Crunch time on Cap-and-Trade: House vote this week!

By Lt. Col. (R) Stuart A. Jolly, State Director for Americans for Prosperity-Oklahoma

Let your voice be heard on this issue. This bill in more about power than it is about global warming. It’s a hidden tax on everyone – pure and simple.

FYI: The Hill is reporting today that Democrats have reached an agreement to move forward with a House vote on the huge cap-and-trade energy tax known as Waxman-Markey this week. The details aren’t known yet, but you can bet that this already-disastrous bill that will send energy prices skyrocketing while having no discernible impact on global average temperature will only get worse as even more special interests are bought off at the expense of taxpayers.

It’s crucial that you contact your Congressman immediately and tell him to vote no cap-and-trade.

You can call the Capitol switchboard at 202-225-3121
or use this form on the AFP web site.

Grassroots can make the difference! Thank you.

I’ve also pasted the letter (below) sent to Rep. Boren this week from many organizations including AFP concerned about the ramifications of cap-and-trade and the vote this week. See below and get involved. It’s crunch time!!

An Open Letter to Representative Boren
Oppose Cap-and-Trade Tax Hike!

June 18, 2009

The Honorable Dan Boren
United States House of Representatives
216 Cannon House Office BuildingWashington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Boren:

On behalf of the thousands of Oklahomans represented by the undersigned organizations, we urge you to oppose H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.” This “cap-and-trade” system constitutes a mammoth tax hike and would crush our already-ailing economy.

H.R. 2454 would be a massive new tax heaped on top of existing burdens. Capping emissions and requiring entities to purchase additional allowances from the federal government will lead to an explosion in revenue. President Obama’s own aides have admitted that it could drain as much as $2 trillion from hard-working Americans.

This is a burden that would fall most heavily upon the least fortunate among us, many of whom are struggling without the imposition of such a tax. H.R. 2454 would increase taxes to the tune of $3,100 on every American family and raise their annual energy bills by $1,500. This is especially troublesome for poor American families who spend 26 percent of their income paying for energy, compared to just 4 percent for the median family. Your 2nd district already has a median household income roughly $15,000 below the national average, and a poverty rate over 20 percent, much higher than the national average. Adding to the economic pain your constituents are suffering is an unconscionable policy in these difficult times.

If Congress deems carbon dioxide emissions to be a problem worthy of attention, then it should confront them without raising taxes on struggling American families in the process.

If you do not support enacting the largest tax hike in history, which would be the unavoidable consequence of Waxman-Markey, then we urge you to sign the simple pledge attached to this letter which states that you will oppose any climate change legislation that would lead to a net increase in revenue. Only by signing such a pledge can one claim to protect taxpayers.

Again, we urge you to defend hard-working Oklahomans and oppose H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.

Sincerely,

Duane Parde
National Taxpayers Union

Brian M. Johnson
Alliance for Worker Freedom

Susan A. Carleson
American Civil Rights Union

Tim Phillips
Americans for Prosperity

Stuart Jolly
Americans for Prosperity Oklahoma

Grover Norquist
Americans for Tax Reform

Dan Varroney
American Solutions

Jeffrey Mazzella
Center for Individual Freedom

Phyllis Schlafly
Eagle Forum

Max Pappas
FreedomWorks

Mario H. Lopez
Hispanic Leadership Fund

Brian Dutcher
Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Inc.

Karen Kerrigan
Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council

Also on: AFPHQ.org

Your Daily Dose of Absurd Liberal Legislation

The complete inability of the ruling elites to grasp the economic effects of their “feel good” legislation reached an unprecedented level yesterday. U.S. Representative Alan Grayson (FL-8) has just introduced the Paid Vacation Act of 2009, which would:

• Require one week of paid vacation for employees of companies with at least 100 employees. Three years after passage, the bill extends this requirement to companies with at least 50 employees, and requires two weeks for companies with 100 employees.
• Covers workers after one year on the job. Part-timers must work 25 or more hours a week to be covered.

The impact of this bill, if it were to ever become law, would be disastrous. Small companies across the country would be saddled with an incentive to keep their workforces low, lest they cross the Grayson Vacation Line and incur new costs. Medium-sized firms who fall just above the threshold will be given another reason to trim their payrolls by a critical few employees to fall just below the line that would mandate new costs on their operations. Multiply these layoffs and reduced growth incentives across the entire economy and the impact would be profound.

As the nation grapples with recession-induced record unemployment, how can anyone think that making employing people, which will be critical to our recovery, more difficult is a good idea? Could it be because Grayson’s district includes Disney World? He did hatch the idea while strolling through the Magic Kingdom.

The bill is also being pushed by Take Back Your Time, a group dedicated to helping Americans balance their work and home lives: a laudable objective. In their materials they offer the following piece of advice, “It’s time we traded some of our productivity gains for time instead of money and stuff. We’d all be happier.”

Maybe so, but should we really legislate happiness? Does the big government absurdity know no ends?
Read it here on our AFP Blog.

Stuart Jolly Lt. Col. (R), US Army is the Oklahoma State Director for Americans for Prosperity-Oklahoma.

NoStimulus.com – Sign the Petition! (Update – Nearly 500,000 signatures, but our Government isn’t listening.)

UPDATE 02/15/09: Nearly 500,000 signatures, but our Government isn’t listening. The so-called “Stimulus” Bill has passed the House and Senate and is awaiting the President’s signature.

UPDATE 02/10/09: NoStimulus.com Effort Crosses 200,000 Petitions! Taxpayer Outrage Intensifies

“This is an avalanche of public opinion, and members of Congress ignore it at their own peril.” –AFP President Tim Phillips

WASHINGTON─ While the US Senate chose to ignore its constituents and vote in favor of a trillion dollars of debt yesterday, more than 100,000 American taxpayers expected to foot the bill signed Americans for Prosperity’s NoStimulus online petition, doubling the number in one day and bringing the count over 200,000.

“Americans now have an outlet to express their views on the stimulus plan going through Congress and it’s called the NoStimulus.com petition, and boy are they using using. The growing citizen outrage against this spending nightmare has brought out the voices in many Americans and they’re no giving up,” said Stuart Jolly, state director of Americans for Prosperity for Oklahoma. “In fact, we doubled the number of petition signers in one day to over 200,000.”

The amended bill will now go back to the House for a vote, giving taxpayers more time to examine its contents and voice concern to their legislators. If even one member of Congress changes positions, the stimulus ‘compromise’ will quickly be compromised.

“Despite the outcome of this first test vote, this bill is far from a done deal,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity. “The American people are so angry that they flooded our NoStimulus.com web site off the Internet as we rushed to add more servers all day yesterday. Millions of people tried to reach the site. This is an avalanche of public opinion, and members of Congress ignore it at their own peril.”

AFP launched NoStimulus.com, a website and online petition against the Pelosi/Reid/Obama spending package, with much success three weeks ago, collecting over 200,000 signatures to date and receiving national media coverage.

More than 50,000 of those petitions were delivered to Senate offices last week during debate on the bill and more will be delivered later this week. AFP continues to drive citizens to the NoStimulus petition and urges them to contact their legislators, flooding Capitol Hill with overwhelming constituent opposition.

The complete website and online petition can be viewed at www.nostimulus.com.

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UPDATE 02/09/09: Good morning fellow WebWarriors, and welcome to all of you who are visiting Ft. Hard Knox for the first time, looking for the NoStimulus Petition. We are aware that due to the number of people who are wanting to sign the petition, the American’s for Prosperity site is having trouble handling the traffic. We are also having trouble handling the traffic overflow.

While we appreciate your frustration, and share your anger over the so-called “stimulus” legislation, we encourage you to direct that anger toward the Congress Critters who are considering signing the Stimulus Bill into law. Posting ugly comments, and sending angry e-mails to the administrators of the website gathering your signatures, or the adminIstrators of sites linking to the petition is just silly. Don’t be silly.

Thank you.

Jenn

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ORIGINAL POST: 02/06/09: From Lt. Col. (Retired) Stuart Jolly, State Director for the Oklahoma Chapter of Americans for Prosperity

I wanted to give you an opportunity to make a difference…today! Please send a message to our US Senate that you don’t want them spending your inheritance…nor your kid’s inheritance by passing the so-called stimulus plan. We want to send a message that we care. So far over 60,000 people from around the country have logged on to www.NoStimulus.com and cast their vote against this bill. Rush Limbaugh talked about it on air a couple of days ago and the number of people signing the petition crashed our site twice. It’s up now, so please sign the petition. People care and you should too.

Think about this: If you spent 1 million dollars A DAY since Jesus Christ was born, it still would not add up to the amount of this stimulus! And we’re not even sure what it is we’re stimulating since so much of it is pork and going to things that does not help our economy. Much of it is going to bail out bad business practices. It’s a temporary boost of cash if anything and a short term financial bandaid. Where’s the long term view of stimulating growth and prosperity in this bill? Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) calls it a “skunk!”

This is an issue you need to take action on. Go to www.NoStimulus.com and sign the petition TODAY! The list of nearly 100,000 names will be delivered to the Senate this weekend. Sign it today…it only takes about 10 seconds!

And PLEASE send it to all your friends and get them to sign it. We only have today and tomorrow to take action. We’re hoping the vote gets pushed to Monday but it doesn’t look like it will. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) wants a vote now, because he knows that if he waits we’ll defeat it.

…Thank you for taking action!!

Also see: AFP Statement from January 29, 2009

Americans For Prosperity Foundation Unveils Report Exposing High Cost of Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying

WASHINGTON DC─ In recent elections, voters overwhelmingly supported a fiscally conservative platform, regardless of party affiliation. And yet taxpayer dollars are being used to lobby directly against taxpayer interests. Americans for Prosperity Foundation today released a policy paper exposing the growing financial hit Americans are taking each year due to taxpayer-funded lobbying.

“Exposing taxpayer-funded lobbying is important to our AFP Foundation’s mission of educating Americans about barriers to prosperity,” said AFP Foundation President Tim Phillips. “This is just one more way out-of-touch Washington bureaucrats ignore the interests of the American people.”

The report, titled “Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying: Runaway Government Growth,” reveals the staggering amount of money spent on taxpayer-funded lobbying in the last 10 years— $1.09 billion. In addition, the report points to an explosion of university earmarking and lists a “taxpayer-funded lobbying hall of shame” to identify the big spenders.

Using our tax dollars to hire lobbyists to go back and lobby for more of our tax dollars only grows government spending,” said AFP-Oklahoma’s Executive Director Stuart Jolly.  ”The state is now lobbying the state, and where is the taxpayer in all of this?”  Phil Kerpen, AFP Foundation’s Director of Policy and author of the paper says, ” Tax dollars should be used to deliver necessary government services, not to lobby for bigger government. While ordinary Americans are busy working, their hard-earned tax dollars are being used to pay for lobbyists who are fight­ing for higher taxes and bigger govern­ment.”

A few key findings:

• Over the entire 1998 through first-half 2008 period, taxpay­er-funded lobbying totaled a staggering $1.09 billion.
• Taxpayer-funded lobbying is a major cause of the dramatic growth in pork-barrel earmarks.
• In 2007 alone, public universities in 46 states em­ployed lobbyists.

View the full report here.