The Patriot Act. TARP. The National Firearms Act of 1934. Cap and Trade.
What do all these acts of legislation have in common? Simple. All came up in a moment of perceived distress and emergency. So far, Cap and Trade hasn’t passed as of yet. But the other acts? There seems to be a distinct lack of these laws actually doing much of anything they were designed to do.
TARP was supposed to fix the mortgage crisis before it destroyed the rest of our economy. NFA 34 was supposed to keep machine guns out of criminal’s hands. Neither has done what it was supposed to accomplish. The Patriot Act, on the other hand, may well have stopped terrorists from attacking us. However, it’s also possible and maybe even likely, that we wouldn’t have been successfully attacked anyways seeing as how most foiled plots are really inept plots in the first place and probably wouldn’t need the Patriot Act to have been foiled.
Cap and Trade may well be another of these issues.
First, let me clarify that I do believe that climate change is very real. A lot of people don’t share that opinion, which is fine. I also think that climate change is a natural process that most likely happens regardless of human intervention. I am willing to conceed the possibility that humans do contribute, though probably in a minor way at most.
Now, with that said, you would think that something designed to fix human contribution to climate change would be OK with me. Well, it ain’t.
You see, I can’t help but look at the negative impact of something like cap and trade to realize that this is horrible legislation for our economy. The basic idea, as I understand it, is to create an incentive to produce less. Producing less will invariably lead to more lay offs in industries not hard hit by the current economy and less job growth in other sectors. I don’t care how many “green” jobs you create, we are heading down a path that I figure no one will be happy with when all else is said and done.
This is what happens when governments act rashly. They find a crisis and figure they have to do something – anything – and do it right now. Who cares if it’s the right thing, just so long as it’s something. Chuck Hagle said something very similar about President Obama’s stimulus package, that the American people didn’t care what was done so long as it was done quickly. Unfortunately, that’s been right far to often.
It’s important to note that the TARP funds, the money we just had to get out into the system is apparently still sitting in bank accounts, coming out in a trickle. So that leads me to ask this: What was the hurry for? Obviously, our nation hasn’t collapsed even without all those billions in TARP money “saving” us from ourself, so why couldn’t there have been some time to debate about this?
Of course, it doesn’t matter to the folks in Washington. They did their something and we’re left holding the bill. Keep this in mind folks. Next time you get to vote for one of the folks, vote against them. After all, you’ve got to do something, right?
