Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

Orwellian to the gazillionth degree.

The goose-stepping jackboots at the EPA want to shame you - while you're alone and naked - into modifying your behavior:

It’s a good thing Uncle Sam is looking out for your best interests. If it weren’t for them, you might spend too long in the shower next time you stay at a hotel. 

Wait… what?

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower.

The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.”

“Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.”

“The proposed work aims to develop a novel low cost wireless device for monitoring water use from hotel guest room showers,” it said. “This device will be designed to fit most new and existing hotel shower fixtures and will wirelessly transmit hotel guest water usage data to a central hotel accounting system.”

The grant language doesn’t specify exactly how the government would “modify your behavior” in terms of water usage, but it’s not hard to speculate. I imagine we’ll be seeing a warning at check-in saying that “x” number of gallons of water usage in the room per night is the standard covered by your reservation. Any more than that will result in a surcharge, with a portion of that going to the government and the remainder going to the hotel. (You need to do that in order to get the hotel owners’ associations to buy in and lobby on behalf of the EPA.)

This instrument of tyranny needs to be dismantled yet this morning.