It emerged yesterday that the US and China, after nine months of secret negotiations, have agreed to a treaty on emissions: The US has agreed to reduced its emissions of heat-trapping gases by 26 to 28% by 2025, compared to 2005 levels.
China, on the other hand, has set a target for their emissions to peak in 2030, if not sooner. How much will their emissions increase between now and then? Two times? Four times? Who knows.
This just doesn't strike me as a great deal for the US. I understand that the US now has a much higher per capita pollution rate than any other nation. But this seems like a particularly one-sided "treaty."
Maybe, with Barack Obama at the helm, we can drive similarly hard bargains on other matters.
Perhaps we can force the Russians to agree to only double the number of nuclear warheads they have, if we halve ours. Yep, that'll show them Russkies.
Perhaps we can coerce the European Union to not increase their tariffs by eliminating all of ours.
And finally, let's bring Mexico to its knees by not enforcing our border with them and declaring amnesty for at least five million current illegal aliens.
Oh, that's right, Obama is already working on that one.
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I think our country is going down to tubes. We're too soft, needing to develop a backbone (on a lot of issues).
-birdie
The President lacks the power to sign treaties.
Congress would never agree to such a climate treaty.
the Kyoto treaty was signed by president Clinton and it was correctly seen as a symbolic act , the president never even submitted the treaty to congress for approval.
Obama will never submit this treaty to congress , thus it a meaningless gesture by a desperate Obama to appear relevant.
Jova --
Now that you mention it, that does ring a bell; Kyoto was a lousy deal for us as well.
You're much more on top of things than I am.
John,
It doesn't matter if congress ratifies the treaty ( which they won't ). He'll get the EPA to add new regulations choking off the private sector even more so he can look good for the environmentalist movement. The whole goal is to make the imperialist capitalists pay for past sins and transgressions. I would worry more for the when the day comes that China asks us to "pay up" for the trillions we owe them, when we can't they'll just take all our natural resources under our feet. Does anyone really think that China gives a rats ass about the environment, heck they don't even care about their people, let alone the earth.
Mad Dog
Mad Dog --
All true. He plans to rule by executive fiat in the next two years. It seems clearer and clearer that his mission over the past six years has been to diminish America's influence. And now he want to give $6.2 billion to West Africa, which is six times more than WO said would be necessary to stamp out the Ebola crisis:
http://nypost.com/2014/11/11/next-up-ebolacare-6-2b-to-spread-the-wealth/
true, Obama has already pushed the EPA to effectively outlaw new coal fired power plants
Congress could reduce the power of the EPA to regulate CO2 , which was never part of the clean air act.
unfortunately the supreme court has given the EPA the ability to regulate CO2 , when the EPA claimed CO2 emissions endangered humans.
Since many of the new EPA regulations do't take effect until 2016 , a new president could easily stop the EPA from implementing the new regulations. It is unfortunate that Obama has gotten away with getting government agencies to wright new laws. We no longer appear to have a constitutional republic.
Jova --
Obama has done his best to skittle spirit of the law wherever he can. Invoking executive privilege to keep Eric Holder from having to turn over those gunrunning records was a good example. And what he plans to do with legalizing 5MM illegal aliens will be both anti-Constitutional and disastrous. Plus just announcing that various provisions of Obamacare were delayed by executive fiat was unconstitutional as well. Our tinpot dictator.
This is about world government and nothing less. Amerika MUST be brought down to parity or lower than any other nation. They are building a NORTH AMERICAN UNION, this is why they want third-world peasants flooding across our borders. They want to brown-out Amerika, (think Brazil) so that we all are happy feudal serfs without any identity or culture or history.
Obama is just the latest point man to get it done. The next POTUS, whether, Demoncrat or Repuke will do the same.
Welcome to the NWO.
Spike --
I don't see it quite as dramatically. I think this is simply a play by Obama to get more Democratic voters to give this country a permanent Democratic majority, thus facilitating a gradual switch to socialism, making the gap between white and black (or brown) smaller.
In what way do you think Obama will make the country more socialist, apart from the dreaded healthcare reform?
From 2000 to 2009, under Bush, the number of government employees grew by about 2 million. From 2009-2014, under Obama, the number has dropped by about 800,000.
That's probably got more to do with the recession than the presidents but even so, it might be seen as evidence against an Obama led transition to socialism.
Noam Chomsky thinks that the US is a one party state- the business party- and that whereas there used to be two factions- democrats and republicans- the democrats are now just moderate republicans. Everyone in mainstream US politics just represents big business. Obama might have a personal agenda but his power to enact it is quite limited and he'll be gone soon.
re the environment, maybe Obama is a true believer. He seems like the type.
Steven --
It's way too long a list to cite here, but Obama's entire life, and entire political career has been about redistribution, as he said on that radio interview when he was a state senator. Since he started running for President, he's done his best to hide his true inclinations. However, now that he no longer has to run for election or "protect" the Dems in the midterm elections which just happened, I suspect he'll be more overt.
Starting with the stimulus package which Republicans in Congress were totally excluded from, most of his domestic initiatives have been about protecting government workers (the stimulus bill had all sorts of money for municipal workers) and the "tax refund" to people who didn't pay taxes. He's had Eric Holder go after the banks to get as much money as he can from them (he generally regards businesses as the bad guys) and he's pushed the government to increase the number of people who get food stamps (whether they need them or not, hence the large number of people who've spent their EBT card money at strip clubs and tattoo parlors and the like). I can't list all the things here, but his entire worldview is about spreading the wealth, i.e., soaking the rich.
I'm sure he wont be able to achieve anything radical. Its more or less business as usual for now.
Look at top tax rates.
1965-81, everybody earning over $200,000 ($1.49m in today's money) was taxed 70%.
In 1987 under Reagen, in the penultimate phase of his reforms, anybody earning over 90k (186k today) was taxed at 38.5%
Today, everybody earning over $400,000 is taxed at 39.6%.
It seems like the rich are raking it in under Obama, almost as much as they were under Reagen.
Steven --
Trust me, Obama would like to raise those top tax rates further, but he knows he can't without Congress's cooperation.
I didn't factor in state tax- not familiar with the US system.
Anyway, I believe you. There you go then I guess...however socialist he is, he can't do too much about it. He can't redistribute wealth if he can't get his hands on it in the first place.
it is misleading to look at the top tax rates before Ronald reagan cut the top rates in 1986.
In addition to cutting the top rate, Reagan cut many deductions, and closed multiple tax loopholes.
the wealthy actually ended up paying more taxes in the years after Reagan lowered the top marginal rate ...because the marginal top marginal rate was a mirage and with multiple loopholes and the incentives to avoid paying 70% actually resulted in less taxes collected.
Federal Tax revenues doubled from 1980 to 1990 as the top rate fell.....as a percentage of GDP the taxes collected did fall slightly from 18% to 17.4%
Jovs --
Thank you, all that had slipped my mind. I do remember hearing that during the Eisenhower years, when the top rate was 90%, absolutely no one paid that because of all the tax shelters which were available.
Jova, you obviously know more about it that me. So how does now compare to the 80s? Are there again more loopholes? Are the wealthy paying more tax than then? Have the overall tax revenues gone up or down? (adjusted of course).
I have not seen any detailed analysis on what the wealthy are currently paying compared to the 80s
the wealthy are more affected by the dividend and capital gains taxes. Today they are still lower than they were during the 80s , now at 20%. While our top tax rate is now ~40%
it may take a few years before someone studies the effects of the 2013 tax hikes.
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