From Planet Gore, this has to be the poop de grace of bureaucratic achievement in the climate and ecology category.
Not a Square to Spare [Chris Horner]
Where are the Beatles when you need them? Someone inside EPA has brought to my attention how Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer has proposed legislation calling on a federal agency to define toilet paper.
Really. It says it right in the bill, the “Water Resources Protection Act” (I know, I know — you were expecting it to be called the Protecting Infrastructure and Sewer Systems Act):
‘‘SEC. 4172. DEFINITIONS AND SPECIAL RULE.
‘(b) WATER DISPOSAL PRODUCT. — For purposes of this subchapter —
(4) TOILET TISSUE. — The term ‘toilet tissue’ means toilet tissue, as determined under regulations prescribed by the Secretary.”
No, it’s not as silly as it sounds. It’s sillier.
The rulemaking to define what rises to the level of a bottom-wipe is in the name of a good cause: to tax the stuff. The current band of feds don’t think you’ve paid enough tax — this has been established ad nauseum — and now want a dedicated revenue, er, stream, to pay to replace corroded pipes and overburdened sewer sytems nationwide.
We know what else is involved in the confines of the rest room so, naturally, there’s a “climate change mitigation” section as well though, upon initial scrutiny, it isn’t as invasive as the context indicates should be the case.
It actually gets even more inane: in addition to adding a “3% excise tax on items disposed of in wastewater, such as toothpaste, cosmetics, toilet paper and cooking oil [because these] products wind up in the water stream and require clean up by sewage treatment plants,” according to Blumenauer’s Fact Sheet, water-based beverages, which actually hit the infrastructure both coming and, ah, going (as anyone who’s ever stood in line at a sporting event knows). So, those are hit with a four-cent per-container excise tax. Feeling flush yet?
This is a nice addendum to the dossier that, I believe, we will look back on as having been rolled up by a congressional majority (and indeed, entire political class) that soon found itself circling the drain.
CRAP
Carbon Really Ain’t Polluting
http://algorelied.com/?p=2467
Finally a campaign that can be used to fight two different Government initiatives.
For those advocating a green solution: I was at Cubi Point officer’s club 20-some years ago having lunch with some aviators who had recently finished jungle survival training. One of their classmates had gone into the jungle for his daily constitutional with a handful of what he believed were “toilet-paper leaves.” Turns out that they were the Filipino equivalent of poison-ivy leaves. The officer had to be medevac’d out of the jungle — further evidence that green alternatives can be a pain in the ass.
M. Simon (03:08:39) :
The answer to this? Use Newspaper for its intended purpose. It is not just for bird cages any more.
Indeed. It certainly isn’t worth reading.
I have a, ah, condition which requires the use of much tissue-I find this to be offensive and discriminatory.
>We, central Ohio, just had water and sewer rate increase approved.
>The reason, Columbus Water Board stated, kid you not, “WE ARE
>NOT SELLING ENOUGH WATER”.
Heh. I’ve been wondering when we might start hearing that.
Is anyone hearing yet from their electric utility that they’re not selling enough electricity?
TerryS – anything over 100 proof (50%+ alcohol) wouldn’t fall under that definition.
local, state, and federal levels of government have had monies designated for infrastructure maintainance. Infrastructure gets neglected anyway because spending on it doesn’t benefit politicians enough. I predict that will not change, no matter what new taxes are instituted. This is just a grab for power.
This is all just a creative way to raise revenue. One of the requirements of being a lawmaker is to find new ways to collect taxes. Many people a decade or so ago warned that AGW and Enviormentalism will morph primairily into massive tax increases. Paraphrasing Clausewitz – Enviormentalism is taxation by other means.
Love the cartoon – however my enjoyment of it is dimished because of a fundamental physical error – the cartoonist has got the roll upside-down – the roll – from the viewer’s viewpoint – is rotating clockwise as it bounces down the stairs, and so the paper could NOT be coming off the roll.
“The answer to this? Use Newspaper for its intended purpose. It is not just for bird cages any more.”
What is a newspaper? Isn’t it one of those giant paper books that old people read?
I’d use my KINDLE but its a little hard to clean that off of it….
H.R.3202 Water Protection and Reinvestment Act of 2009
rbateman,
To offer a clarification of what you said:
“Our politicians are tired of living.”
No, I believe the clear way to state this is,
“Our politicians are tired of our living.”
The politicians and their pals intend to live very well.
I have a few kinds of green leaves I can send to him. Plus some aloe vera plant to relieve the itch and sting.
Other than DC, what sewer do the Feds operate? Is there really a need for a federal tax on TP?
Is this a disguised effort to introduce high technology paperless toilets? See the electronically controlled heated Japanese Toilet In Action.
I wonder if Rajendra Pachauri has weighed in on this? It could be in direct opposition to his desire for westerners to eat less meat. 🙂
Although I live in Fairfax Virginia, my home is on well and septic. I wonder if the Honorable Blumenauer will permit me an exemption from the tax, or, will my repairs and septic clean-out now be paid in full by the government?
As far as cooking oil going down the drain, Blumenauer must be a renter who calls building maintenance when he has a stopped up drain. Because, as any home owner knows, dumping fats and oils down your drain is a good way to get a clog.
Oh, and wouldn’t an extra tax on feminine hygiene products be a gender specific tax? Has anyone asked NOW their opinion on this?
DaveF (04:23:51) :
This is because the government introduced legislation that made site owners, who had not had problems in decades, have tests done on their sites to prove that they didn’t harm the environment. These tests typically cost £150,000 per site. …operating in disused quarries and on steep land not suitable for anything else and they couldn’t afford that kind of money, so many of them shut up shop. Now we have a waste problem.
So you would like to go back to the era of uncontrolled dumping:
Love canal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
In the words of a state health commissioner, “Among its legacies, Love Canal will likely long endure as a ‘national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations.”[1] It was indeed a situation where the inhabitants of Love Canal “overflowed into the wastes instead of the other way around.
Minamata
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
It was caused by the release of methyl mercury in the industrial wastewater from the Chisso Corporation’s chemical factory, which continued from 1932 to 1968.
Perth
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25791308-2761,00.html
RUSTED drums of hazardous waste have been found illegally dumped and leaking at six inner-Perth sites, with some left on the banks of the Swan River.
Staten Island
http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2008/staten-islanders-sue-for-toxic-waste-dump-cleanup.html
Between 1974 and 1980, tens of thousands of gallons of toxic industrial waste were dumped illegally at the landfill, intended only for municipal solid waste. It was one of five city landfills involved in a 1982 federal investigation into illegal dumping which sent a city Department of Sanitation official and a hauling operator to prison.
etc
pkatt says,
Ah but no word on how to handle all the drugs getting into the water supply via the treatment plants dumping off the coasts and into the rivers.
Tax the drugs at 10X their cost.
Chris (22:55:17) :
At least these are consumption taxes, not income taxes
Actually, mathematically these taxes are expressed as:
Consumption – removal of usable molecular constituents = net taxable mass. So it’s a capital gain(loss). You’re getting taxed on the value of the investment after a certain period of time.
i wonder who did the time and motions study on this 😉
It’s the last tax they are going to get…!
They are flushing the entire country.
“Crosspatch – why not raise water rates? Seriously, because water rates and water taxes are all under local control. This plan is angling at a federal excise tax which will have no responsiveness to local voters at all.”
Waste water treatment is provided locally, not by the federal government. So why would the federal government need money to provide waste treatment?
Bill:
The sites I was referring to were in the UK and were licensed for domestic waste and builders’ waste, and were not uncontrolled or licensed for hazardous or medical waste. I am not defending fly-tipping. The new tests that the government introduced were to do with possible contamination of water supplies on sites which had been operating without any problems in that area for thirty years or more. The implication is that the government wanted to pretend that there weren’t enough sites so as to enforce recycling and incineration of waste in order to obey a European Union Directive, which had as much genuine reasoning behind it as the one which forces us to buy compact fluorescent lightbulbs.
I think the examples you have given are in America and I can’t comment on those.
This is soooo not a science based blog. How can you claim that this is science based blog when all you do is bash Democrats? You whine about “agendas” from the weatherunderground and then you post things like this? HA HA HA
Attention K-Mart shoppers, pot calling kettle black on isle 4!
[REPLY – Plenty of GOP dudes get bashed here, too. It all depends on their positions. ~ Evan]