That Silly Sarah Just Won’t Stop Makin’ Sense!

Well, it’s been a little over a week since Sarah Palin announced she will resign as Alaska’s governor, and to the extent she has sought any coverage in national media, it is to weigh in on a serious issue, which is more than can be said of her critics.

As usual, that “nutty” Caribou Barbie doll of a Governor is bringing a logical, common sense perspective to bear on an issue–the cap and trade –that the Obama administration and the media elites are doing a pretty poor job of explaining. In the Governor’s Washington Post opinion piece, she makes two main points: if the U.S. gets less of its energy from domestic sources like drilling in Alaska, we are likely to get it from other countries that abuse the environment worse than we do. So while limiting our domestic energy production will make us feel better about ourselves, realistically, what it will probably amount to is supporting in an even bigger way the economies of foreign governments that abuse the environment worse than we do (and, I would add, that support terrorism). I’m no expert here and she could be way off, but as an independent and a New Yorker familiar with the way  the good intentions of mostly liberal “experts” turned New York into a hotbed of crime and urban decay, and required a logic-based, conservative rescue effort on the part of Rudy Giuliani, I’m inclined to listen to her.

Second, she argues that, due to lost jobs and skyrocketing energy costs, the economy will suffer drastically, and working class and poor families are likely to be proportionally harder hit than the yuppies. I’m no economist, but this seems likely to me. Energy for things like gas and heating bills make up a bigger portion of monthly expenses for people of modest means than they do for wealthier people. I understand there is a provision in the Obama plan for some kind of tax rebate to offset cost to the poor, but I’m skeptical. Many genuinely poor people pay payroll taxes but not federal income taxes because they live paycheck to paycheck. If they do not file a federal income tax return, are they really going to get a rebate? It’s not impossible, I guess, but it sounds to me like a lot of red tape that the poor will probably not benefit from.

Even for better-off people, it seems logical that anything that significantly raises energy costs will take away from disposable income and probably hurt the economy. I don’t claim financial hardship, but I already notice the punishing cost of monthly Con Edison bills in New York City, which are one more reason to cut back on mani/pedis and blowouts.

I’m sure there may be compelling arguments on the other side, and admit I’ve got a lot to learn, but one point goes to the Governor for logical argument that is comprehensible to someone other than an economist or an “expert.”

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