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Tax Stuff

Choose Solutions, Not Facts

By Energy Efficiency, Government, Stimulus, Sustainability, Tax Stuff No Comments
State and federal budgets are headed for the cliff to varying degrees with few exceptions.  Here in Wisconsin, we’ve had the Battle Royale fight to the death cage match with the repubs on one side and the unions on the other while the dems were hiding out in a witness protection plan. Meanwhile at the federal level, we are on a dangerous trajectory unseen in my lifetime.  People have whined about the deficit and debt since my adolescence – the Miracle on Ice days against the Soviet Union.  I kept saying, “It’s not a problem.  It’s not a problem.”  Why? …
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Playing with Fire

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Stimulus, Tax Stuff 3 Comments
I was pretty much like every other 12 year old boy.  I liked fire, explosions, and crashes.  If you think I’m crazy, why are movies sometimes beginning to end filled with the same?  Enough said.  Growing up on the farm there were always plenty of things to burn.  One time I asked my dad if I could burn an old cattle feeder that we no longer used.  No problem. You never see these things anymore but they were wood structures, like a weekend cabin that could withstand an F4 tornado, except it was all wood, nails and fasteners – solid…
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Dow Chemical Finds Free-Market Religion

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Stimulus, Sustainability, Tax Stuff No Comments
I was going to talk about sane solutions for ground transportation this week and I was going to lead with a tidbit, but that snowballed into the entire rant of its own. Last week I was reading The Wall Street Journal on my 1994 organic cotton-stuffed futon when I had a “Ha!  You scheming, scamming, shysters!” moment.    In Law of Gravity Repealed, I accused for-profit corporations who are in favor of carbon caps of essentially getting in bed with the political hacks in Washington to form the rules of the game such that they come out ahead of their competitors. …
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Black Monday Stampede

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Stimulus, Tax Stuff, Utility Stuff No Comments
July 1992: Tickets for U2’s ZooTV show at RFK stadium in Washington, DC go on sale by Ticketmaster.  The tickets are snapped up in a few hours, as fast as the phone lines could handle the traffic.  This was before anyone knew what the internet was (no Al Gore jokes).  Fortunately, a second date was announced and the roommate waited for the crack of 12:00:00 AM for a shot at the second batch, successfully. March 1, 2010:  Federally funded rebates become available for efficient appliances in Iowa and Minnesota.  Phone lines jammed with 10 times expected volume and internet traffic…
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Water Runs Uphill – I Think Not

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Stimulus, Tax Stuff No Comments
This week – a little diversion into engineering.  Go ahead.  Shake those goose bumps out. There are three universal laws of thermodynamics but I’m not going to explain them all now or you might fall asleep and hit your head on the table.  I will only cover one of them. A law is essentially a theory of something that has never been disproven.  One of these laws indicates the direction of all processes.  Heat travels from hot to cold.  Water runs downhill.  However, heat can travel from cold to hot and water can go up hill if you add energy. …
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Policy to Curb Carbon

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Stimulus, Tax Stuff No Comments
Any carbon-reduction policy that includes paying Washington for permits to emit carbon is the wrong way to go.  Why?  Two words.  Social Security. Washington has no spending restraint.  Earmark nation is alive and thriving.  Everyone has heard of the Social Security Trust Fund; Al Gore’s “lock box”.  Social Security has been running surpluses in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year for a long time.  If you think your payroll taxes are piling up for your retirement in a bunker under Washington somewhere, you are sorely mistaken.  Our profligate government has been taking the surplus and spending it on…
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Tax Deduction Pennies

By Energy Rant, Tax Stuff No Comments
Recently, we received our umpteenth “request for proposal” (RFP) to provide the engineering required to capture the elusive $1.80 tax deduction on new or remodeled buildings.  We spend a lot of time, money and effort to drive business through our doors but I’m not sure I want to see another one of these. Like the rest of the universally incomprehensible tax code, the engineering piece of this is relatively complex.  If we did this all the time, it wouldn’t be a problem.  But it seems we get the next RFP just as the rules are overwritten in my long-term memory…
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