America Unplugged! Obama's Cruel Tax on the Poor

America Unplugged! Obama's Cruel Tax on the Poor
Obama's "ideological" energy plan would cripple US economy

by Orson Scott Card

A reprint of an article which originally appeared in the Rhino Times of Greensboro, NC.

October 30, 2008

Obama isn't cutting taxes for the poor, because they don't pay any.

Instead, he's planning to make it so expensive to generate electricity that only the rich can afford to use their appliances whenever they want.

Why? It's all in the name of Obama's true belief in global warming. He says it himself – he'll take coal off the table as an "ideological matter." Even if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, he's opposed to pursuing it.

He wants to put a huge penalty on companies that emit carbon – which means that starting up new coal-powered electrical plants will be prohibitively expensive. In Obama's own words, "It will bankrupt them."

"Cap and trade" plans have already been tried, and they don't work – they cost too much and people find ways to get around them. But Obama promises us that he'll take that failed idea and be "as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's" plan.

In other words, if it doesn't work, let's do more of it!

This is Obama the New Puritan. We've found his real religion: Political and environmental correctness.

It's more important to him to eliminate coal than to find practical solutions. Why? Because coal is "bad." Our groupthinking "intellectual" elite thinks they are post-religious – but they believe in sin and hate the sinners.

(Real intellectuals are skeptical and look for evidence before they embrace an idea; global warming, like the rest of the dogmas of the extreme left, are believed without proof, by faith alone.)

For the New Puritans, global warming is the vengeful god that must be placated. Our economy is the sacrifice to that deity. In the name of global warming, we must destroy our quality of life – and, like sales tax, it will hurt the poorest people first and most.

Unfortunately, human-caused global warming exists only in the way Zeus exists – in the imagination of believers who ignore obvious natural explanations. So this sacrifice of America's most bountiful and reliable energy source (until we can get solar and wind and nuclear up and running) is to a god that only seems real to people who are not serious about staying connected to reality.

Right now it is vital that we convert all our land transportation to electricity so we can wean ourselves from oil (and save that fuel for air transport). It will take far longer to convert away from coal as a source of that electricity – so what we need right now, as a temporary measure, is to build more generating capacity.

Obama would freeze us where we are. Literally.

Our electrical system would be rationed, or as intermittent as in Saddam's Iraq or today's Nigeria – oil-rich countries that did such a poor job of providing electricity to their citizens that it might go away for weeks, and when it comes back on, it's only for a few hours a day.

The poor would be hardest hit. When that electric bill is bigger than your house payment, something's got to go. What do you turn off? The fridge? The stove? Using the microwave is out of the question. Hair dryers? Gone. And you can forget watching DVDs or television.

It's Obama's first album: America Unplugged.

But the harm to the poor wouldn't stop with their inability to afford to use the appliances that the rest of America gets to use. With energy costs soaring to assuage Obama's god, people will have less money to spend. The cost of manufacturing everything would soar.

Let's see – higher prices, less income. Do you see vast unemployment following?

Not only will the poor be worse off, there'll be a whole lot more of them.

Why didn't the San Francisco Chronicle tell us about this back in January, when Obama laid out this plan?

Because it wasn't good for the rest of the country to know what Obama really plans to do. If we knew the truth, we might not vote for the "anointed ruler."

So why did this tape emerge now? Maybe some reporter or editor got an attack of honesty. Or maybe they woke up when they saw Obama declare war on the press – punishing newspapers and TV stations that were not sufficiently loyal to the anointed ruler.

Think of it: Not only can we have Nigeria's electrical power system, we can have Egypt's and Russia's "free" press! All courtesy of Obama!

For a long time we really haven't been able to find out who Obama is. But now, as the anointed ruler makes his triumphal parade to Mount Olympus, his arrogance is showing.

We caught a glimpse when he sneered at religion, saying that we turn to it only out of bitterness – rather than, say, faith, or charity, or love of virtue, or spirituality.

Obama thinks like a New Puritan – the people who punish anyone who speaks an incorrect thought. You've seen how they borked Joe the Plumber and, for that matter, Sarah Palin, accusing them of terrible things – none of which were even bad!

Obama thinks that coal is the devil. But when you ban coal as a source of additional electricity, you cripple our ability to transition to the technologies we must have to keep our great, world-fueling economy going.

But Obama, when you bring the whole global economic system crashing down, what do you think we'll use to heat our houses – or caves – then?

Coal and trees. Lots and lots of carbon.

Obama and his elitist friends think they're smart, but they don't live on planet Earth, they live in a playhouse where they can make huge messes with their stupid policies and then pretend that the mess is someone else's fault while they hope for some invisible mommy to come and clean it up.

The invisible mommy so far has been the American people and the resilient economy that we create (along with the few remaining moral standards that have not yet been crushed).
But we can't clean up after Obama's plan if we're too broke to turn on the lights.

Copyright © 2008 by Orson Scott Card

Don't wait for permission – reprint, forward or link to this now.