Proposal for carbon dividends smart for economy - By John Noreika

Letter found here. This is the organization. Amazingly similar to the Citizens' Climate Lobby. My comments in bold.
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As a former member of President Reagan’s Republican Senatorial Committee, I am enthusiastic about getting this new “Carbon Dividends” proposal before Chronicle readers. (Sorry to nitpick, but I have to stop and note that this common grammatical mistake grates on me. Whenever one writes an introductory clause in a sentence, it must connect to or form a basis to help understand what's coming next in the sentence. 

However, in this case the author is providing a fact about himself that is not related to the remainder of the sentence. That he was a member of a senatorial committee is completely irrelevant to the topic of the sentence, and in fact is misleading. One might think that he has some sort of official capacity as a former committee member, or that he has some sort of approval or mandate from this past membership, or that it lends credence to his position. None of this is true, of course.)

It is co-authored by James Baker, treasury secretary for President Reagan and secretary of state for G. H. W. Bush; Henry Paulson, treasury secretary for G.W. Bush; George Shultz, treasury secretary for Nixon and secretary of state under Reagan; Thomas Stephenson, a partner at Sequoia venture-capital; Rob Walton, who recently completed 23 years as chairman of Walmart; Martin Feldstein, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Reagan; N. Gregory Mankiw, the chairman under G. W. Bush; and Ted Halstead, the CEO of the Climate Leadership Council. (A who's who of centrists, moderates, and insiders. Ted Halstead is the actual mover and shaker here, and he's a middle road kind of guy, which means he happily falls in line with the prevailing leftist issues, but appeals to market-based solutions. Or at least, he makes it sound like they're market-based.

However, he's no capitalist. All he has managed to do is form foundations and thinktanks, most of which seem to embrace leftist causes. His New America Foundation "...began life as Vision Trust. Bill Moyers, president of the Florence and John Schuman Foundation, funded the trust with a seed of $200,000..." Bill Moyers is a big leftist.)

It has four pillars:

• The federal government would impose a gradually increasing tax on CO2 emissions beginning at $40 per ton, creating powerful economic incentives to reduce carbon footprints. (No surprise that the first pillar is a tax. According to the website, the tax is imposed "...at the refinery or the first point where fossil fuels enter the economy..." Thus it's nothing more than a tax on Big Oil.)

• Proceeds would be returned to all Americans on an equal basis via quarterly dividend checks. With a tax at $40 per ton, a family of four would receive about $2,000 in the first year. As the tax rate rose over time, so would dividend payments. (Which if it happens at all, will most certainly be modified, restricted, and eventually eliminated.)

• America’s global competitiveness would be protected with export rebates and import fees. (More taxes.)

• Regulations made unnecessary by this carbon tax would be eliminated. (This has never, ever happened anywhere else. What makes the author think it would be implemented here?)

According to a recent Treasury Department study, the bottom 70 percent (223 million Americans) would come out ahead; meaning we get more back in dividends than we pay out in carbon taxes. Dividends will help us all cover rising costs, thereby helping Main Street. (And we can trust those projections, can't we? It makes so much sense to get the government involved yet again in a wealth redistribution scheme.)

The authors’ analysis finds their proposal achieves twice the emissions reductions of all Obama-era climate regulations combined. (The author does not explain how this will reduce carbon emissions. If Big Oil pays the tax, if charges more for its products. That price increase is supposedly offset by dividend payments to consumers. So if the consumers are not experiencing the disincentive of the tax because of their receiving the dividend, then their will be no reduction in usage.

In addition, in a growing economy and a growing population, there are new consumers coming into the market. They will be buying fossil fuel products as well, which means they will be contributing to the size of the carbon footprint.) 

Using a tax to account for pollution has wide support among economists. With the populist appeal of dividends, this has real, immediate, political power for most of us.