Why's everybody picking on poor Chaffetz?

In my usual fashion, I'm slow to getting around to the next blog post. But figured I needed to since there has been so much great conversation about our esteemed friend Jason Chaffetz.

Why is our freshman Congressman being picked on so much? Because he deserves it.

For a guy who criticized Chris Cannon and the Republican leadership so much to get into office, he sure isn't doing much to oppose the corruption and inaction of his party.

On March 27, the infamous cot-sleeper sent a letter stating his opposition to the President's plan for climate control. The "cap & trade tax" as it is being called would increase costs to utility companies, but what is debatable is how much, if at all, it would affect residential energy users. But Chaffetz was quick to distribute scare tactics to everyone. Simply because he is one of our nation's most partisan puppets.

I'm not going to get involved in the debate of the details of the budget proposal, but simply illustrate how flawed Congressman Chaffetz argument is. Let's keep this nice and simple.

According to his "research" (which is heavily assumptive and highly disputable) the increased energy costs for the state of Utah is $3.01 billion. Chaffetz simply takes this number, and divides it by the population to illustrate how much each person will be affected. To which he points out that it divides out to $1,115.47 per person, or, almost $290 per month, per family (again, simply estimating that a family is 3.01 people). 

Here's the obvious problem. Who uses power, and how much is used? Looking at only the population ignores that there are offices, stores, and other buildings that use power. So you must add every Walmart, shopping mall, restaurant, sports arena, etc. to the number that $3.01 billion is divided by. Now, do we really think that the average Utahn consumes the same amount of power as a Walmart Supercenter, or the Energy Solutions Arena? How about Trax, which consumes electricity to power their trains? All considered, a residential household's average power consumption is dwarfed by these businesses. 

Commercial and industrial buildings account for much more energy use than a household. So if we just thought about it for a second, we'd realize that the $290 per family would be considerably less, even if the estimates are correct. Then we'd also need to consider the larger mansions, apartment buildings, and other structures that would create a large variability in energy consumption.

So obviously, the figures that Chaffetz is proposing are nothing more than a fear tactic to promote his horribly partisan beliefs. When we ignore the facts is when we are mislead as a nation. Tell Congressman Chaffetz to do his job and represent us, not try to scare us into supporting partisan politics.