Taxes on Cell Phone Bills

Awhile back, my wife noticed that we are paying about $5 a month in city taxes on our cell phone bill… But we don't live in a city. I finally got around to calling our cell phone service provider today about getting them removed, and perhaps even getting a credit for overpayment. I was told that was impossible. The cell phone company has no control over what taxes appear on their bills. Seriously. That is what I was told. As far as the clerk and her manager knew, unknown government offices send the tax information to the cell phone companies to add to your bill. I assume that she meant the tax RATE and the tax BASIS was specified, but that is a nit. She assured me that the cell phone company is not responsible for the taxes that appear on our bill and that the cell phone company cannot change them, and they certainly cannot give me a credit for overpayment of those taxes. So, at least in our case, I conclude that some monstrous data file supplied by the government to the cell phone company has an error in it. No surprise there, right?

But wait, I haven't gotten to the worst part. I asked her who I could call to get that database corrected.

Wait for it.

Wait!

Their only suggestion was to call my Congressman.

Wow. I'm flabbergasted.

Silly Economists

Yahoo news article today: "Sales of new homes across the United States rose an unexpected 3.3 percent in April from the prior month, to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 526,000 homes, a government report showed Tuesday. The spike in sales confounded most economists' forecasts of a sales decline last month."

Why are they "confounded"? The lower housing prices offer opportunties for more people to buy houses!! This is basic economics. The supply exceeded the demand, so prices dropped, thus encouraging more buying.

If anything should confound the economists, it is the American driving public continuing to buy gasoline and diesel after the prices have doubled in the last two years. High prices should have reduced the demand, but they have not.

Carbon Taxes

I read that San Francisco will impose a carbon tax on CO2 emissions from businesses starting July 1. Here we go! When carbon taxes really take hold (and which government agency would not like to have THAT for an income stream?), we should expect to see a real recession in this country (and not just the slowdown that we are currently experiencing).

SF is charging 4.4 cents per ton of CO2, which amounts to a surcharge on natural gas of only one 40th of a cent per therm, but the camel's nose is under the tent and the cat is out of the bag. In the long run, I expect carbon taxes of $10-20 per ton, enough to cover the cost of sequestering the CO2 produced at electric power plants.

Before we throw the country into a full fledged recession, are we SURE that our CO2 emissions are causing global warming? Are we SURE that reducing carbon emissions will stop global warming? Are we SURE that reducing carbon emissions is the best way to fight the long term impacts of global warming? From what I am reading, the answer to the first question is "maybe", and the answer to the second question is "no". And I suggest that the cost of moving whole cities in low lying areas to higher elevations is far less costly than worldwide carbon taxes. Imagine a bright clean shiny new Calcutta built on high ground!

For another's opinions on this subject, see
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/apr/25/global-warming-hysteria/

Subaru Gas Mileage

It is too soon to tell if I am getting better gas mileage because the weather is getting warmer, because the Subaru engine is getting broken in, or because I am driving more carefully, but I am seeing a strong correlation of gas mileage to the price at the pump! :)


And, yes, that is the range of gas prices I have paid since I bought the Subaru last September!

French Military Victories

Go to www.google.com

Type in "French military victories"

Click on "I'm feeling lucky"

Did President Bush Attack Obama from Israel?

The Democrats have raised Cain about a line in a speech that President Bush made in the Knesset on Thursday. I'm not so sure that was a good strategy. I suspect that no one would have noticed this speech if they had not gone to the news media. But did the President attack Obama as they claim? See for yourself. Here is the "inflammatory" statement (in bold) in context:

"The fight against terror and extremism is the defining challenge of our time. It is more than a clash of arms. It is a clash of visions, a great ideological struggle. On the one side are those who defend the ideals of justice and dignity with the power of reason and truth. On the other side are those who pursue a narrow vision of cruelty and control by committing murder, inciting fear, and spreading lies.

"This struggle is waged with the technology of the 21st century, but at its core it is an ancient battle between good and evil. The killers claim the mantle of Islam, but they are not religious men. No one who prays to the God of Abraham could strap a suicide vest to an innocent child, or blow up guiltless guests at a Passover Seder, or fly planes into office buildings filled with unsuspecting workers. In truth, the men who carry out these savage acts serve no higher goal than their own desire for power. They accept no God before themselves. And they reserve a special hatred for the most ardent defenders of liberty, including Americans and Israelis.

"And that is why the founding charter of Hamas calls for the "elimination" of Israel. And that is why the followers of Hezbollah chant "Death to Israel, Death to America!" That is why Osama bin Laden teaches that "the killing of Jews and Americans is one of the biggest duties." And that is why the President of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.

"There are good and decent people who cannot fathom the darkness in these men and try to explain away their words. It's natural, but it is deadly wrong. As witnesses to evil in the past, we carry a solemn responsibility to take these words seriously. Jews and Americans have seen the consequences of disregarding the words of leaders who espouse hatred. And that is a mistake the world must not repeat in the 21st century.

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.) "

High Gasoline Prices, Part 2

I see that the U.S. Senate came up with an idea to lower gasoline prices that I missed in my list a few days ago: stop putting crude oil into the underground U.S. reserves. They say it will temporarily lower prices by about 5 cents a gallon. I'll take it. I paid $3.82 per gallon this morning.

As Paul Harvey used to say, "Just what, not why." On November 3, 2006, the day we American voters turned over control of Congress to the Democrats, the price of gasoline was $2.18 per gallon. That sounds like a really low price now.

How You Can Be Carbon Neutral

Well, first of all, you need to have a substantial income to pay for all the hidden GHG taxes that the city, county, state, and federal governments are and will do to you. Examples of the hidden taxes include high gasoline prices due to the efforts to minimize refinery capacity in this country. And high food prices due to allocating corn crops to ethanol production. And high property taxes because county governments are already spending your tax dollars to reduce CO2 emissions, like buying expensive Toyota Priuses for county employees to drive. And, in the future, expect to pay a carbon tax of $20 per ton (perhaps $100 per year, see below).

Next, you need to do an accounting of your personal GHG emissions. If you own land, you can take credit for the CO2 absorbed by the plants (roughly 1 ton per year in good cropland areas and 0.4 tons per year in areas with open range. Most of your GHG emissions are CO2 emissions (most of the other GHG emissions (N2O, SF6, CH4, and heavier hydrocarbons) come from industrial sources). Your car is your biggest single source (19.6 lbs CO2 per gallon of gasoline). Maybe you emit 5 tons per year from gasoline burned. If you have a gas furnace and gas water heater, your next biggest is natural gas (11.7 lbs/therm). Another 5 tons per year or so. Next is electricity (671 lbs/MWh in the Pacific Northwest, but 1,408 in Texas and the U.S. highest is 1,966 lbs/MWh in Illinois). Probably another 2 tons per year (unless you have electric heat in your home).

For now, I am ignoring your GHG emissions associated with your purchases of food, clothing, televisions, books, and everything else you love, like breathing (you probably exhale about a half ton of CO2 per year.)

So you are responsible for about 6 tons of CO2 per year. Therefore, you could buy 6 acres of open land (at 1 ton per acre per year), or 15 acres of open range land (at 0.4 ton per acre) to absorb that CO2. :)

Or you buy an acre of land to garden to offset the breathing and electricity, and ride a bike everywhere you go! Zowee, that sounds like the liberal version of paradise!

Your choice!

High Gasoline Prices

I have been meaning to write on this topic for a while.

Today, President Bush said "if Congress was worried about the impact that soaring gas prices were having on citizens, it would urge the construction of new domestic refineries and allow for environmentally friendly energy exploration in the United States." The Yahoo article points out that he has long called for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil development, and has chastised Congress for repeatedly blocking the proposal, which is strongly opposed by environmentalists, most Democrats and a few moderate Republicans.

IMHO, the blame for our current high gasoline prices lies squarely on the U.S. Congress. Their policies have aggravated the price of gasoline. And they have the authority to take the following actions which would reduce the price of gasoline immediately and in the long term:
1. Permanently remove federal gasoline taxes (18.4 cents)
2. Allow drilling and oil production in ANWR
3. Allow drilling and oil production on the outer continential shelf in California and Florida.
4. Provide incentives for drilling and oil production in North Dakota
5. Remove barriers for building new oil refineries or even provide incentives for building new oil refineries
6. Enforce a uniform blend of gasoline and prevent states from requiring special blends of gasoline (this causes unnecessarily high gasoline prices every time a refinery goes down)
7. Provide incentives for the construction of coal liquefaction plants to produce gasoline from coal (strongly opposed by environmental groups but, hey, we have a lot more coal than oil and the technology has been already demonstrated in the U.S.)
8. Provide incentives for alternative fuel vehicles and the corresponding fueling stations (natural gas and ethanol, but not propane, which comes from oil)
9. Allow coal mining and drilling for oil in federal lands (yes, national parks, national monuments, wilderness areas, national forests, and the 100 to 120 million tons of Utah coal fields that Bill Clinton included in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996)

Democrats in MI and FL

I wonder how the Democrat party leaders in Michigan and Florida feel at this point? Pretty dumb, I'd say. They moved their primaries up to January just so they'd be part of the action, but the DNC disallowed the results of their primaries. If only they had kept their old schedules, they would be right in the thick of it now, just as North Carolina and Indiana are today. And the votes of their delegates to the national convention would count!