9/10/12, "Need for Action on Fiscal Cliff Comes From Alternate Tax," Bloomberg, Richard Rubin
"An expansion in the reach of the alternative minimum tax is the element of the U.S. fiscal cliff with the largest immediate effect on taxpayers and the most bipartisan appetite for a solution, creating the possibility that lawmakers could use it to propel Congress toward a deal.
If Congress doesn’t act to prevent the $92 billion tax increase, the number of households facing the alternative tax would increase to 32.9 million from 4.4 million, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That’s an average unanticipated tax increase of about $2,800.
The effect from the AMT, as the parallel tax is known, would be immediate in early 2013 because Congress hasn’t addressed the change for tax year 2012, and taxpayers start filing returns in January. A retroactive AMT change is much more cumbersome than retroactive changes in the 2013 income tax rates, which can be handled through paycheck-withholding adjustments, said Kenneth Kies, a Republican tax lobbyist in Washington.
“The IRS would be paralyzed, not to mention the fact that the taxpayers wouldn’t get the joke,” said Kies, a Republican tax lobbyist in Washington. “This just has to be done in December."...via Zero Hedge
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Carbon tax:9/10/12, "CEI Files Suit to Force Administration to Comply with FOIA," "What Is “Most Transparent Ever” Administration Hiding on a Carbon Tax?" Christine Hall
"The Competitive Enterprise Institute has filed a lawsuit to compel the Treasury Department to stop stonewalling and produce internal documents related to plans for a possible effort to enact a carbon tax in Congress's lame-duck session following the November elections.
In early August, a carbon tax bill was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA). Days later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) expressed hope that the Senate would soon take up legislation to put a price on carbon-based energy sources. These are the sources of which America has been blessed with abundance, and which work when and where Americans need them: oil, coal and gas.
These moves were joined with press reports and leaked documents indicating that the American Enterprise Institute is teaming up with liberals to rebrand this latest iteration of the failed "BTU tax" as a conservative idea, specifically for the lame-duck session.
CEI also notes that this month the left-wing public relations firm which has long led the charge for "global warming" policies, Fenton Communications, escorted proponents of a carbon tax around Washington to gatherings of conservatives, making the case that this original objective of the cap-and-trade crowd should be sold to Congress and the public as a conservative idea.
In response to the increasing activity on this front, on August 8 CEI filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Treasury Department Office of the Deputy Secretary for Environment and Energy and also the Office of Legislative Affairs, seeking deliberations pertaining to a carbon tax.
CEI Senior Fellow Christopher Horner,...who filed the request, said, "Despite President Barack Obama’s repeated promises for openness and transparency in government, the Treasury Department failed to even acknowledge CEI’s FOIA request as required by law." Horner continued, "This is an unusual step given the tools available to delay producing records typically invoked only for the most inconvenient requests for records."
Faced with this signal that the administration has no intention of cooperating prior to the lame-duck session when the debate is expected to occur, CEI filed suit in the federal district court for the District of Columbia, in order to force the self-proclaimed “most transparent ever” administration to comply with its legal obligations.
To read the complaint, click here." via Tom Nelson, via Climate Depot
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More on carbon tax:
Billionaires like David Rockefeller have plenty of friends in the Beltway. The remaining US middle class has no friends whatsoever in the Beltway:
So-called Republicans behind a "carbon tax" include out of work ex-South Carolina congressman Bob Inglis and Art Laffer who voted for Bill Clinton twice and thinks Obama is a fine human being. Anyone who thinks Obama is a fine human being has problems and can't be taken seriously.
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The Inglis-Laffer venture is being financed by fossil fuel billionaire David Rockefeller, a "Republican who Cares." This group is too late to the party. US CO2 has dropped and is going lower:
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US CO2 emissions have dropped steadily since at least 2006 and are going lower. Even Obama knows this. CO2 is no longer an issue in the US though billions of US tax dollars continue to flow to the CO2 alarmism industry. Other countries' CO2 hasn't dropped despite billions spent on cap and trade and extra taxes. Mayor Bloomberg's Bloomberg News editorializes that the US wants and needs a 'carbon tax.'
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8/14/12, "Carbon Taxes Cut Debt, Cool Planet," Bloomberg Editors
Bloomberg Editors cite Art Laffer whose 'Republican carbon tax' advocacy is sponsored by George Mason University which also sponsors the poll Bloomberg cites as proof that most people want a carbon tax:
Art Laffer is too late to the party. US CO2 emissions have dropped steadily since at least 2006 and are going lower. Profiteers still use CO2 to get to the hapless, utterly defenseless US taxpayer and get attention for themselves though CO2 is no longer an issue in the US.
Laffer says don't worry, you don't need to decide about non-existent CO2 endangerment, he'll decide for you on behalf of the trillion dollar CO2 industry. He and his pals will just restructure and redistribute your country. If all this is so benign and just an accounting matter, why is David Rockefeller involved with it?
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6/4/12, "Climate change stunner: USA leads world in CO2 cuts since 2006," Vancouver Observer, Saxifrage
"Not only that, but as my top chart shows, US CO2 emissions are falling even faster than what President Obama pledged in the global Copenhagen Accord."...
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7/13/12, "George Shultz Endorses Carbon Tax – You Were Surprised?" GlobalWarming.org, Marlo Lewis
"But there has always been a wing of the GOP — the “establishment,” “Country Club,” or “Rockefeller” Republicans — who care more about controlling the party than about advancing liberty or even about winning elections. AEI’s Ken Green (a colleague of Hassett’s) hits the nail on the head. In a story on Shultz’s endorsement of carbon taxes, Green told Climatewire: (subscrip):
“There seems to be an eruption of conservatives — very moderate-seeming conservatives, non-tea party, old country club-style conservatives — who are suddenly enamored of carbon tax,” said Kenneth Green, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
“I think this is mostly vanity and egotism on the part of these people who are coming forward, to try and reassert the Republican establishment over the tea party revolution,” he added. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more of these guys weigh in.” (begin parag. 11)...As noted here, earlier this week, former Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) launched a new institute with Rockefeller Family Fund backing [oil money] to promote carbon taxes as a ‘Republican idea.’ Inglis said nothing to suggest that he views carbon taxes as an alternative to EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations, or that one of his objectives is to rein in the agency
- and return control over climate policy to the people’s representatives."
CO2 alarmist 'glory days' are over:
7/28/12, "The Energy Revolution 4: Hot Planet?," Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest
"But there is one group (other than the Russians and the Gulf Arabs and the Iranians) that isn’t sharing in the general joy: the greens. For them, the spectacle of a looming world energy crisis was good news. It justified huge subsidies for solar and wind power (and thereby guaranteed huge fortunes for clever green-oriented investors). ...But those glory days are over now, and the smarter environmentalists are bowing to the inevitable."...
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1/16/11, "Recession Special: Cleaner Air," NY Times, Matthew Wald
"What the government has not mandated, the economy is doing on its own: emissions of global warming gases in the United States are down.
According to the Energy Department, carbon dioxide emissions peaked in this country in 2005 and will not reach that level again until the early 2020s."...
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2/11/2008, Mayor Bloomberg addresses UN General Assembly about terrors of man-caused climate change, reuters photo.
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