Briar Patch Economics

David Roberts, editor at Gristmill, thinks we shouldn't use a Carbon Tax and rebate system because nobody in Washington thinks it's a good idea except most progressives and a few conservative columnists playing B'rer Rabbit and the Briar Patch. (see "Carbon tax is a poison pill")


""I guess I'm going to be barbecue this day." Brer Rabbit sighed. "But getting barbecued is a whole lot better than getting thrown in the briar patch." He sighed again. "No doubt about it. Getting barbecued is almost a blessing compared to being thrown in that briar patch on the other side of the road. If you got to go, go in a barbecue sauce. That's what I always say. How much lemon juice and brown sugar you put in yours?"-from mythfolklore.net

Yeah, those poor conservative shills or the Coal'N'Oil industries suddenly want anything but "Cap'N'Trade."

On Noes!! B'rer Obama! You gots us now and we know we have to change our coal burning ways. We'll do whatever you like just don make us deal with a "Cap'N'Trade"system; oh my think of the paper work.

Now B'rer Obama he knows how tricksy Coal'N'Oil can get and he surely is tired of getting kicked by them so he thinks he just might toss 'em in a sack of Carbon Tacks where the more they kick the more they get poked. Yep, it's a little bit of the hike over the hill to the shed where he can get a good strong sack and them Carbon Tacks but to be rid of Coal'N'Oil he jus might do it'. Yer gone git the Carbon Tacks in a nice tight sack he tells Coal'N'Oil.

Coal'N'Oil he surely don't want no Carbon Tacks in a nice tight sack so he thinks quick looks around and sees the crazy Sierra Club bird hanging out on a nearby tree limb. Throwin his voice he sings out like it's the Sierra Club bird... "Give 'em to the Carbon Off-sets" he sings, "they'll tear him to pieces and starve him to death those Carbon Off-sets will."

Well those Carbon Off-sets will fill my mouth with fur, bite me like a thousand house-flies and tear out my nails but surely that will be better than throwing me to the Cap'N'Trade system. Whatever you all do jus don' throw me there.

B'rer Obama thinks about this and decides that Carbon Off-sets won't hurt nearly enough and tell's Coal'N'Oil it might be fun to tie Coal'N'Oil up in front of his pump house and feed everyone who comes up to the pump house door with Sun-power seeds, Wind-turbinados and Geo-powershakes that he's going to pay for with Coal'N'Oil's tab down at the treasury. Coal'N'Oil let's go a mighty shudder and sings out.. "Well that's a relief because for a minute there I thought you were going to throw me to the Cap'N'Trade"system where I'd be cut to pieces by all those long Wall Street knives."

We all know how this story is supposed to end but remember what happened when California tried to throw Coal'N'Oil's big Uncle Enron into the Power'N'Trade system which was pretty much the Cap'N'Trade system with free drinks and skittles. Uncle Enron managed to steal California's paycheck and the deed to the house on the way in and things haven't gone right there since.

If B'rer Obama listens to a word Coal'N'Oil is singing or the confusion caused by the voice throwing and wailing by the Wall Street ravens who rely on Coal'N'Oil to feed them a steady supply of dead and dying economies to feed on the rest of us are sunk. It will be way over four years before anybody gets their hands around Coal'N'Oil's throat again because nobody's gonna trust B'rer Obama if he screws this one up and it could be twelve years of doing nothing useful before the winds blow the right way again. We played this game with B'rer Clinton and health care and people are still paying for that bungle.

Push the carbon tax now and rebate now and structure it so the first rebate checks arrive in mailbox's March 2010 and there won't be a whimper from the GOP. Nobody complains about their Social Security checks arriving despite the fact that THAT'S an income redistribution system. A per capita rebate system advantages the very people the GOP would try and rally against any kind of carbon fee; the rural middle class. I'm pretty sure that given the choice between God in the pulpit and Mammon in the mailbox they'll choose mammon.

Adam Werbach, the face of the Dark Side.

This is a cross-post is in response to Adam Werbach's post over on Gristmill where he attempts to promote his new greenwash campaign BLUE as some sort of grass-roots environmentalism. Let's be absolutely clear; the people who advocate for pollution and cover it with greenwashing are more evil than blatant polluters. Their goal is to confuse and corrupt people into thinking they are helping the environment while they continue to degrade it.

Here's my reply to Adam:

It's not "Greenwashing"

It's "BLUE"-where you get to buy all the same crap and feel good about it.
Don't y'all get it?

I don't either. I'm not a religious man but I'll join any religion that reserves a special level of hell for guys like Adam that use their former association with (token) environmental groups to sell pollution. You really have to wonder how the guy sleeps; in a wooden box filled with dirt from a mass grave? Can he see himself in mirrors? What's it like to go to the dark side young Anakin Adam?

Let's just be absolutely clear; if Adam and the people he represents "win" you can kiss the ecosystem as we know it goodbye. WalMart is the very core of the enemy camp from their big box store model that causes more car trips, to the debasement of their own labor force, to the coal-powered, plasticized, cheap crap that they import from the vast pollution that China has become.

There just isn't any solution set that includes "shopping for sustainability" unless you define that set as deliberately purchasing less goods than you previously did and those goods are chosen for maximum longevity, utility, ability to repair or re-use or just old-fashioned value. An example is the one pair of hemp jeans that replace ten pairs of cotton jeans over the course of a decade. Notice WalMart will never, every, ever, sell hemp jeans or socks because they would LAST. There's no return sales factor.

I am very, very lucky to live in a town that has a small, active core of people that rejects the WalMart philosophy and maintains a core of culture. I just came back from my local farmers market that happens every saturday. Our downtown is still thriving unlike most downtowns within 20 miles of a WalMart. People still try to take care of each other and give a hand to the planet. We just kicked one planned WalMart out of town and we're going to beat down the expansion of the existing abomination.

In other towns nearby the WalMart has essentially killed local business and with it civic life. Show me a town with two WalMart Supercenters and I'll show you a town with a serious meth problem. That's methamphetamine, as in nasty chemicals dumped in ravines and entire families destroyed. As in the chemical refuge of people whose future living in a community has been transformed into a future of working in a box and ruled by unseen corporate masters. WalMart and meth are like peas in a pod.

Here's a clue Adam; cheap labor costs the planet as well as the working people. Those nice walkable neighborhoods in San Francisco and next door to Brown University (yes I've been there) are there because there are hundreds of little shops that serve niches and create community. WalMart effectively sterilizes the cultural landscape as well as it's suppliers in China sterilize the physical landscape. So that what happens is people don't form community relationships and therefore are unable to form emotional attachments. Attachments to things like neighborhood trees, and vines and flowers and critters and their children. They definately don't give a crap about some stranger on the street.

How's that working out for everybody here in the great prison that america has become? Is "BLUE" labeled crap going to replace the social relationships fostered in little, inefficient neighborhood shops?

So whatever your new mcmansion lifestyle is, Adam, please understand that it won't ever, ever, make up for the degraded planet you promote. It's one thing to be helpless or overwhelmed in the face of the problem but to promote the destroyers is flat evil.

May your karma find you "faster than expected."