Free Republic

Former GOP Rep. Ryan Costello (Pa.) is signing on to work for a group pushing a business-backed proposal to fight climate change with a carbon tax. Costello, less than a week out of the House, announced Monday in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that he’s the new managing director of Americans for Carbon Dividends. The group is the advocacy affiliate of the Climate Leadership Council, pushing a plan by former GOP Secretaries of State James Baker and George Shultz to tax carbon dioxide emissions and return the money to individuals and families on a quarterly basis. “I understand the...

Mr. Tillerson emerged as a contender on the strong recommendations of James A. Baker III, the secretary of state under President George Bush, and Robert M. Gates, the former defense secretary, according to a person briefed on the process. Mr. Kushner and Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, advocated strongly for Mr. Tillerson, and the president-elect became intrigued.

The fact that it’s being proposed by Republicans doesn’t make it any more economically palatable. Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule — Friedrich Nietzsche ‘Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way,” Barack Obama declared after Democrats’ disastrous losses in the 2010 midterm elections. That shellacking finally killed off the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. From it was born the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the Obama administration’s war on coal, in turn a contributory factor to Donald Trump’s election and Republicans’...