Taxshine & Sunshine Tax shine has caused acres of roof, even flat roofs not pointing at the sun, to be covered with photovoltaic panels with no space for skylights. Tax shine has led fields across Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio to be planted to corn destined for ethanol production, even though we read the farmer uses more than one gallon of oil for each gallon of ethanol.  Though tax shine’s purpose was to aid sunshine as in the examples above, it only perverts our use of the sun. Unlike sunshine, you can’t see tax shine. When children go out to play together some may be playing in tax shine some not, you can’t tell by looking you would have to know their parents business.  Tax shine doesn't work with light, growth or warmth it works strictly with money, it supplies money to owners of PV panels and corn plants.  Tax shine does not pass through windows or skylights nor does it reach any plants but corn and it fails to reach solar water heaters. Tax shine was created by government to accompany sunshine where sunshine was supposedly having difficulty creating benefit for society. Sunshine is a fact of nature that none can influence.  Tax shine is an idea, a bad idea become a law, it is not of nature. Sunshine is free, there for the using, no one gets a bill from the sun. Some would have us think that tax shine is also like this but tax shine is very different. When the sun shines bright in one place it isn’t necessarily darker in other places, but tax shine only gets bright for some by making things dark for others.  There is no tax star radiating tax shine, only tax collectors taking it from all of us to radiate on the few.  Sunshine is good but unfortunately tax shine has become evil. Extra effort and investment is the only way we improve our use of the sun.  Everyone agrees on this and many of us in the solar business know that this effort and investment has to be arranged by free individuals working case-by-case, product-by- product.  Tax shine, as it advocates say does bring certain benefits to some but tax shine is more appropriate to fascism and communism, it isn’t the way for free people.  All in all it is a terrible disaster. Bright tax shine, though it brings more widespread shade than shine, distracts the public from taking care of itself.  Public relations paid for by tax shine has brought us under a spell, we have forgotten the benefits of simple windows and skylights. Steve Baer 03/11/04