Birds of a FeatherI think we've done this before but it looks like Sen. Vitter will be holding a press conference to discuss it this afternoon so I figured it deserved another look.

Here’s how: The bills require a federal declaration of a “climate emergency” if world greenhouse gas levels reach 450 parts per million. Guess what? The Pacific Northwest National Lab says it is a virtual certainty that level will be reached within a few months. The bill then requires the president to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions...to address shortfalls" in achieving needed greenhouse gas reductions.

Any idea what that means? Yeh, me neither. The Examiner asks the question:

Would the president be empowered to do things like nationalize whole sectors of industry, ban coal use, restrict private automobile use, or whatever else the “emergency” requires?

Why not. I guess the saving clause in the provision is the "existing statutory authority" language. As far as I know, no President has existing statutory authority to nationalize whole sectors of the economy. The carmaker bailout was industry specific, I think, and so it shouldn't count as authority to nationalize other energy sectors.

But the concern remains, again, because of who we now know is Barack Obama. I don't doubt for a hot second that he'd resort to truly totalitarian means to address an allege "emergency". And like Caesar, we all know how difficult it is to reclaim the people's liberty once its been misappropriated by the Government.

Neither ObamaCare nor Cap-and-trade have anything to do with their stated purposes. Both are entirely about aggrandizing the size and scope of the Federal Government's power and authority over the economy and, ultimately, you and me. Quite frankly, I personally believe that the two "climate change" bills are actually far more destructive to those ends than is ObamaCare for the simple facts that the repercussions will be felt almost immediately and because it's easier to manufacture a crisis in the make-believe world of "climate change" than it is in medicine.

I'm going to try and find this Sen. Vitter presser and will post any video I find of it as a follow-up to this post.

Russ