By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2025-01-17 01:12:48 | Updated at 2025-01-17 10:10:26
9 hours ago
Greens are peeved that Gov. Hochul suddenly delayed one poisonous “climate” scheme — but everyone else should be furious that it’s still coming if she manages to win re-election in 2026.
Plus, she’s bragging about an equally mad move that follows the same deranged “logic.”
Delayed is the “cap and invest” tax on fossil-fuel corporations, which the gov was expected to push in Tuesday’s State of the State address (her press office even confirmed those plans to City Limits Jan. 9).
Going full-speed ahead after Hochul signed it into law is the Climate Superfund Act, which will charge fossil-fuel companies $3 billion a year for the next 25 years.
A cost they’re guaranteed to pass along to consumers, just as they will with the other tax when the gov finally moves ahead with it.
Hochul’s crew says they’re delaying the one tax because it’s too “complicated” to rush, though she first announced plans for it two years ago.
The lion’s share of the loot from both taxes is destined to be burned on other green projects, all in pursuit of the suicide pact known as the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
That measure pretends New York will cut statewide greenhouse-gas emissions by 85% by 2050.
In fact, the state’s already years behind on meeting even its interim 2030 goals — but it’s burning tens of billions of dollars, sending energy prices soaring and disastrously undermining its reliable-energy capacity in pursuit of its impossible green goals.
Eventually, state leaders will wake up and quit chasing the impossible; maybe Hochul kicking the can on the “cap” tax is a sign that day is getting closer.
But for now she’s selling the Superfund as “taxing corporations,” even though it simply adds to the cost of doing business in New York, a cost they will either pass on to customers or avoid by leaving the state.
Plus, she signed that last month, before she’d decided the theme of her State of the State would be her newfound focus on “affordability.”
Only then did she decide to punt on the “cap” tax, which would spike prices at the pump an estimated 12 cents a gallon by next year (and more down the line) while also upping home-heating bills.
All while New Yorkers already face the nation’s highest energy costs.
But unless and until Hochul finally abandons the insane climate agenda, this is no different than her “pause” on “congestion” tolls earlier this year: She brought that back after Election Day, and she’s on course to add this anti-“affordability” tax if she wins in 2026.
It won’t be pretty: Lower-income households may get rebates to cushion the blow of the “cap” tax, but middle-class and wealthier New Yorkers — the demographics leading the mass exodus from the state — will have yet more reason to flee.
Meanwhile, the state will keep pushing everyone to electrify heat, cooking, cars and so on, even though most of its electricity comes from fossil fuels, while wind and solar can’t remotely meet New York’s current needs, much less the new demand.
This idiocy also stands behind the state’s ban on fracking, which needlessly robs residents of employment opportunities and a potential tax windfall for state and local governments.
Most of America is about to see an energy windfall under new Trump policies while New York sinks ever deeper under the weight of green superstition.
If you like, you can thank Kathy Hochul’s cynical calculations for saving us from one small piece of that pain, for now.
