By Matt Rooney
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Phil Murphy spent most of his first two weeks in office focused 100% on non-New Jerseyans as I’m sure you noticed, folks, rushing to a church to symbolically fight ICE and declaring his intention to spend TAXPAYER MONEY on a lawsuit in support of amnesty for so-called “dreamers.”
At the dawn of week #3?
He’s finally focusing on you and me and everyone who actually pays the bills…
By guaranteeing bigger bills?
Yup. That’s the plan! On Monday, Governor Murphy affixed his signature to an executive order which places New Jersey back into the “Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative” or RGGI, the same cap-and-trade style program from which Chris Christie withdrew the great Garden State early in his first term. Murphy’s wife, Tammy, was recruited by none other than Al Gore as a founding member of the radical leftist environmental group The Climate Reality Project so none of this is a surprise. Doesn’t make it any less disappointing.
Now we’re back in though implementation may be a year-long process. The regional compact’s stated purpose is fighting global warming or climate change or whatever the Left is calling it this week (the preferred terminology changes almost daily). In reality, the Cato Institute crunched the numbers and found that any emissions reductions in participatory states, thus far, have been “consistent with the reduction in other states that are not members of the initiative.”
Its actual impact since establishment in 2009? MUCH higher electric bills for the citizens of participating states.
“Prices in the RGGI states were 64 percent higher than the non-RGGI states in 2015 and 54 percent higher in 2007. RGGI allowance costs added to already high regional electric bills in the RGGI states. For example, according to the study, RGGI allowances added $11 million a year to Delaware’s electric bills,” reported the Institute for Energy Research back in September 2017.
Higher electric bills with NO correlating environmental benefit relative to states with cheaper electric bills.
So the point of RGGI is….? Other than hurting middle class and struggling New Jerseyans whose ability to heat and cool their homes just got a lot more expensive following today’s executive action?
Politics, Save Jerseyans. Virtue-signaling to primary voters in distant states where Phil Murphy hopes to eventually garner support for a future presidential bid, financed by YOU and me.
At least Chris Christie primarily wasted the NJGOP’s money. No one in this state – Democrat, Republican, Independent, Martian, whatever – is safe from Phil Murphy’s ambition.
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