their web site, but I did find an interesting pdf from 2008. Give an idea what their global plans are.

The pdf:

http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2008/022208.pdf

Is clearly written by folks who are globalist AGW believers with dreams of avarice. Folks ought to read it. I will only be quoting one or two small bits.

The intro basically says the answer to “Climate Change” is taxes and wealth transfer to developing nations. Most of the rest of the document is rationalization for that, and sizing up the Chumps who are to be fleeced and how much can be dolled to the the ‘People Of The Right Color’ POTRC being folks in Africa, Asia, and South America.

The Fiscal Implications of
Climate Change

Fiscal Affairs Department
International Monetary Fund

March 2008

The title and author pretty much sum it up. “Climate Change” and money. Internationally to be spread around.

Here’s the Table Of Contents. A walk through the TOC of a document often lends insight to motivation. As much by what is emphasized as by what is left out. No mention of “what if AGW is wrong”. Nothing about the damage of breaking economies with hair brained punitive taxes that do nothing. The bulk of the entries about taxes, revenues, “prices” of “carbon”, “equity” as a synonym for “social justice” I suspect.

Executive Summary 1

Chapter 1. Introduction 4

Chapter 2. Climate Change and Public Finance 6
A. The Economics of Climate Change 6
B. Impact Effects and Policy Responses 7

Chapter 3. Fiscal Instruments for Mitigation 9
A. Principles of Carbon Pricing 9
B. Instrument Choice—Taxes, Cap-and-Trade, Hybrids 12
C. Rates, Revenue and International Flows 14
D. Domestic Equity and Compensation 20
E. Fiscal Aspects of International Coordination 22
F. Current Measures of Carbon Pricing 24
G. Innovation—What Role for Fiscal Incentives? 27

Chapter 4. Fiscal Aspects of Adaptation 29
A. Fiscal Implications of Adaptation—Key Elements 29
B. How Much?—Assessing the Fiscal Costs of Adaptation 32

Chapter 5. Implications for the Fiscal Work of the Fund 35

The references and appendices are interesting too.

References 45

Appendices
1. Glossary and Science 38
2. Key Model Features 44
3. Aspects of Instrument Choice 41

Boxes
1. Carbon Credits and the Clean Development Mechanism 26
2. The Science of Climate Change 40

Tables
1. Revenue from Carbon Pricing by Region 17
2. International Transfers under Cap-and-Trade, Using G-Cubed 21

Figures
1. Carbon Prices and Global Revenue 16
2. Financial Inflows from Global Cap-and-Trade, Allocation by Baseline, 2020-60 18
3. Financial Inflows from Global Cap-and-Trade, Allocation by Population, 2020–60 19
4. Additional Adaptation Investment, 2030 33

The careful observer will note that the numbers are out of order (the better to prevent observing things like size) and that “The Science of Climate Change” starts on page 40 but end prior to 41 where “Aspects of Instrument Choice” kicks in. (Instrument Choice being a fancy word for “Taxes without saying taxes”… )

Notice too, that of 2 tables, one is about “revenues” (another way of saying Taxes without saying taxes…) and the other is about how to spread it around for political effect under “Cap-and-Trade” (yet another way of saying “Cap-and-TAX” without saying taxes).

There are 4 “figures”, that have the “Revenue” form of “Taxes” showing up again, along with “inflows” as yet another way of saying TAXES! without saying taxes… and more Cap-n’-TAX. Then we get “Additional Adaptation Investment”. “Investment” being the current Lie-Du-Jour for “Buying political favor”.

I’ll quote the entire coverage of the “science” of Global Warming here:

Box 2. The Science of Climate Change

Average global temperature increases with the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs). There are three main GHGs (other than water vapor, which is little affected by human activity and decays rapidly):

• Carbon dioxide (CO2) currently accounts for about 75 percent of GHG emissions; burning fossil fuels—petroleums, coal and natural gas—contributes 55 percent, and deforestation 20 percent.
• Methane, mainly from agricultural activity, contributes 15 percent
• Nitrous oxides, generated by industrial and agricultural activities (including nitrogen-based fertilizers) account for most of the remaining 10 percent.

Some man-made factors reduce global warming, most importantly aerosols (particles resulting from sulphur emissions and reflecting sunlight), though these decay relatively quickly and have more localized effects.

The concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere—conventionally measured in parts per million (ppm) of CO2 equivalent (CO2e)—has risen from about 280 ppm in 1750 to around 430 ppm now. It is currently rising by more than 2 ppm per annum, and under business as usual (BAU) could increase to around 750 ppm by 2100.

Temperature rises more than linearly with GHG concentration. By the best current estimate (IPCC, 2007), the global average temperature has increased by about 0.75 degrees Celsius (°C) since 1960 (with the cooling effect of aerosols roughly offsetting the warming effect of GHGs until about 1980). Under BAU, the average global temperature might rise by the end of the century by between 2.2 and 6.4 °C above pre-industrial levels (5–95 percent confidence; IPCC (2007)). Strong mitigation might limit this to 1–3 °C.

That’s it. The whole thing. See any doubt or skepticism or even “prudent man” questioning?

Just so you don’t think I’m being pessimistic in an unwarranted way, her’s a sample from page 33 on “investment”.

UNDP (2007), building on the earlier work of the World Bank, estimates an annual cost of climate-proofing development investment, by 2015, of around US$44 billion per annum, with an additional US$2 billion to strengthen disaster response—and a further annual US$40 billion in strengthening social safety nets.

UNFCCC (2007) estimates suggest an annual investment cost for agriculture, health, water and coastal protection, of around US$40 billion per annum by 2030—perhaps half of which might fall on the public sector (Figure 4). It also reports a very wide range for additional infrastructure needs, of US$8–US$130 billion annually. Figure 4. Additional Adaptation Investment, 2030

UNDP is the United Nations Development Programme

As the UN’s global development network, UNDP links people in developing countries to the knowledge, experience, and resources they need to build better lives. To this end, UNDP has established partnerships with NGOs, governments, and fellow inter-governmental bodies across the world.

UNDP’s Washington Representation Office acts as a liaison between UNDP and the U.S. government, think tanks, NGOs, and academic, diplomatic, and media communities, informing them about UNDP’s role, capabilities, programs, and results.

So their “job” is to pick up “resources” from the developed “West” and move it to where it is “needed”. Resources being a more general word than Tax, as it means a slush fund of taxes, fees, creamed off money from just about anywhere, money laundered through NGOs (so that the tax revenue given to the NGO doesn’t look like tax money used to make payments when it goes out…), etc.

Basically, they are in the business of moving money from “rich” to “poor” (where “rich” includes minimum wage tax payers in the USA and EU and “poor” includes Presidents of Countries and their friends and allies as long as they are POTRC who can spin a good cover story and play on historic guilt trips).

They want $44 Billion a year in one bucket and $40 Billion in another; plus $2 Billion more. Sounds smaller than saying $86 Billion / year to start and rising rapidly through $100 Billion / year thereafter…

UNFCCC is the United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change. Our “friends” who keep burning kilotons of jet fuel flying off to Rio and Durban and other nice places to “conference” with each other. Might be cheaper to just buy them all a cell phone…

They want about $48 Billion to $170 Billion a year to be spent, but are coy about through just who’s hands it ought to flow.

All up (which isn’t stated) running out at about $270 Billion / year. Expected to come from Cap-N’Tax and related “Schemes” from “the west” and flow to the “needy”. (With large cuts lost along the way for those doing the transfer, no doubt).

Noted by the complete absence is any indication of private enterprise and private property owners dealing with their own problems. It’s “All UN all the time”…

Onward Into The Paper

But not too far…

As a ‘taster’ of some of the other more imaginative methods of inserting themselves into the economy, it looks like getting into the insurance and bond business is on the cards. So we can add “insurance” to the words that no longer mean “business of providing shared risk in a private economy” but instead “method for moving money around under political guidance”

Intervention may be appropriate to facilitate private insurance. Insurance does not reduce the physical damage from CC (and through moral hazard effects could worsen it). But it can reduce the consequent welfare losses, including by reducing implicit fiscal risks. One response to the Samaritan’s dilemma, for instance, is to make purchasing insurance mandatory. In many developing countries, however, market insurance may be unavailable or unaffordable at actuarially fair rates. There may then be scope for public intervention to provide or facilitate access to risk markets: in Malawi, for instance, the World Bank and donors provide drought insurance. Strengthening wider social insurance schemes also improves resilience to extreme weather events, as to other traumas.

Like that Federal Flood Insurance has worked out well in keeping folks from building on barrier islands…

Another interesting idea is the “Oh Never Mind about Paying Me Back Bond”

Recent financial innovations point to new ways of coping with some climate-related fiscal risks. The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), for example—bringing together CARICOM countries and launched with donor support in 2007—pays out in the event of parametric trigger points (such as hurricane wind speeds) being exceeded. It is estimated to offer premia about 40 percent below market rates, and provides rapid payment if disaster strikes. The scheme is limited in several respects: verification has proved more contentious than expected, for instance, and pooling among countries subject to correlated shocks limits the benefits from risk-spreading. But it indicates scope for addressing fiscal and other risks from CC through insurance
mechanisms (and is an instance of effective regional collaboration in addressing adaptation challenges). Potentially even more promising, as tapping more deeply into global capital markets, is the sovereign issue of catastrophe bonds (for which principal is forgiven if disaster strikes). This is likely to become increasing attractive as the market continues to develop.

Where “donor” now includes “involuntary donor via taxation and NGO money laundry”.

I do have to give them credit for a truly novel bit of PR and packaging. “Catastrophe Bonds”. Just borrow money you intend to never repay (repeat as needed to keep rolling it over) then wait for historically normal “catastrophe” to wipe out the debt.

I’d like to borrow about $10 Million in Catastrophe Bonds, please. I need to build a small mansion on the Florida Keys…

About page 33 we run into the makers vs takers. It is all couched in the obscuration technique of “Percent of GDP”, and ignores that those “small percent” of GDP of the “Wealthy West” are very large numbers.

So “only” a few percent of the US GROSS Domestic Product. (Never mind that total growth is only 2% to 3% and that if you cream off that much capital you will kill all growth of the economy).

Figure 3 shows net inflows as being largely to Africa (6% of GDP) and India (near 5%) with most outflows being from the USA, Former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe. For some odd reason Western Europe is only shown as about 1/2 % of GDP (it’s hard to read). Latin America gets a small cut of ‘inflows’ at about 1%. These are for the 450 ppm option. As Hansen et. al. have told us we will all be dead and roasted from even 350 ppm, I see no reason to look at the 550 pm and 650 ppm numbers on the graphs.

In the 2060 A.D. graph, they expect fully 7% of African GDP to be flowing in from Taxes and Cap-N’-Tax in the USA, EU, and FSU. But by then, Latin America is a net tax source, not sink, and Eastern Europe is a net sink, not source. One can only wonder why. Oh, and Japan is on the hook for about 1/2% of GDP. China looks like a free ride. Anyone else think that China, in 45 years of 8% Growth will be, um, “a financial issue” for “The rich west”? Table 2 on page 21 shows China in 2040 getting 5.95% of GDP (couldn’t bring themselves to just say 6% ? ) via Cap-N’-Tax ‘revenues’. Anyone else think the idea of the USA borrowing MORE $Trillions from China to give them 6% of GDP from their own money is a bit crazy? Anyone else think that by 2040 we will be lucky to keep the EU from imploding, the Middle East from exploding, North Korea from making both Koreas glow in the dark, and the USA out of Paupers Prison?

Oh, and I just love this little gem about ~”it’s bad to buy people off, but if it lets us get the big cake, well, a few cookies may need to be handed out…”

Earmarking revenue from carbon pricing is generally undesirable—except that it may help overcome political resistance. Since the purpose of environmental taxes is to change behavior rather than raise revenue, pressures arise to compensate the losers and to ensure the proceeds are not spent wastefully—both of which can create calls for earmarking. Tight earmarking, however, can overly-constrain the public finances. The economic rationale, for example, for allocating part of the proceeds from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to an Adaptation Fund is unclear: there is no link between the appropriate revenue from mitigation and the appropriate spending on adaptation. Nevertheless, the acceptability of carbon pricing may be increased by linking spending measures to the revenue it would raise.

So spread the largess around as needed to make it a ‘done deal’…

For me, the more interesting bits start about page 14.

Estimates vary widely, but the starting value of the carbon price path is in many studies often only moderately daunting: in the order of US$15–US$60 per ton of carbon(/tC)—equivalent to around US$2–US$8 per barrel of oil, or 5–20 cents per gallon of gasoline. The technical complexities and judgments required to calculate carbon price paths are reflected in widely varying estimates. One meta-study of estimates of the marginal social damage from carbon emissions9 finds a modal value of around US$20 per ton of carbon (tC), and a median—the distribution being strongly right-skewed—of US$48/tC. (Tol, 2007). The Stern Review (2007) estimate, towards the upper end of the distribution, is US$312/tC; Nordhaus (2007), on the other hand, suggests a starting carbon price of around US$17/tC. (For comparison, the current EUETS forward price (for delivery in late 2008) is around € 83/tC). Since the BAU projections from which they derive implicitly reflect current policies, the corrective carbon prices these estimates imply should be seen as additional to existing measures.

More important than the initial level of the carbon price is its future path—with estimates suggesting substantial real increases.

It sounds so simple. “Just” $2-$8/bbl of oil, or 5-20 ¢ per gallon of gas. So now that $6.10 gasoline (remember, they want it to have more taxes on top of the Carbon Tax) becomes $6.30 gasoline.

Now notice they wander off to €83 toward the end. That’s about $108 / ton at recent exchange rates. Now that 20 ¢ is up to about 36 ¢ and you have $6.46 / gallon gasoline…. Hey, just keeps on rising…

Notice also the clear statement to start out small and less painful and then ‘boil the frog’ later?

I’ll leave it at that. You can read the rest for yourself.

So count the IMF as a True Believer in “Climate Change” and CO2 the magic gas. Looking to rake in $Hundreds of $Billions to ‘redistribute’ for ‘justice’. Wanting you to pay about double the present price of Gasoline and then raise it even more and faster.

That’s what the Central Banker to the world Central Bankers wants. Oh, and “the people” don’t get any say in the matter. Heck, the ‘member nations’ mostly don’t even get much say. The USA (with Obama in charge) has the largest share of the “vote” at about 16%, but voting ‘rights’ are allocated in a strange way. Every country has a representative who can vote, but only some of them get on the controlling committees, and then the guys who chipped in the most currency get more bonus votes. Largest printing press wins?

So now you know. The printing press is mightier than the vote. Get ready for $6-$7 gasoline and a few hundred $Billion in new “Carbon Taxes” if they get their way.

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About E.M.Smith

A technical managerial sort interested in things from Stonehenge to computer science. My present "hot buttons' are the mythology of Climate Change and ancient metrology; but things change...
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27 Responses to IMF Carbon Dreams

  1. I had encountered this document a few years ago, when looking at the horrific mess of global warming policy that Keith X Hakim (now Congressman Keith Ellison) was pushing. Ellison insisted in the “Global Marshall Plan” that we should stop thinking about the interests of the United States as being of any sort of value to the process. He said this after wearing an oath to defend the US Constitution, but he did so with his hand on the Qur’an that Thomas Jefferson had acquired to find out more about the treacherous Barbary Pirates. He had met some and negotiated with them, and was not impressed.

    Jefferson reluctantly concluded that there was no way to reason with them, and that war was needed. He ended the blackmail we had been paying for the prior two presidencies, and attacked to retrieve our people and our property.

    It is a pity that the modern Barbary Pirates have been able to operate with impunity — and that we are once again paying the blackmail. And, as in the “dream document” that you are dissecting and in many other places, it will get much worse, as blackmail inevitably does.

    ===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

  2. adrianvance says:

    CO2 is a “trace gas” in air, insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 80 times as many molecules capturing 560 times as much heat making 99.8% of all “global warming.” CO2 does only 0.2% of it. For this we should destroy our economy?

    Carbon combustion generates 80% of our energy. Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.

    See The Two Minute Conservative at: http://tinyurl.com/7jgh7wv and when you speak ladies will swoon and liberal gentlemen will weep.

  3. adolfogiurfa says:

    Do not complain, the rest of the world already pays US$ 7 and more per gallon of gasoline and a VAT too, etc.

  4. omanuel says:

    World leaders cannot possibly lead society now, for reasons given here:

    LENR Tests claiming positive

  5. The folks who want to make energy expensive seem to have their hands on the levers of power.

    Should we sheep just admit defeat and pay up? Or should we support candidates who promise to keep our fuel bills down while providing more jobs here in the USA?

  6. E.M.Smith says:

    @GallopingCamel:

    Well, my answer is to simply avoid the things that have high price rises in them. As wood is free to me, I’m looking at using wood and yard “waste”. I”m also moving “down the cost curve” along the way.

    So since we have 30 ¢ / kW-hr electricity in California, I’ve stopped using PG&E for my major uses (and I’m slowly finding other things to move off of their product). I can “make my own” electricity from natural gas for about 25 ¢ / kW-hr with the generator I have, for about 15 ¢ / kW-hr with some new equipment.

    As “making your own” is not subject to tax, I’m simply doing more “roll my own” on several fronts.

    Dinner last night was a very nice chicken slow cooker stew, without the slow cooker. Just as one example. So what used to consume about 1 kW-hr of electricity in the electric slow cooker instead used about 20 ¢ of charcoal on the patio. Saved about a dime, I think. Put a tax on charcoal briquettes, I’ll make the same meal with the wood scraps from my trees.

    I’ve got a plan I’m working on to make “Wood Gas” for my car. Haven’t done it yet as I’ve got other more important things to do, but it’s not very hard to do. For things like 20 minutes around town (most of my driving) the unit can be much smaller than the ‘small trailer sized’ ones of W.W.II.

    You can also avoid “imbedded energy costs” along with things like union pensions just by making the product yourself. I now make my own bread. Cost is about 25 ¢ of ingredients and maybe 35 ¢ all told. Compare to $3.00 a loaf at the store (and about 25 ¢ of car fuel to get it from the store and more time to get it than to make it…) I’ve avoided the embodied energy costs of all the stuff being hauled around, the factory being built, the union dues being used against me, the… Plus I get a much better product. ( Not a paragraph of chemical names, just wheat, sugar, salt, yeast, water, coconut oil, potato for a soft crumb.) and like the flavor better.

    Just keep doing that, one product at a time. You get your freedom back, and the things with the most bogus added politically driven costs get to fail quickest. Work for others as little as possible (remove feeding tube from the monster) and for yourself as much as possible. Not commuting to work cut my gas bill from “fill up each week” to “fill up once / quarter”. Oh, and buying what I do buy via Amazon is cheaper and has less “use” of the public goods / taxed stuff.

    Another example: I bought 9 ceramic bowls (Corningware) that have a handle and plastic snap on lid. I now make a large dinner, and load the extra into the bowls and freeze them. These are now “Lunch” for the spouse at work. No more $5 (now headed up to $8) for fast food lunch. That’s $100 to $160 / month avoided costs (and all the tax burden and embodied social burden and embodied energy costs). We also use them as “TV Dinners”. I typically load them with a “Protein / starch / vegetable” in 1/3 segments (so roast chicken, mashed potatoes, corn) or with a 1-dish casserole (Tuna-Noodle w/peas for example where the protein, starch, vegetable are mixed – tuna&cheese, noodles, peas.) Yet more “store stuff” avoided.

    While economic theory argues for instead doing “division of labor” and “highest and best use” as the global optimum, the present system rewards more for “local optimum and screw the common good.” So I’m dramatically “under used” and not even near my “highest and best use”. But it is what I’m being told to do by the economic reality.

    That, then, leaves a bit more time for things like trying to elect folks who have a clue how stupid it is to increase energy costs…

    So “fight the good fight” while “starving the system”…

    @OManuel:

    We no longer have ‘world leaders’, we have rent seekers and busybodies…

    @Keith DeHavelle:

    The modern Barbary Pirates have learned to hide and use disguise better… they have learned to act as parasites and disguise their antigens to look like the host so as not to be detected and attacked…

    They have turned from robbers to pickpockets.

  7. omanuel says:

    @E.M. Smith

    We have frightened cowards, like the Wizard of Oz, who face a harsh reality with an army of fraudulent scientific advisors.

    They are now trapped by their own success at hiding the source of energy that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Aug 1945.

  8. E.M.Smith says:

    @OManuel:

    At this point we ought to be into the 2nd or maybe even 3rd generation of folks, so many of them will have been raised with the “wrong stuff” as their true beliefs. At some point that builds up too much bile and things back up and burst…

    What bothers me the most is that there is enough “leakage” to see the clear coordination. Like the “4 walling” of food related illnesses right up until the farm regulation bill was past. Now? Nothing. Well I’m sorry, but we did not overnight go to zero food poisoning or bacterial contamination. It just reeks of either deliberate contamination to create a panic or a deliberate propaganda effort coordinated from (somewhere) central.

    It bothers me to think that the governments of the world are largely in the Railroading Business, but it is looking ever more that way. Clear lines of control, influence, action “for effect”, coordinated efforts agenda driven. I’d like to think we had a free association of people and a marketplace of ideas, evolving to the best ends. The evidence argues otherwise. The UN is clearly (and states so) acting as a central coordinating and influencing body. The intent to reduce the Nation State autonomy is also quite clear. (That the Big Players have publicly stated that intent makes it easier to see ;-)

    One hopes for a better ending than that. Then again, N. Korea is declaring they are at war and going to nuke somebody (the USA being the likely somebody)… Strange, though, we seem to be just ignoring them.. ( “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” comes to mind ;-)

    Well, at least it’s “interesting times” and somewhat entertaining…

    I’ve been expecting a Nuclear War sometime in the next decade or two. It would be nice to get it over with fast. ( N. Korea launches one missile, we deflect it out to sea with ‘interesting equipment’ where it detonates taking a couple of fishing boats with it, we flatten whatever passes for cities and military facilities in N. Korea and declare ‘reunification’ – inviting China to be peace keeper… and the average guy finds out a day or two after it’s all over… I could be happy with that…) I fear that the Kid Tin Pot Dictator Wannabe is going to be very stupid and get even more people killed, though.

    It’s an interesting study in insanity in government.

  9. BobN says:

    Bad Science
    Bad politics
    Bad decisions
    Insanity rules
    Get the pitchforks!

  10. P.G.Sharrow says:

    As near as I could tell, the North Korean nuclear device was multi-kilo ton of explosives in a cavern around fissionable material. The Pakistani device was the same. Gives the illusion of a real device but can only be delivered by ship. 20,000 tons of explosives on a ship will make a big bang! The Americans first deliverable device was as big as a shipping container and could barely be carried by our largest bomber. The real problem is that the North Korean military has been authorized to open fire at any perceived threat. The north has been propagandizing great victories for themselves over their enemies. I remember that such things were done by the Japanese Army before they psychic themselves up to attack the Americans. This could be sparked off by anything or anyone. pg

  11. P.G.Sharrow says:

    This Carbon “tax” smells to me to be a gang of NGOs pushing to get themselves into the middle of this grand revenue stream. Everyone that pushes this seems to believe that they will be the ones that will benefit from this gravytrain and then squeeze out the others. We don’t need these self appointed Elite Overlords. pg

  12. Petrossa says:

    I wish i could buy gas at 6$ a gallon. That would be cheaper than it is now. At lowest it’s around 7.5 $ but 9$ is no exception.

  13. tckev says:

    @adrianvance says:
    31 March 2013 at 12:46 am

    Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.

    But the people wanting these changes are UN, EU, IMF, World Bank, none of the high officials within these entities are elected by the public. More power and more money to the unelected.

  14. J Martin says:

    All this crazy ideology of giving money away to other countries will just produce country sized institutionalised reliance on benefits, whilst lots gets siphoned off into various corrupt individuals bank tax haven bank accounts.

    Time and time again absolutism and extreme political solutions have been shown not to work.

    My hope is that steadily declining sunspots and the cold this should bring with it will steadily undo these extreme and unworkable socialist plans that will only result in reducing all economies to the lowest common denominator.

  15. J Martin says:

    Re North Korea. I don’t know much about the place, but peaceful change is not impossible, they have occasionally brought in western experts to give advice about deforestation and resultant soil loss for instance. More of this sort of thing might eventually lead to a more open society perhaps based on a variant of the Chinese model.

    Otherwise, they carry on the way they are, an entire country living a medieval life, while the rest of the world becomes entirely western, or it all ends in violence. If a violent solution is to be put in place, then I think we need China involved.

    If the immature dictator uses an atomic weapon to take a swipe at a country, then that country can justifiably retaliate, but North Korea is militarised over the whole country, so it’s not worth invading, just wipe out the points of interest, invade other points of interest and then leave, get China somehow or other to do the actual ‘liberation’ and ultimately perhaps engineer a Korean re-unification which at the end of the day must be the ideal long term solution.

    Internal revolution won’t happen, the people are too poor to revolt.

  16. Gail Combs says:

    E.M.Smith….

    Well, my answer is to simply avoid the things that have high price rises in them…..
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    They already have an answer for that. It is called regulations. For example the bill HR875 had several sections written in lawyerize that were open to interpretation:

    (13) FOOD ESTABLISHMENT-

    (A) IN GENERAL- The term ‘food establishment’ means a slaughterhouse (except those regulated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act), factory, warehouse, or facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.

    Congress did not specify any definition for these terms. Under their common meanings, the terms can include private residences. Where the words of the statute are ambiguous, an agency may make a reasonable Interpretation of the statute SEE: Chevron, USA, Inc. v. NRDC, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-843 (1984); Brown & Williamson, supra, at 132.

    This is the nasty little one liner that was taken out and can easily be slipped back in a few years down the road after they finish consolidating their first ‘Victory’ It is EXACTLY what was done with the Animal Welfare Act.

    406. PRESUMPTION.

    In any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction shall be presumed to exist

    (8) CATEGORY 4 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 4 food establishment’ means a food establishment that processes all other categories of food products not described in paragraphs (5) through (7).

    (9) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 5 food establishment’ means a food establishment that stores, holds, or transports food products prior to delivery for retail sale.

    (14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.

    So what does ” the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction shall be presumed to exist actually mean?

    A lawyer who “….co-represented the prevailing defendant in the last successful constitutional challenge to federal regulation under the interstate commerce clause, United States v. Morrison (2000), one of only two cases in 70 years in which a challenge was successful” states

    … Congress’s power under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause is almost unlimited in the eyes of the courts, and thus can reach the “tomato plant in your backyard.”….

    To an uninformed layperson or journalist, that “sounds as if it might not reach local and mom-and-pop operators at all.” (The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, has sought to forestall opposition to her bill by falsely claiming that that “the Constitution’s commerce clause prevents the federal government from regulating commerce that doesn’t cross state lines.”)

    But lawyers familiar with our capricious legal system know better. The Supreme Court ruled in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) that even home gardens (in that case, a farmer’s growing wheat for his own consumption) are subject to federal laws that regulate interstate commerce. Economists and scholars have criticized this decision, but it continues to be cited and followed in Supreme Court rulings, such as those applying federal anti-drug laws to consumption of even home-grown medical marijuana. Indeed, many court decisions allow Congress to define as “interstate commerce” even non-commercial conduct that doesn’t cross state lines — something directly at odds with Rep. DeLauro’s claims.
    http://www.examiner.com/scotus-in-washington-dc/trojan-horse-law-the-food-safety-modernization-act-of-2009

    So the fact that you grow and consume your own food or energy will not save you from the long reach of federal regulation or taxes.

    The Whiskey Rebellion
    … The Official View of the Whiskey Rebellion is that four counties of western Pennsylvania refused to pay an excise tax on whiskey that had been levied by proposal of the Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton in the Spring of 1791, as part of his excise tax proposal for federal assumption of the public debts of the several states….

    This Official View turns out to be dead wrong. In the first place, we must realize the depth of hatred of Americans for what was called “internal taxation” (in contrast to an “external tax” such as a tariff). Internal taxes meant that the hated tax man would be in your face and on your property, searching, examining your records and your life, and looting and destroying.

    The most hated tax imposed by the British had been the Stamp Tax of 1765, on all internal documents and transactions; if the British had kept this detested tax, the American Revolution would have occurred a decade earlier, and enjoyed far greater support than it eventually received….
    The whiskey tax was particularly hated in the back-country because whisky production and distilling were widespread; whiskey was not only a home product for most farmers, it was often used as a money, as a medium of exchange for transactions. Furthermore, in keeping with Hamilton’s program, the tax bore more heavily on the smaller distilleries. As a result, many large distilleries supported the tax as a means of crippling their smaller and more numerous competitors…. [sound familiar? – GC]

    The point is that, in all the other back-country areas, the whiskey tax was never paid. Opposition to the federal excise tax program was one of the causes of the emerging Democrat-Republican Party, and of the Jeffersonian “Revolution” of 1800. Indeed, one of the accomplishments of the first Jefferson term as president was to repeal the entire Federalist excise tax program. In Kentucky, whiskey tax delinquents only paid up when it was clear that the tax itself was going to be repealed….

    Rather than the whiskey tax rebellion being localized and swiftly put down, the true story turns out to be very different. The entire American back-country was gripped by a non-violent, civil disobedient refusal to pay the hated tax on whiskey. No local juries could be found to convict tax delinquents. The Whiskey Rebellion was actually widespread and successful…

    Except during the War of 1812, the federal government never again dared to impose an internal excise tax, until the North transformed the American Constitution by centralizing the nation during the War Between the States. One of the evil fruits of this war was the permanent federal “sin” tax on liquor and tobacco, to say nothing of the federal income tax….
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard1.html

    Straight from the US government site:

    General Alcohol FAQs

    G1: Can I produce beer, wine or spirits for my personal or family use without paying Federal excise tax and filing Federal paperwork?

    You cannot produce spirits for beverage purposes without paying taxes and without prior approval of paperwork to operate a distilled spirits plant. [See 26 U.S.C. 5601 & 5602 for some of the criminal penalties.] There are numerous requirements that must be met that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal or beverage use. Some of these requirements are paying excise tax, filing an extensive application, filing a bond, providing adequate equipment to measure spirits, providing suitable tanks and pipelines, providing a separate building (other than a dwelling) and maintaining detailed records, and filing reports. All of these requirements are listed in 27 CFR Part 19.

    Spirits may be produced for non-beverage purposes for fuel use only without payment of tax, but you also must file an application, receive TTB’s approval, and follow requirements, such as construction, use, records and reports. http://www.ttb.gov/faqs/genalcohol.shtml

    So they already have you mostly covered EM and I am sure a few quick one liner amendments will add methanol and methane to the home produced fuels that are regulated by the government. The EPA already has a whole section on Manure Management

    The whole idea is complete control of the elite’s ‘slaves’ That is the purpose of Agenda 21 (see Video) and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, traceability (They are now trying to include veggies as well as livestock) and the carbon tax. Once you jack up the price of energy and food add an economic recession, then you force people into bankruptcy and can confiscate their property.

    For the USA this MAP shows the ultimate goal. The Wildlands Project would set up to one-half of America into core wilderness reserves and interconnecting corridors (red), all surrounded by interconnecting buffer zones (yellow). No human activity would be permitted in the red, and only highly regulated activity would be permitted in the yellow areas. We get to live in the tiny green dots in Mayor Bloomeberg’s micro-min apartments (Life size floor plan of these slave quarters.) This site has a listing of bills introduced to make it happen. This is how it will be done. This is an example of that plan in action. Also see The Rewilding Institute

    However when you intentionally wreck your country, siphon off the wealth and hand that wealth, technology and factories to the jackals, don’t be surprised if the jackals decide to band together and rip your throat out. World Bank to be hit with a BRIC

  17. omanuel says:

    May Easter 2013 mark the beginning of the end to almost seven decades of fraudulent government science and the return of mankind to respect for his Creator, his actual role in the cosmos, and “The GOLDEN RULE.” http://tgrule.com/2013/03/29/13511/

    – Oliver K. Manuel
    Former NASA Principal
    Investigator for Apollo

  18. Gail Combs says:

    adolfogiurfa says:
    31 March 2013 at 12:58 am

    Do not complain, the rest of the world already pays US$ 7…
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    If you do not complain then the elite just tax the serfs more until there is no other recourse except rebel or starve. Pol Pot shows how the ‘rebel’ option can be even worse than the starvation. Remember that the UK is already rapidly approaching that point.

    The elite/fabians or what every you want to call them want to rid society of ‘Useless Eaters.’ If you have no potential to produce the future wealth, they will confiscate they want you GONE.

    George Bernard Shaw, a founding member of the Fabian Society made that perfectly clear.

    EXTERMINATION OF THE “SOCIALLY INCOMPATIBLE”

    “The notion that persons should be safe from extermination as long as they do not commit willful murder, or levy war against the Crown, or kidnap, or throw vitriol, is not only to limit social responsibility unnecessarily, and to privilege the large range of intolerable misconduct that lies outside them, but to divert attention from the essential justification for extermination, which is always incorrigible social incompatibility and nothing
    else.”
    Source: George Bernard Shaw, “On the Rocks” (1933), Preface.

    USE OF GAS CHAMBERS
    “We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment …
    A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.”
    Source: George Bernard Shaw, Lecture to the Eugenics
    Education Society, Reported in The Daily Express, March 4,
    1910.
    http://www.scribd.com/doc/37106239/The-Real-George-Bernard-Shaw-–-Fabian-Socialist-and-Hitlerian-Advocate-of-Mass-Murder

    UK socialized medicine came up with the ‘Liverpool Care Pathway’ The first news was about the killing off in hospitals of old patients.

    Top doctor’s chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year
    * Professor says doctors use ‘death pathway’ to euthenasia of the elderly
    * Around 29 per cent of patients that die in hospital are on controversial ‘care pathway’…

    NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday….

    The news story The medical profession’s lethal arrogance over the Liverpool Care Pathway, gives some of the horror stories from the general public and the medical profession’s response.

    Now it has come out that children are also put on the ‘end-of-life plan’

    Now sick babies go on death pathway: Doctor’s haunting testimony reveals how children are put on end-of-life plan

    * Practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube being used on young patients
    * Doctor admits starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in neonatal unit
    * Liverpool Care Pathway subject of independent inquiry ordered by ministers
    * Investigation, including child patients, will look at whether cash payments to hospitals to hit death pathway targets have influenced doctors’ decisions

    Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’.

    Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults.

    But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.
    One doctor has admitted starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in the neonatal unit of one hospital alone.

    Writing in a leading medical journal, the physician revealed the process can take an average of ten days during which a baby becomes ‘smaller and shrunken’.

    The LCP – on which 130,000 elderly and terminally-ill adult patients die each year – is now the subject of an independent inquiry ordered by ministers….

    The eugenics movement Britain wants to forget …Some of British socialism’s most celebrated names were among the champions of eugenics – Sidney and Beatrice Webb (the founders of the Fabian Society), Harold Laski, John Maynard Keynes, even the New Statesman and the Manchester Guardian. They hoped that a eugenic approach could build up the strong section of the population and gradually remove the weak….

    From The Guardian:
    Eugenics: the skeleton that rattles loudest in the left’s closet: Socialism’s one-time interest in eugenics is dismissed as an accident of history. But the truth is far more unpalatable “…Hence the enthusiasm of John Maynard Keynes, director of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944, for contraception, essential because the working class was too “drunken and ignorant” to keep its numbers down….”

    Forced sterilisations in Scandinavia have shocked the world… with more than 60,000 Swedish women sterilised from 1935 until as late as 1976.

    The USA was not to be left out thanks to Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood “The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” ~ Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race” – (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923)

    From 1929 until 1974, an estimated 7,600 North Carolinians, women and men, many of whom were poor, undereducated, institutionalized, sick or disabled, were sterilized by choice, force or coercion under the authorization of the North Carolina Eugenics Board program.

    The MSM may claim the concept of ‘Killing off the Useless Eaters’ is a thing of the past but the UK hospital records and the 65 deaths a day in 2012 due to fuel poverty shows the elite have just gotten more creative.

    I wonder if Obamacare will use the Liverpool Care Pathway as a template?

  19. Gail Combs says:

    E.M.Smith says:
    31 March 2013 at 3:52 am
    …… What bothers me the most is that there is enough “leakage” to see the clear coordination. Like the “4 walling” of food related illnesses right up until the farm regulation bill was past. Now? Nothing. Well I’m sorry, but we did not overnight go to zero food poisoning or bacterial contamination. It just reeks of either deliberate contamination to create a panic or a deliberate propaganda effort coordinated from (somewhere) central….

    Agreed. See History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job and HACCP’S Disconnect From Public Health Concerns and John Munsell & A Trip To The Woodshed With The USDA and SHIELDING THE GIANT: USDA’s “Don’t Look, Don’t Know” Policy for Beef Inspection.

    I know Jason Wilke of Crossroads Farm Petting Zoo – State Fair E. coli Outbreak – North Carolina (2004) Curious that two weeks before there was NO outbreak at the Lee County fair where he was for a week and there was no outbreak the week after at another large venue. (I personally verified with the fair committee chairs.) However during the week he stayed home preping for the state fair an animal rights activist USDA vet stuck a thermometer up the butt of each of his animals thanks to that one line change in the Animal Welfare Act. She also told him she wanted to close him down. These actions and words were relayed to me via phone by Jason BEFORE the fair. (He wanted to vent and moan)

    CDC did over 400 tests on Jason’s animals and the only vector route was through fresh feces. Skin/fur or mouth contact did not have viable organisms. Also it was the first case where this nasty strain of e coli showed in sheep and goats. It was confined to concentrated feed lot operations prior to that. Operations that would be inspected by a USDA vet. The four year campaign by Animal Rights Activists in North Carolina to cause a bad accident/incident at pony rides or petting farms ended abruptly the week of the fair and has not resurfaced…. HMMMmmm.

    I have also talked to John Munsell.

  20. Gail Combs says:

    omanuel says:
    31 March 2013 at 12:11 pm

    May Easter 2013 mark the beginning of the end to almost seven decades of fraudulent government science and the return of mankind to respect for his Creator…
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    We can only hope and that is from an Agnostic. The USA is an English and Christian based country and I want the pledge of allegiance and Lord’s Prayer BACK IN SCHOOL and English declared the official language.

  21. DirkH says:

    P.G.Sharrow says:
    31 March 2013 at 6:01 am
    “This Carbon “tax” smells to me to be a gang of NGOs pushing to get themselves into the middle of this grand revenue stream. Everyone that pushes this seems to believe that they will be the ones that will benefit from this gravytrain and then squeeze out the others. We don’t need these self appointed Elite Overlords. pg”

    In the EU, the environmentalist NGO’s get 70 % of their money from the EU commission. They are the shocktroops of the EU commission; that’s why 10,000 of their goons stormed COP15 in 2009 and we had hordes of greenshirts screaming down sceptics. That’s also the reason why Greenpeace can pull TV stunts right in the middle of any security perimeter.

  22. Gail Combs says:

    Here is more of interest about food The “Monsanto Protection Act” (I have not done any research on the subject)

  23. adrianvance says:

    @tckev: “Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.

    But the people wanting these changes are UN, EU, IMF, World Bank, none of the high officials within these entities are elected by the public. More power and more money to the unelected.”

    So? The elected people have to pass on the regulations and taxes before the UN, etc. can benefit. The money comes from the elected ruling class to the people you cite, but more importantly: “What difference does it make?” in the words of the immortal Hillary Clinton. The concept is BS in any case.

    Stop and think: The world is now in depression if you see the real statistics. Unemployment in the US is more than double the official rate, i.e. over 15% (See DOL.gov Table A-15, line U-6). But, everything that we used to have a thriving economy in the 50’s and 60’s is not only still there, but in greater abundance. If we have spent the money we wasted on “Man in space!” going where no man has gone before because it was stupid,” and put it into oceanography, deep sea mining and drilling with remotely piloted vehicles, we would be awash with oil and mineral riches. See George Woodwell’s carbon inventory in the January 1978 Scientific American. 30 billion gigatons of carbon are missing! Where every oil field was a seabed is every seabed an oilfield? I say yes.

  24. Gail Combs says:

    I would love to send this to All the Congress Critters in DC.

    video => Africa For Norway Do you think when China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa finish setting up their Development Bank they can find it in their hearts to send aid to starving and freezing Americans too?

  25. DirkH says:

    Gail Combs says:
    31 March 2013 at 5:24 pm
    “I would love to send this to All the Congress Critters in DC.
    video => Africa For Norway ”

    The video is actually some art project by some Norwegian art class. But funny nevertheless.

  26. Gail Combs says:

    DirkH, the video reminded me a bit of Minnesotans for global warming and it just goes so well with the ‘World Bank to be hit with a BRIC’ it tickled my sense of humor.

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