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Oregon Considers GPS-based Road Taxes
Oregon is considering instituting a road tax - a tax based on the mileage driven within the state. The tax would be implemented with mandatory GPS boxes in each vehicle recording the mileage driven in Oregon. We've done a couple of previous stories on Great Britain's initiatives in this area.
It's funny because alot of people forget Oregon even exists, but they prove they can create just as many dumb law ideas like California.
The article fails to say why they would do this. Why not just increase the gas tax if you want more money? At least your citizens get relieved of some of the burden of the gas tax because visitors to the state pay as well. With this GPS thing, it will cost a lot to implement, and no visiting cars will pay the tax. Seems like a losing situation for the taxpayers of Oregon.
The more you drive, the more gas you buy and no need for big brother to put his hairy eyeball on oyu.
Good thing no one breaks laws. Good thing that people can't change laws once written. Good thing there is no privacy challenge related to non-real-time data collection.
Good thing I DON'T LIVE IN OREGON.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I know there are a few differences in gas mileage etc. but.. don't state gasoline taxes pretty much do the same thing? (If you use gas for say a tractor, you can deduct it from your taxes in most states..)
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
My sister lives in Oregon and I think she would agree that if they make it ACTUALLY USEFUL to have a GPS reciever in the car, ie gimme a screen with it? people in Oregon (and all over) would jump all over this thing like jocks on a big screen TV. :-) Just my two bits.
I'm only posting as an AC cuz I'm too lazy to fill out webforms.
Can you imagine having a mandatory GPS in the Pioneering days? The Oregon Trail game sure would have been different:
Travelled: precisely 15.24 miles today.
Health: Pa died of snake bite.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
So, to register the car in the state you have to have GPS installed? I suppose that makes it better for tourists than taxing the gas (or do they plan on doing both?)
Will the satellite GPS system go out during rainy weather? Satellite TV does that from time to time. Isn't that region of the country known for rainy weather?
'cause it's so much harder to just tax gasoline.
I didn't know Britain had interests in Oregon... ;)
GPS equipment records where you go, where to stop, etc. Police equipment silently and covertly interfaces to your car. Police pull you over, download your GPS data and see that you've been to a bar, or a mosque, or a brothel, and then deal with you accordingly.
Just increase the tax on gasoline instead of having a tax based on mileage. That would be perfectly fair, because the vehicles that use more gas are the ones that cause more wear & tear to the roads anyway.
Repeal the DMCA!
So a couple of issues come to mind immediately:
-- what stops the state or federal govt (or a malicious third-party, like a stalker) from tracking where you go?
-- how does Oregon collect from out-of-state travellers?
If the purpose of the law is to collect revenue for road usage, what about this can't be done via conventional toll roads, with the use of "EZPass"-style transponders to collect payment?
This is probably cheaper and certainly a more robust way to handle road usage costs than going to an untested and privacy-violating GPS system.
Is Oregon a test-bed for how the government can track the movements of its largely car-bound citizens?
-Alex
Thankfully, this is a law "being considered" by legislators who haven't yet been hit with the reality that this tax is unenforcable, and therefore won't work.
The problem is, the "Good Faith and Credit Clause" of the U.S. Constitution means that licenses issed by any state are valid in all fifty. What's more, a car with California plates can legally drive on Oregon roads.
The thing is, Oregon cannot require California-registered cars (or cars registered to any of the 49 other states) to have their tracking devices.
Another cause of death: Suddenly every road in the state effectively becomes a toll road. That'll cost them in federal highway funds, as toll roads in theory are supposed to be spending those tolls on their own repairs. And, you can surely bet the neighboring states' representives will see to it that Oregon loses all their highway funds for implamenting this kind of tax.
So, it's a nice chance to beat up a clueless state legislator or two for getting a little too 1984-ish on us... but there's really nothing to fear here. This law is D.O.A.
First of all, this is an invation of privacy. The State government has no right to know how many miles I drive or where I drive.
Secondly, this tax will discriminate against those people who are forced to drive more miles then others because of their occupation or place of residence.
Yes it's funny, I thought we already paid taxes for roads.
This is just as foolish as the ill fated internet tax.
Oregon doesnt have a sales tax...
Not only does the government know where, when, and how far you drive, but taxes you for driving (and everything else, such as breathing, living, etc.)!
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I hope that Oregon realises that you can implement road pricing the other way round: tell the GPS box to count itself down (the way a taxi meter counts up) depending on where it finds itself. The trouble is that half the politicians won't understand the difference and the other half are itching to control us all anyway. "The innocent have nothing to fear". "This will be used for billing only". "This will help us catch terrorists and paedophiles".
Just jam the gps signal.
r g/ show.php?p=60&a=13
http://www.phrack-dont-give-a-shit-about-dmca.o
I live in portland and would hate this for I speed where ever I go. Would I start to get traffic tickets in the mail with this new system to???
This GPS thing assumes that every mile driven inside Oregon is somehow a public road. I imagine some Oregonians have large ranches, and they can rack up some miles "riding fences." For that matter, would horses have to wear the silly thing?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Teenagers rarely by cars worth a damn, they are going to make these kids buy a piece of hardware worth more then their car?
And what about all the people in the state? Sure GPS units have gone down in price but they still aren't cheap. SO does that mean the State will give a voucher for the units to make it cheaper? No didn't think so.
This law will be defeated because it discriminates against the poor.
Most states already record your vehicle milage at each pass through the emissions check! This happens either every year or every other year when tabs are due...they could just use that figure to calculate the tax without the implications of "where were you on the night of Friday December 13th" type measures.
Or even simpler, just apply the tax to gas with the dual effect of driving (pun intended) people towards more fuel efficient cars.
Having this type of tracking information will only lead to more invasive government...and records which could be abused. I grew up in Oregon, and I don't think the people there would go for "manditory GPS tracking" of their vehicles...you might start to see a lot of tin cans mounted above the GPS receivers if the state forces this stupid/invasive measure through.
Oregon does not have sales tax. Which means that the state doesn't have much money. Therefore, Oregon has some of the worst roads I have ever been on. North of the Rio Grande, that is. Now people in Oregon are unlikely to want to give up their right to not pay sales tax, because Oregon is mainly populated by both types of the Libertarian genus (Hippie and Mountain Man). The only way that Oregon could get people to pay for the roads is by direct tax, and this GPS system seems lerss enviromentally intrusive than setting up toll booth all over the state (another important Oregon consideration).
What is to prevent someone from setting up a small GPS jammer on their car that would prevent accurate tracking? Could one set up a small, easily removable jammer (to prevent it being detected by periodic state checks similar to the emission tests lots of states do) that can selectively jam the GPS signal? This way you could turn it off and get a few miles (say 5 miles a day) but turn it back on and mask the real milage. Of course, you could probably foil this by comparing the odometer milage with that recorded by the GPS system but you can always tamper with the odometer too. It might look suspicious too if your car periodically disappears from the GPS system but wouldn't this constitute real-time traking which would be illegal according to this article?
I've thought about this idea of a small, portable GPS jammer that could be use by people when they rent vehicles to prevent the rental company from tacking your vehicle and its velocity.
Oh, that's right we're talking about a bureaucracy here, they're going to want more money anyways...
What the hell?
Does this not smack of big brother tactics? And, does this mean that they'll eventually be monitoring your speed too so that you automatically get mailed a ticket anytime you exceed the limit???
No good can come of this.
I live in Washington State, they'd better not try this here...
There is no sig...
road taxes were often levied on the basis of miles travled using a technology called "toll boothes."
I seem to vaguely recall something called a "gasoline tax" as well, which was supposed to have the same effect. Not to mention various levies on tires, which, again, are paid directly in relation to miles traveled.
And now that I think of it, didn't cars used to have something in them specifically to recored miles traveled *already*?
Of course the GPS boxes will never *ever* be used to actually record the movements and whereabouts of citizens "for the children" or to "combat terrorism," no siree Bob!
KFG
So now if they want to kill all the Jews, they just interrogate the real-time GPS data to find out where they all are.
..,gives you a new meaning to driving in a figure 8
They just keep coming up with reasons why Oregon is a good place to visit. Glad I escaped. 'nuf said.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
It has come to the attention of many of the affluent SUV owners that low-income people and students and other undesirables drive economical cars and drive many miles on not much gasoline and are thus not paying their fair share of gasoline taxes and are thereby beating the system. Thus, the affluent want to change the system to tax miles instead of fuel. Nevermind that the fuel tax is easy and economical to collect. Never mind that road wear increases more than linearly with vehicle weight. Never mind that out-of-state vehicles will ride free. Never mind that dependence on foreign oil because of large vehicles is a huge problem for anyone trying to give the US a rational foreign policy. Let's just help the people with the money.
Installing a jammer (or just disabling the GPS otherwise) should be extremely easy, what will happen then? The car can't very well stop (would be an ugly Denial-Of-Driving attack) and you can't really take them to court and require that you must only drive in places where you can get a signal (e.g. no tunnels) either. Oh well...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As an Oregon resident, I first got wind of this about six months ago... Privacy was my first thought as well. Thankfully, the system they're looking at can't track vehicles in realtime, as it's a GPS receiver unit only. There is no transmitter.
My guess is that, no matter how well designed, this system is doomed from the start- it's just too complex for John Q. Taxpayer to understand. People in Oregon, just like the rest of the country, don't like new taxes. That's why we've managed to be one of the last holdouts for no sales tax, and we just soundly defeated a Canadian-style universal healthcare bill that would have laid ruin to the state's economy.
-M
This is very interesting...I was in a discussion last night with some friends, which touched on why it was taking so long to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, and to come up with alternative methods of powering automobiles. Aside from the obvious commercial interests, the notion that the government itself has a great deal to lose from the increased efficiency of automobiles is something I hadn't considered. Because the government has revenue at stake, it would seem makes any effort to "mandate" increased fuel economy in newer cars somewhat suspect. Even if we set this aside, we certainly couldn't have anything that would adversely impact Bush Oil. No, no...definitely not.
What amuses me the most I think, is what while science has been marching forward with newer technologies to increase fuel efficiency (albeit at a snail's pace), the technology to create a road surface that is less susceptible to the wear and tear imposed by day-to-day traffic is something that appears to be somewhat elusive. Another entrenched interest, perhaps?
Citizens ALREADY have the right to travel. Proof? Check here for documented cases.
--
prairies, n.: Vast plains covered by treeless forests.
- Anonymous
...because I don't get this. I thought gas taxes covered usage--the more you drive, the more you use, the more you pay. The heavier your vehicle or the load, the less efficient and more gas you use (and correspondingly probably wear on the road), so it pretty much all gets recovered proportionately.
Now, they want to tax a similar amount as the gas tax. On top of the gas tax. And more than the gas tax to cover administrative costs. What??? You want to changeover or add, and do so more becuase your idea is less efficient from the get go, and you know and admit this from the start? What idiots.
Is the general populace of Oregon that utterly idiotic that they see this as a good thing?
And, oh, we're not done. Then everyone will have to convert and buy boxes to enable themselves to be taxed. See odometer fraud. You can't fraud gas usage if you're burning the stuff to get around.
The only conceivable reason, besides they are looking to get more money (when is a government in the business of getting themselves more money? wtf), is that when alternative energy vehicles come into play, they don't pay for road wear (no gas usage, or less usage). Frankly, Oregon should be looking at this as a good thing, as an incentive to get such vehicles. But do they do this? Nope.
In my tiny mind, this just justifies my reaction that politicians are money-grubbing idiots. Want people to pay more? Raise the gas tax. Raise retail taxes. Don't raise a totally new tax revenue scheme that has an easy impingement on mobility and transportation freedoms, to such an extent that privacy laws could come into play.
Put another way, they certainly are not taxing usage. They could easily do this everytime you get a state inspection--the inspector notes and sends in your VIN, license, and odometer reading, and you get a bill. No GPS required. They want the GPS to see what streets get used, but that's primarily a premise and gateway to invading vehicle and transportation privacy.
Next thing--NY considers requiring GPS modules on subway and rail passengers to monitor their movements for tax purposes.
Seems like a bad idea on many fronts, but most importantly that of privacy. I note that they won't "real time track" you, but what do you want to bet that the data regarding where you've been will be downloaded along with the miles driven? My first suggestion is to require that all Oregon elected officials have to make their GPS data publicly available if this system is instituted. That ought to kill it.
Talk about stupidity. Wouldn't it be easier to just tax the gas to death? Then eveyone pays including out of state drivers. How about just recording the odometer when you purchace insurance. Sound like a make work project to me.
Taxing cars on the number of miles they drive, rather than the amount of fuel they consume in effect punishes people with fuel efficient cars. With current gas taxes, people who drive vehicles which have poor gas mileage (such as SUVs and sports cars) pay more tax than those who drive more efficient vehicles like Geos and Insights.
Of course the whole idea of using GPS to track mileage is ludicrous. GPS tracking fails in many situations such as tunnels and even heavy weather. Not to mention that they take time to 'lock on' to the satellite signal, often times longer than the trip itself. And of course buying a GPS device for every car would cost an outrageous amount of money.
The whole idea is DOA.
As to the "What's to prevent someone from removing their box and driving for free?" argument: If they collect it at the fuel station, it would be hard to get fuel with an illegally modded car.
I preduct a thriving industry in GPS spoofers if this thing passes. It wouldn't be that difficult to generate signals that overwhelm the real GPS and make it look like the car is hardly moving. No mods to the in-car system needed.
This tax pays for roads, thus the mention of higher tax for studded tires. But while a fuel tax to some extent measures likely road wear, a per-mile tax per vehicle is useless for those purposes. What's the incentive to drive a small, light vehicle, when you get taxed the same per mile as someone in their 7700lbs Ford Monstrosity? There's a rather confusing (or confused) suggestion that the current Oregon gasoline tax will be retained as well, and that this tax will be an either/or, but that's hard to believe, as all that would achieve would be to introduce extra administration fees for no extra tax revenue.
The suggestion that real time tracking will be "illegal" is simply laughable. The first time law enforcement has a cause celebre (kidnapped Aryan child?), they'll demand access, and they'll be given it. The only question is whether it will be used routinely by the like of Ashcrofts Federal Illumatus Agency to identify suspicious behaviour. I rather suspect that this will depend entirely on how affordable this turns out to be, not on any question of privacy.
While it's always tempting to see conspiracy theories everywhere, in this case it's very hard to see what else it could be. Who's this going to be good for? Big Oil. Ashcroft's Watchmen. Pretty much nobody else, and certainly not the citizens of the State of Oregon.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
car-sellers on the other side of the border...
I can also immagine a fake-residence service
where you would pay a small monthly fee just
for having a fake residence on other state...
For some reason my car has been parked in the same place for the whole last year..
Got Code?
Besides the fact you obviously didn't read the article, you also have the wrong concept of a gas tax. The gas tax in most states is designed to pay for highway maintenance, not to mete out environmental justice. Moving to this system is a more *equitable* way of taxing fuel efficient cars.
Just how many microseconds would it take people to figure out how to put tinfoil over the GPS antenna.... no GPS, No tracking, No tax. What planet are the idiots who think up this stuff on?
I live near Philadelphia, and we have this thing called the Pennsylvania Turnpike. You get a ticket when you enter the Turnpike, and you pay a toll when you exit based upon how far you drive. It's completely anonymous because it is cash-based. Granted, there's the new EasyPass which could be used nefariously, but you still have the cash option. To the best of my knowledge the money earned from the tolls is used only for the maintenance of the Turnpike, as well as police enforcement, emergency response and anything else related to it. So, it basically takes the major state-wide highway system out of the budget of the state. This doesn't necessarily resolve paying welfare or anything like that, but it makes for one fewer thing for the state to have to deal with. Does this punish fuel efficient drivers? Not really, because they make out on cheaper gas taxes. Does this punish local residents? Not really, because everybody who uses the road has to pay. Does this solve world hunger? No. But neither will anything else government does. I hated the Turnpike concept when I got here, now I think it's the best. It doesn't solve the problems of maintaining local roadways, but it does solve the highway funding problem.
First off, I really doubt this will get anywhere beyond the testing stage and hopefully it won't even get that far as it would be a huge waste of money.
Besides being an idiotic idea technically - costs for the GPS boxen (of course they'll probably want to charge the drivers for the box - why not just have everybody cough up the cost of a GPS box when they register their car and actually apply that money to roads instead of the GPS box, but I digress), tracking all of those cars, trying to make sure people don't disconnect them - it's not politically viable. Remember this is a referendum state. For something this far-reaching the legislature will be afraid to just enact it without a vote of the people - that's pretty much how it works here.
Currently some of the beaurocrats are whining about how they're not getting their gas-tax money from all of those folks driving hybrids (must be about 10 of them in the state by now, so it's a major crisis). Problem is, those hybrids do run on gas, they just do it much more efficiently. One would think that using less gas would be something the state would try to encourage instead of wringing their hands trying to figure out how they can spend $millions in order to make not much more money than they are now.
Hopefully, the bozo beaurocrat that came up with this idiotic idea will be promptly fired.
But the hairy eyeball is the real point of it all, just finding yet another way to tax you is only an added benefit.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
yep
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
I would just like to thank the state of Oregon for helping convince people to move into their state Washington and California. It takes a state with a lot of balls to promote the other guy.
I am all for use based taxes, but before they implement such a system they need to get rid of all the other taxes, as use based means you only pay for what you use. If you don't drive, you don't pay, if you don't send your kids to public school you don't pay, etc etc etc. But odds are the systems like these won't be implemented in that fashion. I am sure this new "Road Tax" will simply be implemneted on top of all the existing taxes. Oh well, prepare to be taxed into oblivion.
Stuck following the "Almighty Buck".
Just check out the Libertarian Party and see whether you agree or disagree.
I was in Oregon a few days ago and the Corvallis Gazette Times had a better article about this (unfortunately I couldn't locate it on line). The gist is that Oregon is forecasting a sharp reduction in gas tax revenue from the growth in fuel efficient cars. This is why they are searching for new revenue.
Unfortunately, a mileage tax will increase the relative tax on fuel efficient cars. They should be taxing cars based on emissions and weight, both of which are damaging to others. (A gas tax probably comes close to doing this.) Instead they will penalize environmentally preferred vehicles. I'm guessing they don't raise the gas tax because it would penalize SUV owners, who are probably politically powerful on average.
The real kicker in the article was an assertion that Oregon had considered a bicycle tax (!) to make up for lost gas tax revenue, but concluded it wouldn't raise enough to be worth the trouble.
Doesn't it seem like there should be an absolute limit on the amount of money that the Governments (State, Local and Federal) should be allowed to take from individuals?
Each Government should be able to set an amount of money that is required to provide the services for which they were formed. This is called a realistic budget.
It seems to me that the Government mission has become clouded. Maybe our officials need to sit down and define the scope of government in the context of our State and Federal constitutions. Just because the Constitution does not prohibit government from entering into a particular area does not mean that they are mandated to do so.
Why is it that every time a new technology surfaces that enables something to be measured, government feels the need to use it to extract more money from its citizens?
Taxing the use of our roads seems like a good idea except that whenever you tax an action that is a right you change that action from being a right to a privilege. For example: we have a right to free speech. If your local government made a law that required a permit to speak it would in effect be saying that you do not have a right to speech that speech is a privilege. Rights cannot be taken away without due process.
It has been successfully argued that driving a car is a privilege not a right even though one of our rights allows freedom to travel. The constitution obviously does not specify the method of travel so I guess that's deemed to mean that walking cannot be taxed. Personally I feel that it's very close to the constitutional line. But then what do I know.
Anyway to end this rant I would ask Oregon's Government to consider the question; Just because you may have the technology to use GPS to extract more money from your people, is it really the right thing to do?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Well if they followed that sign word for word, of course the tap wouldn't work. "Why do I have to stick my hands under the counter?"
That's exactly how it reads, everyone. I think it get's trampled over on a regular basis. It ought to go right out the door right after pesky Ammendments #1 and #2.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
It's already a crime to tamper/roll back an odometer, so you don't need a new 'law to protect the law'.
And if you go out of state, you can simply get a reciept at the border. (States like california already stops everyone to check for fruit/plants. Just look at the odometer while your at it.)
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
I don't know why you all are complaining, this is going to create a large number of jobs for people like us. Instead of the current trivial cheap efficient widespread and low error way of collecting gas tax. We are going to replace it with an inefficient, error prone, custom way to do it. And that means jobs for technology people.
My Weblog
Problem: Oregon can't require all vehicles operating in Oregon to have the GPS units. They can require all vehicles registered in Oregon to have them, but they can't require them on vehicles registered anywhere else and they can't prohibit those vehicles from driving in Oregon. That means they'd either have to keep the gas tax, or lose the revenue from large trucks, tourists and the like. My guess is that they'd need to at least double their estimates of the GPS-based fees to make up for the lost revenue. This will go over real well with Oregonians, I'd imagine.
Finally, widespread proof that Oregon has paved roads, now quit asking me!
Ok, ok... it said "Under faucet", not "under sink".
Details... details.
The government does not pay for the internet to more than a trivial extent. It pays for close to 100% of roads.
It's unworkable currently, but a great idea economically when it becomes feasable. Economies run far more efficiently when users of services pay in proportion to that use.
It's an economic no-brainer. And presumably, it would lead to LOWER taxes for people not clogging up the roads and creating air pollution.
> The gas tax would remain in effect. In paying the > new tax, drivers would get credit for gas tax > > > paid.
... the more gas you buy, the more gas tax you pay, the less mileage tax you pay. That mean's you're getting a tax break for using more gas per mile -- a fuel-efficient car pays more tax than a gas-guzzler over the same distance travelled.
So
Why were you peeing for them? Or were you sitting in their pee? And were you sitting on the urinal? Otherwise, how could you watch them? All the Oregon restrooms I've seen have doors.
Besides, those people who couldn't figure it out were probably from California.
If you look at the OR DOT preliminary report the basic reason is that fuel tax revenue are declining. Why? Increased fuel efficiency of all things! They are particularly concerned about hybrids which you know get double mileage -- and so pay half the tax. You can imagine what horror electric vehicles would bring.
So I guess they are trying not to discriminate against older and larger cars, who would pay much more fuel tax than hybrid, esp. as they raised the tax rate to compensate. An alternative might be a direct ad valorum tax on each automobile, paid with registration -- that would cut against expensive and new cars, unfortunately discouraging trading up.
I am sympathetic with their need to maintain constant income, it's how they maintain the roads. As for their methods?
A bizarre side effect of a good thing, I'll say.
Aftermarket modifications to the GPS box that make you a little old lady who only drives to Church on Sundays.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
The article states that the gas tax will be subtracted from the mileage tax; since inefficient cars use more gas and thus pay more gas tax, they will get a higher gas tax credit, and thus pay a smaller mileage tax.
This method is not equitable by my sensibilities.
Ok, I originally come from Pennsylvania which tends to have rather crappy interstate roads, and there's a simple reason for it - large tractor-trailers.
Pennsylvania a while back passed a law to eliminate studded tires from the road. Sad reality is that roads go worse, as there was more heavy truck traffic. Studded tires didn't really do anything.
If you want to cut costs on maintaining roads and raise money to do so, here's my suggestion:
Again, most of the wear and tear on roads in Pennsylvania is caused by out-of-state heavy-load trucks. Taxing your own citizens based on the mileage they drive their passenger cars taxes the wrong end of people and simply creates more excuses to vacate your state.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
"Good Faith and Credit Clause"
:)
Actually, it's Full Faith. Nothing requires states to act in good faith.
Someone else mentions the right to travel, which refers not to travel so much as discrimination against out-of-state immigrants with respect to things like welfare benefits and voter registration. Irrelevant here; there is nothing discriminatory about requiring everyone to pay for the road they drive on.
Gas taxes work better, and promotes lower weight better milage veichels; this law would do the opposite.
The privacy issues (which I believe to be the real reason the proposal is being made) are huge.
But consider also:
Cars already have a way to measure miles on the road that would not involve a large extra cost to the consumer - an odometer. It could be read when the car's license is renewed, of if Oregon has inspections at that time, and people could be taxed accordingly. For those who do a lot of out of state travel (as if that's a real issue), they could supply documentation of such (such as out of state gas receipts) with their taxes and get a rebate. If you don't like that approach, even remote reading odometers for recording mileage at the boarders (for checking people in and out based on mileage) would be less expensive and less obtrusive than trying to track everyone in the state by GPS.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I was there once and the lady who insisted on pumping my gas for me then drops the gas cap on the ground, getting it all dirty.
God knows how much gunk got in the engine because of that.
Good thing it was a lease.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Ok, now time to argue. Why shouldn't we discriminate against those who have to drive more miles to their occupation? Why can't they live closer to where they work? We'd certainly be easier on the environment if everyone drove 3 miles to work instead of 20...
Easy to say if you can easily find a job and don't have a mortgage.
It is a terrible time to require people to move or get a new job, with the economy and job market the way they are.
From the Article...
To protect drivers' privacy, using the system to track cars in real time would be illegal.
Right. Just like social security numbers weren't supposed to be used for identification purposes.
Time to do the bicycle thing. Maybe the jet-pack that never really took off in the sixties.
I hope this goes through. It will be a measurement of how willing people are to forfeit privacy for a monetary gain (perceived ability to shift taxes to someone else.)
...and build one of these:
GPS Blocker
If Oregon wants to give special treatment to selected groups (truck drivers, low income, etc.), they can tax diesel differently, issue identification that would let these groups pay reduced taxes right at the pump, or institute a rebate program.
The use of GPS for this purpose is so stupid that it suggests to me that there may be a hidden agenda: get the GPS into vehicles and start using it for tracking and surveillance. Or, perhaps, it's simple political stupidity: politicians think that increasing gas taxes is political suicide, but voters are too stupid to figure out thie Rube Goldberg proposal. Or maybe it's just heavy lobbying from electronics manufacturers.
Ok, so you get a big bill from the State for your gps miles. You want to contest that. Seems like you would need a daily log, to compare to theirs, and some witnesses that you did indeed stay at home on "that day". Hopelessly complicated to enforce in a democracy. (No one in their right mind would let a screwball piece of legislation come under Slashdot review, better to spring it on the populace without any debate)
then you must be a terrorist.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Granted, people who drive hybrids or all-electric vehicles (or CNG or propane, for that matter) get a free (or at least discounted) ride with gasoline taxes. I think they deserve it for keeping the state's air cleaner.
Except here in Oregon hybrid drivers pay almost double a normal gas vehicle in registration fees for exactly this reason.
"As I sat their peeing, I saw no less..."
Hmmmm. Dr. Watson, what things can you reasonably discern from this statement?
- Unsolicited advice to Oregon law makers:
Get rid of the mandated gas station attendants, keep the price of gas the same, pocket the difference and balance your budget.Even if this law fails the person/persons who considered this law haven't disappeared. Seems to me that Oregon has many dangerous laws coming up. These people won't stop.
They want to lift Oregon to be a model state with state of the art technology, but fail to come up with ideas that are not idiotic.
The goverment pays for nothing. Taxpayers pay for everything.
- You can tax congested roads only.
- You can tax places where public transportation is available only.
- You can tax during peak hours only.
In short, the intended effect on drivers' habits can be tuned in a much more fine grained way.Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
What's really sad about this, is that rich people are still less affected (as a percentage of their income) than poor people are. And before you say that poor people can just use Tri-Met or some other public transport, remember how much of Oregon is rural.
By the way, if I still lived there, my first challenge to that law would be to have them prove that my car wasn't on a flatbed truck when it was moving around, with the flatbed truck presumably reporting its own movements for taxation purposes, already. And I'd like to see them try to charge me for building an encasing box for the unit to block GPS reception when I'm not at the inspection site, if they win that battle.
Get off my launchpad!
Big Brother would know how many miles you drove, but not where you went, when you went, and where you are right now.
This idea doesn't account for how out of state visitors fill up. Then again, the current plan doesnt account for them either.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Why in the hell do we need to penalize both corporations and inviduals for doing there jobs and contributing to society? I remember back in the good old days that individuals would actually get tax credits for fuel rather then being charged to do there job so the government can waste there money. Its my car and I will do whatever it is I please (that included removing the boxes) thank you.
http://saveie6.com/
After all, a 10mpg SUV pays more tax than an 80mpg Smartcar for each mile it travels anyway, so what's the problem?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It just has to workout total distance travelled within that state. not where you actually went. Then upload or read this 'distance' once a month or something and then pay the tax. No privacy issues involved. I too have some GPS driving experience. Drivers will be undercharged, stick with the gas tax. Less Gas Tax means less gas burnt, there are larger issues here than just road use.
Really, at this point the goals of fuel taxes should only be related to road maintenance, insurance and emissions control. For noncommercial vehicles, this is best done by a fuel consumption tax, since the cause/effect is so evident. Raise the gasoline tax to a point high enough to cause discomfort to the populace, and they start looking for lighter, more efficient vehicles which use less fuel (lower taxes) and weigh less (less mangling of roads, thus less maintenance needed, thus less money for maintenance needed). Raise it a little more to subsidize ethanol and biodiesel in passenger cars, thus reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Fuck the poor, they can get out of their underinsured, undermaintained polluting jalopies, take mass transit and put money saved towards not being poor anymore.
;)
:)
Diesel, being linked to large heavy vehicles and consumer price indexes (shipping, power, etc) should be handled differently. Road taxes by weight (the system used today) with moderate taxes on petrodiesel should be in place, and some of that petro tax used to subsidize biodiesel and biodiesel conversion subsidies.
I'm thinking US$3/gal gasoline, $1.75/gal diesel should get people moving towards lower fuel use (less envirodamage and terrorism subsidizing).
Of course, I drive a diesel. Think globally, drive locally..
ps: one of my friends recently scoffed at the idea of a hybrid SUV. Frankly, I think SUVs should be the EARLIEST adopters. People want them, not just for the tax dodge. They're pretty useful for what they offer, and people have legitimate needs for traction, space and ruggedness. Let's just get them to 40MPG, preferably hybrid diesel wankel power
Cooped up in a car for 2-4 hours per day.
Seriously. Go work out how much of your life you'd spend sitting in traffic over say 50 years.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Actually only two in seven people now in Oregon can read English.
As a long time Oregon resident, let me fill in the slashdotters with some background.
One: Oregonians are poor. We have the highest unemployment rate in the country. When you run out of unemployment benefits, you automatically get taken off the unemployment rolls and become 'employed'. Real unemployment is 15-20 percent. Our forest product, tourist, fishing, and electronic industries are decimated.
Two: Oregonians are dumb. We have the shortest school year in the country and are about to shorten it another twenty or so days. We have one of the highest dropout rates in the USA. Most of the jobs requiring advanced skills and education to people moving here from other places.
Three: Oregonians are cheap. We voted down all major tax increases in the past ten years. We defeated the sales tax proposals put forth by our betters five times in the past twenty years. Being cheap is a direct result of being poor and dumb.
Four: Oregon is big. Bigger than New England. A third of the people live in the Portland metro area; one third live in other 'cities'; and the rest live far out in the country and drive lots of miles.
Five: Our state legislators are either over-educated Jane Jacobs followers from Portland or Eugene (the Dems) or dumb-as-dirt bible-thumping morons from the woods (the Repubs). Each side hates each other and would gladly shut down the state rather than cooperate or give an inch on anything. Both sides pride themselves on coming up with truly dumb laws to show that they are meaner than the other side. For example, get caught with any amount of voter-approved medical mar1juana, lose your driver's license for a year.
Or, drop out of high school at age sixteen? Can't get a driver's license until you're twenty-one.
To point of all this? Don't take anything that the Oregonians say or do seriously.
that this is about collecting taxes?
...the GPS receiver tracks YOU! Oh, wait.
All the other comments didnt recognize that this article mentions hyrbid vehicles and the like as an impetus to this proposal.
I stand very strongly behind my parent comment. Way to decipher the bullshit out of this VERY complex solution.
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
There are just too many problems with this for it to be feasible...
Warning: Poster of this comment is a nerd. Just like everybody else here.
I can see some enterprising individual come out with GPS jammer. Road tax? what road tax?
GPS signals were designed from the start to be weak, but impervious to weather. That is, regardless of the weather, GPS will work under otherwise unobstructed view of the satellites. Going under trees, overpasses, tunnels, etc, will render GPS signals useless.
Regardless of the above comment, I still think Oregon lawmakers don't know what they are doing.
It's a big federal no-no, just like jamming cell phone signals.
Could you do it anyway? Sure. Would you want to risk 5+ years in the federal slammer for messing with GPS? I don't think so.
paintball
Why not just put heavier taxes on gasoline?
Hi
No idiot, mens urinals do not usually have doors. If anything, there is a short partition seperating the stalls.
I was at a stall, peeing, and I looked to my left. 3 sinks. No body washing their hands. Lots of slacked jaws and dirty hands.
Besides, those people who couldn't figure it out were probably from California.
How so? Do Oregonians not use reststops?
(or rather, doesn't have to be)
The system needs no memory of where you've been, or even how far you've gone.
Each car contains a sealed box with GPS reciever, and a display showing how much money you have left. When you are low on money the box is filled up by a plastic card that you buy on the gas station. (The box checks that the card is digitally signed by the authorities.) Of course the card can't be tracked to you if you pay cash.
If you are ever stopped by the police with the seal on the box broken, or a display blinking "insert coin" you'll be in trouble, unless you ran out of money while racing somebody to the hospital or stuff like that.
They'll never know where you've been, though.
The system could probably be jammed, and there would also likely be counterfeit cards in circulation. Whether that's enought to stop the system remains to be seen. (Counterfeit money hasn't destroyed the economy yet even though they've been around for a long time).
However, there is no privacy issue.
The box would also have a socket for connecting your navigation computer - why waste a perfectly good GPS reciever?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
We used to vote very progressively, but things like that are being shot down left and right by people with some strange sense of entitlement and an SUV in the garage. Oregonians know you don't need an SUV to get around in a little rain.
Sweeping generalizations aside, this sounds like a great way to tax the people who use the roads. Roads are less like schools in the sense that even people who don't use them benefit greatly from their strength, and here in Oregon we're having a very hard time keeping our roads in working order. Much of this is due to overuse of studded snow tires in a metropolitan area that sees zero to very few inches of snow a year, and never any that lasts more than a day or so. I drive about 5k miles a year, and that usually includes 2 long out of state road trips. I'd love it if people who drive an hour to work each way paid the bulk of the bill. However, I don't know how this could cover all the Washingtonians who commute from Vancouver everyday.
Quit being so literal.
It's "sat" as in "I sat here waiting for you for 10 minutes and you never showed up" which is ambigous as to "sit or stand", not "sat" as in "I sat down".
Yes, I probably should have said "Stood there peeing", but bad American grammar rules allows me to say "I sat there peeing".
Maybe I don't get it, but couldn't you just turn off your GPS unit if you knew a little bit about cars?
Gnuyen
course, if those crazy oregonians arent out helping each other die so much ;) they're probably finding ways to switch to biodiesel or something more eco-friendly.
i think that GPS is a pure play for GPS interests, anyone find out how many GPS related tech companies are in oregon? i'm sure there's more than a few in neighboring Cali as well.
like most bad ideas, this one will go down in flames soon enough. perhaps they'll wise up in oregon and start implanting mandatory gps chips IN oregonians. after all, isn't that what the point of doing this with GPS really is????????
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
As long as I get to be the ruler, I don't mind totalitarian control.
here in Britain we have less in common with the US and more in common with the USSR - opressive regime, wide raging poverty, decline, recession etc etc - we pay road tax, and the government wants to make us pay more - and to top it all, only a small amount of our road tax is re-invested into the roads!?!?!?!
The reason that simply increasing gasoline taxes doesn't do a great job is because the largest concentration of population within Oregon (the Portland Metro Area) is within 20 miles of the Washington border.
If gasoline taxes where significantly higher, then people would just purchase their gas in Vancouver.
However, since Washington passed a referendum that destroyed the majority of their road tax base, perhaps a tandem gasoline tax increase would do the trick.
Oregon has a lot of foolishness surrounding laws. For example, see this: Airplanes are safe, but laws often crash..
A city councilman in Portland, the largest city, tried to promote a law that would require giving people tickets for going through a yellow (not red) light. Of course, the purpose of a yellow light is to warn drivers that the light will soon be red, not to make them stop.
For a while, there was a law in Portland that said you could be fined $400 for jaywalking. This was especially foolish because there are many times when the streets of Portland are empty.
Recently I talked with a programmer friend who said that he had spent a week finding a subtle bug that mildly affected the user interface of one of his company's products.
However, when I talk with people in Oregon government about the major defects in Oregon law, they just dismiss the issue with very little thought. One recently told me something to the effect of, "It would be too difficult to make a more perfect law." Another said, "This is the legislature's responsibility," which I understood to mean, "I don't have to think about it."
Back in the 80s Oregon decided that since their own residents already paid for their State Parks and campgrounds through taxes, that they'd hike the fees up for non-residents. We were shocked to pull into a State campground and see fees of over $20 (this was 20 years ago). So, naturally, we stopped going to Oregon. And, if we drove through Oregon we stopped buying anything there.
But what made them go back to charging the same price for everyone was when Idaho began charging double for Oregon residents at *their* campgrounds.
Although, come to think of it, we still don't buy anything in Oregon or stop there more than absolutely necessary. Their fuel is already high-priced because of their idiotic program to only expose the poor to cancer-causing chemicals in gasoline. In an apparent attempt to weed out high school dropouts, there is no self-service pumping in Oregon... you must use a trained gasoline attendant. Who is paid minimum wage to risk leukemia.
And we NEVER stay at their campgrounds.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Gas tax only works to a certain amount. If the taxes are significantly higher in one state than the neighbouring state, guess where people living sufficiently close to the border are going to go to buy their gas? The more you increase your gas taxes, the more people from further away will be willing to drive to the next state for gas. Once the tax is high enough, an increase in the tax rate will result in a decrease in tax revenue. I won't take a stand on whether or not GPS is *the* answer, but it does have certain advantages (and obviously disadvantages) over gas tax.
turnpikes drain my pocket change. They waste alot of everyones time. Why use the fast road only to have to count change and wait (sometimes I admit!) at the toll gate.
Having lived where we don't have these things, I am not interested in seeing them.
Not that it does not work though, I just would not like it at all.
Blogging because I can...
The admonition was printed on the card and referred to the card. The card was not to be used for identification. This makes a lot of sense since it is just paper and has no picture on it.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
If someone proposed a law that said that the State should track the movements of your vehicle if you were driving with a gun in your car, that would be shot down by the NRA and 2nd Amendment radicals as unconstitutional usurpation and invasion of privacy of gun owners. But change it so that they the State will track your movements whether you have a gun in your car or not, and then it's just business as usual. Maybe we can get an exemption if we have a gun in our car.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Hey, why not require implanted microchips that give off GPS signals instead? After all, you can't have people walking on public sidewalks untracke... er, without having them pay their proper share.
Now, does this mean that all future highway-related tolls and state taxes will be abolished for Oregon citizens in compliance? If they're moving to a use-based model, they won't still demand blanket tax payments, right?
What do visitors do? Aren't the worst causes of road damage shipping trucks? Do Oregonians have to foot the bill for damages caused by out of state shippers?
I've seen those stupid faucets and they're not as idiot proof as you'd like to think they are. I've put my hands underneath the faucet and ... nothing.
Microchip the pets,
Make GPS seem "cool" so people carry it,
GPS the cars,
GPS the world.
One step closer to the mark of the beast technology.
He should get some karma for admitting he lives in Oregon :)
These are just some silly bureaucrats trying to pull the solution to Oregon's multimillion-dollar budget deficit (caused by one of the lowest tax rates in the nation) out of their ass. It hasn't even hit Congress yet, and it'll die quietly there if it even makes it.
Hell, even if the polits were desperate enough to consider it, it'd only be put up to a referendum where about 90% of the votes would be "No."
This is because the majority of Oregonians are non-idiots, tax-haters, or both.
You've been hearing a lot of bad stuff about Oregon because we have an extremely loud press that will stir up huge controversy about any government issue that involves the word "tax" (on the conservative side) or anything involving civil rights (on the liberal side).
Oregon is fucking insane and schizophrenic, but I love it. At least we try to keep the environment intact. It takes a lot of guts to look at a sludgepit like the Willamette River and not throw up one's hands in defeat.
Who needs real time? Just give me a list of where you went the past year. Close to retirement? I see here that you were at the Mustang Ranch when you should have been 70 miles away for the past three months. Haven't I seen you at that political rally of my opponent? Let me check the gps records just to make sure it wasn't you. Don't want to mistake you for someone else. Can't have that.
Anyone remember how fbi files were found in political hands a half dozen years ago?
Applying for a job at the post office? Anyone reading slashdot know that they ask you if you've ever (not just in the last few years, but EVER) received a seat belt ticket (which btw is a non-moving violation), and if you say yes, they don't hire you, and if you say no and it is a lie they can fire you at any time in your career?
Let's add gps data to your application for a government position. It is already happening at the post office with seat belt tickets and perfectly legal.
Used your rental vehicle out of state? Well, the rental agency saves on the road tax, but they will be charging you a 500% premium in per mile charges according to the contract.
Applying for a job? A government job? Any job? Let's check your gps driving record. It's illegal to use gps for speeding you say? We're not charging you with a crime or traffic infraction. We simply need to know that we can trust you with several tons of metal insured by the government/our company. Especially after that last driver/school bus driver/highway bus driver/truck driver that killed so many school kids that was in the news, he could have been prevented from being hired and all those school kids would be alive today. You know that this job requires that you drive one of our vans while (see bottom of link, note info on seatbelt use in accident) in the field, don't you? We have to check if you drive at or near the speed limit, or even over, before we consider you for that promotion.
Did you kill a church van loaded with worshippers due to drunk driving? I can't have access to the gps data in real time to prove you were at this bar, the only 5'0" blond guy to be there that night who drank 18 shots of tequila? Time to change the law. Technology is already in place.
What's that? You're a child molester? And we need the gps info to prosecute you or a child molester will walk? Time to change the law.
Neo-liberals can't stand the patriot (as well as conservatives). But give a pinko a chance to
raise taxes
sock it to car owners
get mod points with the greens
stick someone else with a tax because they have a tendency in the urban areas of that and many states to use mass transit
stick it to everyone but those that can't afford cars, keeping up with their tireless class warfare mantra
So the pinko wackos, who never met a tax they didn't like, get another tax, and privacy dies a little further.
And yes, I do turn off my cell phone while driving and keep the electronic toll tag in a lead lined bag between tolls, paying cash when the tracking is too obvious.
Already know of cases of law enforcement using the tags to "unofficially" catch motorists. Try proving it in court. Especially traffic court.
otoh, with the patriot act, they don't need government gps. They can just demand these records, similar to the demands for your library book rentals, your online surfing at your isp and library, your shopping habits, your lottery habits, etc.
Things in Oregon are worse than many think. As of today, New Year's Day, the minimum wage just went up to $6.90/hour. As this seems good news to the burger jockeys, it's bad news to the rest of us. For those of us who make under $14/hour, this is horrible. The cost of living goes up dramatically, and to make up for having to pay higher minimum wage, Employers fire or lay off employees. My rent is going up because of this. Prices in all the grocery stores are going up because of this.
Where does all the money go? The state legislature. Senators and Reps taking our money and spending it on themselves. Thank God we have Peter DeFazio, who keeps the working class here in Oregon in the game at all. I think it's time we start looking at where our taxes go. We are having tax hikes to keep education budgets from being decimated, but only because THAT IS WHERE THE REPS AND SENATORS CHOOSE TO TAKE THE MONEY FROM. This is the case in all states, not just one where $10.50/hour before taxes = $7.60/hour after.
We are also NOT all hippies and dirty chiba monkeys.
Can't they just track them with the chip they've implanted in their brain that shocks them whenever they think unkind thoughts about their elected officials?
----
a: "excuse me, why do you want a GPS in every vehicle in the state which is directly monitored by the government?"
b: "um... eh, heh heh, well... um to track... eh, Road Usage... that's it! And think of the children." (--- I think a there is a pacific coast congressman that just might want to know where the fsck his wife drives off to at 11pm every thursday! but just a guess.)
-pyrrho
That Oregon is almost out of money.
Whoopee! Maybe it's time to tax that Intel guy and that Nike guy for a change.
We have seen the traffic/attitude of the East Coast. And we are trying not to copy it.
Several relatively faint satellite signals on a limited range of frequencies that are relatively easy to isolate and disrupt (hell, a simple steel box will jam a GPS device if you physically have access to it-- it doesn't take a high-tech solution.)
See this article from Aviation International News (or just do a Google search).
As far as GPS-jamming goes, the top-level poster made a perfectly reasonable point. However, I don't think that it's much of a solution, as the authorities will soon notice the constant lack of information from your box and come over to investigate.
Three: Oregonians are cheap. We voted down all major tax increases in the past ten years. We defeated the sales tax proposals put forth by our betters five times in the past twenty years. Being cheap is a direct result of being poor and dumb.
You're an idiot. Because I don't want to pay for tax increases, I'm cheap? My government hasn't shown me that they can manage the money they DO have let alone deserve more.
After all, they created the Oregon Health Plan which was supposed to cost about $600million/year and within a few years was costing several billion per year.
And for the record, I'm neither dumb nor poor nor uneducated. I make six figures and have a PhD. Fuck the rest if they're too stupid. Eat them and have less competition.
Damn. I read through all these comments, and yearn for the days when /. readers used to be SMART.
/.
I am an Oregon resident, and this has been analyzed and discussed locally and all that LONG before it made any national news streams - or
Oregon's laws are no better or worse than anywhere else in the country. Every state has sucky laws. Every state has screwed up government. Every state has bad taxing schemes. Every state has areas with bad roads, crummy schools, or high crime. Every state also has some good stuffs, nice places, good policies - what have you. Portland has some strange laws (It is illegal to ride a bycicle on the streets downtown) and some good ones (they were the first major city to oficially legalize skateboarding and give skateboarders rights and responsibilities).
1. Oregon is looking at this system for the LONG TERM future, not immediate gain. The simple truth is that Petrolium based fuels are going to be replaced with other mechanisms. They are just THINKING of how they will be able to still provide roads when no one is buy buying gasoline any more. (Flashes of "Mr Fusion" powerd cars come to mind). "OUR ROADS SUCK - WE WANT MORE, BETTER ROADS!!! What do you MEAN you want us to PAY for them? Why should we have to PAY for them?"
2. These things you have been reading about are all trial programs to test the viability. They are planning on passing legislation to allow them to TEST these types of systems with voluntary participants. The results of these tests will be used to design the real system. (with the speed of state govt, it'll be a while.)
3. Part of the needs of these tests is to design a system that charges appropriately. Some of the discussed options is having the mileage rate also be based on vehicle weight, size, number of axels, etc... So that a smaller lighter vehicle won't pay as much as a large heavy one.
4. Outsiders will just pay the regular gas tax for now. Just like they do currently. If you buy gas in a state - any state - and you pay their gas taxes, you are helping to pay for their roads. If you pass through the state without buying gas - you are using the roads at a discount. (Some of all roads is paid for with federal dollars and federal gas taxes - so no one gets a completely free ride).
5. GPS is important so that they don't bill people for miles they drive outside of Oregon, or not on Oregon roads. The ultimate goal is for the GPS to only count miles driven on ROADS. We all know that GPS is not perfect, but we have to start figuring out something - and it is a place to start.
6. I do have very real privacy concerns. The system is NOT real-time - but who is to say what info they actually record? Even if it is after the fact, it could be abused. "Lets see, this indicates you were in the vincinity of this crack house - we should search your home for drug paraphanalia." "Hmmm, looks like you broke the speed limit 38 times this month. Here is ticket."
7. Any system would have to have the ability to detect tampering - much like cars computers do now (the dealership can tell if you have a chip or modified system) - and they would have to account for irregularities or weather problems. Our GPS devices we have now work pretty good here - except in forests. And since 2/3 of oregon residents live in the Willamette valley - full of dense forests - this could pose a problem.
8. People REMEMBER: Gas taxes are usage fees THE SAME WAY but just collected differently. Currently, a large heavy vehicle will typically get much less mileage, and thus pay more per mile for usage. A motorcycle that gets 70mpg will pay much less gas tax, but also damages the road much less. If you drive a million miles a year - you pay gas taxes - thus mileage fees - evey gallon of gas you consume.
9. Oregon already taxes trucks heavily. Deisel taxes are higher than gasoline taxes - which sucks for those who drive the 50mpg Volkswagen TDIs. In addition, Oregon taxes trucks on a weight / miles driven scale IN ADDITION to the fuel taxes. Pretty steeply as I understand it. Thats why we have so many weigh stations on our highways.
10. There could be better ways. Toll roads. I always have thought they were a good choice - because then the people who use that specific road pay for it. Transponders. Could work just like toll roads - with less manpower requirements. Maybe a combination of all the solutions. Nothing is perfect.
11. I *like* not having to pump my gas. Last night it was damn cold and raining sideways. I got to sit in a warm car while someone else froze. I always watch them and make sure they don't F up. And AFAIK Oregon is not the only state that it is illegal to pump your own gas, New Jersey the other maybe? One on the east coast anyway.
12. The one most important thing they could do is either get rid of studded tires - or tax them heavily. They freaking destroy the roads! We get nice ruts - so deep you can take your hands off the steering wheel and let the car just steer itself in the "tracks". And they are ABSOLUTELY un needed. I ski regularly, and on a two wheel drive rear drive van - I make it just fine without studs. Have for 5 years now. Only need chains occasionally. People use studs forgetting that studded tires REDUCE your traction in wet or dry conditions. NW Oregon has mostly wet conditions. So by using studs you REDUCE your traction 99% of the time, so that the ONE day a year we MIGHT get Ice, or the once a week you ski, or the one time you need to go through the mountains - you will have traction. Dumbasses. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I love when it is a sunny warm spring day, and I am walking around in a short sleeved shirt downtown Portland, and cars are driving by clacking with studs. Good thing they had them, those bone dry roads can be treachorus.
HELLO PEOPLE. STUFF IS NOT FREE. There is ALWAYS a cost somewhere. (I have heard people complaining that they had to pay a $3 use fee at a state park when before THAT policy they complained that trails that were washed out were not being fixed fast enough.)
Yes, I probably should have said "Stood there peeing", but bad American grammar rules allows me to say "I sat there peeing".
Um, that ignores the choice of "their" instead of "there". Those two words have a very different meaning.
I'm sorry, you seem to be suffering from the unfortunate misconception that the state government is a company. Common among big-L Libertarians, I'm told.
Tax rates mainly paid for a certain rate of service several years ago. Now, due to a number of circumstances, those tax rates no longer pay for services. Thus taxes must be adjusted upwards -- raised.
Spending has not increased past inflation and devaluation over the last biennium. Revenues have decreased. The only way to keep services at a constant level is to increase tax revenues.
No budget has been been overrun here -- the tax dollars have underrun.
I'm sure this thing would suck off the car's power, right? So just send the state a bill for the estimated cost, and throw on some BS charges, totaling in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. I wonder how the state'll like it.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
There's a low-tech way to collect this sort of tax. It is known as a tax on gasoline. Oregon may already collect this.
One thing (as far as I can tell unmentioned to this point) is the fact that Oregon has the lowest (or one of the lowest) yearly license fees in the nation--just $15. So low is it that the Oregon DOT had signs warning out of state drivers not to come to Oregon and register their vehicles.
/year, and that provides a nice revenue base that the state/local governments can depend on (for road financing) no matter how much people drive, and yet it still is not pricey enough to be severely regressive to the grandma who drives only 500 miles a year.
While some states have a yearly vehicle property tax (like Colorado, Taxachusetts, Rhode Island) that assesses a significant fee per year, most of that goes to local government for schools and stuff.
Most states have a fee of $30-$80
Some states, like Michigan, have an ad valorem, which is based on the value of the vehicle, and so people with more expensive cars pay more (this isn't a property tax because it is a flat percentage, it isn't based on property tax millage, and the money goes to the state for funding roads, not the local government.) It is gently rising, and my friend with a 2002 Corvette pays about $120, which isn't severe for an expensive vehilcle (and it caps off at some value.) That is clearly a progressive system for road financing irrelevant to how much ya drive or how much wear and tear you put on the roads.
New York has a system which has some type of base amount (like $40, but I can't remember what it is) and then adds some surcharge if the vehicle is heavy. That's essentially the same as the fuel tax, but once again, it offers a stable revenue base that fuel taxes can build off of.
Another suggestion is to change the fuel tax system to a hybrid style. Most states that I know of assess a fuel tax on each gallon of gasoline sold (like in Ohio, it's 22 cents...I think.) Instead, Ohio could consider making it 18 cents per gallon sold, then add another 5 cents for every dollar's of gasoline sold. That way, if gas prices go up and sales go down, the revenue stream is a bit more stable (and it still works well if prices go down, and people end up buying more gasoline.
At any rate, Michigan style ad valorem, New York vehicle weight surcharge, hybrid style gasoline taxes or simply raising yearly fees are significantly better ways of road financing than the complexity of a GPS system.)
Yes, and I suppose only the people with children should have to pay for PUBLIC school, and only the people who visit parks should have to pay for them.
I actually first heard of this the other night from some friends of mine who are Oregon residents. They're pissed to all hell about this idea.
Still, if they *must* tax drivers for driving, I'm wondering why in gods name the legislators are bothering with GPS? Why not take the route the East went and implement toll roads to increase revenue for the department of transportation? Hell, they could even get creative about it and charge more for road-damaging SUV's, which some other posters have mentioned.
Yeah, this new law seems on the outside that it would raise all kinds of crazy cash, but it would seem to me to be far more expensive to set up and maintain. And then there will no doubt be legal challenges against it. All in all, far more trouble than its worth.
If they really need to levy funds for transportation costs, it would make more sense to me (at least in the near future) to go the Jersey Turnpike route. Make drivers pay tolls every so many miles. The eastern states have been doing this for years, and it seems to work pretty well--i.e. it helps support their highway system, and people there don't mind it too much.
Just a thought!
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Found a pdf on the Oregon Dept of Transportation web site dated July 2002 HERE . Provides a little insight into their thinking...
Essentially, minor rural roads would be free and rural roads generally would be very low cost whereas innner city roads would be extremely highly taxed (in US prices, up to about seventy cents a mile).
The idea isn't nearly as stupid as it first sounds.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Both roads and schools are equally useful to those who don't "use" them directly. Every time you buy a product in a store, you are making use of the roads that got that product to you. Every time you send a piece of mail, you are making use of the roads. And every time you fail to get mugged by gangs of punks roaming the streets with no education and no prospects for respectable work, you are using the public school system.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
This article reminds me of my parents' first experience with GPS in a rental car a few weeks ago. For some reason, they got some kind of bonus on their rental, and the car they recieved came equipped with a full navigation system. All they had to do was punch in their destination, and it would give them spoken directions.
." until they got disgusted with it and turned it off.
;)
I'm poor and have never seen one of these, but the idea sounds great. My parents decided to test it out while driving around Phoenix, Arizona. Unfortunately, the unit had slightly dated maps, and the freeways in Phoenix are a perpetually changing work of art. They ended up going off the map pretty quick, and the poor GPS unit soon showed them driving around freewheeling out in the middle of the desert. For about a half hour it kept repeating "please make a legal u-turn. . . please make a legal u-turn. .
If the GPS units in Oregon work as well as that one did, I don't think there'll be too many problems with this law after all.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Another pdf HERE that gives a high level use case of the process using a GPS.
Oregon cannot trample on the authority of the US Congress to regulate interstate commerce: this means that a tax which discriminates against people from out-of-state will be scrutinized by the courts.
It seems to me that the effect of this tax would be to allow Oregonians to pay the per-mile tax but (probably) force out-of-staters (who would most likely lack the GPS devices) to pay the per-gallon tax. This means that out-of-state truckers, for example, would pay way more tax than in-state truckers (per-gallon tax is bad for large, inefficient vehicles). Allowing inefficient cars in Oregon to bypass the high gas tax with GPS, but requireing out-of-state cars without GPS to pay the gas tax, might amount to an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce.
In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
Women are prohibited from wearing patent leather shoes in public.
It is illegal to fish for whales on Sunday.
It is illegal to get a fish drunk.
The Ohio driver's education manual states that you must honk the horn whenever you pass another car.
Participating or conducting a duel is prohibited.
Breast feeding is not allowed in public.
It is illegal for more than five women to live in a house.
It is illegal to mistreat anything of great importance.
No one may be arrested on Sunday or on the Fourth of July.
I don't think Oregon has any patent on foolish laws. In fact, they tend to have extremely good ones.
Furthermore, there is a difference between "considering a law" and passing one.
But I guess it's too much to expect the typical slashdot poster or moderator to understand that.
I live in Oregon, so I'm used to some pretty boneheaded ideas but this one takes the cake. Fortunately it runs afoul of a little thing called the 4th Amendment. While the state is in dire financial straits--so bad that a 4-day school week was investigated as a cost cutting measure--a much more obvious fix to the budget crisis than this moronic measure would be to readjust our income tax. Oregon has a defecto flat-tax as the brackets haven't been readjusted since the 30's. A flat tax is naturally a recipe for ruin because in order to pay for things like roads and schools the tax has to be set quite high which means the working poor and middle class have less disposable income to put back into the economy.
Taxing the miles someone does on the road because you can't upkeep them is about the worst way to deal with it, IMHO. If most of the damage is caused by morons with studded snow tires (tyres), why not outlaw those tyres on the public roads? And other types of tyre which damage the road a lot? And vehicles over a certain weight for anyone but businesses? The police could then make a packet for the state by prosecuting all the people who didn't obey the law.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
but bad American grammar rules allows me to say "I sat there peeing".
So it's an 'official' American grammar rule now that the word 'sat' can be translated as 'stood at a urinal'? Things really are going down hill education wise.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
No measurement needed. Established long ago. Human behavior is well understood, just as ape behavior, dog behavior, rat behavior, have been.
I don't mean to sound demeaning but the methods are the same in practice. You know what makes a thing tick, and you can control it's behavior. It's a serious vulnerability that few seem willing to accept.
The accumulation of information about a person is power that can be used against that person. Information gathering accumulates potential energy that can be loosed when pressure is needed to alter behavior.
Get the fuck out of Oregon. If the State requires your every motion to be reported, they're no longer viewing you as a human being worthy of respect, but as an animal who is subject to whatever process the State deems necessary.
Some States will maintain some sort of integrity during these strange days but Oregon is clearly taking an openly hostile attitude towards it's residents, and I'm glad I don't live there. Other States are going the way of Oregon, just not being so open about it. Keep your eyes open, this isn't going to be an isolated case.
Install a jammer? And that can't very well be violating FCC rules and interfering with legitimate GPS operations.. except it is. Installing a device that broadcast GPS signals would be a very bad idea.
I don't know, I look at things like this law,
The TIA
The DMCA
The fact the lawyers are little more than court appointed extortionists
politicians seem completely incapable of doing the job they are elected to do
Politicians can't even demonstrate a little class while screing up (the 2000 election, miami's 3 simultaneous mayors for example)
And I look and I think why haven't these people been dragged from their offices, tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail. A tax on mileage, that would require a several hundred dollar investment per car, need a large infrastructure to implement, and wind up being horribly regressive. How could someone with a braincell think of this ? If you really wanted to raise revenue at the expense of drivers wouldn't it have just been simpler to up the taxes on gas ?
And track your trips to the grocery.. Then what you buy there.
Its none of their damned business.
Note to goverment: Get the hell out of my personal business.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It pays for close to 100% of roads.
And where do you think the government gets its money from?
Economies run far more efficiently when users of services pay in proportion to that use.
They do; they pay more because they use more gas.
And presumably, it would lead to LOWER taxes for people not clogging up the roads and creating air pollution.
People need to travel. They have to go to work everyday, and they already pay for the roads through gas taxes and other taxes. What does creating air polution have to do with maintaining roads?
can be a utopia like Ohio.
It's January 1st and we already have a winner! These guys are geniuses!
Why didn't I think of that first?
SAME idiots that refer to republicans as fascists.
Jack booted liberal busy body thugs
all moved to oregon.
that somewhere in the USA a republican is storing a car that gets 140 miles per gallon of gas. Never to see the light of day.
I guess in oregon they don't tax by the kilometer, do they?.. No. What a shame...
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
its still the increased spending that is causing the budget problems.
You think taxes are fair. You must be a true idiot.
The only fair way is a flat tax on everything.
Check out my ghey articles and linux pseudo-contributions!!
my favorite quote from the article...
"Owners of older cars would be allowed to take part by retrofitting them."
whew, i thought i might now be allowed to participate! what a relief...
Two positives: It taxes road use, and makes SUV's pay more per mile.
So simple. and better.
This goes to show that the real use of this GPS TAX is identification and location of vehicles.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Yipee! We get to participate in our government by complying with the law! Can't wait until I'm allowed to retrofit my car.
I wonder if they will let me do it before they make a national law...?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Most GPS units I have seen have a "Training" or "Simulator" mode which still outputs the same data format (e.g. Garmin protocol) as the active mode. Set your GPS to training mode and have a canned route in another state or an offset (where your actual location may be in Oregon but is depicted as another location) to your actual route by several hundred miles to the east so that all your GPS tracking data indicates you are driving in Idaho or Wyoming. Oregon is truly the most screwed up state when it comes to transportation funding. For example in the Portland metro area where voters reject every "Light Rail" train project, the liberals continue to build them. Forget about construction costs of over $135 Million per mile which are never recouped, operations alone are subsidized to the extent that taxpayers chip in around $43.00 every time somebody makes a train trip. Not to mention that ridership figures are artificially boosted by changing bus routes so busses overwhelmingly feed the trains rather than making their previous point to point routes. Result? What used to be a 40 minute bus trip (10-15 minute drive) now is over an hour due to transfers from bus to train to bus. And busses? Portland's Tri-Met busses operate at 80% subsidy (rider fare is only 20% of the cost) yet has GPS on every bus and readouts at major stops which indicate bus arrivals. (Gee, my 5:00 PM bus will be here at 5:02:32!!!!whoopee)More fine stewardship of ever-rarer taxpayer dollars. Let bus riders pay their own costs and car drivers get the roads their gas taxes are supposed to pay for. Oregon's General Fund budget has increased 220%+ in 5 years which is well out of whack with population, wage and cost-of-living indexes. Not only that, but 60% of the entire budget comes from "fees" used to circumvent citizen opposition to taxes. Staggering waste with no corresponding increase in services. And to those who touched on education...Portland will soon go to approx. 160-day school year. The shortest in the nation. The average teacher makes about $50k for this (equal to $75-80k for a regular full-time worker who also takes their work home with them) and the Ed budget breaks down to about $400,000 per 30-student classroom. Given the $50k for the teacher, where does the other $350,000 per classroom go? Maybe to the 80% of the employees in education who have no classroom duties? Maybe to the 1 "administrator" for every 1.5 "teachers"? Maybe to all sorts of needless junk? So GPS based road taxes? One more means to confiscate the fruits of citizens labors against their wills and distribute it to those who didn't earn it.
You can get mileage by reading the odometer. Right?
"The gas tax would remain in effect. In paying the new tax, drivers would get credit for gas tax paid." This is a way to get MORE money! Get real..how long do you think they'll get credit? One year? Two years? Certainly not more then that! This is another law like the seat belt law. They slide it in under the voter's nose by saying: "It's only 15 bucks and we won't enforce it unless you get stopped for something else" Well, guess what? Here in CA that lasted about 3 years. Now it's 35 bucks and they CAN pull you over just for not wearing a set belt! This is how Govt. works. Crack the door open an inch for them and the next thing you know there IS no door!
Pedestrian Insurance?
I hope you don't assume that Driver's Insurance will be expanded to cover your walking skills.
...that the miles have to be driven on public roads, or the proceeds spent on said roads? A tax is a tax, it doesn't necessarily matter what's being taxed or why, so long as it's legal. Also, the tax could be said to encourage certain social goals of less pollution. I'm guessing. :)
On the other hand, road taxes are refundable -- if the gas is not used on the roads. Aviation fuel (I don't know about jet) carries a road tax strangely enough. Most casual flyers don't apply for the refund, but my flight school boss was cheap enough to collect other people's fuel receipts as donations. I don't think the refund is a matter of right; it's the gov't being nice. For example, you pay tax on a pack of cigarettes, but they don't care whether you actually smoke them.
The horses are probably OK, despite the methane. (Maybe they should have licenses, like dogs?)
Children receiving more education will incur greater taxes on their parents. Parents will be taxed $1000 for each A, $500 for each B, $250 for each C, and $500 for each summer school or remedial course. Each extracurricular activity will incur a further $500.
Hmmm, so what you are saying is rather then scale back the taxes for schools people will pay the existing taxes that go towards education and then for all the extra classes/programs they will pay more. Seems to miss the point of use based taxes since it is added to the existing taxes that supposedly pay for schools. And another question do people with no children pay no taxes to the schools? Or do people with no children just pay the basic amount, like every other county in the country.
If all these systems were truely use based you would pay nothing up front and only pay when services were rendered, ie you would pay no car registration and only be billed for use of city/state roads (not interstate highways since those are funded by the federal goverment). As for schools you should ONLY pay if you have children in school. Oh well.
I would think it would be simpler to just increase the existing gasoline taxes at the pump, don't you?
I'm sure that you use the roads a lot more than I do in order to do your job, thus put more wear and tear on the roads, thus have to pay more money so that the roads will be in decent shape for all of us. Or maybe you would prefer that the state just stop doing road maintenance (because you fucktard republicans don't like taxes) and in a few years you will *really* need an 8000lb Ford Explosion just to navigate all the potholes and you'll be making some great time at 10MPH (a fringe benefit would be that all those SUVs would at least be used for something more than taking Johnny to soccer practice). Since you wouldn't be able to drive more than 10MPH, then you wouldn't fix as many copiers, thus you wouldn't make as much money and hence you wouldn't be taxed as much. Just imagine the tax savings man!
Oh yeah. I'm not a CPA, or a tax lawyer, but I'm pretty sure you get some vehicle-related write-offs as a traveling salesperson.
A Texan, a Californian, and an Oregonian are out hiking in the wilderness and meet each other and decide to share a camp fire. After dinner, in a flash of showmanship, the Texan pulls a bottle of tequila out of his pack, and takes one long swig out of it. Then the Texan throws the bottle up into the air and whips out a large chromed, pearl-handled revolver and shoots the bottle out of the air. His camp-mates are a bit surprised and comment on the waste of good tequila. The Texan explains:"Oh, it's no loss. Where I'm from we've got more tequila than we can drink." Not to be out-done, the Californian fetches a bottle of Chardonnay from his pack,takes a sip, throws it into the air, whips out a Glock 9mm with laser sight and emptys the clip, breaking the bottle, and then boasts: "Where I come from we have more wine than we can drink." The Oregonian fetches a bottle of micro-brewed, bottle-conditioned Inda Pale ale from his pack, quietly drinks the entire bottle, tosses the empty into the air, pulls out a shotgun, shoots the Californian, and catches the bottle before it hits the ground. Then he explains to the stunned Texan: "Where I'm from, we have more Californians than we need, and this bottle is worth 5 cents."
But seriously, no laws have been passed. All they are doing is studying a problem: "If your roads are paid for by a gas tax, how do you pay for roads when electric and hybrid cars start eating into your gas tax revenues?" That is a good question, worthy of some study. I think there must be a better idean than a transponder to record mileage on Oregon roads. What if you drive on private roads a lot?
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
"We don't so much blame California as we blame all of the Californians who moved here during the 90s. "Welcome to Oregon, are you sure you didn't leave the oven on?"
I beleive it at least tartecd way back in 1he 1800's. The pioneers coming west reached a point where they had to decide, go the southern route to Califonia and GOLD, or the northern route for freedom & liberty. After raping & plundering CA those pesky Californians have been out to Californicate Oregon ever sense.
Former Gov. Tom McCall, back in 196?, actullay stated the official Oregon policy for Californians: "Come visit but don't stay."
Greg
Moved to Alaska
Besides the fact you obviously didn't read the article, you also have the wrong concept of a gas tax. The gas tax in most states is designed to pay for highway maintenance, not to mete out environmental justice. Moving to this system is a more *equitable* way of taxing fuel efficient cars.
It's still a stupid idea.
You could implement the same thing without the risk of an Orwellian dystopia. Just implement a gas tax that is adjusted for the known fuel efficiency of the vehicle model and tire type. Say they want to charge you T cents per mile. You pull into the gas station and put G gallons of gas into your car, which has a fuel efficiency of E miles per gallon. So the gas tax is T x G x E. See? No GPS, no need to worry about weird speeding tickets arriving in the mail someday. Of course this complicates things at the pump because E varies from one car to the next. If that's a big deal then they can charge everybody the studded tire, 50 MPG rate at the pump, and the poor overtaxed SUV owners can save their gas receipts for when they do their state taxes in April. Of course people will then say that they drove their SUV everywhere instead of their Geo Metro, but asking for odometer readings would cut down on that a bit. People cheat on their taxes all the time. At some point the state has to drop its surveillance requirements and trust its citizens.
The concern about being taxed for out of state driving is a red herring. Gas bought in Oregon will most likely be burned in Oregon. And unlike the GPS proposal, people driving through Oregon end up paying a gas tax as well. A gas tax is not quite a "fair" way of implementing a per-mile road tax within Oregon, but it's certainly a close enough approximation to fair that GPS should be out of the question entirely. Laying the infrastructure for a future police state is not worth the pennies involved here.
Next thing you know, they're going want cameras in people's bedrooms so they can tax "thingy".
No, it's decreased tax revenues. Income tax revenues have decreased over the past year.
yeah, I dont understand what it is with people in the Willamette Valley (writing from Corvallis BTW), and studded tires. Yes, it rains all winter, but it rarely snows in the valley, and if you want to get over the mountains in bad weather then studs arent enough anyway -you are going to have to carry a set of chains and may end up using them. So why do so many people who dont look like skiers cruise around with studs in the part of the state where it rains all winter?
Now in the eastern side of the state, its a different story, and all attempts to limit stud use becomes a west vs east issue. IMO they should just allow studded tires but ban them from the freeways, or limit vehicles with studs to 30mph; that would split the people who need them from those who only think they do.
Senator Joe: Hey, Dick, we didn't use up our 2002 federal grant for transportation technology. We better come up with some kind of project so we can ask for more money in 2003.
Senator Dick: No problem. My sister in law's consulting firm just lost their FEMA contract because the funding got diverted to Homeland Security. Let's all do lunch.
This whole monitoring is absurd, insane and has nothing to do with road maintenance. It will actually costs taxpayer money. The reason for this is lost revenue from the trucking and shipping companies as well as businesses such as the one I work. With higher taxes comes less profits which equal less taxes. Name one product that is not shipped to the store or does not have all of the parts assembled and shipped from elsewhere?
This argument that I am using is why all of the sudden we have a budget crises in Washington. Sure the tax cut is partially responsible but alot of businesses are reporting losses because of the bad economy so Uncle Sam does not tax them as much.
You mentioned part of the tax rightoff for gas but this whole vehicle monitoring effectively erases the tax benefits a bussiness owner recieves. Luckly my boss pays me a fuel allowance but I would end up losing alot of it in taxes.
http://saveie6.com/
You forgot all the old hippies and bomb-shelter freaks who settled in the woods... that Richard Benjamin movie about moving into a bunker in the Oregon backwoods isn't all that wide of the mark. Really no wonder that Oregon has had spasms of weird laws, and doubtless will again.
...1980s bumper sticker
"Last year in Oregon, 963 people fell off their bicycles -- and drowned"
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I have no idea what they are thinking, this was just an idea. On the East coast, where states are smaller, there definitely are issues about people going to the next state to avoid high fuel, alcohol and cigarette taxes. Out west, states are bigger, but it could still be an issue.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
So can I get out of paying my tax by putting some copper shielding around this thing. They can't tell where I go if it can't see the sats. :-)
well considering in oregon we already have a tax on gasoline and the last few attempts to up it were unsucessful I dont think this would work.
In oregon not much ever happens to sucessfully increase taxes, the people here do not like having to pay what they already do and are not willing to increase taxes.
In oregon taxes must be approved buy ballote/vote. Historicly almost all tax increases are turned down. We are still operating on tax laws from the '30s. And it is HURTING the state.
-start rant--
I wish my fellow Oregonians would open there eyes and vote in some new taxes as our state NEEDS them. (and if your from oregon and still think we need lower taxes well I was born and raised here and I think we do... the school systems here SUCK both k~12 and higher edu.)
-end rant--
EVERYBODY knows that you could defeat such a system easily just by jacking your car up and letting it run in reverse for a few hours by stickign a cement block on the accelerator! DUH!
Will the gps transmitter interfere with the detonator on my homemade nuclear bombs?
Operating permits on large trucks (from U-Haul sized box trucks on up to 18-wheelers) already run into thousands of dollars a year, per truck.
You know those weight classes that are pasted or stenciled on the side of every 18-wheeler you ever see? (numbers like "48,000" and "180,000" etc.) That's the certified weight, on which each commercial truck is charged a weight fee when they pay for their annual operating permit (whether they ever actually haul that much weight or not). There's a gawdawful tangle of federal fees, state fees for EACH state the truck is licensed to operate in, and proportional fees for trucks licensed in more than one state. And as to ridiculously complicated -- the proportional fees are such *expensive* chaos that many truckers choose to operate only in one state SOLELY because of that.
Oh, and do you know what "weigh stations" are actually for? Any truck that is carrying more load than its *licensed* capacity gets dinged an additional fee for the overage, as determined by these weigh stations. It used to be a common scam to have local scales rigged to cheat out-of-state truckers.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Time to get out the tinfoil hats....but this time put them on the antenna :) "oh ya mr IRS guy, it's been in the garage the whole time."
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
Did you know that the OnStar system used in the more expensive GM automobiles already has equipment to track you? I know there is at least a cellphone ID in any OnStar equipped automobile. Why not just require people to carry whatever equipment is used here to go "oh joe has traveled a mile, bill him!"
And how is it going to determine when someone is going down a driveway anyways?
Has anyone ever been to Oregon? This state is so backwards that it's illegal to pump your own gas at the gas station. They didn't want to displace gas pump operators. This is also the state that has pretty much clear cut most of it's forests and had a governor that wouldn't allow anyone new into the state. He went so far as to refuse to give out driver's license unless you were a residence for so many years. It's one messed up state.
The down side of income taxes is that those who reside out-of-state and don't work in Oregon don't pay for systems that they use when they visit Oregon. In my opinion, the best system would be a combination of use and income taxes.
Take a look at the taxes your city/county/state place on things like hotels and rental cars, travels DO shoulder a larger tax burden. I travel a lot with my job and I see those couple extra percent the cities/counties/states add on, trust me travelers/visitors pay.
As for use base systems being regressive taxes? You lost me there, why shouldn't everyone shoulder the burden equally? I am not saying the poor should pay an equal amount, but I think an equal percentage is more then fair. If someone makes more money why should they pay a higher percentage, especially when they generally don't use the services their money supports. The bulk of the programs that governments in this country run are paid for by the middle class, the group that uses them the least.
You see, the idea behind cigarette taxes (though not necessarily the application) is that the cigarette tax is used to fund medical program that treat the illnesses related to smoking. If all the smokers die off, the medical conditions go away, and the money is no longer needed.
OTOH, the idea behind the gas tax is that the money is used to pay for roads. If electric cars replace gas cars, the roads are still being used, but the gas tax is not bringing in revenue to pay for the upkeep of said roads.
If someone makes you plug in a GPS system into your car, what's to stop you from disconnecting the antenna? Even if it's some type of closed loop system that required an electrical signal to go through it, just replace the antenna with a resistor....
Check the article for a technicle solution. Jam the GPS
Hoch
2*31*37*263
Actually, we considered ourselves spoiled for not having to get out of the car! Now I live in a state where you pump your own gas and I hate it. Especially when they make you pay first. You have to run in, give them a twenty, go back, pump, then go back in and get your change. Also, there are a lot of people who simply cannot be trusted with gasoline. They want to get to the nearest whole dollar amount, so they keep squeezing the handle over and over to get the pennies up to 00, oblivious to the growing puddle of gasoline at their feet.
Although when people get a job pumping gas in a full service state, they often forget that collecting the money is the last thing you do. That's the unwritten rule that everyone's used to- once you pay, you're free to go. So take the pump handle out of their tank first, then take their money. If you do it in the reverse order bad things happen- I've seen it twice.
Maybe they should follow the example of road-use fees implemented elsewhere in the US that have been successful since the 17th century, and in Europe at least as far back as the Roman Empire: Toll Roads.
> Economies run far more efficiently when users
> of services pay in proportion to that use.
They're already paying in proportion to their use via a gasoline tax (assuming they have one like most other states.)
The gas tax in fact stimulates the buying of smaller cars, which also happens to have less wear and tear on the road.
This proposed tax will charge the same for small and large car alike.
It won't happen: like Clinton's BTU tax, it'll lead the Democrats to a big defeat. (If the Republicans are proposing this, sigh, butt-heads.)
Just raise the gas taxes. I'm sure their gas taxes are much lower than NY or California, anyways. Interestingly both Oregon and NJ require full service gas stations.
It is in everybodies best interest that the children of this country have access to education without regard to finical standing. (Although I'm sure some extreme right wing people could claim otherwise.)
The last time I visited a California state park I paid $5 to park my car. So it would seem things are to be heading that way. If it works and we keep our parks, great, the money must come from somewhere and we can't always count on the government to provide the necessary funds (from the taxes I've already paid).
But, you are saying that it should be right that somebody driving less than 1,000 miles a year pay the same amount for the up keep of the roads as somebody driving 35,000 miles a year....
A milage based tax will reward people who drive less. I think given the world situation any incentive for people to drive less is a good idea.
What about privacy? Well, even though you basically give up some of your rights when you get in a car, having a box in your car that track you movement does sound a little scary and open to possible abuse. But, I dout that the box could transmit your live location to anybody. It might record your location in some form that can be extract and used as evidence against you at a later date. Although, it shouldn't be impossible to have a box that just records total distance travel and not the locations visited.
M0571y H@rml355.
You can actually thank bill sizemore for most of the above mentioned laws - most all of them made into effect by the initiative process.
Perhaps points 1 and 3 are somehow connected? If Oregonians generally feel poor, can you blame them for not voting for tax increases? The shortened school year -- a genuine tragedy I agree -- is also a direct result of lack of funds. As to your final point: news flash! Democrats and Republicans typically are at odds with one another.
Let's take a look at a couple of extremely progressive things that Oregon has approved:
I can tell you're pissed of at your state; why then don't you do something about it, like participate in public school board meetings, campaign for tax increases, or run for office?
Oregon already has a gas tax at the pump. But it's got a pretty strange side effect that the GPS would actually solve. In Oregon, there are no incentives for buying an electric or hybrid car. In fact, there are disincentives. Oregon charges more in tax for electrics and hybrids. Why? Because they get less income from gas taxes.
But with a gas tax, Oregon would have a disincentive against promoting the use of more fuel-efficient cars. Would you do anything to reduce fuel consumption, if it would LOSE you money?
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
umm i think that is what i said. tax the gas. I also think they should provide automobile insurance through a gas tax. the more gas you use the higher your car insurance. but its not that simple as their are good and bad drivers.. but maybe we should let the law work that end out.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
well Oregon should tax any fuel that is used for the purpose of transportation. ie.hybrids do use a fuel of some sort. tax it. presto! not so hard. the consumer demand in oregon would then be higher for small, more efficient vehicles. The government would lose tax money gradually as general car efficiency improves. But i'm sure the government could solve that problem.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
This is a great way to get all the country dumbfucks who clog the fastlane on I-5 going 40 MPH off the friggin freeway.
Most of these are unconfimred, but I know car dealership are closed in Wisconsin on Sunday, and I know we have some goofy provisions in the books on margarine restrictions (97.18(5) The serving of margarine to students, patients or inmates of any state institutions as a substitute for table butter is prohibited). I couldn't find references to the others, although the search function on the Wisconsin legislation site pretty worthless...
I keep reading about how there are better ways to tax and raise money for the government. Are you listening to yourselves? You are trying to find MORE ways to give money to an entity that already is the poorest manager of money EVER (not Oregon specifically). The average American already pays over 50% in taxes (Income, gas, cigarettes, alcohol, sales tax, telephone, power, etc.) So to make this crystal clear, you give them 50% of the money you earned through labor and you want to give them MORE? How about we make them work with the money they already have and make better use of it? There's a novel idea. More efficient use of money... wow. There is enough money there already. IF there isn't, then they should learn to do without.
In the current economic climate, where there are millions of Americans without jobs, it never ceases to amaze me that government thinks they should tax more. If we are all doing with less, they should have to make de with less also. Pretty basic if you ask me.
I enjoy reading our esteem cousins opinions from across the pond. Most have the ability to support their arguments and ways of thinking (while I still do not agree, I like to read and learn). However, this is one area where Europe is clearly wrong. Higher taxes are bad. More government is bad. They (government) are here to work for us. We are not here to serve their needs.
Just my opinion.
I didn't word what I said very well, apparently. The councilman was saying that people should be ticketed for being in an intersection when the light is yellow, so that the yellow light was equivalent to a red light.
Automated Mileage and Stateline Crossing Operational Test (AMASCOT):
Here's the Iowa State University study
Here a longer, more general PDF report on AMASCOT
It was originally designed for tracking commercial vehicles, but now is being cited for passenger vehicles too.
In Wisconsin, a man is charged with using GPS to stalk his ex-girlfriend.
"A better idea. Make this road tax, a tax on Gasoline.
Two positives: It taxes road use, and makes SUV's pay more per mile."
Meanwhile you shoot yourself in the foot everytime you go to fill up your economy sized car.
I don't understand what you are so worried about, first of all they aren't going to do the tracking real time, probably just going to collect data on a monthly basis which pretty much eliminates the possibility to intrude in peoples private lives. (unless you happen to be a suspect and part of a criminal investigation) The benefit of this is on a longer term basis you can bill people for speeding, you can figure out who did a hit and run and other stuff like that.
I know the nerdish community seems to be rather afraid of big brother, but if you have so much to hide just take your bike. Look on the benifits of such a program.
Ohh yeah, the US really should take a look on how we do the taxing on fuel in EU. The prices are just around $1 for a litre (in Denmark its above), people still drive their cars and the countries get's a shit load of money.
A few years ago I was back in Jersey and needed gas for my rental car. I went into the station to pay, and was told by the mechanic that the guy who pumps gas was on lunch break. I went out and pumped my gas, went in to pay again, and got yelled at; I'd forgotten that they had this silliness.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And every time you buy a product in a store, the cost of shipping that product to the store is included in the price you pay, and the fuel taxes and vehicle registration that are levied on the shippers are included in the cost of the shipping that the store pays. So when you buy the product, you're already contributing to road upkeep to approximately the appropriate degree if the fuel taxes are set at proper levels.
that a story like this would come out of the Statesman Urinal...
In Maryland, we are compelled to present our cars at state-sponsored inspection facility once every two years for an emissions testing. What an opportunity to read the odometer and see how many miles had elapsed since the last visit. This would be a fine baseline for a mileage-based tax, without the need for all that newfangled (and paid for from taxpayers pockets) GPS tracking technology. I know we don't drive all our miles neccesarily within one state. I'd prefer my additional taxation to be based on faulty assumptions rather than lost privacy.
hm?
bigger tax on gas(per value/litres bought)==you pay less for big fuel consumption? i wish.
this is actually a very good reason to not buy (gas engined) suv around here(finland). gas costs around 1($) per 1 litre, mostly because tax, so buying a car with 15-20 litres/100km consumption is expensive for a commuter vehicle(when you can get some car with 5liters/100km instead..).
oh and to be a little more than just correction post:
in finland they were thinking of using other means for similar tracking system, like using cameras to read the license-plates on cars. gps just aint that smart, and i guess gps would be even more vulnurable
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
EXACTLY! Here in Sweden (I'm an American ex-pat), gas costs, like, ~$3.50-$4/gal., about 75% of which is taxes. You know why? Because they're charging you for the real cost of a gallon of gas, i.e. not just for the material costs, but for road upkeep, emergency response, environmental cleanup, etc. I'm so fscking sick of explaining to my American friends & family why I don't really mind paying a lot for gas here...
I concur. And frankly, people in Oregon should be angry and concerned about this, because it's a very weasly way of getting mandatory tracking equipment installed in all vehicles.
Looks like people better start working on this article in the latest issue of Phrack. It has the details of how to build a GPS jammer. When we people in power start to realise technology is a double-edged sword and raising the bar constantly like this just pisses people off?
As a side note on the studded tires: The damage caused to the highway from usage of studded tires is extensive and costly to repair each year. Hence the reason that we have laws that limit the time frame you can use studded tires, and we encourage folks to instead carry chains. In fact, at the moment, all the passes in the Cascade Mountain range and east are on Condition A - Carry chains or traction tires (although most people find carrying traction tires around the trunk can prove inefficient).
Joseph
Salem, OR
ODOT Employee
This is certainly a hoax.
Such a law would be struck down as unreasonable search and seizure. There is no good reason for the state to track the movement of all of its citizens.
I suspect such a law will one day be passed. Laws always become more restrictive rather than less and we have run out of new continents to which we can escape. But my optimistic side won't let me believe this is really happening.
... just have a look at any typical 20-40ish year old concrete autobahn (a very good example is the Ha-Fra-Ba), or a busy asphalt motorway like any of the major ones around Paris (A1, A4, A6, A10, A86, A104/N104) 10kms away from the périph' [the closer sections have almost all been rebuilt very recently]. I bet you you can notice which lane is the lorry lane.
Why should being an Oregonian determine if we are taken seriously or not. I'd like to point out that we have many good things that come out of Oregon.
Have you ever had Tillamook Cheese? or Oregon Nog?
In terms of intelligence, we have excellent engineering schools (Oregon State University) and liberal arts universities (University of Oregon). Personally, I graduated from Chemeketa Community College (in Salem) with an AS degree in Computer Electronics. The electronics department at Chemeketa is one of the best I've seen from visiting various community colleges.
of course, the job market here sucks right now, so I'm stuck working for the state. =)
Another thing about Oregon is the livability. There's the big city living in Portland, if that floats your boat, but then there's the ROOM to live out on a couple of acres if a rural setting suites you more. I spent part of my years growing up on about an acre and a half with lotsa trees. My work in downtown salem was a 15-20 min drive, even at the height of rush hour.
What else is there to cover? We have the big beautiful outdoors! Little known waterfalls, hiking trails, and wilderness areas abound. Personally, I enjoy Abiqua Falls outside of Silverton, as well as the Opal Creek Wilderness area, up at the end of the Little North Fork road. =)
Oh, and Seaside! The beach there is one of the widest on the west coast! They've had beach volleyball championships there. Lincoln City hosts kite flying festivals a little further south. The dunes near Florence and south are a blast to go running around in (on foot or on your favorite atv veh).
And that's just in the northwest area of Oregon -- there's sooooo much to explore here!
As anyone who's ever stayed in a hotel knows, politicians love to shift as much of your tax burden as possible to people who can't throw your sorry ass out of office. Given that such a law would only be enforceable on Oregon residents, this tax works in just the opposite direction.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Grandparent post is talking about incentive for the State of Oregon to encourage fuel efficiency.
It's like cigarette taxes - they discourage smoking, but they also raise revenue, and state governments get 'hooked' on the money, to the extent that truly discouraging smoking gets problematic, in a budgetary sense.
That's one way to guarantee a dubious activity will remain permitted for a long time. For example, in Washington State, both timber sales and the state Lotto send money directly to the education budget. That way, if you're against aggressive logging or state-sponsored gambling, you can be painted as against children.
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
I've been wanting to get my hands on a GPS constellation simulator (like this one)ever since I saw one at GPS ION years ago. The problem is US$20k is a bit over my price range for a toy that would provide such a small window of entertainment. If this law happens, then I expect an open source sim within weeks complete with schematics, borad layouts and of course code.
on a semi OT note: There will be a civil GPS users meeting Downunder in Feb if anyone has any feedback they want to give the US govt about the system.
Umm, isn't the gas tax for making sure that those who use the roads pay more? This is a whole lot simpler & cheaper than putting GPS boxes in all cars. The gas tax has the added advantage of encouraging people to buy vehicles with better gas mileage.
the last few attempts to up it were unsucessful I dont think this would work.
... if your from oregon
In oregon taxes must be approved buy ballote/vote
I wish my fellow Oregonians would open there eyes
the school systems here SUCK
Hmm, you don't say!
There are ways around this.
Ask a truck driver. In the state I live in, there is a significantly higher gasoline tax than a lot of other states, especially those around us.
A lot of trucking companies have taken great pains to plot exactly how far out of their way they can go to still be profitable. In other words paying a truck driver extra milage for almost an extra half a day can be cost effective.
This works the same way when the destination is in my state. They plot the gas fill ups so that they have to get as little gas, definitely not proportional to their road use, in the state.
In DC that many unrelated women living together is automatically considered a brothel. For this reason, there are no sororities in the nation's capital. Weird, eh?
The gas tax is a perfectly accurate levy based on use. If you drive little, you pay little. If you drive a lot, you pay a lot.
If you drive a lil' Civic, you pay a little JUSTLY: Damage to roads is proportionate to the weight of the vehicle. If you drive a 8600lb Hummer (GVWR) that gets 10 MPG, well, by gosh, you pay 3-4 times as much in gas tax.
Also, by giving the SUVs a free ride for on the road damage side of the equation, this moronic idea they have would negate the incentive to buy a fuel efficient, lighter, hybrid car. Because that's just what Oregon needs, more polluting vehicles on the road.
Didja know that the new Hummer H2 not only gets the worst gas milage of any production vehicle on earth but that, due to it's obesity, it is EXEMPT from gas guzzler tax? As a "mid-duty" truck, it also is able to pollute 6 times more than other SUVs. Egad.
Anyone up for a bet that GM is behind this legislation?
The EZ-Pass system in NY is just as bad as the gps system in regards to privacy. While not implemented yet, the feature is there. Computer recorded timing between toll booths guarantees the first major accident where a number of children are killed by someone spotted speeding prior to a toll plaza will cause the implementation of speed control and fining via EZ-Pass records. It is illegal in NJ to use this info for speeding, and that will change there as well as soon as a major accident that kills children in a school bus/tour bus occurs.
On the NYS Thruway, unmarked trooper cars were banned when incidents occured of criminals using similar sedans were pulling people over and robbing/raping/whatever them. As soon as the term "road rage" was used extensively in the lexicon, and law enforcement saw their opportunity (some incident happened), out went the ban on unmarked cars, and back up went those important, revenue generating tickets. Meanwhile the criminals using similar sedans issue didn't go away.
EZ-Pass enables time/distance recording and logging in perpetuity. Whether that is used against motorists now is not relevant. It is recording the data now, and once the data is available, it must be set free. Take a look at the nationwide practitioner database. The doctors and other licensed people who were required to participate fought it, but it was advertised as a secure database that would never be released to the public, and the opposition was eventually worn down. Enter reporters looking for publicity, some stories on "killer" doctors, and the pressure to make the database public (just as the cameras in the courtroom was eventually conquered) is relentless.
btw, the database includes social security numbers.
I've been on the Penn turnpike. Don't recall, but don't the tickets have timestamps on them? I know in NJ, the timestamps have been used in the past to issue speeding tickets (NJ Turnpike). Not an everyday occurance, but I saw several stories on it during the mid and late 80's.
You may be ok with this, but when the times get tough, the system enables all kinds of possibilities.
The possibility of tolls on the east river bridges has been hanging over nyc residents for over 20 years. Before ez-pass, the greens opposition on an environmental basis was the only thing stopping implementation. With a large voting block in nyc not owning cars, and more using mass transit, they print the signs indicating the new toll amount even prior to the public hearings to debate the issue (they were actually caught doing this when the tolls were raised to either $3.00 or $3.50, before ez-pass). Before ez-pass, it wasn't uncommon to have to wait 2 or 3 hours on the approach to the toll booths after a three day weekend. Or on a Thursday night prior to a three day weekend. This is at the bridges that were tolled. The east river acted as a relief valve for the motorists brave enough to drive through uptown manhattan at night to reach one of the midtown bridges to avoid the traffic and toll booth. One problem is there is no space for a toll plaza at the east river bridges. there are street entrances in the immediate vicinity of the bridges, and traffic would back up to an unacceptable level, paralyzing local streets. It is already this situation, but the downturn in the economy has relieved this somewhat.
Add ez-pass, add kiosks where disposable tags could be purchased on approach, add the increased use of ez-pass, add a lighter traffic load due to not being able to avoid the toll any longer, and you get the ability to install ez-pass tolls on the east river bridges. Don't have the tag? Use another bridge. Have the tag? Drive through non-stop, same as before, and the toll is deducted.
The previous mayor understood that the motorists in the outer boroughs feel like trapped animals when it comes to the tolls, and understood and admitted that the tolls would increase flight of middle class taxpayers from the city. I know that the toll was a major factor in whether I continued delivering product to the Bronx from Queens for my small and struggling business. That toll (which was doubled because I drove a full size van (same size as the 15 passenger vans) that exceeded the ridiculously low gvw set by the agency in control of the bridge. Bypassing the toll by using the east river bridges was possible but cost me time (I was working for myself so it wasn't a factor), some extra gas, and more risk in driving/breakind down in very high crime rate areas (it usually took less than 20 minutes for a breakin in my van when servicing stops in the afternoon. Learned to make stops early in morning when criminals still sleeping). But the satisfaction in beating the toll was priceless.
The majority of the toll money collected by nyc is not used for road improvements. The majority of the money goes to pay for nyc bus and subway costs, and the slush funds for the make-work positions still left at the toll plazas. The minimal amount spent on roads is a joke. The last time I saw an article on the subject, nyc roads were on a 99 year repavement cycle. Some roads are less than that, and local politics has a lot to do with whether your crumbling road gets any attention or not (how many school kids were killed in the last ten years as a direct result of a road condition on the road you want repaved?). And how much have you contributed to the local legislator's campaign coffers lately? Never? Don't hold your breath.
btw, the ez-pass tags in nyc are being used "in aggregate" for measuring speed of roadways/traffic. I know of at least one case where it was used unofficially for a different purpose, and the outcome was not pleasant.
One toll stop on the Thruway was dropped because the tolls had achieved there purpose, paying for the construction of the roadway. But the others are still there. Election year politics also had something to do with it. But the dropping of the toll (wasn't completely dropped, trucks and car-pulled trailers still have to stop and pay) was severely opposed by the toll workers' union on grounds of jobs and increased pay. The compromise was the truck tolls, cars pass solution. Increased tolls are the perpetual solution as to where the authority in charge will get funds to pay for salary/benefit increases for the toll workers, and maintenance of the toll plazas is important to the local law enforcement labor position as well, due to there always being law enforcement stationed at each toll plaza.
Make it possible, and it will be impossible to resist.
Talk about naive..
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
cant get an OREGON driver's license. why not just visit a neighboring state for a few hours and get one early? my mom loves to wax nostalgaic with a story about her driving to AL from MS to get her license at 15 when the legal age in MS was 16.
A better idea. Make this road tax, a tax on Gasoline.
Agreed. Gas tax is much much fairer than GPS or car property tax. I'm really sick of property taxes that make people want to drive old dirty cars, and putting a GPS reciever into cars is unconstitutional. I say unconstitutional, because the government could track the activities of protected groups of people and strategically interfere in favor of the government's agenda. GPS data would really be ripe for abuse of all types. It could be a new era of witch hunting (e.g., why was political-enemy XYZ's car at motel ABC on Tuesday morning...)
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
didnt' they used to call this a toll booth?
The article states specifically that they're thinking of implementing this instead of odometer readings because there's no way to tell what miles were driven in the state as opposed to somewhere else.
It would also seem to me that a mileage tax would reduce the incentive to get a more fuel efficient car. At first glance, it seems fair that a person that drives 300 miles in a Hyundai Accent should pay the same as someone who drives 300 miles in a Ford Explorer. One must, however, consider the fact that the accent does less damage to the roads, emits less exhaust and requires less fuel to operate. If such a tax is implemented, the price per mile should take into account vehicle tonnage, fuel efficiency, safety rating and emmissions rating.
Stupid is as stupid dies.
I drove semi's for a few years, on the roof you see a 12" dome, it's the ant for the "qualcomm" system a GPS/text communicator that thru GPS logs the location and distance per state (for paying road taxes on desil fuel to each state) and allowing text messages between driver and dispatcher. To allow it on cars just shows that the road tax per mile makes more money than taxing the fuel directly (you pay per mile instead of per gallon) so a electric car or a alcohol car can't dodge the tax. It seems to be a way to correct the money they lost in higher fuel milage / to bad gas prices won't come down from it.
As far as ohio...thats communistic teritory... a 58 in a 55 mhp ticket what bull...And the cop had to smile while he wrote it bragging about the plane clocking me. also 3 traffic tickets for speeding in a year gets automatic jail time in ohio. (the judge in court told me this....)
There is an easy solution to that. Simply multiply the fuel consumption by the base tax rate. If a Hyundai Accent gets 5L/100km, multiply 5 by the kilometre rate and the Ford Explorer which gets maybe 15L/100km would be the base tax rate times 15. Not only does the state of Oregon get its tax grab, but it also encourages economy.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
Seems like gas consumption correlates as well go "use" of a road as mileage driven, since a heavy vehicle, which burns more gas, degrades the road more.
what i really want to know, is why does anyone have the right to tell me that I cant have a big ol un fuel efficent SUV. Isnt that my right. And if that is my right, why am I any different than a geo metro owner? Isnt this America where I have the same rights as anyone else? Furthermore, I pay taxes for the roads, therefore I should be able to use them as much as I want to. But I am no different from any one else. Its my right to be free, and its my right to own a SUV if I want to. Why should I be punished for owning a SUV? I dunno, the whole SUV's are evil argument just annoys me, becuase its bigoted towards people who OWN something different than economy cars. Man it annoys me. This is america, where we should be able to do anything lawful we want. sigh.
Theonlyuse of monkeys is to testthings onthem.Some peoplemay say"Hey That'scruel!"and myresponse is"I don't like monkeys
Also, I already pay more per mile for my SUV due to my lower gas mileage. Assuming gas costs $1.50/gal, and I get 15 miles/gal, I'm paying $.10/mile. Someone who's car gets 30 miles/gal is only paying $.05/mile. So as I see it, the road tax is already a tax on gasoline and I'm paying more than my fair share with my SUV. Its not like I'm putting any more wear and tear per mile on the road than any other non-commercial vehicle, yet I'm paying twice as much.
The real reason probably is identification and location of vehicles, but it would be great if it was used for something better. Ideally, it would track which roads were travelled on, and give state funding to those roads. Or maybe it would issue tickets for anybody travelling too slowly in the left lane.
Economically speaking, the way to prevent the tragedy of the commons (overuse and abuse of public goods) is to come up with ways of charging based on use. For example, you come up with a price for pollution, sell "pollution credits" and let the open market figure out the rest.
GPS tracking, though... That's pretty stupid and invasive. How long will it be before they stick the GPS info on a map and voila - instant speeding tickets. Coordinate that with info on traffic light timing and you can ticket someone for blowing a red light any time of day or night.
My two cents - if you really want a use-based tax, you roll the tax into gasoline. If the person isn't using it to drive, they're using it for a small engine - the kind that put out a whole lot more pollution than most cars.
OK, so they have the right to tax road usage. They do NOT have the right to know where and when any citizen drives a motor vehicle anywhere!!! If they have a GPS unit in the car, they know everywhere you go, and when. HELLO BIG BROTHER. My attorney would havea field day with this one...
I think they've been doing this in Hong Kong for over 10 years. Done originally with transponders installed like "Smart Pass" toll devices, and counted by sensors at city intersections. Methinks the local PI establishment is of mixed mind about this, but cops must love it.
Yeah, I would agree with higher gas taxes if it got rid of the property tax on cars. I drive a gas-guzzler because there are times when I need to power of the large V8 engine. However I figured out that while I could afford to buy a second car (something small and economic for my daily commute) that the property taxes would cost more then the extra fuel for having just one car. So I keep driving my van (10.2 miles/gal) everywhere. Too bad for the environment that 10% of the time I need to carry three quarters to a ton of stuff around and need the bigger engine.
"Better" plans are accurate.
You are forgetting that many things run on gasoline other than cars. Things that don't travel anywhere, like lawn mowers and generators.
Yes, they may be tempted to use the GPS info inappropriately. I wouldn't trust that an inch, and I think it will be definitely used in the long run for inappropriate uses, as is governmental wont. But I can't think, offhand, of a more accurate way to tax road usage.
people who drive suv's should be
I updated my article about the law in Oregon, Airplanes are safe, but laws often crash, to include the GPS law mistake:
Airplanes are safe, but laws often crash.
by Michael Jennings
If you bought a TV in 1970 for $400, you would likely spend another $400 in the next 4 years having it repaired. But then there was a revolution. Famous quality control expert W. Edwards Deming and others helped managers realize the importance of doing things right. Now airplane, computer, television, and drug makers, to give just a few examples, are extremely serious about quality and reliability.
The quality revolution has not yet come to the legal profession. Laws are still allowed to be sloppy. Often imperfect results are simply ignored.
The DMV laws are an example. The auto insurance law in Oregon is based on "belief" and is structured in such a way that you can lose your driver's license because of a clerical error. It doesn't seem to bother the law makers that "belief" cannot be reliably known, and the insurance companies sometimes make mistakes. Amazed? Skeptical? Have a look at Oregon law ORS 806.245 (b).
The laws define driving as a "privilege" in spite of the fact that driving is a necessary freedom for a large percentage of us. Calling driving a "privilege" supports a system in which insurance companies make more profit.
Oregon law ORS 25.750 suspends a person's driver's license for being behind in child support payments. But there are obvious problems with this. Not having a driver's license is likely to make someone, usually a man, less able to pay.
The child support law supports a common fraud: A woman convinces a man she is serious about having a relationship, when in fact she has no serious intent. Even though there is an understanding that they will not have a child, the woman deliberately becomes pregnant. The woman disconnects from the relationship, but gets paid by the man for her personal project of having a baby. The child support also supports the woman, who can quit her full-time job and get an easier part-time job to supplement the money from the man.
Your telephone always works. Electricity is always delivered. The reliability comes from investigating and correcting any problem. In contrast, there is little desire to clean up faulty laws. Lawyers don't want to disturb a system that pays them $100 to $350 an hour. Often laws are allowed to be so confusing that citizens can't understand them.
Part of the reason that laws lack quality control is that there are people who want to use the power of government to make money. If you lose your driver's license in Oregon for a reason not related to safety, once you get your license back you will have to pay about $3,000 extra to some auto insurance company, even though the risk is not greater. It is easy to construct a more perfect auto insurance law, but that would reduce the unearned profit of the insurance companies.
This scheme of using the laws to make unearned profit is used in other areas, also. In Oregon, if a car is towed because of being in a wrong parking place, the cost of the tow to the car owner is far greater the true cost. The extra money goes to the towing company.
Part of the problem of making laws is that lawmakers often don't realize that lawmaking is difficult. The author of this article has, at different times in his life, repaired the automatic flight control systems of aircraft, worked in a Physics research laboratory, and written complex computer programs. None of this is as difficult as making good laws. However, people with no experience recognize that they should not repair aircraft. In contrast, the only requirement to be elected a lawmaker is popularity, and that is considered sufficient preparation.
Why don't judges demand quality control in laws? One reason is that the legislature tells them they can't look before they decide. Oregon law ORS 183.400 (4) limits the power of the Judiciary: A DMV agency rule, for example, can only be examined to see if it (a) violates constitutional provisions, or (b) exceeds the statutory authority of the agency; or (c) Was adopted without compliance with applicable rule-making procedures.
That means that, if the DMV says that black is white, judges must pretend they don't notice. Why? Well, (a) there is nothing in the constitution that prevents someone from saying something that is obviously crazy. (b) As long as the rule is about cars or driving, it is within the authority of the DMV. (c) And, since the DMV mostly makes it own procedures, it is unlikely a rule won't be in compliance.
If you studied American government in high school, you learned that the U.S. Constitution establishes separation of powers. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches are not allowed to interfere with each other. In Oregon, there are numerous ways this sensible law is not observed.
For example, the DMV is an agency of the executive branch, but it is allowed to make rules that bind the citizen as surely as any law. The only way an agency rule differs from a law is that it is not called a law.
The DMV has its own judges called ALJs, Administrative Law Judges, who decide whether those rules have been observed. So, the DMV has departments that perform functions of all three branches of government.
The ultimate method of assuring there won't be close scrutiny of the application of law is used in Oregon: The Legislative branch doesn't give the Judicial branch enough money to operate. More than 40 people have told the author that the Courts are under-funded and under-staffed. Starving the judiciary is the surest means of preventing good judicial action.
Do you want to experience for yourself how laws are made in Oregon? The Oregon Department of Transportation is developing a system to charge by the mile for driving in Oregon, and you can participate at the February 14, 2003 meeting. ODOT plans to install GPS radio receivers in every car to track where each car goes.
GPS stands for Global Positioning System. The system uses satellite radio transmissions to show pilots or hikers their position, for example. The GPS would calculate how many miles you drove in Oregon, and you would pay when you bought gasoline. See the December 31, 2002 Associated Press article at StatesmanJournal.com: Oregon drivers may pay more: http://news.statesmanjournal.com/article.cfm?i=541 84
Also see the Oregon government's own web site: Road User Fee Task Force, http://www.odot.state.or.us/ruftf/documents.html.)
Lawmaking is made to look very official and respectable. But underneath, it often isn't. One of the Oregon government's web pages says that ODOT's work is based partly on the "results of research of consultants from Oregon State University and Portland State University". However, it takes someone who has a minimal understanding of GPS about 10 seconds to realize that the system they are considering won't work. The GPS system depends on receiving the GPS radio signals. Anyone who covered the GPS antenna with aluminum foil would show that they had driven zero miles in Oregon, and therefore would pay no tax.
Aside from the fact that it won't work, there are so many other problems with this idea that they cannot all be listed here. For example, a system that charges by the mile will make the road taxes for SUVs the same as the cost for fuel-efficient vehicles. At present, owners of SUVs pay more because they pay a tax on gasoline. Another problem is that tracking where each vehicle goes means that there will be no privacy.
See the DMV laws for yourself:
ORS 806.245 (b): http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/806.html
ORS 25.750: http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/025.html
ORS 183.400 (4): http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/183.html
January 2, 2003, 9:56 AM, #1 (file lics001h.htm)
Michael Jennings
Futurepower
P.O. Box 14491
Portland, OR 97293-0491
503-233-7820
E-Mail: MJennings AT myrealbox DOT com
(Take out the spaces, change AT to @, and change DOT to a period to e-mail the author. The coded e-mail address helps discourage misuse of the address by computer robots that harvest email addresses for sale to those who send unwanted e-mail.)
Seriously, they say they need more revenue to account for reduced gas tax revenues. So why don't they:
(1) Increase the gas tax, which provides a social incentive to use a more fuel-efficient car?
(2) Drop the silly prohibition against self-serve gas stations, so Portland folks quit driving across the bridge, takign their business (and tax money) across the border to Washington?
the beaver is the state animal of Oregon
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need ROADS. ;)
A tax on fuel does not translate one-to-one with road usage, due to variances in fuel efficiency, so there is no "proper level" you can set fuel taxes at.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Well, you sat you "sat their" [sic] peeing. Which is why I asked if you were, in fact, sitting on the urinal.
I would much rather see gasoline heavily taxed so we could finally have a reason to stop using it.
Better stop using roads then too...
Shift more cargo traffic to trains. One of the worst things done in America was the expansion/creation of the interstate highways in the 50s. It was done so that there would be a backup to rail transport, but the end result is highways cluttered with Big Rigs and very little train traffic. Go back to using trains (and hire the ex-truck drivers as engineers) and you'll reduce by orders of magnitude the amount of pollution in the air and wear and tear on the roads. Just use trucks for intra-city trucking vs. inter-state and a lot of the problems will go away.
-Gandalf23
The law only applies to houses. Apartments are fine. Dorms are fine.
But nobody wants to have a 'sorority house' in a dorm do they?
That he was saying the gasoline tax doesn't really address the issue the same way a milage tax would.
There are ways around the gasoline tax.
What about those on bicycles, electric cars and three-year-olds on Big Wheels (Or the electric Power Wheels)? This negates the concept of Gasoline taxes.
I say, dump all taxes we currently know including the IRS, and slapping a standard 20% federal sales tax. The rich pay more, the poor pay less.
---
IMHO, of course.
May the SOURCE be with you.
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your
hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you
notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This
teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never
use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects
that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt.
The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger,
where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels
down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.
Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger
would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have
carpeting.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
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