When I wrote Red Hot Lies, I backed up the claim with specifics and evidence. Sadly (if typically), a new talking point has emerged among the cap-and-trade cheerleading Left — not including those on the Left who are not financially vested in the scheme, to their credit — which came up at two town hall meetings I attended with Rep. Michele Bachmann last Thursday.
At both meetings, the press — whose penetrating questions beforehand were restricted to “Who’s paying for your trip out here?” (Bill McAuliffe, Minneapolis Star Tribune: it was that mean old Young America’s Foundation) — and the Alinskyites in the audience at one session clung like grim death to a supposed life raft in the sea of cap-and-trade red ink: “an MIT study on cap and trade” that disputes certain cost estimates for the scheme.
Today, I see the Huffington Post is repeating the claim that Rep. Bachmann was lying . . . without saying what the lie was, or otherwise backing up the language. Somebody denies cost projections about a scheme — whose express purpose is to price energy out of current levels of use — and somehow that makes anyone who projects cost estimates a “liar?” For press coverage to make that the take-away point relies on playground logic.
But fine, we’re used to that. Playground logic, ad hom, subject-changing, and all that. But here’s the test:
Is Barack Obama lying?
Numerous cost estimates, all projections of the future, are floating around about what a cap-and-trade bill would cost. It is a fool’s errand to bother claiming to know which is most representative — one I lapsed into during a Q&A once, I will admit, by offering a range of projections (and an audience member shouted “Lie!”. . . no, it’s actually a range of projections). A principal reason this is a time-waster is that the Waxman-Markey bill — “the” game in town right now — cleverly avoided assigning specifics to their scheme, thereby ensuring that all potential recipients of its rents will pant after the project in hopes that it is their beak that gets most wet at the expense of the economy.
So, again, the question is whether the man pushing this scheme — the man whose political vanity or social engineering dreams it seeks to satisfy — is lying?
The only relevant estimate of cap-and-trade legislation is that it would cause your energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket.” That’s Obama.
Hey, Left, stop changing the subject and answer the question: Is Obama lying?