Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by The_Baron on June 29, 2009 at 8:17

Permalink Reply by Checkmateking on June 29, 2009 at 9:14

KB, I was hoping you would join in. As for being a moderator I have never ever deleted one post, I think people should have a right to say whatever is on their mind without fear of retribution or censorship. The only reason I am a moderator is to help Keith clean up the hundreds of old threads in the "please find a category" section. So I hope you won't hold that against me. It was not my intention to call you and and e-pologize if that is how it looked. You really should get a look at this report, it is very revealing.

Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on June 29, 2009 at 9:06

What's next? an Obama Federal Light Bulb Police?

You can see this like on "Cops", where a heavily armed raiding squad, with helmets and bullet-proof vests on, breaks down the door and has the homeowner and family handcuffed on the floor.

One lawman shouts "Watch out! He has an incandescent bulb and it is burning!" (Like they do on Cops when there is a gun found during a raid.)

Obama is missing a good new viewing tax on people owning a TV set. I know, he has never met a tax he didn't love, but he flat missed this one.

The British have been taxing TVs since the 1950s. Watching a TV without a license is a criminal offence in the U.K.


During the years I lived there, you would see a non-descript, unmarked van cruising neighborhoods with a bar antenna on top, rotating. (Like a radio-beam direction locating trucks in World War Two, where the Nazis could triangulate the location of a spy radio.)

They would demand entry into a house (by law, they did not need a search warrant to enter. You could not keep them out.) They would go and feel the set. If it were warm, you were asked to show them your license. With the van, they could tell you which channel you had been watching, and what room the set was in.

If you didn't have one, you were not only fined but had to pay for a whole year's license. I have been invaded by these people, a few times. There were only had 3 or 4 government channels, so bad they should have paid the viewers to watch.

Currently a license now costs $236 per year, per set. The fine is $1,656.


"Using a television without an appropriate licence is a criminal offence. Every day we catch an average of 1,200 people using a TV without a licence. There is no valid excuse for using a television and not having a TV Licence, but some people still try - sometimes with the most ridiculous stories ever heard. Our detection equipment will track down your TV. The fact that our enquiry officers are now so well equipped with the latest technology means that there is virtually no way to avoid detection."
-- from the official website of the British Television Licensing Authority, May 2003


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the United Kingdom, citizens must pay a licence if they own a television set. That's right, a TV tax. For Americans, the whole idea of an annual tax to own a television borders on the absurd. However, in the UK, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a government agency that has the power to tax and enforce laws. In order to obtain funding, the BBC requires that anyone using its services must pay for them. So, if you own a TV set and live in the UK, you could conceivably turn on the BBC broadcasts, so therefore you better pay.

For the complete article:

http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/international/bbc.html

"Big Brother" and "1984" is alive and well in the U.K.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Williamson on June 29, 2009 at 9:15

Don't laugh...I have a feeling our new regime may find something more absurd to tax.

Permalink Reply by jffree1 on June 29, 2009 at 13:40

Pipeliner, You must have seen the press conf. mid-day... I had the TV on and was only vaguely aware until I heard the man talking about light bulbs. I just shook my head. Where will we draw the line?

I'm going solar! Don't know how I'll pay for it yet but it will be done. By then it will probably be illegal to even sell an "old timey" light bulb, so there won't be any in the stores to buy.

Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on June 29, 2009 at 14:50

iffreel,

If I were you I would stock up on a case or two of the normal bulbs. (if the Light Bulb Police don't raid you for possessing them). There is already a ban on buying them, but I do not remenber the exact cut-off date when you can no longer buy them.

Do you remember when the government banned R-12 freon? A can used to cost $2 to $3 a can before the ban. It went up to $64 a can after the ban., if you had a permit to buy it.

The worldwide ban of R-12 freon caused untold deaths in the Third World of people unable to buy cheap (or any) freon for their fridges, so they died from eating spoiled food.

Same thing with DDT. Some say the ban killed more people worldwide than Hitler did (30 to 50 million) when malaria came roaring back after the ban.

If DDT exposure is so bad and deadly, how come exposed people in their 40s, 50s, 60s,70s, 80s, etc in the USA are not dying by the thousands from exposure to DDT? It did not get banned until 1972 or 1973.

I was exposed to it for the first 35 years before it was banned,

I have spent over 45 years building pipelines all over the world, many where malaria and dengue (breakbone) fever are deadly killers.

In over 4 years in Chad, Africa I have had friends die from malaria. Willbros, out of Houston, who did our export crude oil pipeline across Chad and Cameroon, had 17 Americans die from cerebral malaria, the deadliest and most malignant of the 4 types of malaria. The client, (Esso), KBR and drilling contractor (Pride) lost many more.

It was a very quick killer. Once the parasites broke out of the liver, you had only 6 to 8 hours to stop it reaching the brain or the heart. Once there, you were a dead man.

An African baby dies every 30 seconds of malaria in Africa.

Even if you take anti-malarial pills, most are only 70% to 80% effective. You can still catch malaria. You can spray yourself with OFF, which helps.

Permalink Reply by Checkmateking on June 29, 2009 at 15:58

The banning of DDT has cost an estimated 15-30 million lives, but hey, those hawks eggs sure are thick these days. Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Permalink Reply by Just Me on June 30, 2009 at 3:20

from the CBS article:

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

Incredible.

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Permalink Reply by Dorcheated A1 on June 30, 2009 at 2:45

gingles,

We wouldn't do that, we send them to Bermuda, where it's really tuff. Most people don't realize that Chinese Uigurs love to vacation in Afganistan. They say the mud huts are beautiful this time of year.

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Permalink Reply by P.G. on June 30, 2009 at 3:44

Who has been legally stuck in prison without habeous corpus or trial?

And listening in on phone calls should really have some kind of warning like those one always gets like "This call may be monitored for quality control" or something to that effect, huh?

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Permalink Reply by Pipeliner on June 30, 2009 at 5:50

State Governments Grab Unused Gift Cards.


Some states faced with sinking tax collections and rising debt are going after unused gift cards that bolster their revenue.

South Carolina is considering legislation that would give the state the right to collect unclaimed gift-card credit. A similar measure in Texas to allow the collection of unused credit even from cards that have no expiration date passed that state's House this spring and stalled in the Senate. Texas already collects unused gift cards with expiration dates.

Since the recession began, states have been aggressively tapping so-called abandoned property -- anything from gift cards to dormant bank accounts and safety-deposit boxes. About half the states collect unused gift cards after a period of two to five years.

For the complete article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124605742408663533.html

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Permalink Reply by jffree1 on June 30, 2009 at 11:54

gingles, I have a problem with light bulb control, AND with illegal wiretaps and prison w/o trial. In fact I have a problem with any form of extreme government overbearance whether it be right, left or off the wall. I think the Homeland Security Act has been abused and I never signed up with that. But the idea that we are going to CREATE more gov. buracracy to oversee all of these energy measures in the average AMERICAN household is repulsive to me. No mention of how we are going to pay for all of those "NEW" government jobs, either. Guess we'll just run off a few trillion dollars more. Where does it stop?

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