Because the state has decided your frying pan grease is its business
It is almost impossible to come up with the implausible scenarios that somehow regularly find their way to light when government is involved:
State Rep. Kathy Webb is seeking to have Arkansas declare a state of emergency due to people failing to scrape grease from their dishes or trap the grease in special grease collectors before washing the dishes in dishwashers or the kitchen sink.
Webb has submitted Interim Study Proposal 2011-201, an act “to declare an emergency” over the alleged crisis. Frying hamburgers is now The People’s Business of the Highest Order.
Webb’s bill claims food grease presents an emergency risk of sewer overflows that threatens the environment. “It is in the public interest to establish a Fat, Oil, and Grease Advisory Committee to study the recommended measures to better ensure that the collection, transportation, disposal, and recycling of fat, oil, and grease are done in a manner that is protective of the environment,” reads the bill.
Anyone want to guess what party Ms. Webb calls her own?
An emergency because of a grease “crisis”. Damn people, who have been doing this for hundreds of years, have finally driven the state of Arkansas to the brink of Greaseageddon. The environment is threatened because the sewers might, uh, probably will, uh, definitely will overflow if the state doesn’t step in and regulate it.
No. Really. She means it. Gotta have state mandated “special grease collectors” so all that nasty grease can be collected before it hits those sewers. No telling how Arkansas has avoided Greaseageddon before now. Thank goodness for Rep. Webb’s foresight (because you know, towns and municipalities would never be able to handle such an emergency)!
So how will government do what has to be done, Ms. Webb?
According to the bill, the state will appoint a 14 (!) member committee “with adequate staff and facilities” to study the frying-pan-grease emergency and recommend legislation, enforcement, and other emergency government action to fight food grease. Even after such action, the committee and its “adequate staff and facilities” will perpetually exist, convene, and soak up taxpayer resources.
Because that’s what government does. It appoints “Grease Czars”, enthrones them in perpetuity “with adequate staff and facilities” and then wastes taxpayer money trying to enforce unenforceable laws passed by morons.
Forward.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Webb
A restaurant owner, hmm…
I smell a rent-seeking ploy here. Since restaurants are required to have grease traps in most municipalities, she wants to spread the pain around to the citizens.
Worked in the woman’s movement, and wears sensible shoes.
I wonder if her biography left out a cousin or someone who runs a roto-rooter company, but isn’t as famous has her singing cousin and so didn’t get a shout out on Wiki.
People like Kathy Webb who exploit the power of government to help themselves deserve to be locked up in prison, along with the likes of Bernie Madoff.
But the idiot Democrats/socialists will insist that such regulation is not only necessary to protect us from some evil, but that resisting such unnecessary regulation is the cause of all manner of calamity. They govern based upon fear, scaring voters into sacrificing the rights of their neighbors for this ephemeral sense of safety.
She does understand that generally the grease problem is between the house drain and the street, right? No, probably not. Or are olive, canola, etc oils a tremendous source of ‘grease’ now?
Honestly, I don’t see how we need to worry about this NOW, after all, we’ll be told what we can and cannot eat soon, and I’m sure grease frying bacon fat is going the way of the dodo. And does she actually have any evidence that this is a residential problem?
Lastly, if the representatives of the people of Arkansas agree with this fracking loon and this bill passes then Arkansas has a problem that goes way beyond Kathy Webb.
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I would not be surprised if California picks up on it. I live in CA, the lunatic state. They will find the way to force you not to pour oil and grease down the drain by taxing those items to death. Like gasoline, tobacco etc. All to protect our sewer lines, of course. Fact is our infrastructure is in bad shape, and it works by gravity with the help of water. Since “water conservation” movement and low flush toilets, solids in our sewer line dont get enoug of a push to run thru. That forces wastewater plants to use higher amouonts of clorine, and higher energy cost in processing waste. So, lose-lose all the way.
I’m wondering why rent seeker Kathy Webb sees fats as an environmental threat. Why not sugars, preservatives, and the endless list of multisyllabic industrial chemicals in processed food?
And, who puts grease down the drain? That’s why you keep jars when you’ve finished the pickles or salsa. So you can drain the fat into them and toss them in the garbage. Anyone who puts a significant amount of grease in the sink eventually has clogged plumbing.
This is probably from the fact the sewers should have been expanded. But instead of putting tax dollars or quasi-tax dollars via a public utility to where its suppose to go, its been squandered. And the government has probably obstructed any expansion projects anyway.
So instead of being the government’s fault, is the public’s fault and those sewer fees can safely keep going into make work projects and government kickbacks.
Bet this one dies the same way the Massachusetts bake sale plan died. Ah, New Media, alert, alarmed and angry.
Who throws grease down their own pipes? When you own those pipes, you have to clean them when they clog, and they will clog.
Isn’t it basically a Liberal notion to try and regulate stupidity?
“Isn’t it basically a Liberal notion to try and regulate stupidity?”
Indoctrinate, mandate, then regulate.
When your overall strategy, from education to elections, is to inculcate with collectivist rot while actively squashing individualist thought, in order to lower everyone down to the same level, you’re going to have more stupid or ignorant (disinformed) people. That you get to use that as an excuse to consolidate more power and create more make-work bureaucratic jobs is an added bonus.
Or, to put it another way:
It’s intriguing how the responses to the Forbes column pretty much focus on the author’s affiliation with the Heartland Institute. It would be like rejecting an argument, b/c the author works for, say, Mother Jones or The Nation.
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This legislation is racist as it will disproportionately impact those who cook and eat fried chicken.
Try to think of one aspect of your life that some level of government has not regulated.
Just one.
Well, Jim, 1 out of 3 jobs now requires some kind of government license before you can start getting a paycheck. That compares to 1 out of 20 in 1950. That may be Progressive, but it ain’t Progress.
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