An Alternate Reality?

There's a bang at your door. You stumble there, peek out the peep hole and see uniformed men and women with stern faces carrying a great deal of equipment and clip boards....you open the door and hear "mam, we're the environmental police and we're here to rate your compliance with the new environmental laws. Please show us 6 months worth of energy bills or sign this form so that we can get them from your utility company." They enter the house uninvited and begin to look at the light bulbs in your ceiling fan and lamps and over head light fixtures all the while marking things down on their clipboards. One or two of them ask to see your attic and your utility closet while you see that outside, your heat pump and a/c are being looked at. Next, you're asked to escort one of them to your laundry room; they're opening and shutting your windows and use some kind of blower to measure the air that escapes under your front door. They're looking at your thermostat to see just what you've got your a/c or heat set at. Almost as suddenly as it began, its over. You're handed a paper while someone slaps a label on your front window visible from the outside.

Does that paper say you passed the inspection? Or is it a citation dictating what must be done to bring your home up to code and the fines you'll pay for everyday of 'unlawful occupancy" of your home until you bring it all up to code? Were you trying to sell your house? Well, if you were and you weren't up to the new codes, you'll have to pay to bring your home to code before they'll authorize the sale to take place.

Is this an alternate reality that exists only in conspiracy theorists minds or is this perhaps in the future for every American? If cap and trade passes, its our future....unless of course the individual states stop it....or the voters vote these people out of office and start completely over.

I can hear some of you saying, "but Cap and Trade is dead; the Party of No stopped it". I wish that that were the truth, but its not. Those in Washington are still talking about passing the house bill in the senate sometime this year and if you listen really carefully, you'll hear the Environmental Agency threatening that if it isn't passed, that agency will just regulate the things in the bill into being. The bill says that 90% of homes and buildings in this country will be brought to code in 5 years from the effective date of the law. What exactly are the new codes based upon? The California Codes of course....you know, that state that is bankrupt at the moment because of their building and energy codes and the one that is forcing the farmers of California out of business to save those wee little fish? Anyhoo, how will they accomplish this making 90% of homes and buildings meet the new codes in five years?

First, by establishing new building codes that will be 30% higher then the ones in affect now and forcing every seller of a home to bring the home up to code before they can sell it and incur a fine for every day the house is below code. Second, there will be mandatory inspections of every home and building in the country with fines for every day that the inspected house is under code. Third, if the states don't comply, the federal money will be cut off. One federal employee stated that we needed "a swat team to sweep a street in a neighborhood and replace every window of every building on that street" and then move on to the next street until every home in America had new windows.....can't pay for it? Out you go.

I once had a friend say that she was willing to pay more money for her energy usage if it saved the world.....but she refuses to take steps on her own to become pro-active in her own life to help save the world. She wants the government to force her to do it......plus said she "the government will give me a subsidy to help me out". I asked just where she thought that subsidy would come from....her answer wasn't "the taxpayers who don't qualify for that subsidy" and she certainly didn't comprehend that a whole lot of folks making only about $32,000 annually would be the ones paying for that subsidy in higher taxes. Not to mention Candidate Obama's own words that under his plan for the new energy reality in this country "electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket".

I urged her to read the bill herself; I gave her information on the true cost and affect on all Americans in job losses, in liberty losses, and she said "don't give me your statistics....change is coming...get used to it!".

While David and I voluntarily spend oodles of money retrofitting this old house to save not only it but save in what our own footprint does in impacting our world, this woman wants the government to mandate her compliance hoping that when it does, it'll also give her the money to be compliant. She doesn't count the cost in her liberty of when and how to buy and sell her property; she doesn't count the cost of forced retrofitting of her own home before the government gives her whatever subsidy they'll allot her when she files her 1040 in April.

And too many Americans share her mindset.....while the rest of us watch every facet of our lives becoming more and more under the control of a government that uses our money to jet to Copenhagen and stay in exclusive hotels that most of us could never even contemplate setting eyes on.......all the while pointing their fingers at the Corporations that employ us and shaming them for the same things they themselves are doing.

What's your mindset? Are you willing to live in a country where you're fined everyday for "unlawful occupancy" in your own home? Or are you of a mindset that says "hey, I need to make my home energy efficient because its not only good for the environment but good for my pocketbook" and then lay out a long term plan to get it done?

Don't believe that America will set up a system of Green Police? New York has already done it.....and it may be coming to your town. Don't believe that you just might be forced to retrofitt your window by a swat team? Read up on Cathy Zoi at Obama's Department of Energy......

An alternate reality or fundamental change? Read the bill while remembering that the EPA has said it will regulate these things if the bill isn't passed and then you decide. If you still need some help, it might serve the whole country if you took the time to read the constitution and remember what it was to protect us from.............the tyranny of an out of control government.....!