[Editor note: This introduction was given on March 28 at the University of Rochester where Dr. Rizzo is assistant professor of economics. An increasing number of colleges and universities are becoming ‘freedom friendly,’ creating opportunities for free-market guest speakers such as Robert Bradley on energy.]
Welcome to Liberty Week at the University of Rochester hosted by the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. We want to again thank the College Democrats for co-sponsoring the opening event with Robert McNamara of the Institute for Justice. His sobering and inspiring presentation was on the fight to protect the right to freely choose to enter into occupations and consume from businesses of their choosing, to pursue their own destinies, in the face of overreaching by governments and interest groups.…
Continue ReadingWhile campaigning in San Francisco in early 2008 during the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama got a little too candid. “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can,” he opined to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
Waxman-Markey: Never Forget
Elected, President Obama tried to keep his promise by way of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (aka Waxman-Markey, H.R. 2454), which narrowly passed the House in June 2009 by a vote of 219 to 212.
Among the many features in the 1,437-page bill, cap-and-trade of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions was designed to price (cap-and-tax, to critics) and thus reduce such emissions down to 17 percent of the 2005 level by 2050.…
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