December 21, 2018
by John McClaughry
On December 20 the Scott administration announced that it was taking part in a year-long nine state coalition to “combat greenhouse gas emissions caused by cars and other transportation uses.” Scott’s emissary to the Transportation and Climate Initiative, Peter Walke, said that a carbon tax is an unlikely outcome, and more likely is a cap and trade program for transportation fuels.
Scott’s spokesperson Rebecca Kelley told the media that Scott will not embrace a carbon tax. That statement 
reminds me of Baghdad Bob, Saddam Hussein’s spokesman who announced that Saddam was routing the invading coalition forces, while US tanks roared by right behind him on a Baghdad street.
“Cap and trade” is a complicated, corruption-prone fig leaf for a carbon tax. The coalition will assign an arbitrary government cap on fossil fuel users. If they use more than the cap, they will have to buy funny money credits that the coalition has bestowed upon – wait for it – its participating governments! The cost of buying the funny money credits is passed on to consumers of the fossil fuel products – in transportation, mostly gasoline and diesel fuel users. They pay the Carbon TAX. Who gets the proceeds? The sellers of the credits, state governments that obtained the funny money credits for free! The governments spend the proceeds on more subsidies for the renewable industrial complex. Thank you, Carbon Tax.
You’re going to hear a lot more about this disguised carbon tax.
— John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Come on Scott! No new taxes!! Unless the whole world participates in climate change it’s not going to have any impact!
The whole world is participating in climate change and always has. Go do some research. The solar cycle drives the climate. Co2 FOLLOWS warming doesn’t lead it.
The only climate models that are close to accurate are the ones that follow the SOLAR cycles.
Carbon tax,Cap and Trade, Tax Tax Tax All just another way to control
Don’t give up your gardening tools.
look to France to see your future. Don’t look at mainstream media do your own research and find out the truth.
I suggest an alternative to the proposed carbon tax. Insted of all residents being subject to an overreach of government authority, those who truly believe in the program should voluntarily pay said tax. After a 10 year period, carbon emissions in Vermont and the surrounding states will be measured to measured/ validate the effectiveness of the program, where monies actually where used, who benefited, and if climate change/global warming declined due to a loss of revenue on the participants part.
How can Vermont leverage its market based climate change work to encourage India and China do likewise?
This is genocide on the poor
people who cannot afford to buy carbon credits will suffer
if you need fuel you need fuel..
they have no business making a carbon tax based on falsified climate data.
this is an out right scam.
You are correct…only the wealthy can access the credits…the rich get richer under the Democrats!
Phil Scott wouldn’t have been elected if he didn’t hold essentially the same views as the majority of legislators who have been elected in Vermont, so his shenanigans should be no surprise… Thanks for the info, John. I hope you guys can shine some light on all this and get some sense back into Montpelier.
I recently watched this video and thought it was excellent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IoZrzYUq_c.
Scott can fill the public full of all the lies he wants.
The Montpelier cesspool is veto proof and they have an agenda to for fill.
Not to mention Scott says one thing and does another. Are Vermonters really buying into his lies ?
It is Republicans like Phil Scott, whom I served in the VT Senate with, that convinced us to finally vote with our feet and leave the state I and at least 6 generations before me lived and loved. Without a reasonable opposition party to the socialist/democrat/progressive party there really was nothing to give any hope of positive change. So we moved our family and my business economic activity out of Vermont. I figured if I cannot help to make effective change, then the least I can do is make sure my economic activity is not helping push these wrong headed ideas. In the process, rather than having to travel 3-5 hours for projects for my small engineering company, I now have a good customer base of about 8 companies within 25 minutes of our home and the last three years have been the best three years since starting my business in 1993. Since moving, our four boys have lived where healthy opportunities are more numerous than unhealthy opportunities. So while we miss many friends and family, which I could rarely get together because of working out of state, and while it took some time to get our financial equation in order, the move has proven to be a very good decision for our stage of life. And the demographic issues Vermont has indicate we are not alone among families raising children.
One of the saddest things about Vermont today is that people like Mark Shepard have to move away to seize economic opportunities free of burdensome taxes and regulation. Mark was the sponsor of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights when he served in the Senate, but few if any “Republicans” showed any interest. Glad to hear you and your family are prospering and happy.
I believe it was the late and beloved Jack Simons who warned the Citizens for Property Right 50 years ago to not become just an “Ain’t it Awful Society”
Always be doing something positive, trying, striving, proposing, fighting “for’ rather than against.”
So many of us have been doing this ever since Gov Phil Hoff – who knocked Vermont on its ass. Then Act 250 and Sales Tax from Gov Dean Davis “Republican”
We fight this, we fight that, we propose corrective actions and fight for those causes.
We have been doing that for 50 years!! And it gets twice worse every decade.
What is left for us to SAVE?
Mark,
Thank you for all you tried to do.
We have also left, 6 yrs. now, and with no regrets. My thoughts are, ‘why did it take us so long?’ It has been a regrouping of energy, assets and a new mindset, but worth the minor effort. We believe change will not come until VT has turned upside down and has truly fallen on its face. I do not see it changing in my lifetime. The people to be devastated are our poor and elderly, who cannot leave. They are expendable to the politicians and Gov. Scott. Our lives are better and our financial health is better.
Bottom line that I always wonder: Who gets the money?
The Vermont budget is always far beyond revenues, they’re always looking for new ways to pillage more tax money from the working serfs rather than actually cut expenditures. Like Billy Idol sang, they always just want “more, more more!” That’s why businesses, jobs and tax-paying working class are bailing off of this ship as fast as they can and nobody in Montpelier will change their voracious spending appetites.
The Carbon Tax is a scheme; take our money use it for whatever, and then come back for more because there was not enough to start with. It is not about carbon or the weather, it is about control. There cannot be control unless there is a pot of money, and if this passes, regardless of the version or format, they will continually be back for more. These clowns could not put the oil companies out of business because they could not control them, they could not control them because they did not have enough money to buy them, so we will see regulation upon regulation once a foot is through the door. They did put VT Yankee out of business however.It will fix it (so they think) so that there will be continuous hammering so the clowns will be in control of energy, and it’s uses, and whether or not you or anyone NEEDS it, absolute CONTROL, that’s what this is about. Vermonters for the most part do not understand the real goal here; when they do I am afraid it will be too late.