From: baldwin@netcom.com (J.D. Baldwin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,alt.society.liberalism,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Was 3 lifes worth $5, gunloons?
Date: 4 Aug 1999 17:28:22 GMT

In article <37a8566f.319126494@news.snowcrest.net>, Zepp
<zepp@snowcrest.net> wrote:
> I was in southern California during the 80s, when people were either
> painting their lawns green or replacing them with gravel and cactus.
> They simply used a progressive rate: use x, pay y, use 2x, pay 10y.
> One guy who maintained a tropical garden was howling over his $7,000
> monthly bill.  At a time when you could get a ticket if your
> sprinkler water was running down the curb, people were mostly
> unsympathetic.

I was living in California at the same time, and I recall the water
rates and restrictions clearly.  It was illegal even to take a decent
*shower* in California.  Yet the restrictions only applied to the
"little people," of course -- if you were a farmer in the Imperial
Valley or the Fresno area, your water usage was subsidized so heavily
you had no incentive whatsoever to improve on the 1920's irrigation
techniques you were using, wasting billions of gallons of water at a
stroke.

It's always helpful to own a few dozen state legislators.  Makes life
lots more convenient.  I, unblessed with any such possessions, had to
surreptitiously drill a hole in the little insert in my shower head
just so I could get halfway clean after a bike ride.  (I sure hope the
statute of limitations on that has expired.)
--
 From the catapult of J.D. Baldwin  |+| "If anyone disagrees with anything I
   _,_    Finger baldwin@netcom.com |+| say, I am quite prepared not only to
 _|70|___:::)=}-  for PGP public    |+| retract it, but also to deny under
 \      /         key information.  |+| oath that I ever said it." --T. Lehrer
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