From yesterday’s Los Angeles Times:
:Dave Eck, a Half Moon Bay mechanic, had attracted a media spotlight with his fleet of vehicles fueled by used fryer grease from a local chowder house. So when Sacramento called, he figured officials wanted advice on promoting alternative fuels.
Not at all. The government rang to notify Eck that he was a tax cheat. He was scolded for failing to get a "diesel fuel supplier’s license," reporting quarterly how many gallons of grease he burns, and paying a tax on each gallon.
All of a sudden they nailed me for a road tax," said Eck, who drives a Hummer converted to run on vegetable oil. "I said, ’Not a problem. I’ll do my part. But what do I get? At least let me into the carpool lane.’ "
No such luck. The state offered Eck only a potentially large fine -- and not just for failing to pay taxes. He can also get in trouble for carting kitchen grease away from eateries without a license from the state Meat and Poultry Inspection Branch.
Or for not having at least $1 million in liability insurance, in case he spills some of the stuff. Or for not getting permission from the state Air Resources Board to burn fat in the first place.
The regulations are so burdensome that even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, trying to set an example for Californians by driving a Hummer that burns cooking oil he buys at Costco, had not complied. Schwarzenegger . . . was unaware that he was required to send Sacramento an 18-cent road tax for every gallon of kitchen oil he burned, according to spokesman Aaron McLear. After The Times raised the issue, McLear said the governor would pay the taxes he owed.
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
-- Ronald Reagan
All Dave Eck has to do is stop moving.
"A lot of my customers think this fuel should be exempt from taxes," he said. "They feel they ought to get something for the climate-change-neutral aspect of it."
What we're facing is an anti-industrial, anti-technical primitivism, which glorifies and mythologizes preindustrial man and the preindustrial society. Were we to develop a technology and a fuel source that is not oil based, not even biofuel based, but still allowed people to have V8 horsepower under the hood, ---------------------- groups would soon arise against that.
We're encountering a true, genuine anti-humanistic ideology, which must be identified and branded.
I hope this guy learned something about the left from living through all of this utter and supreme nonsense.
Whereas before a neocon was defined as somebody who got mugged by reality, perhaps the post-modern neocon will be somebody mugged by the regulatory state.
We're encountering a true, genuine anti-humanistic ideology,
I'm not really sure what you mean by that. Wouldn't most of these groups claim that technology, the mass culture industry, and industrialism in-general are all anti-humanistic? Wouldn't they claim that the consequences of these phenomena are destroying the "humanness" of human beings? How is that "anti-humanistic ideology"?
I think what Dan is trying to say is that these so-called green/enviroment groups will not be satisfied till the Earth is free of electricity, oil, gas, and other modern conveniences, with, in the most extreme case, the elimination of humanity because of its destruction of 'nature'.
Being human, historically it appears, is to advance in technology. Today, is seems, that advance is not taking thousands of years or even hundreds of years, but decades or even just several years and this is what the green/enviro-nuts is against.
So, being green and for the environment could mean you are against humanity's most basic desire ... the desire to better humanity, not to devolve it!