Concerned Citizens of Utah's holy crusade against the Illegals

A little less than two weeks ago an upstanding anti-Illegals group from Utah mailed multiple government and news organizations a list of 2,300 Illegals that they had been secretly watching for the past year and demanded that these Illegals be deported back to Mexico immediately (if you have no idea what I'm talking about I suggest you click on this link). The list included the names of the Illegals, their birth dates, workplaces, home addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, names of their children, and the due dates of pregnant women on the list. The group, humble as they are, decided to remained anonymous, as they had no desire to bask in the glory of their righteous crusade (not to avoid prosecution for what some insignificantly say was a criminal act). I'd like to spend this blog post hailing these men for their brave actions and defending them from their misguided critics.

Everyone knows that we have a problem with illegal immigration here in America. By coming here illegally, Illegals unfairly take the jobs meant for hardworking white Americans, causing mass unemployment. If town halls are any guide, and they are, it was the Illegals who caused this recession, along with 9/11 and the dot-com crash. Some inconsequentially argue that the U.S. economy is actually dependent on Illegals, since the Illegals take the thankless but necessary jobs that no one else would take and since they work at such a cheap price that businesses are thus able to lower their prices and compete in the world market. However, these people are missing the much larger point that Illegals are destroying our country.

Luckily, action is being taken to stem the Illegals tide. The brave state of Arizona recently passed a tough new measure requiring police officers to ask all Mexican-looking-people for proper ID whenever they stop these people for any crime or violation whatsoever. Since this essentially means that all Mexicans who aren't US citizens have to carry their green cards with them wherever they go, this law will also have the positive unintended side effect of driving many legal immigrants out of the state, allowing more jobs for real American citizens. Ridiculously, the federal government is suing Arizona to stop this law from taking effect because they claim that the US Constitution gives the federal government absolute authority when dealing with foreign relations, of which immigration is a part. As one who has strenuously opposed many of the federal government's actions because of their unconstitutionality, I would never support an unconstitutional law, otherwise I'd be a hypocrite, right?

But this post is about the actions of the brave group in Utah, not of Arizona, of which I'll say no more. Outrageously, rather than immediately deport all the Illegals on the list sent by the group, the state of Utah has tried, and it seems succeeded, to find and arrest the brave men who created the group in the first place! What part of illegal do these people not understand? When the Illegals stepped foot in this country without proper papers, they forfeited all their rights, and that is what this brave group in Utah has realized. Yes, normally what these people did would be wrong and against the law, but whenever dealing with a situation like this we can't forget: these are Illegals we're talking about.

Why we need a climate-change bill now

The recent oil-spill disaster, while heart-rending, has had one positive effect. It has focused the nation's attention on the danger of offshore oil drilling and the importance of getting rid of our dependence on oil by changing the way we get energy. It has also convinced President Obama to take a firmer stand in favor of a climate change bill getting passed this year.

There are multiple reasons why a climate change bill needs to be passed. But the most important, by far, is that global warming is happening right now and will ruin our ecosystem (and by extension, our economy) if we don't do something soon. There is no disputing the reality of global warming. Even Sarah Palin, tea-party extraoardinare, agrees that global warming is occurring, although she has been vague about whether it's caused by humans or not. If you don't believe in global warming, I'm not even going to argue with you because, for one, I'm not a big science buff, and two, there's no point arguing with people who just won't accept facts.

The only way to stop global warming is to convince people to stop polluting. What is the best way to do this? By making it more expensive to pollute, of course. That is the core of what the Senate's American Power Act (APA) and the House of Representative's American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) would do. It would charge the 7,500 biggest power plants and factories between $12 and $25 per ton of carbon emitted. The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and by 80% by 2050, something an Environmental Protection Agency analysis says this bill will do.

Now energy producers will probably pass the extra money they have to pay in taxes on to consumers in the form of higher energy bills. Luckily, the climate change bill under consideration in the Senate sends 75% of the profits received from the carbon tax back to consumers. As a result, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the APA would only cost consumers $146 a year. That's only $12 a month, or one Starbucks coffee a week. And with the increase in energy efficiency mandated and incentivized by the two climate change bills under consideration, this bill would actually significantly lower energy prices in the long run. In addition, because of the progressive element of the energy rebates, those who could least afford higher energy prices, the poor, actually will have to pay less on energy bills (by about $40 annually) than they normall would.

All of this runs contrary to Republican claims that a climate change bill will result in massive price shocks running through our economy. This myth has been perpetuated most significantly by the Heritage Foundation, which issued a report last year saying that the House of Representatives-passed climate change bill would cost the average household $1,500 a year. The CBO, which is much more trustworthy than the very conservative Heritage Foundation, tells a much different story, and due to its nonpartisanship should be trusted much more than the flawed Heritage Foundation report. Most likely, when you hear an opponent of the climate change bills quoting a study showing the damaging effects of this climate change bill, they will be talking about the thoroughly untrue Heritage Foundation study and any comments they make should be viewed through this filter.

Another major goal of the two climate change bills under discussion is to greatly increase the amount of energy Americans get from renewable energy sources. The APA would do this by taking 25% of the profits received from the carbon tax and using that to subsidize renewable energy and encourage renewable energy research. No one can say that increasing renewable energy production is a bad thing, and this bill does a good, although not great, job of achieving this goal.

All of these clean energy power sources would need to be built and managed by someone, and as a result both the House and the Senate climate change bill would create a significant number of jobs. According to a report by the nonpartisan Peterson Institute, the American Power Act would create 203,000 new jobs per year between 2012 and 2020. The slightly-more-partisan Climate Works estimates that the bill will create 440,000 more jobs per year in the same time period. That's a lot of jobs, and completely disproves doomsday scenarios predicting that this bill would cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs per year.

The final, and in my mind, least important, reason we need a climate change bill passed is to protect our national security. Currently we spend billions of dollars on oil coming from unstable Middle Eastern countries. A lot of this money is funneled into terrorist organizations that are actively engaged in trying to kill Americans. If we could stop this indirect funding, why wouldn't we? Now there is a caveat. Renewable-energy sources such as solar cells and wind turbines also need natural resources to function, and some of these resources are found mostly or only in unfriendly countries. For example, the mineral lanthanum, which is necessary for solar cells and wind turbines, is only available in China. However, the amount of lanthanum and other minerals we'd need to import for renewable energy sources pales in comparison to the amount of oil we import right now, so on balance a switch to clean energy would still significantly improve our national security.

All of this, by the way, doesn't take into account the huge benefits of stopping global warming. None of the studies conducted can quantify how much money or how many jobs climate change would destroy (even in just the next 10-20 years), and thus how much money would be saved by a climate change bill. But isn't that the main point of the bill, to stop climate change? Almost this entire blog post has been trying to disprove the perceived problems a climate change bill would cause, without touching on the benefits. Speculation says that we'd be saving hundreds of billions of dollars if we were able to stop climate change. We'd be averting mass casualties, the loss of entire cities and industries, and who knows what else. My point is, both the House of Representatives and the Senate bill would still accomplish all the goals that a strong climate-change bill should, while also turning the perceived drawbacks of such a bill into benefits. So what's with all the outrage?

So did I misrepresent something in this post? Am I completely off the mark in my analysis? Comments would be appreciated.