“Gloom, Despair and Agony on me

• Deep. dark depression, excessive misery
• If it werent for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
• Gloom , despair and agony on me.”

Our old friends at Hee-Haw used these lines to introduce one of the regular skits on the long running country western show back in the  70′s and early 80′s. And now, lo and behold, those words once again can be employed . In  a sense, they already have by noted environmental Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat, Ca.

Her committee began hearings on a bill this week to cut global warming. She says that if the bill  does not pass, the results will be dire. For example, she used the words  droughts, floods, fires, loss of species, greater air pollution , damage to agriculture, etc. This may or may not be the case since we have a lot of  those things already and how does  one isolate the cause. But, to me, perhaps even more astounding than those things she said would happen  were those things that she said would not happen. There will  be no new taxes. Now, with all the things that will  likely change if the bill becomes law, how can one not expect new taxes? Oh wait. Almost forgot the good  things that passage of the bill would cause to transpire. Millions of new jobs, yep, millions , less pollution etc.

But those dastardly obstructionist  Republicans will play the distort and confuse game so she does have her work cut out for her.

One more small  comparison. Boxer says that will be incentives and investments and opportunities galore. Her Republican counterpart, Sen. James  Inhofe of Oklahoma says that the public will see that someone, them, will have to bear the costs  that companies will incur to reduce  global warming  emissions and they will reject that.

One other thing happened during  the hearings this week.  Boxer had an exchange with the CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Harry Alford.  He took issue with her quoting another black group  while he was  before her committee. One gathers that  Mr Alford is not sold on the millions of green jobs and comes out and calls the senator a racist. Imagine that, a liberal Democrat being called a racist. What is happening to this country?

It is bill #SD 406, watch it closely.