Now the Gov't will regulate your home

[Jccarlton]

An email I got today:
I knew Cap & Trade would be bad, but I didn't realize it was going to be this draconian and invasive to individual home owners... read on:



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: thomas tuoti
Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2010 1:22 PM
To: Mark Weiss
Subject: FW: HOMEOWNERS...HEADS UP...


Mark and Maryann, you've got to read this.

Regards,


Tom Tuoti


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FYI – I don’t know much about the Cap & Trade issue but this doesn’t sound good. This will affect renters too as the cost of compliance will be passed on to them through increased rental rates.

Date: Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 1:53 PM

All:



If you like our new Healthcare Reform you may really love Cap & Trade. Read carefully as your government is about to grab you by the knickers again. When will we say ENOUGH???





HR 2454 [Cap and Trade} bill passed the House of Representatives during the spring 2009. It now awaits senate approval.



It will affect every property owner in America . Become informed.









BOY, THINGS ARE GOING TO GET UGLY



Don't want to be bothered with "Political stuff?" You'd better read this one. It will come as a huge shock to you if you aren't informed as to what Obama is up to, and it has already passed one hurdle. It will take very little now to put it into actual law!! YOU'D BETTER WAKE UP AMERICA !!!!

So you think you live in a free country.

Boy have you got a surprise coming.

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 (expen$ive) to meet in a few years. Oh, goody!


Rush was talking about this yesterday:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/ ... guest.html
American Thinker has more:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ns_he.html

Note that DOE and the EPA have no statuatory authority to do any of this and in fact it may be unconstitutional. But that doesn't stop the Administration.

[blaisepascal]

It has been my experience that when I see a post about how disastrous a bill will be that doesn't link to the bill or provide clear pointers to where in the bill the particular onerous provision is most of the time the cited problem is either non-existent, based on a misunderstanding (sometimes intentional) of the text, or otherwise blown completely out of proportion because it makes good propaganda to kill the bill.

The email you forwarded at least cites the bill. It also claims its so large that my congresscritter probably hasn't read it, but then doesn't say where in the bill the problem is. Nor does it quote the bill, so I can't even search the bill for the section involved. Is the expectation that when I read the email I'll be outraged at what the bill does without really knowing what it says, or that I'll take the opportunity to carefully examine all 1437 pages of the bill to find the provision that should upset me?

If there's one thing clear from reading the News and Theory sections of this forum is that there is a strong emphasis on evaluating what evidence we have regarding various proposed energy technologies out there. Often we are hampered by companies who hold evidence, but for whatever reason choose to not publicly release that data. At least the raw data (the bill text) is available in this case; why should we blindly accept the statements of a partisan without actually looking at the text?

Perhaps I haven't looked deeply enough, but reading the bill's text at http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h2454/text, I was able to find:

Section 201 "Greater energy efficiency in building codes." where it discusses developing new national standards for energy efficiency building codes. Last I checked, building codes were not normally retroactive and any new codes typically only effect new construction. Home sellers typically aren't required to guarantee that existing homes meet new code, just the code in force when the work was done on the home. I see nothing in this section which would make the code changes retrospective.

Section 202 "Building retrofit program." where it establishes a program to encourage building owners (both residential and commercial) to get their buildings' energy performance measured, and also encourage building owners to make retrofits that provide measurable improvements in building energy performance. The encouragement comes in the form of paying up to $200 for the audit, and up to $1000 for improvements that save 10% on energy, and up to $2000 for improvements that save 20% on energy.

There are many similar programs available on a regional basis, funded by the States, or utility companies, or NGOs, or banks, or other sources. My job is writing software which supports these programs, either by allowing contractors to model buildings for their energy performance or by allowing contractors and program administrators track which buildings are part of the program and if the improvements actually did change the energy performance of the building. The purpose of tracking is in part to ensure compliance by the contractor (who is the one who gets the moneys from the programs). These programs are voluntary; in fact a larger problem is getting people to actually participate. I see nothing in this bill which would make the retrofit program mandatory for anyone.

Section 203. "Energy efficient manufactured homes." which would provide incentives (i.e., money) for people owning mobile homes built before 1976 to replace them with new energy-efficient mobile-homes. Again, this is a voluntary program, not mandatory.

A quick scan can't find anything else even vaguely resembling the provisions mentioned in the email. But the sections I found above don't come close to being "draconian and invasive to individual home owners". What draconian and invasive sections did I miss?

[Jccarlton]

I don't know. the original email did actually have links to the bill and commentary:
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-tra ... -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 you House? Look at HR 2454:

http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/10/ ... rade-bill/





www.google.com/ search?hl= en&source=hp&ie=ISO-8859- 1&q=A+License+ required+ for+your+ home-+Cap+ and+Trade&btnG=Google+ Search


This points to sections in the bill:
http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/10/ ... rade-bill/

I imagine with 1500 pages or so there is plenty of rotten stuff in there.

[blaisepascal]

I don't know. the original email did actually have links to the bill and commentary:
Cap and Trade: A License Required for your Home http://www.nachi. org/forum/ f14/cap-and- trade-license- required- your-home- 44750/

Unfortunately, in general commentary tends to be bullshite. Also, while I'm planning on looking at all the links you sent (and a lot of them are broken, by the way) the two I've looked at are basically identical in wording to the email you sent. So they add nothing to the conversation.

This link has does specifically mention Sec 202, and says in part "Beginning 1 year after enactment of the 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 Act."

This does not comply with my reading of the bill. I saw nothing in the bill, and specifically nothing in Sec 202, which would prevent you from buying or selling a home without retrofits, period.

The standards mentioned in the link's discussion of Sec 202 are really in Sec 201, and take the form of changes to building codes. Building codes typically prospective, not retrospective, so the new energy efficiency standards would only effect new work, not existing buildings.

Which brings us to the links discussion of Section 204 and building labeling. This section does seem to imply that you'll eventually have to get an energy audit done when you sell your house, and that the results of the energy audit will be attached to the title to the house or otherwise must be revealed to potential buyers. But despite the comparison made in the commentary to automobile emissions inspections, nothing indicates that there would be periodic inspections or forced compliance with a particular standard. The labelling contemplated under this provision is descriptive, not proscriptive.

The more egregious selective quoting about Section 204 that I see is the idea that 90% of the residential housing market would have to be labelled in 5 years. Hardly. The provision that quote is from mandates the development of measurement protocols that will cover 90% of the residential market. That's a big difference, and the word "protocols" is in the bill, but omitted from the article discussing it.

The article goes on to discuss Section 304, which doesn't exist. In reality, it is discussing Section 201, which adds a "Section 304" to a different law already in force. I've already discussed Section 201 above.

I'll note with approval that the article does in fact purport to link to the bill text on Thomas.loc.gov for each of those sections. But the links you get from Thomas for searches are temporary links, and all the ones in the article are dead.

However, the article does include a google-search link to the title of the article. This is an interesting way to provide backing to what's being claimed. Somehow I bet the majority of top hits in that search will be either copies of the article, or rehashes of it.

Moving on...

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

What is it about posting links here that causes them to be filled with spaces, this breaking them.

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

A copy of the article I discussed above

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

This op-ed piece is nearly a year old, was written before final passage of the bill in the house, and doesn't discuss the housing market at all.

Cap and Trade: A License Required for your Home: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2393940/posts

Yet another copy of the original article.

Thinking about selling you House? Look at HR 2454:

http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/10/ ... rade-bill/

And yet another copy of the original article, this time with some editorial modifications and the stripping of the original author's credit.

So, what I see is an article written last December by one person and then copied around which no one who has copied it around has bothered to fact-check.





www.google.com/ search?hl= en&source=hp&ie=ISO-8859- 1&q=A+License+ required+ for+your+ home-+Cap+ and+Trade&btnG=Google+ Search


This points to sections in the bill:
http://www.federalobserver.com/2009/10/ ... rade-bill/

I imagine with 1500 pages or so there is plenty of rotten stuff in there.[/quote]

[Jccarlton]

The problem is that I keep finding stuff that says the same bad things:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ns_he.html

We also have, a government right now that has amply demonstrated that it will go to any lengths, including outright deception to get what it wants. I do not want to repeat "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it" with these 1500 page atrocities of unconstitutionality. That goes double for bills that are themselves based on monsterous frauds.

[blaisepascal]

The problem is that I keep finding stuff that says the same bad things:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ns_he.html

We also have, a government right now that has amply demonstrated that it will go to any lengths, including outright deception to get what it wants. I do not want to repeat "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it" with these 1500 page atrocities of unconstitutionality. That goes double for bills that are themselves based on monsterous frauds.

That they all say the same things doesn't mean that they are right. The American Thinker article repeats, without citation, that the Cap and Trade bill would require homeowners to upgrade to the new standards, a requirement I have looked for but can't find.

The problem with assuming that Obama is the bad guy is that it makes you assume that every complaint about bills in congress are true, regardless of how outrageous they are, without verifying for yourself. It's evident from the fact that the article by Frank Carrio was copied around without anyone checking that the bill said what he claimed that there are a lot of people who are willing to believe whatever outrageousness on the Administrations part they are told uncritically.

[Jccarlton]

The problem is that I keep finding stuff that says the same bad things:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ns_he.html

We also have, a government right now that has amply demonstrated that it will go to any lengths, including outright deception to get what it wants. I do not want to repeat "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it" with these 1500 page atrocities of unconstitutionality. That goes double for bills that are themselves based on monsterous frauds.

That they all say the same things doesn't mean that they are right. The American Thinker article repeats, without citation, that the Cap and Trade bill would require homeowners to upgrade to the new standards, a requirement I have looked for but can't find.

The problem with assuming that Obama is the bad guy is that it makes you assume that every complaint about bills in congress are true, regardless of how outrageous they are, without verifying for yourself. It's evident from the fact that the article by Frank Carrio was copied around without anyone checking that the bill said what he claimed that there are a lot of people who are willing to believe whatever outrageousness on the Administrations part they are told uncritically.

I don't assume that Obama is a bad guy. His words and deeds have told me he is a bad guy. I knew that before he was elected. The Democrat Congress is worse. The fact is that the very reason for this bill's existence the AGW theory, has been proven by recent events to have been based upon fraudulent and corrupted data created by a bunch power hungry activists. I don't what group produced the cap an trade bill, but I can smell a skunk without actually having to read the bill. This is the same kind of crap they tried to do in the Seventies, with a new label. The fact is that the current Congress has through the way they jammed the health care thing through demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. This is just another exercise in taking our liberties. If somebody says that something is in the bill the smell test says that until the bill passes, it's in there even if it doesn't seem to be there. The fact that links were provided to the actual bill means there must be something there,even if it isn't obvious. With this Congress you cannot afford to look at things like this any other way. As far as I'm concerned it's better to just kill the bill and move on. We need growth, not job killers that punish people.

[blaisepascal]

I don't what group produced the cap an trade bill, but I can smell a skunk without actually having to read the bill. This is the same kind of crap they tried to do in the Seventies, with a new label.

There are two ways to know it's the same kind of crap they tried to do in the 70's: Read the bill and analyze it yourself, or trust others to read and analyze it for you.

You've chosen the latter, I've chosen the former. In this case, your sources are stating things which aren't in the bill, and have chosen to construe what is in the bill in the worst possible light and out of context. To me, that says they can't, or shouldn't, be trusted, to tell me about what's going on in Congress.

If somebody says that something is in the bill the smell test says that until the bill passes, it's in there even if it doesn't seem to be there. The fact that links were provided to the actual bill means there must be something there,even if it isn't obvious.

That is a piss-poor standard of evidence, especially when the links either don't work or don't say what the article says they do. But with that standard, you'd never know that the links don't back up the claim.

[Jccarlton]

I don't what group produced the cap an trade bill, but I can smell a skunk without actually having to read the bill. This is the same kind of crap they tried to do in the Seventies, with a new label.

There are two ways to know it's the same kind of crap they tried to do in the 70's: Read the bill and analyze it yourself, or trust others to read and analyze it for you.

You've chosen the latter, I've chosen the former. In this case, your sources are stating things which aren't in the bill, and have chosen to construe what is in the bill in the worst possible light and out of context. To me, that says they can't, or shouldn't, be trusted, to tell me about what's going on in Congress.

If somebody says that something is in the bill the smell test says that until the bill passes, it's in there even if it doesn't seem to be there. The fact that links were provided to the actual bill means there must be something there,even if it isn't obvious.

That is a piss-poor standard of evidence, especially when the links either don't work or don't say what the article says they do. But with that standard, you'd never know that the links don't back up the claim.

I know that this bill represents a means to an end, not the end in itself. That end is a more "sustainable" society as far as the people who wrote this bill are concerned( Moveon, the Sierra Club, Tides, Apollo, the usual suspects.) One goal all these groups have had for a long is advocating desusburbanization. Eliminating sprawl has been one of their battle cries for decades.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/
http://knol.google.com/k/a-future-visio ... can-suburb#
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl
This does that. It devalues older homes and encourages condo and apartments that are more energy efficient. With that in mind, I find it more than plausible that something like this has to be in a bill like this.
In fact in order to achieve the ends they want they need to have something like this that forces removal of all the old homes in suburbia and devalues property values.
As for the links, cut and paste. I can't control how the editor breaks them up.
here's the ones that seem to be broken:
http://www.nachi.org/forum/f14/cap-and- ... ome-44750/
Including the bill itself.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2454
If you know their ends it's easy to pick out the probable means. In any case this bill is a disaster in the making and only a Progressive idealogue would want to foist something like this on the already burdened American people. Especially since the whole thing is based on a lie.

[Skipjack]

It devalues older homes and encourages condo and apartments that are more energy efficient.

Well, if you read the bill like blaisepascal did, then you would know that this is not the case.
We have something very simillar in Austria now, btw. Difference is that here you have to pay those 100 Euros for the evaluation yourself.
All you get is an energy efficiency rating. That is IMHO not sooo bad a thing. Home- buyers will at least know what they buy into that way.
It might also give people an idea where they can improve their house to save money. Also a good thing, especially since, in the US, you even get some government money for doing so. Good thing, not bad thing.
Yet, you are panicking without even checking all the facts. Incredible!

[Jccarlton]

I don't think that knowing what they trying to do is panicking. If you know what to look for and the sign are obvious it's easy to see:
http://www.tidesfoundation.org/fileadmi ... limate.pdf


The fact is that these people have been opposed to suburban growth and the American lifestyle for as long as I can remember. This bill is just another attempt to do want they have always wanted to do, on the backs of Americans. This especially sick because the whole thing is a fraud and a burden on Americans.

[Jccarlton]

I don't think that knowing what they trying to do is panicking. If you know what to look for and the sign are obvious it's easy to see:
http://www.tidesfoundation.org/fileadmi ... limate.pdf


The fact is that these people have been opposed to suburban growth and the American lifestyle for as long as I can remember. This bill is just another attempt to do want they have always wanted to do, on the backs of Americans. This especially sick because the whole thing is a fraud and a burden on Americans.

More of the same:
http://romanticpoet.wordpress.com/2009/ ... s-to-know/
http://apolloalliance.org/digest/?tag=cap-and-trade

http://apolloalliance.org/downloads/res ... 122748.pdf

[Skipjack]

You are making assumptions, assumptions based on what your ideology tells you to assume. This is not a good way to make decisions.
All of these are just more of the same, as blaisepascal said.
Oh and we have the bigger, more leftist idiots in our government and all that we have got is what I described above. Nothing to panick about.

[Jccarlton]

You are making assumptions, assumptions based on what your ideology tells you to assume. This is not a good way to make decisions.
All of these are just more of the same, as blaisepascal said.
Oh and we have the bigger, more leftist idiots in our government and all that we have got is what I described above. Nothing to panick about.

I'm making assumptions based on what I know about the kind of people who wrote the bill in the first place. If that is idealogical, so be it. But I have already over the course of the last months posted numerous things showing what these people want. I've put their own words up for people to read. I've been reading what these people write for a long time. Frankly, considering who is behind that bill, it's death is going to do the American people a big favor. The US cannot afford this and the rest of the world goes down if the US does.

[Skipjack]

The US cannot afford this

I agree that there should be other, higher priority tasks at hand and that the government should not spend 100 USD per house on doing these energy efficiency readings and supporting people that want to make their houses more energy efficient with government money is probably also wasteful spending at the moment. The money is currently probably better spent elsewhere.
At any other time, it would not be such a big deal though. We had a simillar bill introduced 1.5 years ago and Austria, a slightly poorer country, did not go bankrupt from it.

the rest of the world goes down if the US does.

It would hurt us yes, as it has already done the last two years. It wont completely destroy us though...