no ethical diff bet degenerate gamblers in vegas or wall st.

Now I understand what GOP stands for -- Goldman Owned Party.

Please check out this email I got from a conservative friend that is always trying to sway me to the right. This one has me concerned.... thanks, Rachel. I appreciate you so much!

Homeowners - Better Read This one!

It will come as a huge shock to you if you aren't informed as to what is in the proposed Cap and Trade Bill, and it has already passed one hurdle. It will take very little now to put it into actual law!!
A License Required for your HOUSE?

If you own your home you really need to check this out. At the end of this email is the Google link to verify. If the country thinks the housing market is depressed now, wait until everyone sees this. No one will be buying homes in the future.

We encourage you to read the provisions of the Cap and Trade Bill that has passed the House of Representatives and are being considered by the Senate. We are ready to join the next march on Washington ! This Congress and their "experts" are truly out to destroy the middle class of the U.S.A.

A License will be required for your house...no longer just for cars and mobile homes....Thinking about selling your house? Take a look at H.R. 2454 (Cap and Trade bill). This is unbelievable! Home owners take note and tell your friends and relatives who are home owners!

Beginning one year after enactment of the Cap and Trade Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with the energy and water efficiency standards of this "Cap & Trade" bill, passed by the House of Representatives. If it is also passed by the Senate,

it will be the largest tax increase any of us has ever experienced.

The Congressional Budget Office (supposedly non-partisan) estimates that in just a few years the

average cost to every family of four will be $6,800 per year. No one is excluded. However, once the lower classes feel the pinch in their wallets, you can be sure that these voters will get a tax refund (even if they pay no taxes at all) to offset this new cost. Thus, you Mr. And Mrs. Middle Class have to pay even more since additional tax dollars will be needed to bail out everyone else..

But wait. This awful bill (that no one in Congress has actually read) has many more surprises in it. Probably the worst one is this: A year from now you won't be able to sell your house without some bureaucrat's OK. Yes, you read that right.

The caveat (there always is a caveat) is that if you have enough money to make required major upgrades to your home, then you can sell it. But, if not, then forget it. Even pre-fabricated homes ("mobile homes") are included. In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator.

To get this permission, you will have to have the energy efficiency of your home measured. Then the government will tell you what your new energy efficiency requirement is and you will be required to make modifications to your home under the retrofit provisions of this Act, to comply with the new energy and water efficiency requirements.

Then you will have to get your home measured again and get a license (called a "label" in the Act) that must be posted on your property to show what your efficiency rating is; sort of like the Energy Star efficiency rating label on your refrigerator or air conditioner. If you don't get a high enough rating, you can't sell.

And, the EPA administrator is authorized to raise the standards every year, even above the automatic energy efficiency increases built into the Act. The EPA administrator, appointed by the President, will run the Cap & Trade program (AKA the "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009") and is authorized to make any future changes to the regulations and standards he/she alone determines to be in the government's best interest. Requirements are set low initially so the bill will pass Congress. Then the Administrator can set new standards every year.

The Act itself contains annual required increases in energy efficiency for private and commercial residences and buildings. However, the EPA administrator can set higher standards at any time. Sect. 202 - Building Retrofit Program mandates a national retrofit program to increase the energy efficiency of all existing homes across America.

Beginning one year after enactment of the Act, you won't be able to sell your home unless you retrofit it to comply with its energy and water efficiency standards. You had better sell soon, because the standards will be raised each year and will be really hard (expensive) to meet in a few years. Oh, goody!

The Act allows the government to give you a grant of several thousand dollars to comply with the retrofit program requirements IF you meet certain energy efficiency levels. But, wait, the State can set additional requirements on who qualifies to receive the grants. You should expect requirements such as "can't have an income of more than $50K per year", "home selling price can't be more than $125K", or anything else to target the upper middle class (that includes YOU?) and prevent you from qualifying for the grants.

Most of us won't get a dime and will have to pay the entire cost of the retrofit out of our own pockets. More transfer of wealth, more "change you can believe in." Sect. 204 - Building Energy Performance Labeling Program establishes a labeling program that for each individual residence will identify the achieved energy efficiency performance for "at least 90 percent of the residential market within 5 years after the date of the enactment of this Act."

This means that within 5 years 90% of all residential homes in the U.S. must be measured and labeled. The EPA administrator will get $50M each year to enforce the labeling program. The Secretary of the Department of Energy will get an additional $20M each year to help the EPA. Some of this money will, of course, be spent on coming up with tougher standards each year...

Oh, the label will be like a license for your car. You will be required to post the label in a conspicuous location in your home and will not be allowed to sell your home without having this label. And, just like your car license, you will probably be required to get a new label every so often - maybe every year.

But, the government estimates the cost of measuring the energy efficiency of your home should only cost about $200 each time. Remember what they said about the auto smog inspections when they first started: that in California? It would only cost $15. That was when the program started. Now the cost is about $50 for the inspection and certificate.

Expect the same from the home labeling program. Sect. 304 - Greater Energy Efficiency in Building Codes establishes new energy efficiency guidelines for the National Building Code and mandates at 304(d) that one year after enactment of this Act, all state and local jurisdictions must adopt the National Building Code energy efficiency provisions or must obtain a certification from the federal government that their state and/or local codes have been brought into full compliance with the National Building Code energy efficiency standards.

CHECK OUT a few of the sites;

Cap and Trade: A License Required for your Home http://www.nachi. org/forum/ f14/cap-and- trade-license- required- your-home- 44750/

HR2454 American Clean Energy & Security Act: http://www.govtrack .us/congress/ bill.xpd? bill=h111- 2454

Cap & Trade A license required for your home: http://www.prisonplanet.com/cap-and-trade-a-license-required-for-your-home.html

Cap and trade is a license to cheat and steal:
http://www.sfexamin er.com/opinion/ columns/oped— contributors/ Cap-and-trade- is-a-license- to-cheat- and-steal- 45371937. html
Cap and Trade: A License Required for your Home: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2393940/posts

Thinking about selling your House? Look at HR 2454:

http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/10/01/thinking-about-selling-your-house-a-look-at-h-r-2454-cap-and-trade-bill/

This can be confrimed at http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/h/HR-2454-American-Clean-Energy-Act.htm

Keep up the obstructionism on this one, repubs. Every second you do, you prove that Wall Street is far more important to you than Main Street. Do you think your new BFFs, the Tea Party, will be happy about this? Do you think that voters will support you on this? Polls show that two-thirds of Americans want financial reform, and yet you have the gall to say that you want to even prevent debate on this bill. The rhetoric you use about wanting to "improve the bill" is a transparent lie, especially when you dash off for campaign fundraisers on Wall Street, mere hours before you head back to DC to continue your filibuster.

My question to you is: even though businesses and financial institutions prove over and over again that without sufficient regulation (and penalties for those who do not comply with the regulation), they will run amok and do things like fix prices, lie on balance sheets, insider trade, and (more recently) create investment instruments that are designed to fail, then sell them to the public who buys them under the impression that they will increase in value, but they inevitably fail, and the issuing institutions rake in huge profits because the whole time they had hedged their risks by betting that the investment instruments would fail, when failing is EXACTLY what they were designed to do in the first place, the ultimate result of this whole circle jerk is the collapse of the global economy,

and even though businesses like the west virginia mining company that was responsible for the 30 lives that were lost in the recent mine explosion will just look at regulation and laugh in its face because the benefits for ignoring regulations GREATLY outweigh the penalties,

The question is why won't conservatives acknowledge that it's DETRIMENTAL to the economy to pursue a lasseiz-faire style of capitalism, where businesses are allowed to do whatever they see fit, and the ultimate loser is the american taxpayer, because we ultimately pay for the unemployed victims of this "capitalistic system" while those who benefit from it are paying less than income tax rates on their billion-dollar profits (capital gains taxes), even though their way of thinking has proven over and over again that it will just lead to future collapses of the economy?

Also, why is it a BAD thing for businesses to actually benefit the people of a country? Why do conservatives place this huge line between doing business and caring about the american people? Does it really have to be one way or the other, like they say?

Miss Kathy: I got that same e-mail. The links given were to other echo-chamber websites. Snopes eventually debunked it but too many people have been taken in...one of those lies that, repeated enough, begins to sound true.

The videoclip above, of the blank-eyed GS exec getting worked over by the Senatorial committee made me wonder if ANY of that privileged ilk learned ANYTHING from the debacle. They're still hitting the wrong notes and sounding as though they come from a different species than we do. If Stephen Hawking is correct and the et's arrive any time soon to eat us up, I vote we give them Goldman-Sachs.

Go Sherrod go!! I dig my upright Sen so very much, and am so psyched he keeps coming on your show, Rachel, saying the straight up word. he rocks. and so do you, btw -- my *most* favorite non-comedic voice out on the airwaves today (i do gotta save a little love for Jon Stewart and Colbert, of course -- not to mention Keith!).

I'm looking forward to the Repubs fully caving on this soon, and us seeing *much* quicker movement than we ever did on healthcare, because I believe the Pres and Congress started *off* wrong on that, playing too soft, not realizing you *have* to play hardball with these folks to push them into a corner and relent. it's not just that politics is hardknuckle when it comes down to it -- it's that:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

--Frederick Douglass