Posted on 10/27/2006 5:37:19 AM PDT by Brilliant
It's not every American politician who can go to Europe and have a tax named after him.
Earlier this month, Al Gore spent a day in Brussels to promote his eco-mentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," and give a talk. "Our planet has a fever, and the fever has been getting steadily higher," he said. "It is in fact a full-scale planetary emergency." Within days, apparently so taken with the former U.S. Vice President's message, this low country's politicians were rewriting its tax laws.
Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt invoked his American visitor in proposing a new "environmentally friendly" tax on packages that would penalize users of aluminum or plastic and give them incentives to switch to paper or cardboard, whose production releases less CO2 into the atmosphere. The details have yet to be worked out, but the idea is for milk sold in, say, a plastic bottle, to cost more than milk sold in a cardboard container.
"We must take Al Gore's message seriously," Mr. Verhofstadt told parliament last week. The measure, introduced into the draft 2007 budget, was fast dubbed "the Gore tax." Also in the works are tax breaks for car pollution filters and deductions for energy-efficient investors.
Look closer, though, and this grand Belgian scheme to save our planet also happens to raise a bundle for the Kingdom's coffers, to the tune of roughly €600 million a year...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
They need all the taxes they can get. This is just the beginning.
I thought that we were paying the Al Gore tax every time we pay a phone bill.
Must we? I take Al Gore's "message" as lame humor, personally.
The comment implies that the guy thought that no one is taking Gore seriously. Why else would he have to say it?
OMG! Shades of Chicken Little---the sky is falling, the sky is falling! Run for your lives!
Did you ever wonder when and if Al gave up smokin weed? Do you have an answer now?
vaudine
Heh... of course Algore is super-serial!
This is beyond pathetic. He couldn't seriously influence the US so he's going to oppress the subjects of a small kingdom in Europe. < shaking head >
I had to look to see if this was scrappleface or IowaHawk. Nope, seems real. WOW!
Paper & cardboard are readily recylable, just not economically.
A few weeks ago, one of the local theaters showed AlBore's movie for FREE (one time only). What's up with that? Did they run out of theaters that would pay the distibuters?
He should be just disposed of.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City says free newspapers hawked at subway entrance are causing flooding on the tracks during heavy rains, The New York Times reported.
The authority said the papers fall on the tracks and clog the drains.
A spokesman for New York City Transit said the agency increased the number of workers who clean trash off the track bed to 198 from 118 over the last year, and there are two vacuum trains that clean underground sections of track, but the problem persists.
I think The United Church has had free showings too.
You think Gore would consider that a bad thing ? Are you kidding ?
That's what he'd spin as "creating good jobs for Americans."
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