Taking a page from the tobacco litigation playbook, the people of California just announced that they were filing suit against the world’s six largest automakers. It seems as though their argument is that these companies, by dragging their feet relative to emissions reform, are willfully damaging their environment. To continue the tobacco analogy, it’s like they’re saying that the entire state is turning into a huge, black lung and that these companies did nothing to stop the damage even though they had it within their power to do so. It won’t go anywhere, but it’s the thought that counts… As the evidence is now clear that things are seriously fucked up, it’s going to take every creative idea we have to draw attention to the problem and push corporate America toward the blinding light of reality. Fortunately, some, like Virgin’s Richard Branson, are beginning not just to see the light, but to take action. Branson announced today that he was going to invest $3 billion toward the global fight against climate change over the next decade. It seems as though, in the wake of “An Inconvenient Truth,” hurricane Katrina, and this last sweltering summer of ours, that there’s finally some momentum in the right direction. Let’s just hope that that the movement can grow fast enough to dispel the lies and turn things around before it’s too late.
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Polar bears drowning? I think we have our new “canary in the cole mine.”
I
Cross …
Ahhnald has it wrong. I agree with you in part. However … we don’t sue Detroit. And we don’t sue Houston.
Al Gore has it RIGHT. You tax the USER for buying an inefficient machine, using an inefficient machine for every little trip around the neighborhood, polluting the user’s neighborhood and every other neighborhood East of Balboa Island!
Buy an EFIICCIENT machine … pay less, if any, special pollution tax. Use your efficient little machine sensibly, thereby keeping your CFI footprint within reason … pay less use tax and pollution tax penalties! Simple.
Do the same (use taxes) with booze, cigarettes, guns, weed, prostitution and a few other western culture addictions and we’ll all benefit from Al’s plan.
NO INCOME TAX … for a long, long time!
Yippee, hooray!
And do the same in Ypsi … no City Income tax.
I liked this post over at Ann Arbor is Overrated:
And I think you’re on right track, Ed, but the Devil’s in the details.
We could, however, I suspect, ballance Ypsi’s budget with an aggressive prostitution tax.
Ypsi simply decriminalizes prostitution and pot, then regulates both with fees, mandatory health screening, and licenses for the johns. This puts the pimps out of business, keeps the girls safe and battery-free and stops most VD … all the while making money for the city. It
will surely bring a better class of “girls” to town and also improve thje quality/safety of the “weed” going around.
Polar bears are not going to drown, they will follow the seals wherever they go.
Is Ypsilanti a signatory to Kyoto? If so, there’s a lot they could do with their choice of police cars, other fleet vehicles, trucks … light and heat … street lights that look like War of the Worlds death rays (State issue I suppose), the new street lampposts (attractive) but which cast an ugly yellow-orange (mercury vapor) glow EVERYWHERE (is there a different bulb? could be shielded) … city hall and other facilities power generation systems (taking a clue from the food co-op’s solar array) … and what else?
Any others want to jump in?
Hell. If we pass a prostitution tax the pimps will just outsource to Ypsi Twp.
To work here, those girls will need a license and without it … it will be a crime. Their from the Township now … what I’d worry about would be girls from Romulus … Ohmagawd!