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Paper Companies' Windfall of Unintended Consequences
Jamie found a post on ScienceBlogs that serves as a stark example of the law of unintended consequences, as well as the ability of private industry to game a system of laws to their advantage. It seems that large paper companies stand to reap as much as $8 billion this year by doing the opposite of what an alternative-fuel bill intended. Here is the article from The Nation with more details and a mild reaction from a Congressional staffer. "[T]he United States government stands to pay out as much as $8 billion this year to the ten largest paper companies.... even though the money comes from a transportation bill whose manifest intent was to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, paper mills are adding diesel fuel to a process that requires none in order to qualify for the tax credit. In other words, we are paying the industry — handsomely — to use more fossil fuel. 'Which is,' as a Goldman Sachs report archly noted, the 'opposite of what lawmakers likely had in mind when the tax credit was established.'"
The intent of the law is to encourage the use of alternative fuels. Paper companies are already using alternative fuels both economically and efficiently. Taxing them, and distributing that money to less-efficient companies that are not currently using alternative fuels economically, discourages paper companies from existing, thereby punishing them for using alternative fuels.
Regardless, concentrating on bullshit like this, instead of seriously addressing the negative externalities of dependence on foreign fossil fuels, makes all of us worse off.
But I seriously can't fucking believe, that after eight years of the incompetent fucking clowns in the Bush administration, that anyone has the brass balls to try to justify, let alone suggest, more retarded, illegal bravado from the executive branch. You are a complete dumbfuck, just like the tools who passed this law in 2005, and the tools who are currently skullfucking the concept of market economics for their ill-conceived political agenda. This country has become a sad fucking joke. And idiots like you are the primary reason. By now, absolutely no one should give two dry shits what the average mouth-breathing American thinks about who or what is "evil" and what his president-god-king should do about it, since it's obvious that most of their heads are so far up their own asses that they couldn't find them with two hands and a GPS device.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
*Ahem* this is the real world, intention and result ... don't match. Not for anyone at all, not for me, not for you, and sure as hell not for the government. This is not anything new, nor will it ever change.
I'd suggest these idiots grow up before spending us all into the ground ... oh wait ...
Well, they're politicians, let's just hope they wake up AFTER spending us all into the ground. After all, Barack Hussein Obama did just that.
But the reality of the matter is ... these idiots will keep spending until the below average half of the population is only 10% of people.
Saying it ain't so doesn't make it true.
The bottom line is that the Feds encouraged and even bullied lending institutions to loan to those with bad credit risks, saying "we got your back".
Now the feds are saying, "we got your company".
If you want the absolute, real cause, just Google "mark to market". Government accounting rules artificially causing banking institutions to go "insolvent"
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.