I Report Back from the Inaugural “Carrotmob”

Yesterday, I participated in something calling itself “Carrotmob”

We’re going to get hundreds of people to show up at a liquor store in SF at 1pm and buy the place out. The store is spending 22% (they won a bidding war) of the revenue we bring in on environmental improvements to their store.…

What sort of things are they going to spend this 22% on?

Well I assembled a team of energy experts, and we decided to go through the SF Energy Watch program. Their people are doing audits of the lighting and refrigeration systems at K&D [the liquor store] to come up with a list of all the improvements they could make, as well as the likely cost of those improvements. Once we calculate how much cash we’ve brought in, they will choose which changes they want to make based on how much money they have to work with.

Creative people-powered solutions that use cooperation and free market incentives rather than coercion and big government to help solve environmental problems and encourage more efficient use of resources? I’m all for it.

The line to the cash register stretched all the way down the block. Here’s a brief video of the scene from Aaron Pava:

Time to check in on this year’s three big war tax resistance campaigns.

The first is NWTRCC’s “2008 War Tax Boycott”. The original idea behind this project was to have thousands of anti-war activists publicly pledge to redirect all or a portion of the federal income taxes due on April 15^th to charity. As of today, about 375 people have signed on to the pledge, with about 290 “public” signers willing to put their names out.

The second is the “Don’t Buy Bush’s War” campaign, which aimed to get 100,000 taxpayers to pledge to resist their taxes (if 99,999 others would) by April 5^th. They haven’t updated their counter in a while, but it currently reads 2,092 pledgers.

The third is “Pledge For Peace.” They didn’t have a target number of signers or a deadline, but wanted “self-identified leaders and opinion shapers in our congregations” to, by signing, “commit to action and to personal sacrifice” including war tax resistance. Last I looked, 134 people had signed.

Some news-in-brief:

• The Tax Foundation notes that the IRS is going to spend $200 million dollars of taxpayer money to let us all know that they’re going to be sending us “stimulus” checks and then to mail us the checks (not counting the value of the stimulus payments themselves). That kind of money “would have bought 74 Super Bowl commercials, which is more than the 63 that were shown at the last Super Bowl”
• Some taxpayers challenged the way the IRS handled last year’s refund of the erroneously-collected federal excise tax on long-distance telephone service, and they sued. Their suits have been dismissed.
• William Giunta suggests that you take a page from Dubya’s playbook and add a signing statement to your tax return. “Back it up by stopping payment of federal income taxes.”

Thanks to FSK’s Guide to Reality for plugging The Picket Line.