Cigarette Taxes...
The state raised cigarette taxes to $1.77 per pack and promptly budgeted/spent all the new money that would bring in. The only problem is that this 230% increase in the tax rate only generated a 48% increase in the tax money received! Now, we're stuck with a lot of people circumventing the tax entirely by buying cigarettes out-of-state or over the Internet. And, we have added to an already staggering budget shortfall.
Makes a lot sense, huh?
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Clean Air Act Gone Wild...
One of my favorite agencies, the EPA, has decided that it now has free rein over so-called greenhouse gases. This came to pass as the result of a 'namby-pamby' U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that didn't go quite far enough to ward off this rampant agency. EPA has now released its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule-making, an ANPR in the jargon, and this is astonishing. EPA would regulate airplanes, trains, ships, boats, tractors, farm and mining equipment, lawn mowers, garden equipment, portable power generators, fork lift trucks, construction equipment and logging equipment.
EPA estimates that more than 500,000 new permits will be required. Among the supposed new requirements are these:
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Lawn mower standards: "...each application could require a different unit of measure tied to the machine's mission or output-such as grams per kilogram of cuttings from a 'standard' lawn for lawn mowers."
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Truck speed standards: "Speed limiters are generally available on new trucks or as a low cost retro-fit..."
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Single family homes become polluters: "...we believe that small commercial establishments...and indeed, a large single-family residence could exceed this [CO2 pollution] threshold."
All of this means that our taxes go up exponentially since the EPA will be forced to grow staff and facilities to handle this new found mission. And, it means that we'll all pay more for products and services.
And, none of this was ever the intent of Congress nor has it had the opportunity to inject itself to this point.
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Compact Fluorescent Bulbs...
Regular, nice old incandescent light bulbs (starting with 100 watt bulbs) become illegal to manufacture in 2012. The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) points out that this means we can forget about spending 20 cents or so for the old bulb while buying the new CFLs for something on the order of $3.00+ (remember that these are usually subsidized today).
While CFLs save energy, they have costs associated with them that make all this really questionable:
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The average lifetime is not 10,000 hours, but "up to 10,000 hours"
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The energy savings and lifetime of CFLs has been exaggerated in some applications
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The CFL only achieves the claimed efficiency if burned continuously for long periods
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If left on for only 5 minute periods, the CFL will burn out just as fast as an incandescent bulb
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CFLs dim over their lifetime and do not deliver what is promised
And, we're adding mercury to the environment which supposedly will be handled by proper disposal. Yeah, sure! How many of us has disposed of a burned out CFL improperly already? How is that ever going to be policed?
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Clean Water Restoration Act...
The EPA is back again. The original Clean Water Act of 1972 had gotten to be very broadly interpreted under various EPA rulings. "Navigable waters" had morphed into isolated wetlands, dry lake beds and drainage ditches, for example. Now, two Democrat members of Congress have introduced the bill named in the title. It would replace the phrase "navigable waters" with the phrase "waters of the United States" This means "all waters subject to ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds and all impoundments of the foregoing". Reason magazine, August/September 2008
If this bill were to pass in its current state, it would very likely result in massive new regulations for boaters, fishermen, hunters, and even conservationists. This act would leave it to the courts to decide what constitutes "waters of the United States".
Thanks to Ronald Bailey for writing the article "Feds in a Fishbowl" in Reason.
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Anti-Meat Campaign...
Finally, from the Heartland Institute, this on global warming activists' latest efforts. They are launching new efforts to restrict meat production and consumption, building on prior efforts to restrict various agriculture activities that supposedly would reduce 'greenhouse gases'.
More on this can be found on the worldchanging.org website.
If we continue to have a ban on drilling more oil, we won't be able to buy meat anyway, so maybe this isn't as bad as I first thought.
Maybe we really do have too many crackpots in Congress...or too many people are being paid through campaign contributions and don't have the commonsense necessary to sort out the good from the crazy.
