New Global Warming Tax on Cows and Pigs?

Think food prices are too high already? Get used to it!

Remember when Obama said he would "bankrupt" segments of the coal industry and force electric rates to skyrocket? Or how about the time he suggested that higher gas prices were just fine with him?

Well, if you like to eat (and who doesn't?) you getter get prepared for the next big hit on your wallet coming soon in the age of Obama:

Proposed fee on smelly cows, hogs angers farmers
By BOB JOHNSON
Associated Press
Fri Dec 5, 2008

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if a federal proposal to charge fees for air-polluting animals becomes law.

Farmers so far are turning their noses up at the notion, which is one of several put forward by the Environmental Protection Agency after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases emitted by belching and flatulence amounts to air pollution.

"This is one of the most ridiculous things the federal government has tried to do," said Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, an outspoken opponent of the proposal.

It would require farms or ranches with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs to pay an annual fee of about $175 for each dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 for each hog.

The executive vice president of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Ken Hamilton, estimated the fee would cost owners of a modest-sized cattle ranch $30,000 to $40,000 a year. He said he has talked to a number of livestock owners about the proposals, and "all have said if the fees were carried out, it would bankrupt them."

Sparks said Wednesday he's worried the fee could be extended to chickens and other farm animals and cause more meat to be imported.

"We'll let other countries put food on our tables like they are putting gas in our cars. Other countries don't have the health standards we have," Sparks said.

EPA spokesman Nick Butterfield said the fee was proposed for farms with livestock operations that emit more than 100 tons of carbon emissions in a year and fall under federal Clean Air Act provisions.

The EPA spokesman went on to add that they don't have a timetable for "next steps" to implement the proposal but when the Obama Administration comes to power efforts like this which falsely claim to combat global warming will become a priority.

Obama said he was going to cut the taxes of "95% of Americans." And yet the impact of higher gas, higher electricity, higher transportation and higher food prices will impact everyone who lives in this country but particularly those who are less well off.

All this money will be collected by the government indirectly from producers of the everyday products and services we all use. Just how these taxes will help solve the global warming problem is unclear. What is clear is that the billions these schemes would generate can go to funding a new expansion of government power and new vote buying schemes to make the poor sheep who are getting fleeced every time they drive their SUV to the supermarket think Obama cares about them.

As a personal aside, one of the grants that came across my desk when I was at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was a request for $50,000 so bureaucrats from the Dept. of Agriculture could attend a conference to study "methane emissions from ruminant livestock." In other words, gaseous cows. Where do you suppose they held this conference? In the Chicago stockyards or in some cattle ranching area? Nope. They held it at a resort in Palm Springs. Your tax dollars went to pay for a vacation!