NYC Letter: Ceci n'est pas une taxe

Day 158 of CHOPE

Read my lips: no new taxes.

George H. W. Bush,
then-candidate for the presidency, making the promise
that won him his first term and lost him his second term
ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION
NEW ORLEANS August 18, 1988 (presidency.ucsb.edu)

But let me [sic, be] perfectly clear...if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.

I repeat: not one single dime.

Mr. Obama,
repeating the campaign promise
that will lose him his second term
ADDRESS TO JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS
WASHINGTON February 24th, 2009 (White House)

CECI N'EST PAS UNE TAXE
It's A Jobs Bill! Fooled Us.
[With apologies to René Magritte]

Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers.

Nobody, nobody in this country realizes that cap-and-trade is a tax. And it's a great big one.

John Dingell (D-MI, 15th),
chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee,
calling a tax a tax
WASHINGTON April 24, 2009 (YouTube/C-Span)

I think if you get into the way [the cap-and-trade bill] was written, it's a huge tax and there's no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. And it's a fairly regressive tax. If we buy permits, essentially, at our utilities, that goes right into the bills of the utility customers and an awful lot of people in Iowa, in Oregon, and Utah, and places where we are, very poor people are going to pay a lot more money for electricity.

Warren Buffett,
billionaire investor and supporter of
and sometime advisor to Mr. Obama,
calling a tax a tax
NEW YORK June 24, 2009 (CNBC)

In Obamaland, if you don't call a tax a tax, it's not a tax.

PRESIDENT OBAMA ON ENERGY BILL:
"MAKE NO MISTAKE, THIS IS A JOBS BILL"

WASHINGTON June 25, 2009 (ABC News) - Standing in the Rose Garden this afternoon, President Obama called for the House of Representatives to pass the energy bill written by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., calling Friday's roll call a "vote of historic proportions" that would likely be close because of "misinformation that's out there that suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and our economic growth."

"Make no mistake, this is a jobs bill," Mr. Obama said, arguing that the bill would "create incentives to spark a clean energy economy."

The government will collect fees for emissions permits forcing up your electric bill. [Pause.] It's a tax. [Hard pause.] And more likely it's a jobs killer.

CHOPE.

Tax rich. Energy poor. And no jobs.