Friday, April 03, 2009

Lies, Lies and More Lies

Repugnants have an adversion to the truth.  The have no vision for America--one of their recent Presidents dismissed it as "the vision thang"--so they resort to trashing the other side's policy proposals with lies. Their latest mendacity is a whopper.  Several Repugnant legislators from the House Minority Leader [photo] down have been parading before the cameras spewing the Repugnant line that the administration's carbon cap and trade proposal is "a light switch tax" for every American household costing $3,128 a year.  The method by which they made this seemingly precise calculation is a textbook example of twisting the truth beyond recognition. An M.I.T report says that a similar cap and trade proposal would generate $366 billion per year in tax revenue.  Divide that figure by 117 million households and it equals the figure according to their staffers.  One big problem with that.   An author of the report, economist John Reilly, said the calculation is "wrong in so many ways that it is hard to begin".  And he told the inquiring staff people it was wrong when they called.  According to Reilly the tax burden for households would be more on the order of $340 per year starting in 2015.  But the truth does not stop legislators all out of ideas from making Fox Spews sound bites. Reilly has written a letter to House Minority Leader Boehner denouncing the blatant distortion.  In the letter he also says global warming "poses severe risks for the US and the world" and the solution involves "using cleaner energy sources that are more costly then [sic] conventional fossil fuels." If we could only harness the Repugnants' hot air.