Boondocks No. 53

Interesting Provision of the Revenue Bill.

While I'm not a budget specialist by any means this text caught my eyes in Part H of the Article VII Revenue Bill:

Section 11 of the bill would merge the Articles 12-A and 13-A refunds and reimbursements and make any necessary conforming changes. It would also create full reimbursements of the new Article 13-A tax for any international organization of which the United States is a member (e.g., the United Nations), for exempt organizations that qualify under Tax Law § 1116(a)(4)-(9) who purchase certain non-highway products for “first responders” and not-for-profit hospitals, for snowmobile and ATV operators or clubs and for interdistributor sales of dyed Diesel motor fuel and dyed nonroad, locomotive or marine Diesel fuel (NRLM). This section of the bill would also provide a partial reimbursement for Tax Law § 1116(a)(4)-(9) exempt organizations, qualified empire zone enterprises (QEZE), commercial horse boarding operations and film producers who purchase and use automotive fuels.

This is the complicated merging of gas taxes that will end up with about a penny to five cent increase per gallon pumped.

But my question is what are these exemptions about snomowible and ATV operators or clubs? Does it apply just to first responders on quads going deep into the woods? Or does it apply to snomwobile clubs and the alike for groomers? They don't have the full bill text up so I'm not sure what exemption they are modifying.

I'm very suspicious of this tax proposal. The last time gas tax was touched, by Governor Hugh Carey 1982, it pushed our gas taxes to the highest in the nation. It wasn't so bad when gas was a buck a gallon, but at $3.30 a gallon, the taxes have inflated quite significantly.

Billing Gazette on Cloned Cattle.

The local newspaper out in Billings has an interesting article about the history of cloning and what it means to cow-calf operations and the beef industry as a whole.

"There won't be clones in the food supply," said Larry Coleman, a rancher from Charlo who has waited a decade for the cloned beef industry to take off. "When you breed the progeny of cloned beef, you take a vial of semen and impregnate a cow. There's no cloning."

Coleman turned to cloning in the 1990s after his best Limousin bull, "First Down," injured its urethra and could no longer reproduce. Around that time, Scottish scientists were producing the first mammal cloned from a common adult cell. The clone, a ewe named Dolly, was making world headlines. Coleman kept his bull alive, hanging his hopes on the chance that cloning science would become widely available.

In 1998, an American laboratory made copies of Coleman's bull. The cookie cutter copies of the slick black bull became First Down, Second Down and Third Down. Other ranchers did the same, but none scored a market success. The FDA banned cloned products from the nation's food supply so research could be done on meat and dairy products from cloned animals. The government stopped short of banning ranchers from cloning altogether, after producers said they'd self-impose a voluntary moratorium.

Coleman's cloned bulls have been in holding since and are in danger of aging beyond their reproductive prime. Three government studies have since been done, all concluding that meat and dairy products from cattle, pigs, poultry and the like are safe. The rancher said he hopes other countries will follow the FDA's lead, creating a market abroad for the progeny of cloned breeding stock.

I'm sure there are people out there that are against domestication of animals. Actually, I know who they are, with their love of heritage breeds of cattle and livestock. Which is perfectly fine—there are a lot of benefits of heritage for the small-scale homesteader.

But you can't beat the benefits of Holsteins, Herefords, and Angus cattle for a certain type of operation. But nobody is forcing you to work with those animals, heritage cattle are great. We might even be able to improve on them in the future.

Cloning just is a more precise version of in vitro fertilization that is pretty much the norm.

See also Sarpy Sam's comments on cloning.