I was reading this article today and noticed this bit of wisdom:

This "amounts to the largest tax increase in American history under the guise of climate change," declared Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

Give me a break, Mike Pence.  If you're going to argue against this bill, there are plenty of honest ways to do it.  Argue that it would kill jobs (it might).  Argue that it will increase energy costs and the price of goods (it almost certainly will do both).  Just because the republican media apparatus loves these sound bytes on taxes doesn't mean you need to provide them every chance you get.  They also like pointing out how the US is becoming a socialist / fascist state (how it could become both continues to puzzle me).  So why doesn't Mr. Pence just say "Hitler invaded Poland so that he could enact cap and trade legislation there, and kill their businesses"?  It would probably kill with the Beck/Hannity/Limbaugh crowd.  

This makes me mad for a few reasons.  The first is that there are people out there who eat this shit up, but it is a free country (for now!).  Who am I to tell someone not to eat shit?  The second is that its not really a tax at all, and I actually would have preferred to see a carbon tax put in place instead of the cap-and-trade system that they've decided to go with.  The tax would (in my opinion) be easier to implement and its' effect on the rest of the economy would be easier to quantify.  Meaning that the sound bytes about it being a tax increase would be accurate, but it would be harder to get away with pulling a number out of your ass to support it.  Finally, CO₂ emissions are a textbook example of a market failure.  Even if you don't buy the idea that human activities are accelerating global warming (a position that is getting more and more difficult to hold) the effects that high levels of CO₂ emissions have on people is pretty hard to ignore.  I guess keeping the magical markets moving efficiently only matters when you're trying to block legislation, and not pass it.