My conspiracy theory craziness thinks it has a lot to do with Big Oil not wanting the competition and Big Government (and I include both the reds and the blues in that category) being terrified that they won’t be able to tax biofuels. Biodiesel and ethanol can both be brewed up relatively easy in your backyard. For Big Oil this means that they can’t manipulate the price of oil. I know, I know, they say they don’t already. It’s all “speculators” fault. But have you ever noticed that when the price gets really high and people start talking about windfall profits taxes the price drops for a few months until something new comes along — like say thieves at AIG raping the US Treasury– then they inch their way back up? For Big Government it means you lose the ability to tax fuels. How do you tax a gallon of something when you don’t have any idea how many gallons of it are being used?

Bad for Big Everybody. Of course it would also mean that we wouldn’t have to care what the Middle East was doing and they could go back to being camel jockeys.

Anyhow, there’s a Weigh Station on I-40 over by Statesville, NC. The westbound side has been closed for replacement for a while. For those of you that don’t have to deal with these sorts of things on a regular basis, every Weigh Station in NC has a sign near the entrance that say OPEN in big green letters or CLOSED in big red letters. Even if you can read you can tell from the color, right? And you can see the color waaaaaaayyyyyyy out in the distance.

So some genius at DOT decided that the truckers riding through NC needed some extra help. They put out one of those big baby-diarrhea flashing yellow traffic warning signs. You know the ones… they typically say something like LEFT LANE CLOSED AHEAD and are followed by dozens of miles of not-closed left lane. At any rate, this thing is on the side of the road and says

SCALES CLOSED. PROCEED WITH CAUTION

The thing is this sign is visible and readable exactly 4 seconds before you can see the red lights at the entrance to the scale. Some of you are probably thinking what’s the BFD? It’s this: that thing has been out there for at least 2 months and it uses some sort of energy to run 24 hours a day. It has a finite life that is being frittered away to no end.

It was taken and placed there by a crew. From my observations, that means it was towed there from someplace in a heavy truck by 2 guys and followed by a support crew (or something) of 2 in a pickup truck. They then spent an hour setting it up during which time they left both vehicles running. And then they drove back to wherever they originally came from. You right, in the grand scheme of things, not a huge deal but multiplied by hundreds of such occurences a year it turns into real money.

And that money comes from the taxpayers of North Carolina.

The property taxes in question date from the 2 years I lived in TN and are on a car I registered there that I no longer own. I’ve explained that to them more than once & last time told the bitch good luck getting it because I don’t need to register that car anymore. That’s what I get for arguing with the gubmint.

After I found out about the garnishment I called revenue back and explained to them again. They said all I have to do is provide a registration for the vehicle from TN for the time period. So I called TN to see if I could get one. They told me that they could only do that in person due to privacy laws (which I’m totally behind).

So the short form of the story is that the government gets to tell you that you owe them money, decide how much, & then forcibly take it from you when you tell them they’re wrong. Good gig if you can get it, I guess.

For what its worth in TN you pay the property taxes when you pick up your plate or sticker thus avoiding any questions of whether the taxes are paid or due. But then, I guess, you can’t have a whole squad of feeders at the public trough to administer them, can you?