Not hearing the other side

An organized campaign to stop Waxman-Markey? Say it isn’t so!

Well, in order to stop what they termed “Fraudulent Letters Opposing Clean Energy Legislation” the Congressional Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing this morning, It was to investigate what they considered fraudulent letters sent by a group representing the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

Naturally, my first question would be: who selected these guys anyway? It’s a 15-member committee (9 Democrats and 6 Republicans) chaired by Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts. (Yes, he’s the Markey in Waxman-Markey so it’s pretty obvious where he stands.)

One person who was supposed to testify but dropped at the last moment was Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose testimony was supposed to highlight the “Astroturfing” on the pro-warming side. But the Democrats on the committee had no interest in hearing about that and, according to Horner, Republicans meekly conceded. As Chris put it, “in Washington, times such as these are called ‘weekdays.'”

Apparently the global warming alarmists have taken a page from the pro-Obamacare folk by labeling opponents “Astroturf.” (Pity, I preferred the epithet “skeptic” for the heretics who do not believe mankind can warm the planet better than the sun can.)

More distressing is the fact that those who wish to air the dirty laundry of a particular interest group expressing their opposition to climate change legislation that’s going to hurt their bottom line doesn’t want to hear about the same practices achieved by their side. It’s something on the order of holding their fingers in their collective ears and yelling, “lalalalalalala I don’t hear you!”

Perhaps they aren’t listening to the millions of Americans who are sitting at home during a chilly fall wondering just when global warming is going to kick in and save them money on the natural gas, electricity, or heating oil required to heat their homes this winter. Some of them went to the TEA Party right at their doorstep and most of them called out in one voice: say NO to cap-and-tax!

How about this solution to curtail global warming: quit holding meaningless hearings about a problem which doesn’t exist and an answer that will do nothing about the phantom problem but send us all to the poorhouse? China and India are thumbing their nose at the Copenhagen conference, so if they don’t want to play ball we shouldn’t either.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.