Got this (via im) yesterday from a friend who lives in Washington state:
Just got a bill Friday for a new $800 a year rain tax only they called it surface water management–to pay for all the rain that runs off my tree-covered 5 acres
.
Got this (via im) yesterday from a friend who lives in Washington state:
Just got a bill Friday for a new $800 a year rain tax only they called it surface water management–to pay for all the rain that runs off my tree-covered 5 acres
.
Ah, the boundless creativity of the State in its relentless quest for more revenue to waste. What a marvel of nature!
Next a sunshine tax because the sun causes the trees to grow leaves and the leaves have to be cleaned up by the highway crew and then of course a snow tax for similar reasons and then finally and oxygen tax in an attempt to stem the production of carbon dioxide.
According to PS 50:10 the Lord has at least a thousand hills. I wonder what his rain tax should be?
Come to think of it, since Washington state has significantly more rain than many other states, it seems only fair that these rain free zones should have a “no rain tax” to be redistributed to folks in Oregon and Washington. It is only fair.
Wow, that was so easy. Maybe I should leave the priesthood and become a politician, or even better, go to work for the national church office.
Living in WA state, I can point to this as an example of what one gets from a left-leaning one-party government (Dem legislature + Dem governor). It truly lives up (or down) to Reagan’s observation that government is like a baby: limitless appetite at one end, no self-control at the other.
Josh 24:15 (#4),
A crude, gross analogy, but it’s apt. Reagan was right.
So-called “windfall” taxes are bad enough, but rainfall taxes are simply absurd. More and more, taxes are coming to represent a form of legalized robbery, with the government as the thief.
David Handy+
I recall from the local news here in Washington State within the past 4-5 years that my wife had heard a story about someone fined for collecting rainwater from their house’s rain gutters and using it for irrigation on their same residential lot. Apparently, it is, or was until very recently, illegal to do so. I also remember being somewhat amazed because one of City of Seattle’s departments had a program to sell heavy duty plastic rain barrels for that purpose in the same time frame as the story concerning the thrifty homeowner. I knew about the rain barrels only because the Federal facility at which I work is immediately adjacent to the department selling the barrels. In walking past it every day to enter or leave the compound where I work I saw the signs by the area in which they stored the barrels for sale.
And, even though I am currently employed by a part of the Federal behemoth, I also think Reagan was right. Or, perhaps, he was a little too generous in his choice of analogy.
Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer
I can not say this holds true for Washington State. But the city for which I once worked did assess property owner’s for storm water and drainage maintenance. The city was responsible for making sure storm run off did not flow directly into the river. This is because of pollutants that might enter the river if such runoff was not first diverted to retention ponds or even front yard swales.
The drainage system of most older cities is most likely way past standard and in serious need of repair or replacement. So though at first glance this does seem nonsense I am inclined to think it is a means of trying to deal with a very real concern.
This is nothing. My state is proposing a user tax on members of the public using the public parks. The tax revenues allegedly will be used to convert the parks to make them “homeless-friendly” so that they can take the parks over at night to camp, do drug deals and commit crimes.
A national tax way to pay for healthcare! At last!
[b]9. dwstroudmd[/b],
Yes, doctor (assumed, correctly or otherwise, from your [i]nom de blog[/i]). Now we just have to find the taxpayers with enough money to fund it all. I guess that is up to those of you that some revisionists refer to as “breeders.”*
Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer
____________________
I omit myself from the “breeder” group only because I am 64 and no longer capable of breeding (absent Divine Intervention).
The time for civil disobedience is fast approaching.
What’s really needed is a “sunshine tax” to maintain diversity of options, don’t ya think?