SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Inslee using lightning-caused wildfires to push bogus carbon tax

Aug 21, 2018, 5:13 AM | Updated: 5:42 am

Jay Inslee is trying to engineer a multi-billion-dollar rip-off of taxpayers with the wildfires that are happening right now. As you probably know, lightning strikes started about 12 wildfires recently; most of the smoke we have here in the Puget Sound is from wildfires in British Columbia, along with some in the Cascades.

As I’ve pointed out, you can have absolute gridlock here in the summer, and if there isn’t a forest fire nearby, then the skies can be beautiful and pristine and clear as can be. But if a lightning strike causes a forest fire, then all of a sudden we are engulfed in smoke. It is proof that man’s role in carbon emissions is insignificant. As I’ve said before, carbon-based transportation represents about 100 years of the 4.5 billion years of our planet; a lightning strike and ensuing wildfire emits hundreds or maybe even thousands of times the amount of carbon of all of our cars put together.

But Jay Inslee, bizarrely, is using these wildfires as a reason why we should raise our taxes by hundreds of dollars in that bogus carbon tax that he wants us to pass this fall. “Unless we act, they will continue to be covered by this pall of smoke on their futures,” he said of our children.

RELATED: Time-lapse video from KIRO Radio studios shows Seattle blanketed by smoke

So if you raise taxes by billions of dollars, a lobbyist will slip some of that money to God, and he will stop lightning from hitting our state’s trees? None of this makes any sense. Inslee says that the wildfires are worse because we are tinder-dry. Actually, we’ve had wildfires caused by lightning strikes forever.

Inslee calls the carbon tax initiative a “very well-calibrated, sophisticated proposal which will give these kids cleaner air.” As I told you last week, the state gets $600 million from the tobacco companies per year, and they said they will use it to provide smoking cessation programs and anti-tobacco education. Well, the state is only spending $1.5 million on those things. The state would rather have people fill their lungs with smoke and their cells with cancer if the alternative is taking some of that money out of the general fund and spending it where they promised. Remember when they sold us on the state lottery? They said they would use that money to fund schools, but they hijacked that money and put it in the general fund; they would rather have crappy schools than to give up money.

So we’re supposed to believe today that if we pass a multi-billion-dollar carbon tax, it will go to clean air and clean water? No — it’s going to go to the general fund like everything else they do. And if you get suckered in again, that’s on you; I’ve been warning you forever.

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Dori: Inslee using lightning-caused wildfires to push bogus carbon tax