Wasting the Taxpayer's Money Again

Debra J. Saunders has an article today in Townhall.com that brings up an aspect of the Goofball Wormening mess that has not really been addressed. Her article entitled So Much Wasted Green for Climate Change address the cost, in both dollars and greenhouse gases of the travel to Copenhagen by the Congress and the Administration. Go read the whole thing, but keep a sick bag close by in case you...well...need to be sick. The hypocrisy has been covered before, of course. For all that was accomplished, this could have been done using the Internet. Then there is the fact that the Republicans did not exactly cover themselves in glory over the affair either. A quote:

Surely the best "offset" would have been for more Democrats to stay home. And what were all those Republicans doing in Denmark? I get Inhofe's parachuting into enviro territory to serve, as he likes to style himself, as a one-senator "truth squad." Spokesman Matt Dempsey noted that Inhofe "would prefer not to go" to an event he has dismissed as "the biggest party of the year," but someone had to counter COP-15's cap-and-trade agenda.

Surely some (or, better yet, all) of the six GOP House members -- James Sensenbrenner, Joe Barton, Fred Upton, Shelley Moore Capito, John Sullivan and Marsha Blackburn -- and their 10 committee staffers could have stayed home.

It would have been a great photo op -- in contrast to all those global warming enthusiasts ducking from the blizzard that they flew thousands of miles to experience -- if House Republicans had held a low-carbon, low-cost Skeptics Summit in D.C. at which they announced their refusal to participate in a process that, if somehow magically successful, would be harmful to the U.S. economy.

What a missed opportunity to distinguish themselves from the progressives.

Also, to whom were the "carbon offsets" paid to, and what accountability does the Congress have that the "offsets" are true offsets. On offsetting carbon, the science is once again not settled. Does planting trees constitute an offset? Saunders likens buying offsets to the medieval practice of buying indulgences for sins, and there are many similarities. The truth is that if a person truly believes that CO2 is heating up the planet, then that person would reduce his or her lifestyle and live with as small a carbon "footprint" as possible. He would not buy offsets. If, on the other hand, he does not truly believe, but he wants to foist this governemt enlarging program on the people, then I have to question what sort of a monster is he?

Finally, what about those "government rates" for airfares and hotels? Government usually negotiates rates that are lower than the current rate if you have to travel now, though somewhat higher than the rate one can get if one plans ahead several weeks. Were these truly "government rates" or was that just an excuse thrown out there? I mean, $10K....and they've known about this for years, it boggles the mind.

Update: Also read Taxpayers pay $101,000 for Pelosi's in-flight "food, booze" at World Net Daily.