Cap and trade a total ripoff

Speaking of cap and trade, here's the Register's editorial deploring it. There weren't near enough votes for a pure cap-n-trade, so they've been buying votes by giving away carbon emission permission credits instead of selling them. But they'll have a market price if this abomination passes, so in fact they're giving away money, even as they're imposing an indirect tax on anybody that uses energy. All kinds of pigs, from farmers to algae biofuel producers to energy companies are crowding around the trough. As I said, they may not yet have the votes, so they're madly trading and buying votes-- about 40% of the credits are giveaways now. It's an orgy of what economists call rent-seeking -- using the political process to get favors and money.

Given our new connection to the WSJ (see next post) I compared and thought our editorial did a much better job than theirs did of explaining the hideousness of the bill. You decide.