Author: Shawn K. Quinn

Taxing sunlight in Spain

Just when you think  you’ve seen everything…

A post on Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis reveals the truly jaw-dropping audacity of some politicians in Spain. They have decided to levy a consumption tax on those who use solar panels. The tax is called a “backup toll” and the sole function of this tax is to make it financially unfeasible to use solar power.

I almost don’t know where to even begin.

The logic behind the law is completely flawed, beyond even what some of the lunatics here in the US have proposed and even passed (both at state and federal levels). It’s never been easier to get real news and the supposed lampoons of the news that come out of sites like The Onion mixed up.

The purpose of the tax can’t be to actually collect money like most taxes. It would indeed be the ultimate irony if the expense of collecting the “backup toll” is higher than the revenue, or if the people decide simply not to pay it en masse. I’d like to think it’s unlikely the plan to tax solar power out of existence will actually work in practice.

The other point I’d like to ponder is, how fast can Spain get rid of this stupid law when the oil, coal, and other non-renewable fuel markets take a dive and become financially unfeasible? Will they be able to even get rid of it fast enough? I’ve noticed this about a lot of laws: they tend to stick around a lot longer than they are useful or sensible. It took what seemed like forever to get rid of the regulatory walls between cable TV and phone service (at one point in the US, if you sold one you couldn’t sell the other).

We need more renewable energy, not less. Spain is moving in the wrong direction entirely. The perplexing thing is, I’m not sure what exactly the rest of the world could or should do about it. Maybe someone out there has an idea.

Breaking the language barrier, or making it even tougher to overcome?

A recent story on click2houston.com (KPRC-TV) describes an executive order signed by Houston mayor Annise Parker, calling for the “translation of essential public information” into no less than five other languages besides English. While on its face the move seems like an admirable attempt at accessibility, I suspect the actual result will be the exact opposite.

The more things are translated into another language, the less incentive new residents have to learn English. Less incentive means fewer actually do, in turn meaning that trying to patronize a business in some parts of town becomes an exercise in frustration. And thus the problem I run into, where I walk into, say, a restaurant, and have a bunch of Spanish babbled into my face (apparently people think I’m Hispanic-looking enough; I self-identify as white, and I don’t know what I can do to make myself look more white and less Hispanic.

Maybe it’s just me slowly becoming a curmudgeon, but I consider it downright rude to start talking some other language based on such an assumption. It’s either that, or the waiter/waitress really does not know much English. I can’t tell the difference, and honestly I feel like if we have reached the point where it’s acceptable to try Spanish first, then we’re damn close to the point that those that fought for the independence of Texas and for the entirety of the current state of Texas to remain part of the United States did so in vain.

This isn’t a race issue. It’s the same for anyone who speaks a language besides English, which should be the official language of this country, being the language the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the laws, and the road signs are written in. It’s high time that “for English, press 1” and similar over-reaching attempts at accommodation of non-native languages go the way of the rotary dial telephone. The less information is available in other languages, the faster those who don’t know English get the message that they need to learn English to function in the United States. The faster they get the message, the better the result is for all of us.

The case of the surprise graduation rejection

I know this is from June, but it’s still quite relevant given past posts regarding event planning and capacity management.

This story on click2houston.com (KPRC-TV) (archive.org) is about a graduation gone wrong. Some families traveled from out-of-state only to be denied entry due to a lack of capacity, leaving between 200 and 300 standing outside not able to see anything.

It’s an unfortunate situation for everyone. It’s hard for me to fault HISD’s security personnel here, as their job is simply to keep the event safe and to make sure the school district is not legally liable for a fire code violation. I would think based on this rather bare-bones story that the likely cause was a lack of an RSVP system so the district would know what size venue was required to accommodate the crowd.

Priority should have been given to those who came from longer distances. If nothing else, an overflow room with a live video feed could have been made available at another of the Reliant Park venues. (I went to a church some years ago–this was during an earlier part of my life when I was still a Christian–where they piped in video of the service to an overflow room. Technically, this should be possible in 2013 especially if it was possible in the mid- to late 1990s.)

In a larger sense, this underscores the importance of sizing the venue to the expected crowd. I know of at least one university graduation that required tickets for admission to the venue. Was that workable in this case? Would it have still left some people out? Maybe. But I personally would rather family members coming from hundreds of miles away know not to bother making the trip weeks in advance than being turned away at the door.

[Edit 2023-07-03: change broken link to archive.org]

Completely out of control: arresting college students for buying water

To those who still truly believe that the USA is the land of the free, this post on NPR’s blog The Two-Way is nothing short of a harsh reality check. In Charlottesville, Virginia, 20-year old college sophomore Elizabeth Daly and two of her friends were approached by plainclothes Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents after purchasing a box of LaCroix bottled water, cookie dough, and ice cream. (The ABC agents thought the women had made a purchase of booze illegally.)

Elizabeth was already inside her car when the plainclothes agents showed what she described as unidentifiable badges. According to the ABC, she struck two of the agents as she drove away; later, she did stop for a marked police vehicle with lights and sirens. At which point, of course, she was arrested along with her passengers, and charged with felony eluding of police and felony assault of a police officer.

After all this, in what is to me a surprising show of good judgment, the prosecutor’s office declined to pursue the charges, leaving Elizabeth free to speak about the incident. One of the things that came to light was that this incident occurred right after a sexual assault awareness event called Take Back the Night. In that context it’s much easier to see how young women would be scared out of their wits by what happened. What are the odds the average citizen would even know specifically the difference between a valid badge and something hacked together by a would-be rapist or robber? How about someone from out of state who barely knows it’s illegal to bring their radar detector into Virginia, much less the name of the state agency responsible for regulating booze sales? How much differently would this have played out had this been someone driving from, say, Atlanta to New York City who just wanted to satisfy their passengers’ ice cream fix on the way and get some bottled water while at the grocery store?

I think the Virginia ABC looks absolutely ridiculous in light of all the facts, and I doubt I’m the only one. As an aside, I personally think the 21 drinking age is ludicrous, and has caused more problems than it solves. But that’s another, much longer, rant for another day.

When “sorry, we changed our mind” just doesn’t cut it

So, picture this: You’re an independent filmmaker struggling to make a hit movie. After an extensive review of your film’s script, that film gets approved for a grant from a freshly-approved government program designed to encourage producers to make films in the state (in this case, it’s Texas) instead of going elsewhere (like California or New York, or even outside the US). You had contemplated making the film somewhere else, but with the grant money, you can make a far better film in Texas. So you do, and up the budget to reflect the grant money you have coming in.

Meanwhile, after your film has been released and the bills are starting to become due, someone else takes over the agency in charge of the grant. Only then are you informed your movie doesn’t qualify for the grant after all, because the final product was “inappropriate.” You are left “holding the bag” to the tune of $8 million.

As the Houston Chronicle recently reported, this is pretty much what happened to Austin-based filmmaker Robert Rodriguez of Troublemaker Studios. The film is Machete, and it didn’t sit well with some people, particularly anti-immigration groups. The program is the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program, administered by the Texas Film Commission.

(Working backwards from the info on that site, if Robert’s in the hole for $8 million for a grant that never came, that would imply either in the neighborhood of $53 million of eligible spending in Texas, or in the neighborhood of $32 million in wages paid to Texas residents. This is a huge benefit for the economy of the state of Texas either way.)

I have yet to see the movie myself. However, I believe strongly that keeping one’s word is a Texan value, and that reneging on a deal, especially when millions of dollars are at stake, is decidedly un-Texan. I’m not happy at all that my state’s government has decided to throw Robert Rodriguez under the bus. A deal is a deal, and there was plenty of opportunity to treat Robert fairly and tell him to go to, say, New Mexico or Arizona to make the film there instead.

I’m also really disturbed about the use of the word “inappropriate.” This word means a lot of different things to different people. If I deleted every blog post that someone, somewhere, found inappropriate, I’m certain I’d have an empty blog. The time to decide Robert’s movie was inappropriate in the context of a government grant was at the time the script was first reviewed, not after the movie was made and released. It’s completely unfair to an artist to promise money and then not deliver.

While I’ll be sad if Robert decides to make his movies elsewhere going forward, I can’t say I’ll blame him if he does. I just hope the next filmmaker who takes the state up on their offer doesn’t have the same problem.