Sarah Palin Was Right #3: Obama Admin. Admits Cap and Trade Will Raise Taxes

TWS' Michael Goldfarb at The Blog quotes a CBS News story:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

Remember how the Obamunists beat up on Sarah Palin for her July op-ed on Cap and Trade in the Washington Post? She had written:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

[...]

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!

[...]

The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will "necessarily skyrocket." So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

[...]

Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?

Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan.

So once again, Sarah Palin was right. Once again, she has been vindicated. That seems to be occuring with increased frequency since June, as we have noted here, here, here, here and here.

- JP

Zycher: Sarah Palin is 'absolutely right' about death panels

Benjamin Zycher, a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute think tank, has written an excellent point-by-point review of the president's Wednesday night speech to Congress, published on National Review's health care blog Critical Condition.

Dr. Zycher (he holds a Ph.D. in Economics from UCLA) found no less than twenty-two distinct misrepresentations in Obama's address, including this one:

"13. With respect to 'killing off senior citizens': No, Gandma won't be unhooked from the machine. Instead, she won't be allowed onto the machine in the first place, if it is expensive. Can President Obama actually deny this, given that resources are limited always and everywhere? And who will decide how to allocate such limited resources? Well, let's be honest: Sarah Palin is absolutely right about death panels, however emotive that phrase might be. As for illegal aliens: Has President Obama proposed some sort of verification process for those seeking non-emergency care? In a word: No."

Don't let the Obamunists, including the Democrat-Media Complex, get away with telling the Big Lie that former Governor Palin's point about death panels has been "refuted" -- it has not. A number of economists from Dr. Zycher to Thomas Sowell have vindicated her. She has also been vindicated by doctors, pundits, politicians and everyday americans. But the most telling vindication of all for the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate was when the Senate Finance Committee removed the death care provision, one that liberals had insisted did not exist,  from the Senate version of the bill.

- JP

'Pals around with terrorists' was not Palin's idea

A vindication of Gov. Palin and a scoop for Marc Ambinder:

Whose idea was it for Gov. Sarah Palin to attack Barack Obama as a guy who "pals around with terrorists?" Palin's camp has always insisted that the McCain high command endorsed the stratagem, while folks close to McCain have accused Palin of going "rogue" and pointed to the "pals around" attack as an example of how Palin simply could not be controlled. The idea that Palin was hard to manage as a candidate and ignored the advice and wishes of McCain's senior advisers is explicated in some detail by Todd Purdum.

But on the subject of linking Obama to ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, it turns out that Palin hadn't gone rogue. Balz and Johnson answer this question pretty definitively. They've obtained an e-mail from campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace sent to Palin on the morning of October 4rd, with an attached New York Times article about Obama's relationship with Ayers.

Wallace's e-mail reads:

"Governor and Team:

rick, Steve and I suggest the following attack from the new york times. If you are comfortable, please deliver the attack as written. Please do not make any changes to the below without approval from steve or myself because precision is crucial in our ability to introduce this."

"rick" is Rick Davis, CEO of McCain's '08 campaign. "Steve" is Steve Schmidt, the campaign's senior strategist and advisor to McCain. Here's the line suggested by the McCain campaign for Gov. Palin to use:

"This is not a man who sees American as you and I do -- as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."

Sarah Palin did what they suggested she do. At the next event, she added the following to her stump speech:

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Ambinder says that Schmidt never denied ordering the line of attack, but that others in McCain's campaign told him at the time that "Palin had instigated it." In other words, they lied.

The "palling around with terrorists" attack never stuck to Obama, thanks largely to the legacy media which never pursued it, accepting Obama's denials at face value. But Gov. Palin was blamed for making it, and she became a target of intense hatred from the left for doing so. Now we learn that McCain staffers let her take all the heat for their idea and even lied about it to cover their backsides.

Any candidate who hires these people is certifiably insane or stuck on stupid. And as Texas stand up comic Ron White is fond of saying, "You can't fix stupid."

- JP