How Will the "Cap and Trade" Bill Affect You?

Some think all the fury about Obama's "Cap and Trade" bill is just political positioning and it will not impact the average American. Wrong! Your life and cost of living will be greatly impacted by the hidden "Cap and Trade" tax. All industries that burn carbon fuels (coal, oil, gas) will see higher costs and these will be passed along to every consumer as higher prices, (effectively a "hidden tax"). Families, farmers and drivers will see higher prices because power bills, heating and cooling bills food prices, other product prices and gasoline prices will all be higher, some much higher, depending on how energy intensive the utility or product is. Why will these utilities and products have increased prices? Local power distributors, natural gas distributors, home heating oil and propane, fuel (oil) refiners, energy intensive industries like heavy manufacturing will all be "capped" on carbon emissions and have to "trade" (purchase) carbon credits from industries that don't use all of their credits. In addition, workers in energy intensive industries will lose jobs to overseas manufacturing which don't have this regressive energy tax; places like India, China and Southeast Asia. This process is open to great political interference and corruption, as politicians can influence which industries get extra carbon credits based upon who contributes to their campaigns. So, the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, John Murtha, Harry Reid who have a history of using political influence for pork projects, favored personal loans or legislation to benefit their friends and families, and the White House can manipulate who wins and who loses based upon votes and political support. The bureaucracy around Cap and Trade is enormous, the central agency being the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which is controlled by a White House appointee. But there is more: an Offsets Advisory Board, a Carbon Market Oversight Interagency Working Group, with input and oversight from the Federal Energy Oversight Commission (FERC), the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Department of Energy (DOE), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the national Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA), the Department of Labor (DOL), the Internal Revenue service (IRS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Corps of Engineers (CORPS), the Treasury Department, the State Department, the United States Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the National Park Service (NPS), the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Bureau of Reclamation (BUREC) and the Bureau of Land Management, all will be involved in various aspects of Cap and Trade. Is there anyone in their right mind who thinks that "Cap and Trade" with this huge government bureaucracy, great opportunities fro favoritism and fraud and basic goal of increasing the penalty for using carbon based fuels will not greatly increase the cost of living of every American while making a few politically connected companies (like GE) and individuals (like Al Gore) extremely rich?