WHAT THEY'RE NOT TELLING US - AT 10:03 A.M. ET:  Just as the Dems' health-care "reform" bill contains many hidden goodies that are not discussed with the public, so the proposed global-warming treaty being kicked around in Copenhagen contains some things that the American people might find, to put it mildly, surprising.  American Thinker has the facts:

The draft of the treaty encompasses 181 pages and recites that it shall be the obligation of the developed countries (Europe, United States, Japan, Australia, etc.) to pay the developing countries (China, India, Africa, etc.) huge reparations, annual sums to erase poverty and to share technology with them. Australian lawyer Janet Albrechtsen explains the most recent draft of the treaty:

Clause after complicated clause sets out the requirement that developed countries such as Australia pay their "adaptation debt" to developing countries. Clause 33 on page 39 says that by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be at least $US67 billion ($73bn), or in the range of $US70bn to $US140bn a year.

And the "developing" nations, some of which have trouble developing anything, are making huge demands:

In the behind-the-scenes negotiations, the developed countries have already agreed to pay $167 billion per year, but the developing countries are holding out for $400 billion per year according to BusinessGreen.com.

And, of course, we know that money will be wisely spent.  Right.

It is not clear what share will come from the United States. But based upon the totals cited by BusinessGreen, it safely can be assumed that Obama will volunteer somewhere between $50 and $200 billion per year by 2020 as the U.S. share.

You read that correctly.  Two-hundred billion.

Naturally, we will be deemed the guiltiest of the guilty:

The largest share of the burden would be borne by the United States. Students of history may remember that the reparations forced upon Germany by the victors of World War I, resulted in hyperinflation, destroyed the German middle class, and eventually brought Adolf Hitler to power, causing World War II. Economist John Maynard Keynes predicted this disaster at the time.

And...

Basically what this treaty proposes is that the United States go ever further in debt to China, selling China our remaining assets, so that we can pay reparations to the developing countries, so that they can afford to buy windmills and solar panels from China.

The result would greatly accelerate the present trends. We would become a nation unable to get out of debt, even with the falling dollar. We would stop being an "ownership society" and become, in the words of Warren Buffett, a "sharecropper society."

Fortunately, a treaty requires ratification by two thirds of the Senate.  I suspect that's where this crazy scheme will die.  But you never know.  A campaign by the left wing of the Democratic Party, joined by zealots in the press, and by some misguided Republicans, might result in an upset. 

Watch this one with two eyes.  Will Obama be foolish enough to back such a treaty?  Only if he wants to be a one-term president.

December 8, 2009