People who buy hybrid cars now enjoy tax breaks as a thank you for doing their part to preserve our planet. Now there's a proposal to give similar tax breaks to vegetarians for the same reason. The bushies are going bonkers, insisting that proving a person eats meat would be tougher than proving an employer discriminates or proving a dictator has weapons of mass destruction. But while the bushies look for excuses to reject this idea, patriotic Americans are looking for ways to make this work.
The principle is certainly sound. It is well-documented that the meat industry contributes more to global warming than all the world's cars, trucks, and SUVs put together. Therefore, a person who stops eating meat does more for the planet than a person who stops driving a car, let alone a person who merely switches from a regular car to hybrid. (And I'm not trivializing hybrid cars; every bit helps.)
Of course, the reason bushies hate this is not because they think global warming is a giant hoax, but because of who could benefit. Not everyone can afford to buy a new hybrid car, but everyone can afford to go veggie. Hell, vegetarian food generally costs less than meat. Therefore, this "tax relief" could actually go to those who need it: the middle class and those still struggling to enter the middle class. If there is one thing bushies cannot stand, it's tax breaks that don't favor the rich.
I don't expect the current congress to do something Pres. Bush wouldn't approve of, but Bush won't be president forever (I pray), and when we finally have a Democrat in the White House and/or have a Congress with enough balls/clit to stare down a president for the good of the world, this idea needs to be polished and ready to implement.
The only current weakness in the idea seems to be the question of how to prove vegetarianism or lack thereof. I'm not a doctor, nor smart enough to solve this one on my own, so I thought I would open this to our online think tank. Any ideas out there? Tonight's forecast calls for: Brain Storm!