Cap and Tax

The C&T bill that was recently whooped through the house contains, it seems, what is called in Washington, a placeholder. This is an interesting legal doohicky that allows a bill to be passed with things like TBD installed in it that can be re-written or interpreted later out of sight of the unwashed masses. In the C&T bill, it looks like this, thanks to Michelle Malkin:
Section Reserved is to be filled in later when someone thinks of something that might need to go there. More interesting is that the section that will be installed later is in the allocation of allowances, or for you unwashed masses, the spreading of the wealth around, presumably to the richly deserving.
When you go to section 788, there is no text except the words [section reserved], so the minute details of who exactly would be deserving of allocations is still TBD. Maybe Obamas fine print czar will take care of this, but I would suggest, to my Senator, that some stimulus action be applied here, to wit:
Sec 788. Allocations for Patriotic and Underemployed Bloggers. Setting up a committee to be made up of Billll, Tamera K. and Jeff Soyer, being all patriotic and either unemployed or underemployed, who will allocate CO2 emissions credits as they see fit in such a way as to reduce the discomfiture level of the country and reward patriotic and inspirational blogging. For this service, the committee shall each be given 25,000 tons of CO2 credits to dispose of as they see fit. The committee shall be allocated 25 million tons of CO2 credits to be distributed as they see fit, a report as to the distribution to be submitted to the minister of minutiae at the end of the fiscal year.

Current thinking is that depending on how the economy moves, a ton of CO2 credit would be worth somewhere between 0 and $40. In Europe, the C&T system was installed, and the economy tanked, causing fuel and power usage to drop driving the price of a CO2 credit from 15 euros to about .15 euros. Industries who bought early took a beating, but hey, I might get lucky.

The word in DC is that as soon as a copy of the bill can be printed up, it's going directly to the Senate shredder, so the actual value of a CO2 credit will likely be zero, same as a unicorn fart.