Skeptic Chris Martz tweets: “The government invents imaginary problems, then demands you pay more taxes to solve them. This scam needs to be shut down.”
Federal judge upholds Hawaii’s new climate change tax on cruise passengers
A federal judge’s ruling has cleared the way for Hawaii to include cruise ship passengers in a new tourist tax to help cope with climate change, a levy set to go into effect at the start of 2026.
U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake denied a request Tuesday that sought to stop officials from enforcing the new law on cruises.
In the nation’s first such levy to help cope with a warming planet, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green signed legislation in May that raises tax revenue to deal with eroding shorelines, wildfires and other climate problems. Officials estimate the tax will generate nearly $100 million annually.
The levy increases rates on hotel room and vacation rental stays but also imposes a new 11% tax on the gross fares paid by a cruise ship’s passengers, starting next year, prorated for the number of days the vessels are in Hawaii ports.
Honolulu’s tide gauge goes back to 1905, and shows just .51 feet of sea rise per 100 years. Exactly average for a Holocene century. It should be way more during a warm periods. Erosion is not ‘climate change’, they are islands. Wildfires are manmade problems
Cruise Lines International Association challenged the tax in a lawsuit, along with a Honolulu company that provides supplies and provisions to cruise ships and tour businesses out of Kauai and the Big Island that rely on cruise ship passengers. Among their arguments is that the new law violates the Constitution by taxing cruise ships for the privilege of entering Hawaii ports.
Plaintiff lawyers also argued that the tax would hurt tourism by making cruises more expensive. The lawsuit notes the law authorizes counties to collect an additional 3% surcharge, bringing the total to 14% of prorated fares.
Look, Hawaiians voted for the people who put this tax in place. Every experiment needs an experimental group, right. Let’s see what happens to the economy of Hawaii, see if the peasants enjoy the fallout. And, anyhow, if the doomsday cultists in Hawaii hate fossil fuels, why not ban cruise ships, gas powered boats, airplanes, and helicopters?
In 50 years, my father-in-law has never run out of wood.
A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its Justice Department counterpart from “sweeping” civil arrests at immigration courthouses across Northern California, teeing up an appellate challenge to one of the Trump administration’s most controversial deportation tactics.
Anglican Deacon Michael Van Dusen typically has plans for the Christmas season that do not involve a Toronto courthouse.
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
