The American Spectator

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(Page 6 of 10)

/p> p> It is hard for me to believe the proposed cigar tax will pass, as it is so intrusive on the lives of people who just enjoy a good relaxing smoke in the privacy of their own house or yard. But I fear it may pass due to Congress being so detached from the reality of what people do to enjoy themselves. I go back to JFK having Pierre Salinger round up hundreds of Cuban cigars for the president's enjoyment before he stopped the common man from having them. The Democrats and Republicans are so far out of step with the average American that there must be a total house cleaning to right the ship. Unfortunately I am too old to see it happen, but it will happen. br> -- Dan Mittelman /p> p> KNOW IT ALL QUACKERY br> Re: Jay D. Homnick's Global Kellogging : /p>

The thought that the idle rich know what's best for Joe Six Pack is appalling. Nothing in their education and experience makes them experts in the subject matter. Only their pedigrees give them a voice in the public square. And I, for one, refuse to listen to their nonsense. Their views are not based on science but on faith, not on reason but belief.

The scientific method begins with a hypothesis and gathers data from experiments and observations to test the hypothesis. What these trust fund babies prefer to do is cherry-pick the data that supports their hypothesis. And the scary part is we continue to use junk science to formulate public policy at tremendous cost to taxpayers with little if any benefit and a myriad of adverse unintended consequences.

The ethanol craze is a perfect example. My car gets 20 miles per gallon on gasoline and 18 miles per gallon on a 90/10 gasoline/ethanol mix. The addition of ethanol provides no benefit as my car would still go 18 miles on 0.9 gallons of gas anyway. And the real cost is higher food prices, wasted energy converting corn to ethanol and additional transportation costs. Meanwhile, millions die of starvation while we "selfish Americans" put food in our gas tanks.

The carbon offset is another foolish idea. According to Louisville Gas and Electric, my electricity usage generated 1.6 metric tons of CO2 last month. That would be 1,310 metric tons of CO2 over the next 70 years. According to Carbon Neutral, six trees remove one metric ton of CO2 every 70 years. So just to "offset" the CO2 from my home electricity usage would require an additional 7,862 trees. Based on reforestation figures from the South Carolina Forestry Commission, this equates to 11 acres of trees for my 2,000 square foot house on a one fourth acre lot. The 2000 census counts 55 million single family homes which would require 600 million acres of trees. The USDA identifies 2.3 billion acres of land in the US, 651 million acres are already forests and another 442 million acres are farms. So half of the remainder would have to be planted in trees just to offset the CO2 from homes. We have yet to consider offsets for commercial buildings, multifamily dwellings and transportation.

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