Sunday, December 20, 2009

“Pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history ..."

The New Socialism

By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON — In the 1970s and early ‘80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC, The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Brief History of OPEC from the Internet:
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a permanent, intergovernmental Organization, created at the Baghdad Conference on September 10–14, 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The five Founding Members were later joined by nine other Members: Qatar (1961); Indonesia (1962) – suspended its membership from January 2009; Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1962); United Arab Emirates (1967); Algeria (1969); Nigeria (1971); Ecuador (1973) – suspended its membership from December 1992-October 2007; Angola (2007) and Gabon (1975–1994). OPEC had its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in the first five years of its existence. This was moved to Vienna, Austria, on September 1, 1965.

OPEC's objective is to co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member Countries, in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers; an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations; and a fair return on capital to those investing in the industry.)

(This is the web site public relations garbage. In fact, OPEC, made up to the greatest extent by Arab countries, is the most devastating monopoly in the world today. The world, including the US is totally intimidated and has done nothing while their wealth and economies are brutally dissipated. As Charles Krauthammer states, “They pull off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in world history.”
I do now take exception to this last sentence. It has become transfer of rich to rich) jsk.

Krauthammer continued:

Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they: began calling for a “New International Economic Order.” The essential demand was simple: To transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World. On what grounds - In the name of equality - wealth redistribution via global socialism - with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.

The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early ‘80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

However, such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to its current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it’s an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man’s guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But, the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale, too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by-declaring them an “endangerment” to human health.

Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of C02 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means over a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.)

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism. Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: the metamorphosis from red to green.

Not everyone is pleased with the coming New Carbon-Free International Order. When the Obama administration signaled a U.S. commitment to major cuts in carbon emissions, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb wrote the president - protesting that he lacks the authority to do so unilaterally. That requires congressional concurrence by legislation or treaty. Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There’s the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society — as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based — you do it through Congress reflecting popular will.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend existing clean air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation. Do it now. Do it soon because Big Brother isn’t lurking in a CIA cloak. He’s knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

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