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California Considers Tracking Your Car
dan_sdot writes "California's budget problem has led the state to consider desperate measures: taxing you based on how much you drive. The only problem is the way they propose to do it. California is now proposing to put GPS devices on all new cars to track how far people drive and tax them accordingly."
Via the very large tax on gas?
Time to get the fuck out of DodgeCalifornia.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I will never understand why we passed Proposition 71 which calls for three billion in bonds over the next few years to fund stem cell reasearch given that our state is broke. Ah well, I dont drive so I guess I dont much care.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Right. Then we'll get a few smart people to develope a means of faking the mileage and paying next to nil. Not only will it not work, but it's not fair. I live in CA and am frankly sick of all the car-related restrictions that we have to abide by!
A blog like any other.
--------
State of California
1 Aahnold St.
Sacramento, CA
Dear Skyshadow,
While we in the state of California appreciate your interest in our state and the contributions you've made while living here the last fours years, it has become increasingly apparent that you're not getting the message. So, let us be direct:
Get the hell out.
Frankly, all of you refugees from Jesusland are seriously overpopulating our state, and we can't afford it anymore. We figured you might have gotten the hint after we destroyed our public school system with Prop 13. We thought you would have put it together when we started referring to pet owners as "guardians" like they were our fucking kids or something. And, really, we're stunned that electing the guy from "Commando" as our governor didn't make you reassess living here.
C'mon, how much is nice weather, a neat bridge and decent wine really worth? A crappy 900 sq. ft. house in Walnut Creek with a postage-stamp sized yard is a steal at $400k because of all you idiots flooding in! Go home!
Anyhow, by now we're sure you've read about our plan to implant a GPS tracker on your car and tax you for every mile you drive. We're proud of that one -- we know you're driving an hour each way to and from work because of the sky-high housing prices around the Bay Area (again: your fault), and we figure that nicely conveys our point. And frankly, if this doesn't get our message across, we're going to have to resort to simply grabbing you out of your bed in the middle of the night and feeding your to that Great White we have on display down in Monterey. Don't think we won't. Hell, we'll feed her your goddamn cheesehead cats, too. Try us.
Move back to Wisconsin. We're not kidding.
Love, California
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
taxing walking to cover pavement depreciation? this kind of stuff scares me...
It is government measures like this that will continue to drive the traffic to the internet, but of course, the tax man will eventually find his way here, unless...
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
...in the UK. Not sure where that one went actually.
Boo.
Wouldn't it be easier and less privacy-intruding if there's a blackbox in the car with GPS, which determines if the car has crossed a state line, and record mileage accordingly?
This way car owners can go to a fee-station any time to pay whatever tax whatever state wants to charge per mile travelled.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Time to Move to Nevada. Tahoe here I come! Raydude
So, does that mean that if I run my car in reverse, the state will start sending me checks? Hmm, no ... that doesn't sound right ...
... turning to the 3-D map, we see an unmistakable con
Shouldn't this one be filed under "Your Rights Offline?
Just saying is all...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was happy I live in Texas instead of California. At least here, we only obsessively track our children.
Open Source Sushi
Why not just report your odometer reading each year? It could even by done by the service station that performs your annual inspection.
Who has to drive the furthest? People who can't afford to live in the houses they clean. People who run small businesses and have to deliver product themselves. People who deliver pizzas.
This really won't bother your Hummer drivers. They are already getting hit with gas-guzzler taxes.
Share and Enjoy!
I remember back in the day when "Privacy" actually MEANT something!!!!
Sig?! Sig?! We don't need no stinking sig!!
California being in debt is a huge problem, gets lots of attention, in need of desperate measures and so on, but the federal government being MASSIVELY in debt isn't.
Is there a reason for this or is it just because republicans haven't been successful with the federal budget? (not trolling)
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
In the Netherlands they tried something similar a few years back. It stranded long before implementation. And since the American populace loves to drive and loves their cheap gass price, I don't think that the government will be able to do this successfully. (Pardon my typos and possible bad grammar, I'm dutch, so english isn't my first language)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Can they figure out any OTHER way to try to drive out business out of this state?
We have some of the highest sales tax, the highest standards of living, permits are required to do anything short of wiping my ass and whacking off.
I propose a tax on ravers. We have enough of them. San Francisco could wipe out our debt in and of itself. It's simple to do it too: if the number of dead glowsticks in your apartment/mom's basement weigh more than your furniture, you get taxed. They certainly have the money for it. If they can afford those E hits....
Just a thought,
Joe
Why not just use odometer readings? There are already laws and measures in place to prevent tampering.
The other is that, as the FA notes, a gasoline tax also taxes mileage, in probably a better way. The complaint is that the lower tax per mile on a Prius than an Explorer is good from an environmental point of view but unfair in terms of road wear -- I'm no expert on asphalt but wouldn't an SUV with knobby tires (because you need them to drive to the mall, you know) be running up greater road damage roughly in proportion to its greater fuel consumption?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
how far you drive, how long you f**K and anything else he can. How nice that the democrats aren't to blame for this abomination.
Time to expose the 13-car owner 'govner for what he is - aggressively hostile to everything the average guy or gal needs.
Great... now I have to fit a tinfoil cap for my car
(yes I know the car is already made of metal)
<3 <3 <3
:P
Someone mod him up!
Seriously, though.. as a californian, I can't disagree. Even though I'm stationed out of state, I still pay my CA taxes because I <3 CA. But the influx of refugees, well.. Don't worry, we'll outsource to your state eventually.
A tax based on how far you drive does make a certain amount of sense (ignoring the method used), in that tax-payer money goes to building and maintaining roads. However, as someone who drives a high MPG car (Honda Civic), I admit that I prefer methods that target gas guzzlers disproportionately. Of course, one could also argue that gas guzzlers tend to do more harm to the environment, etc., and should pay more, but then that kind of sounds like they're buying the right to poison us.
Of course, what it really boils down to is a new tax that they can add on to existing taxes to pay for even more government programs, preferably to benefit people who made large contributions to the winners' campaigns.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'm going out right now and renting Road Warrior.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
Taxing people based on how much they drive is a good idea (because as it stands, the costs of driving are highly externalized -- e.g. the people getting the benefit from driving more are not necessarily the ones paying for it), but there's no reason the mechanism for tracking needs to store any personal info. It's entirely possible to come up with a system for tracking how much you drive, without tracking where you drive.
Nonetheless, rather than tracking your mileage, I'd much rather see gas taxes increased so that the more you drive, the more money the state gets for road maintenance, mass transit, etc. Right now, gas taxes are a fixed number, rather than a percentage of the gas price. You could also include the cost of auto insurance in the gas price, so that everyone's automatically insured to some required minimum, and then you could get more insurance on top of that if you wanted it, rather than the situation now, where it's illegal to drive without insurance (in California) but millions of people, mostly immigrants, do it anyway.
This would also put more of the burden on vehicles that get worse gas mileage, which also tend to be larger, heavier, cause more road wear, are more dangerous to other vehicles, and emit more pollutants.
And of course, people in the U.S. (and especially Southern California, where I live) are so obsessed with being able to drive wherever you want, whenever you want, and not having to pay for it (even though someone has to pay for it!), that they fight gas taxes tooth and nail even though proper application would reduce traffic (by providing more transit options). Europe has the right idea.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
In the Netherlands they tried something similar a few years back.
It stranded long before implementation.
And since the American populace loves to drive and loves their cheap gass price, I don't think that the government will be able to do this successfully.
(Pardon my typos and possible bad grammar, I'm dutch, so english isn't my first language)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
wouldn't it be easier to just tax gas at the pump at a higher rate? while it wouldn't would equate to equal taxes per mile per person (because of mileage variations), it would seem a lot less obtrusive. given the price of gas these days, who'd even notice a few pennies difference anyways? if we absolutely had to spend some money to make money- we could always build toll booths. same function, some of the same privacy issues (a la EZ pass etc.) but would hurt the pizza delivery drivers a lot less hard.
HUGE privacy issue. There is no telling what can be done with these devices. Plus, GPS unit's don't JUST measure distance traveled. Most also track where you are at all times.
I note with interest the presence of an onboard speedometer in the Oregon graphic. If they're not very careful to protect individual rights, the government of California is going to wind up with an extremely efficient method for collecting revenue in the form of traffic tickets.
;)
Next logical steps: centrally-controlled speed governors, ignition cutoffs, and Breathalyzers. What fun!
This is a Travesty, a Sham, and a Mockery, a Traveshamockery!
It's called, uh, a toll road.
Just break up the road into multiple sections and have $$ deducted via your Fastrak.
You know, back when I lived in New York state, we had a toll system on our main highway (New York State Thruway). WTF would be wrong with just installing toll booths and (gasp) hiring workers to man them?
Generates revenue based on miles driven (roughly), preserves privacy, creates jobs. Low- and high-skill, I might add, as modern transportation systems tend to have electronic monitoring systems. I know the LA area has a centralized traffic monitoring and control system; someone had to program and design all that.
What's the matter with the already existing measuring device in every vehicle?
It's already a crime to mess with it anyway. So why can't it just be used for whatever other purpose they want to measure the distance a car is driven?
Brian
This proposal will have the opposite effect
The Raven
What happens if you "accidentally" break the antenna off, and don't realize it's gone for a year?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
This would be seriously easy to crack: GPS receivers must have a clear view of the sky. This gives you a limited amount of obvious places to mount the device. Now cover with a tasteful home-made faraday cage (made from recycled cans or some-such, this being California) and voila, no tax.
So in effect this is a tax on people who flunked physics 101. Just like lottery is a tax on people who failed Math.
Is Arnold still getting payments from AM General for promoting the Hummer?
we know you're driving an hour each way to and from work because of the sky-high housing prices around the Bay Area (again: your fault),
Boy, are they wrong about that one! It's actually San Andrea's fault.
Nice. I grew up in Walnut Creek. We since moved to Arizona that is less than half the cost of living and still have nice weather. In fact, Arizona has seen a large influx of new residents (mostly from CA)
1. You're removing the right to privacy, and who says they won't track you for other purposes?
2. What happens if someone removes it?
3. See number 1.
4. See number 3.
Solution: Simply increase the gas tax, or raise the price of tabs.
Nobody interested in you and where you go. Right. Like my wife isn't going to scan the GPS database every week to see if it contains the coordinates of any strip clubs... or as if I won't use it to check if she's been buying shoes and purses behind my back again!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
As at least one poster has already noted, this would be particularly brutal for the low- and medium-wage folks living in the Central Valley that're driving their poor selves miles 'n miles to the Bay Area every day 'cause... they're already close to the edge financially. It would be more just (relatively, anyway) to tax water consumption in Atherton and Hillsborough. (Not that I'd go there, at least not as a matter of principle...)
So, all I have to do is go to Arizona or Nevada to buy a car, and I'll still benefit from the $0.18 of tax break per gallon of gas? ALRITE!
They build the roads, but get mad when we drive on them.
They subsidize the roads with tax dollars, then wonder why we don't take the bus.
They tax gas to keep us from buying it, then complain they have budget problems.
The State taxes me so I don't drive, but the Feds let me take it off my (business) taxes.
They want jobs, but they can't stand it when we make money.
What's a self-employed nerd to do?
sigs, as if you care.
That's my story, and i'm fscking sticking to it.
i'll rent an apartment with 10 other friends, and we'll all just register our cars at that location.... and get our Driver's licenses out there too.
everything you try to do to fsck us over, we WILL work around it, assholes.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
See, we all pay taxes, and some use the road more, some use it less, but it all comes out in the wash. If I get taxed more for driving more, then I want people with kids to pay more property tax than me. Since I don't have kids, why should I pay for your kid's education, if you don't give me the reach around and pay for my roads?
If we all pay we all benefit. If we want to start paying based on use, then suddenly I can make a strong case against a lot of taxes that I pay for services that I NEVER use. Why go through that hassel? I'll pay the same property tax, you pay the same gas tax, and everyone's happy.
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
Did you read proposition 71? I did.
First, its set up in such a way that it has no fiscal impact for the next few (2? 3?) years. The finance charges are rolled into the bond issuance so it requires no cash.
Second, the money it kicks out will largely go to California business activity, which gets taxed, sending some of the money right back where it came from.
Third, it proposes that through interests in any discoveries it is self-funding.
Whether you believe the second and third points or not (and the jury is definitely out here...), the first point is not up for debate - 71 has no impact right now, and will not for some time.
I don't drive hardly at all either, so I don't really care, but we're nerds, and nerds like facts, right?
If we step back and look at the impact of the gas tax it's two fold: First to pay for roads and second it has the happy side effect of encouraging socially responsible behavior by favoring smaller more efficient cars.
The same effect could be achieved with a mileage based tax by including a weight factor in the tax calculation. Heavy vehicles (which do more damage to the road) pay more. This improves the fairness of the system (which is the stated reason for move to a mileage based system) and preserves the incentive to drive smaller cars.
[As an aside some California cities impose a road tax on construction projects based on the amount of concrete pored and dirt hauled away to cover the wear and tear caused by heavy trucks]
That said it's not going to fly because the state is simply not capable of maintaining the technology infrastructure needed to make it work.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
is to make all major highways toll roads including those within a city limits. Day pass, tokens, cash and radio receiver/transmitters (e.g. EZ Pass, etc.).
I thought Schwarzenegger was going to wave his magic Hollywood wand and edit California's debt right out of the picture. Oh, yeah, he promised Enron (in that meeting he can't somehow remember) that he'd run for governor, and drop that $8B lawsuit to recover all the pricegouging Enron pulled on "Grandma Millie". So now he's going to get the money, and privacy invasion, all on the same ticket. That's what Republicans, do, right? Smaller, less invasive, cheaper government. And their superior morals make them keep their promises. Action!
--
make install -not war
Taxing expensive low mileage vehicles is a great progressive tax, and doesn't lessen the importance of doing everything we can to reduce our country's expensive and security-exposing dependence on OIL. This is one of the most humongously dumb ideas I've ever read.
And who says that just because someone doesn't drive much, they shouldn't share in the tax burden to maintain the roads? Just because you don't have kids doesn't mean you shouldn't contribute to the tax to support public education. This pay-as-you-use stuff is for the birds and this is a clear case of overextending it.
"What's that? My car's GPS tracker isn't working? Gee, officer, I have no idea where that fuse got to."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
For the record, it's not tin foil, it's ALUMINUM FOIL. Tin and Aluminum are distinctly different things. Sorry but someone FINALLY had to point this out.
Sorry for being ignorant, but which one is prop 13? I havn't been keeping up with califorinia latly.
The article claims this is because of the danger that hybrid cars will eat into the tax income, since they consume less gas and therefore don't pay as much tax.
But the fact is that very few people drive such hybrids, even in California. Far more Californians drive gas-guzzling SUVs; a drive through LA used to surround you with Ford Explorers, but now those seem to be outnumbered by the much larger vehicles like Expeditions and such. A gas tax is a better way to collect income and provide a market incentive to reduce air pollution (as opposed to a regulation, like smog checks, which are expensive to enforce and provide an incentive to cheat rather than to conserve).
So really, this is just a proposal to make sure that people who actually switch to efficient technologies keep subsidizing those who don't. It's completely retarded. It is not only counterproductive to the desire to reduce fuel consumption and air pollution, but requires that the state spend an additional $100 per car just to implement.
Expensive + counterproductive to societal goals = bad government. Bad government! No cookie!
Dumb dumb dumb dumb....
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
So let me get this straight... One half of the government is trying to encourage hybrids by giving tax breaks... ...while the other half is going out of their way to make sure that owners of hybrids have to pay the same amount?
THE SEX TAX
Every male will have a chip installed in his sex organ. This chip would provide the following functions:
- It would provide extra stimulation during the sex act.
- Via a Bluetooth interface, the male would be able to specify sexual parameters, such as extra lasting time, longer orgasms, etc.
- The chip would record all sexual activity and categorize it as follows:
- Masturbation
- Vaginal intercourse
- Oral intercourse
- Anal intercourse
- Other intercourse
- The male would have to report all sexual activity on a government document. Government computers would then match these documents against records received wirelessly from sex organ implants. (This step is performed to make the process error-prone on the male's part.)
The male would then be taxed accordingly. Mistakes made in filing the appropriate paperwork would result in interest, fines, interest on the fines, penalties, interest on the penalties, and interest on the interest.This new technology would create a new revenue stream for the government. Additional benefits for the male include:
- A spousal sex monitoring system, accessible via the web. Using this service, for which women could pay a monthly fee, wives will be able to monitor their husband's sexual activity, uncovering extramerital affairs, dirty masturbational habits, etc.
- Proof of rape allegations. This service would provide women with a method of proving that a male had engaged in sexual intercourse with them. Of course, since there would be no female implant, a woman who is completely unrelated to the male, but who knows that the male had a sexual rendezvous at a certain time, could allege that the male had raped her. Proof would exist that the male had sex, but the male could not present any evidence that the sex had occurred with a different woman. According to the law, the male would be assumed guilty until proven innocent, and the law will provide for only one way for the male to prove his innocence: Sign all assets, property, and money over to the government.
The new law will be called: The Millenium Sexual Freedom Act of 2005.Yes, this will obviously benefit both the male population, by providing innovative services that all males want, and the government, by providing a much needed revenue stream.
Of course, in the typical government style, the money would be used for anti-sex education.
Or buy some lead shielding for the GPS receiver :)
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Couldn't they just check your odometer when you get your car inspected, then tax you accordingly? The intent of the law seems good enough, but the method is a pretty horrible invasion of privacy.
Although it is not a perfect proxy, gas taxes are a relatively good measure of the amount of wear a specific vehicle causes on the roads--heavier vehicles tend to use more fuel per mile, resulting in a higher tax per mile. Although the connection is less strong to congestion, there is still some correlation between acceleration and vehicle weight (and a lot of congestion is caused because trucks and other slower-accelerating vehicles take more time getting back up to speed, slowing down all the more-capable lighter cars behind them--this is actually the main premise behind the Bay Bridge metering lights).
Let's just put a tax collector in each car! And just have him reach into your pocket every few miles.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Sorry, I went back and did the right thing and googled it. Prop 13 reduced property taxes (apparently they were very high). I can see how this reduced the budget for public education, but I don't see how its such a crazy insane idea like you make it sound.
But only if they use the money on building and expanding our transportation system here in California. And if you have said device you no longer pay taxes on Gas.
This will push people to carpool and to use public transportation.
Not a too horrible thing at all.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
The "think of the poor!" plea has been around since the 1970's. It has been an excuse for failing to give people any incentive to cut their fuel use, and it's gotten us exactly where we are today. Isn't it time to go back to what works? If your withholding taxes go down won't you be able to afford another quarter for that delivered pizza?
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Not to mention trucking companies and their importance to the California economy. They do all this work to improve out trucking infrastructure, then think they can bust something like this out?
As for the privacy issues, they make me want to puke. Seeing such short sightedness makes me lose my faith in mankind.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Some other states apply their car tax by the vehicle's weight, due to the very sensible reason that a heaver car wears down the roads more than a lighter car, and therefore more repairs (and hence, more cost) are required with heavy cars.
Obviously, SUVs and luxury cars pay more, while lighter and frugal cars pay less, PLUS it just makes sense: if you chew up the pavement and make more potholes because of your heavier car, then you SHOULD pay more.
Of course, this makes too much sense for my state's DMV to figure out...
You know this isnt' a bad idea, I've lived in NYC, and La, Southern california has an extrodinary amount of traffic. Now most of the time you look in traffic 80% of it is single passnger. Now back east they generate a ton of revinue based on Tolls. The way I see it this is a better way to tax the traffic. If anyone has ever sat in the valley say around sunset and seen the smog trust me it's worth it.
I'm sorry, I don't know where that tin foil came from.. damn neighborhood pranksters.. I was wondering why I wasn't getting my quarterly bill on driving.
Oh, and I would like to thank you for charging me last summer for driving to New York. I enjoyed paying for the 3000 miles drivin outside of the state of CA. I like being taxed, thank you!
Obama = Socialism.
It's ALUMINUM foil. Tin and aluminum are distinctly different. I can't believe so many geeks never get this right.
They can "consider" tracking my car, and I will consider never, ever living there. How is it that a state that is supposedly the world's third largest economy (or some such) is so completely and thoroughly screwed up? It's California that is heavily pushing OBDIII (On-Board Diagnostics III) for use in all automobiles. That thing makes this GPS tracker look comparatively tame. My apologies to any Californians in the audience, but ... geez. You guys have your work cut out for you. I wish you luck.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Or use the mail system.... Mail it to a penpal in China back and forth until it hit's 1,000,000 miles... Who'd believe that?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Looks like he's finally gonna catch up to the Bandit, just maybe not the way we wanted.
Yee-haw!
M
Oregon Slashdot Article
"My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulfate hair."
this seems somewhat on topic. I found this article from 1995 (!) about a new electronically controlled valvetrain system that would increase fuel efficiency by at least 10%
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9510/cleaner_engine/
here we are 10 years later and no production cars come equipped with such a system, nor is there anything like it in the after market. The details of it seem simple enough, prototypes have been demonstrated to work well and manufacturing costs as well as tcoo are lower than the current line of mechanical valvetrains.
does this not exist because america can't afford to take the tax hit?
bite my glorious golden ass.
I suggest you file a counter compalint about the damage hard pavement has done to you knees. If the pavement was of original quality (dirt, grass and pebbles) then you wouldn't have had the problems.
Same goes for if you fall over and land on the concerete that someone put in the way of the nice soft dirt underneath.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
this is perfectly fair. why should people that go out of their way and sacrafice their quality of living to avoid driving pay equally for the roads they rarely use? why should i, who drive the 5 miles to work about once a month, pay the same road taxes as someone who drives 60 miles to work every day? duh!
when i went looking to purchase a condo in the SF bay area, i heavily weighted: how close it was to my my current job, how close it was to public transportation hubs, and how centrally located it was in the greater metro area. what did i lose by heavily weighting these items? well, i had to pay A LOT more. i purchased a condo for the price my colleague paid for a house (he lives 50 miles from work). my property taxes are higher. i don't have a yard. i live in the city, so it is noisy, and dirty. i have to risk life and limb to ride a bike in darkness (in the fall and winter). it takes me 2x as long to travel the same distance as someone in a car. the school system is worse.
any way you slice it, it's cheaper for society to manage a population when they live close to urban centers, yet for the most part there's only negative incentives to do so. this is a step in the right direction.
Would this be constitutional? Something about freedom to move about within the country/states.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
"I don't live in California, but I'm going to operate under the assumption that they require yearly car inspections"
they dont although you have to get it smogged like every other year
The goal is to create a track and trace society where the government has "godlike" powers over you. BTW, OnStar *is* a GPS device. You speed can be determined. You are this close to being fined for driving too fast based on their ability to track you this way. It is tyranny.
I don't like the idea because its an invasion of privacy. But, if you are going to have said law to help more fairly tax those who use roads, why not make the law actually do that. Add in a factor for vehicle weight, a prius is going to cause less road damage than an accord (I think it weighs less, might not with those godawful heavy batteries), and it definetly weighs less then an excursion. The excursion is going to cause more road wear than a prius, so it should be taxed more per road mile its driven. Also, motorcycles should be taxed almost nothing, since they weigh so little. While your at it, why not tax based on the way the vehicles are used. A prius hauling one person getting 50 mpg, is getting 50pmpg pmpg=people miles per gallon). An excursion hauling 7 people getting 10mpg is getting 70pmpg.
"brxref
Forgive the caps, its a copy/paste job. Hopefully this disclaimer will be enough to appease the lameness filter.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Republican In Name Only. He's just another goofball demagogue who got elected on a flood of voter rage. He seems to be in a race with Feinstein to see who can pass the most unwarranted gun control legislation, as well.
At smog-check time, the GPS memory gets down-loaded into a database... Remember Gray bought $82M worth of Oracle licenses.
Then when a crime goes unsolved, the local police only need to search the monster database of who was where and when. Round up the guilty, and sentence the convicts.
Remember Big Brother is Watching
I'm beginning to think Americans are suffering from a lack of studying Orwell.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
This is true, but some DVD covers look like this one
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
So, is this what the blue states want for the rest of us? I'm glad I ended up in a red state then.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
the only way I could ever see this succeeding is if by allowing the GPS, you (individual) would stand to get a tax break because you don't drive as much as the average. Like Ezpass -- there must be a benefit so that people would *want* to adopt the technology.
start making your own bio-diesel!
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
douche bag...
Assuming they are going to tax by the mile, wouldn't it be easier to have the car's circutry (sp) report to the pump how far it's driven since it's last fill-up? This could be done via a very simple interface near the gas cap. Maybe even integrated into the gas nozzle. Granted, there are "Security" issues to work out (like making sure someone doesn't reset that counter right before they fill up) but it has potential. What do you guys/gals think?
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
MPG 51 - $52.94/yr 2004 Toyota Prius 2,890 lbs
MPG 24 - $112.50/yr 2004 Honda Accord 3,265 lbs
MPG 11 - $245.45/yr 2004 Hummer H1 6,814 lbs
Prius = 1.83 cents/lb yearly
Accord = 3.44 cents/lb yearly
Hummer = 3.60 cents/lb yearly
Clearly the hummer is charged a higher rate per mile and per pound than both the Accord and Prius. My question is what the hell is wrong with that? California traditionally has been very aggressive with pollution legislation, so much so that some import automakers used the -C designation for cars sent to the Americas. A rate based on miles traveled makes no since if you are considering smog control.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
What we should really be taxing is THE BLING!
in a manner of speaking. ;)
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
All people living in California are required to get a breath measurement implant.
Actually, Californai DMV only requires an inspection every three or four years. I can't remember which but its been at least 2 years for me now with no required inspection. Plus, once a car is 25 years old it becomes smog exempt and therefore never requires an inspection.
The plan seems logical enough, but what about the obvious privacy concerns? Will this device have "phone-home" capabilities to report the mileage? Even if not, I sure don't want them downloading data detailing every trip I took (think of the datamining you could do with THAT information). If the box were programmed with the California borders built in and logged the in-state mileage only (not actual GPS coordinates), AND could only be read at an inspection station -- cool.
It's about devising the method that will generate maximum revenue, who in government is really concerned with fair? Besides, if you can afford a new car you got lotsa money.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm sort of a "tinfoil hat wearing" type of guy, but this seems really transparent to me. With everything that's been happening lately, perhaps tinfoil will become the latest fashion trend, but... Remember that the state of Oregon proposed this same thing perhaps a year ago, Slashdot did an article on it then...
Think of this logically, as some of the others here already have. If the state were interested in taxing you based upon milage, they would simply record your odometer readings at each emmissions inspection and bill you accordingly for your tabs. Yeah, I know about the in-state/out-state argument, why not just ignore that and set the median tax at something reasonable.
If the state were interested in reducing polution and oil consumption, they'd simply increase the already in place tax on gas and let the people in their Prius' slip through with their good milage. There are not really that many of them, and you could always give truckers a rebate at the end of the year if you feel sorry for them. Yeah, you COULD buy gas in Nevada or Oregon or Mexico, but you'd use up that gas getting back across the border, making any savings moot. Besides, the number of people living on the border is pretty fractional.
Seems clear to me, the intention is NOT about simply taxing vehicle use based upon how far you drive, but something more nefarious. Something like the car rental places have been implementing. Looks like California wants to incorporate GPS into the new "black boxes" discussed on cnet a few days ago, those boxes that the government & insurance industry wants to put into your cars in order to give you better rates and let you prove that you're law abiding. They'd have the ability to track all vehicles.
Each of the other taxation methods (checking odometer / gas tax) are simpler and already have the infrastructure necessary to implement in place. Both would accomplish the desired goal (more money for state based upon usage). Because something like this would be all new and would involve MUCH new infrastructure, it seems clear that simple revenue is NOT the intent of this proposal.
California is a big enough market, that they cause defacto standards for cars. The lawmakers know this, and I'm guessing that they are acting as the "stalking horse" in order to get all cars in America fitted with such devices. I don't think the insurance industry alone has the clout to pull this off over the objections of the car driving public, but if each of the players asks for some little addition, they might all be able to get their way. Think of it like this, insurance wants feature A, Feds wants feature B, and state wants feature C. Expect all three features in one DMCA protected box that you must not tamper with, under penalty of law. Expect lawyers to get access to ALL recorded information.
I would expect this proposal to move just about as quickly and silently as the copyright modifications moving through the Senate currently... Think fast and quiet.
That's rediculously asinine. Some people, making very little, depend on their vehicles to, you know, live. Besides, there's already taxes upon taxes on the distance you drive, they're embedded in every litre/gallon of gasoline you buy.
The majority of vehicles in my area are trucks and SUVs anyway, so if they dropped the gas tax and went with mileage tax, the people with low gas mileage would pay effectively less tax, therefore possibly defeating the purpose. Besides, we need more insentive for people to buy CARS instead of huge trucks and SUVs that they're not using for any reason other than trying to be cool and wasting gas. I'm tired of having some jackass in an SUV driving 2 inches from my back bumper just because he can see over the top of my car.
If you are self-employed (e.g. doctor, lawyer) and buy a vehicle that weighs 6000 lbs or more (e.g H2), then you can write off the cost of the vehicle against your income as a business expense. Ok, I'm not a tax lawyer so I may have the precise wording or details wrong, but the end result is that you purchase the H2 for $50k and save $20k on income tax. You have to buy a lot of fuel for the government to get that $20k back.
Thirty feet long, 2 lanes wide, it's sixty-five tons of American Pride --- Canyonero!
Won't this just do wonders for the economy of some neighboring state that lets people easily buy cars and get them registered and everything, what with the full faith and credit clause?
You shouldn't because as long as you live a perfect life it's OK that the state knows what you do every second of the day. God, I'm glad Republicans are in power because they don't believe in bigger government or intrusion into the personal lives of Americans.
Vote Quimby!
That will slow them down a bit, as there are no visits to the gasoline pump.
But seriously, if they are talking about wear and tear on the roads, why wouldn't they make the tax a function of vehicle weight AND mileage driven? A heavier vehicle causes MUCH more road damage than a light one.
But what do you expect, the Gov drives Hummers...
Let's be honest here, Not everyone can drive a primus around.
In fact, no one can, because it doesn't exist. Maybe you were thinking of the Prius?
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
Let me tell you how it will be,
There's one for you, nineteen for me,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don't take it all,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat,
If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.
Taxman.
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Don't ask me what I want it for
(Taxman Mister Wilson)
If you don't want to pay some more
(Taxman Mister Heath),
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
Now my advice for those who die,
Declare the pennies on your eyes,
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
And you're working for no-one but me,
Taxman.
'Fool on the Hill' was taken already, I guess.
This just does not seem like a good idea. So they're telling me that a Prius takes up as much space on the road as a freaking Hummer?! The Hummer is gargantuan compared to the Toyota (?) hybrid. If their argument is that the Hummer and the Prius both cause the same amount of wear on a road, I find that to be very thin. Are they considering vehicle weight a factor in regards to how much wear a vehicle induces on the roads? If weight is indeed important here (which I think it is) then I think they had the right idea by taxing the semi-trucking companies and other companies that use the roads. However I feel they should tax the companies using the roads first before the individual drivers.
By the way isn't there a way they could just work this into a toll or something. If you've been driving for X miles on the road you pay a couple of dollars or something at the toll. Because the way it sounds, every time I fill up I'll get taxed a certain percentage based on how much I've been driving. If my gas mileage isn't all that great I have to pay more than if my gas mileage was that of a hybrid.
I just feel too little thought went into this before it's proposed.
if they don't start salting the roads, and the gps units are only going on NEW cars, The biggest effect they will have is to further depress new car sales [ie get LESS tax to the state]
dumb!
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
... and with the necessary infinite emphasis on privacy ...
10 PRINT "What happens if someone removes it?"
20 PRINT "You're removing the right to privacy, and who says they won't track you for other purposes?"
30 GOTO 20
(I'm sorry. I'm very, very bored. And apparently in retro mode.)
I agree that you certainly do not need any do gooders of any liberal strip ruining your great state from whatever location. Now how about taking a smaller bit of the Federal taxes that support your independent, freedom loving life styles?
i don't think GPS would be as good as an idea on Gas usage monitoring.. they should tax according to that if you ask me..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Step 1: Remove the GPS device from your car
Step 2: Drive around!
Why go through all of the trouble of mandating GPS when they could just check the EDRs, the equivelant of an airplane's black box.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
All taxes do is tell smart, hard-working Americans to screw off and go somewhere else. Fine by me, there's plenty of other states that aren't going to try to restrict how much my salespeople can do their jobs and make money.
Berto
The person driving the H2 should pay more in taxes. Their huge/heavy cars cause more damage to roadways so they should pay more..
maybe its just the fact that I hate those cars with a passion
Outdoor storage sheds and pet kennels
They could accomplish their goal in a much more appropriate way by simply tracking how much gas you buy and what type of vehicle you drive. This would be a lot cheaper and simpler than building an infrastructure to collect and parse the data from all these GPS things (remember, GPS is RECEIVE ONLY!).
You know what... It's about frickin time
Rural parts of states live off of our dime in the cities. Urban centers generate the lions share of tax revenue. At least for gas taxes, if they want to pollute, then they should pay their fair share. Hell, if it incoveniences them so much maybe they should lobby for mass transit to be improved? Urban votes are the reason things like the LA/SF fast rail project are ignored in favor of some random state pork project in the boondocks.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Public highways like schools are a socialist institute for a reason. They're too expensive for any one person to pay for.
I'm all for taxing gas [which they already do]. That's a good way to get people to use more efficient cars, carpool, etc.
However, if you are taxed base on how far you drive you just punish people who can't afford to live near their work [for instance]. Which is specially important in California where housing is expensive.
This is just another example of double-dipping. Either make gas tax higher or don't implement this new mileage tax.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
PROPRIETARY.
A Prius with a low-ball mpg rating of 44 (a real-world number I've heard) and its 11.9 gallon tank can go over 500 miles. How far apart are gas stations where you're talking about? I think the basic problem here is you're assuming the Prius is electric. It's not; it's a hybrid. So why can't the truck be a hybrid?
No, people in rural areas will use more efficient vehicles. Last I checked, electric power also made it out there -- why do you think an all-electric vehicle wouldn't be practical in 10-30 years?
No, it's the perfect tool. It pays for the impact of vehicles in the same way as gambling, smoking, and alcohol pay for their impact: through a sin tax. A gas tax encourages more efficient vehicles, shorter commutes, and public transportation. Taxing mileage only encourages the latter two.
"Move back to Wisconsin. We're not kidding."
Hum, I thought Wisconsin was one of the Blue states?
That makes it NOT part of Jesusland.
Rather than trying to tax mileage directly, why not make a separate sales tax rate for automotive parts and supplies? Even hybrids need lubricants, tires and spare parts. And cars which are used more will require more of these things. Since there would still be taxes on gasoline, it would still be cheaper to drive a more efficient car.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
That's the real question. What if you're car
breaks down three times, say, 20 miles from your house and AAA comes and tows it to the shop for you. Are you going to be taxed for that 60 miles? If you use a flat-bed tow truck and the tow driver has already payed tax on that travel, is this a double tax? Oh I see a huge lawsuit brewing on this one.
they drop the taxes already paid in each gallon of fuel... until then, it's double taxation...
...and as other posters have pointed out, people are still moving there at a sufficient rate to inflate the property market to pretty outrageous levels. That suggests to me that maybe a race to the bottom in tax scales isn't the be-all and end-all of making a state a good place to do business.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
From the Article: The California Performance Review Commission recommends developing a pilot project to test whether the state could levy a user fee based on how uch each driver uses roads. The report suggests a fee of .1 cents per mile traveled.
In case you missed it, that's a whopping $100.00 for every 100,000 miles you drive -in California-. Seems to me the real money makers here are the GPS manufacturers. Infrastructure costs alone would make this a money losing venture.
It's tough to find a state so wallowing in it's own ineptness as California. This is among the same policy that bankrupted the damn place to begin with, and you'd have hoped Arny would have sacked whoever proposed this busted-ass initiative. I mean, overengineering the solution isn't even the half of it. Frankly, I don't think california has the rescources to impliment this without driving them further into that bleed gushing pit of red they call a budget. We're talking about the percision tracking and billing of over a million drivers. What is going to be cheaper? A few toll booths, or building a new infrastructure designed to handle this crap from the ground up??? And that's not even the privacy issues involved. Even then, it's only a matter of time before mass circumvention of the system takes place.
How the fuck is it that every other state in the damn union can maintain their roads without seriously ass-fucking their population in the process? I have hope for Arny, but if he lets something like this through, he can go screw himself if he tries for another public office.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
A tinfoil hat for your car...
GPS signals are piss-weak, and can be easily blocked with a bit of metal. Wrap your GPS antenna in tinfoil every other week, and you will only log 1/2 the miles...
Of course, your reported gas mileage will be pretty crummy, but you do drive with a lead foot, right?
Or, to quote Mr. Scott, "the more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Trucks and other gas powered will always be needed, expecially for rural and long distance driving.
A Prius will do 600+ miles on a tank.
How far will your car go?
It might be fairly easy to defeat... however, it also presents additional problems. Would you be taxed for out of state driving? How about disabling the GPS receiver so the signal isn't recieved? Seems like a huge hassle in the name of "revenue capturing"? Why not increase the gas tax? Seems easier and less of a new beauracracy... Then, they will have to increase the taxes to support the new GPS Monitors administration... Silly, silly taxmen
If we continue down taxing gas usage only, we'll get to a point where rural areas are paying a significant part of the taxes for upkeep of the road.
What, make people who use rural roads that are far less efficient, getting two or three cars per day, pay more than city drivers who densely share the same roads far more efficiently?
Why, that's scandalous!
Besides, have you been to California? I live here. I'm not so sure there actually is anywhere rural. We have cities, mountains, desert, freeways and some weird green stuff up North of which Regan said, "If you've seen one, you've seen them all".
Homer: Let the bears pay the bear tax! I pay the Homer tax!
Lisa: Dad, that's homeowner's tax.
Homer: Well, anyway, I'm still outraged.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
So the government shouldn't encourage citizens to vote?
Getting an education is legal. Working is legal. The government shouldn't encourage citizens to get an education or a job?
I must be misreading your point somehow, or am I a commie nutcase?
This is nothing more than a colossally stupid, complex idea which will only serve to benefit drivers of environmentally unfriendly (due to high gas consumption), needlessly dangerous (to drivers of other vehicles) expensive cars. Oh, and the trucking companies who do most of the damage to our roads, it will benefit them too. It will certainly benefit those who are paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year to run the complex systems, not to mention those who will charge about $5 Billion just to install the tracking devices. And the guys who install other supporting hardware. It may also benefit the politician who angles to name it after himself. And SUV dealers
Who won't it benefit? Drivers of fuel efficient cars. The state, which could spend $5 billion on much more effective things-- like fixing the roads, or installing real-time electricity meters on every home, or paying off our debt, or funding the UC system. It won't benefit motorcycle drivers. It won't benefit our state's clean air as more hydrocarbons are burned.
Put it into perspecrtive. The chart shows that a typical car owner pays $100/ year in gas taxes. And the article states the technology costs $100/car (I bet it won't be that cheap installed, but I'll let that one go). My guess is that the average car is in California for about 5 years, so that means 20% of the revenue goes to tracking the revenue! And that doesn't take into account the software, administrative or infrastructure part of the equation.
We have a great system now for taxing road usage; vehicles pay by the mile and heavier vehicles, which cause more road damage, pay more per vehicle mile. I don't know this, but I would bet that SUVs tend to be involved in more accidents than cars due to their decreased manueverability.
I'll say it again: it's a colossally stupid idea which will waste billions in unneeded administrative, infrastructure & software costs that will lead to more pollution, less healthy air and decreased state revenue. I'll lay down on the tracks to stop this one.
Phrack had a nice article detailing how to jam the consumer frequency. I assume cost is an issue so the recievers requiered will use this band.
So without further ado:
http://www.phrack.org/show.php?p=60&a=13
BTW: insert lame space balls quote here.
What could possibly go wrong?
All of the girlie R's don't like Arnold. The big bidness boys LOVE Arnold and they are behind the Mormon R's amending the Constitution to permit Arnold becoming the second coming of Ronald.
RINO - I think NOT!
I do belive the government TRACKING every automobile in our civilization is a violoation of our privacy.
;)
I'm really growing to dislike our country (America that is). It stands for so little that is relevant to an individuals rights these days... not even the ideals it set forth. So much for inalienable rights
We're a profit society and you are only worth the cost of your exploitation.
Frankly i'm starting to feel all fuzzy knowing that the michigan militia exists
It seems that when politicians, aka fat cats... who simply sit on their high chair with no real qualifications to run our gorvernment in a financially stable way, love to make new ridiculous laws that at all costs are defined to make up for their own lame inabilities.
Basically.. you're electing idiots (like Arnie) and now hes fucking you. GOOD JOB! Lets make it legal for such a fine man to run for president.
Let the brain drain begin!
We here in GA welcome our new CA overlords!
Y'all want grits, right?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Not everyone lives in your fantasy world where they can just quit, move, learn to cycle 40 miles because some random change.
You want to save the environment? Prop up public transportation. Random taxation only punishes those who can't afford it the most.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
This just screams "major privacy intrustion"! You're gonna slap a GPS device on my car to um... "track how much I drive"? Geeze, then how long before homeland security gets access to this system to "track terrorist"? Then how long is it until you become a "terrorist" because you drive to "suspicious places".
The world has enough to worry about with RFID. Do we really need this too?
There is a pilot program for this scheduled in Oregon. California has no elected officials who endorse this plan. It is merely a possible income source pointed out by a comission designed to point out possible income sources. While I do not at all like the idea of being tracked everywhere I drive, the fact remains that this not even in the pipes pipe-dream stage.
Yes, but property taxes shouldn't be so high as to cripple the housing industry.
What happens if someone takes your car for a joyride cross country? Can you claim that back?
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
"Yes, Mr. Prosecutor."
"Then why were you driving to the docks that night?"
"Uh..."
"And why, when you know there are better alternatives, did you fuel up using REGULAR?!"
[Gasps from the jury]
"I rest my case!"
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
This isn't about taxes. It's about tracking you everyplace you go so they know WHERE you are at any given moment. Also this will allow them to give out speeding tickets, failure to full stop, etc. from the comfort of a computer room. And don't bother with court, the evidence is such you'll be guilty no matter what.
Remember, this IS NOT about taxes. It's about CONTROL.
This just reeks of a consultant who is being way too clever....
There have been a number of proposals like this ever since GPS technology became widely available. And a lot of seemingly knowledgeable people have bought the concept, and thrown a lot of good money at consultants to study how to implement these sorts of schemes.
I should know. I was one of those consultants.
Executive summary: It won't work
Key point: GPS technology broadcasts from satellites in space to receivers on Earth. Given how far out in space the satellites are (and the problems of generating electricity in space) you won't be surprised to learn that the signal strength from the various satellites is extremely low. Lower, in fact, that ambient background radiation. GPS receivers have to use digital signal processing (DSP) chips to dig the GPS signals out of the ether.
As a consequence, it is extremely easy to lose "lock" on a particular satellite--or on any satellite. Drive under a gas station canopy--lose lock. Drive into a tunnel--lose lock. Drive into your garage--lose lock. Because you lose lock all the time, GPS chipsets all store your last known good position, and will continue to report that until lock is regained.
So....
Let's pretend that this silly scheme is enacted. Drive your vehicle to your local gas station where you always buy gas. Buy gas. Wrap a piece of aluminum foil around your GPS receiver. Drive all you want to. Your GPS unit will never detect that you have moved.
The really, really sad story behind this....
I had a client, back in the late 1990s, who had a brilliant idea: use GPS technology and the cellular telephone system to develop and sell a low-cost vehicle tracking system. I was at a luncheon in a neighboring county, and talked about the project to some people at my table who seemed interested. One older man, in particular, got more and more enthusiastic as the conversation went on. After lunch he spelled out the reason for his enthusiasm: he didn't want to track trucks, he wanted to track people. In particular, he wanted to track people who had Protection From Abuse (PFA) orders preventing them from having any contact with an ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, etc. He was one of the county commissioners (which in Pennsylvania means, among other things, that he was involved in supervising the county prison system). They had an in-home monitoring system, which monitors convicts who are not permitted to leave their homes. What he wanted was a system that let the subject go anywhere--except within N feet of some specific points (her home, her workplace, etc).
How big a deal would this be? He said, and I've subsequently heard other people confirm the number, that 40% of homicide victims have an outstanding PFA order against their attacker. The vision my acquaintance had--right before his eyes--was being able to almost instantly cut the murder rate by forty percent. He could barely contain his excitement. I was getting pretty excited, too.
The client gave us the bad news--the GPS signal strength (as I mentioned above) was far, far too low. All the guy would have to do is wrap a piece of aluminum foil around the attacker, and his monitor would never know the difference. And worse--his monitor would continue to report that he was at home, while he was across town beating his ex-wife to death. Our oh-so-cool system would not only not prevent the killing--we'd also be providing the killer with a terrific alibi ("...how can the district attorney accuse my client, when the county's own computer system shows that my client was safely within his home at the time, the very time your honor, that the crime was committed?").
It was an exhilarating few days--and I can still remember the crashing disappointment when we learned it wouldn't work.
Sigh.....
It's like when they raise tolls in Virginia. They say that part of the reason why their doing it is to scale back traffic - great idea but it doesn't work.
Bob: "Hey boss, they raised the tolls on Rt. 7 another $1 yesterday!"
Boss: "No problems Bob, here's a small $350 raise to cover it..."
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
All taxes should be income-based. No usage or consumption taxes of any kind. And no low income person should pay ANY type of tax.
In a capitalist system like ours, the top 50% should be able to pay all taxes for everything. After all, they have like 85% of the wealth.
If you believe as I do, let's organize and focus our power to change the system. See my sig for more.
Or simply make me one of your Slashdot "friends" via the "Relation" operator on my slashdot page. As more Americans get connected, we progressives can organize together to change America.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The car-related restriction that bothers me the most is being restricted to one's car to go anywhere or do anything. This is life California.
The scary thing is, new development in the rest of the country is following the same template, only worse. If you think LA is a horror of sprawl, try Atlanta or Greensboro.
The best thing that could happen to California, and the US, is $5/gal gasoline. There would be a lot of short term pain for sure, but in the end we'd make better choices about where to live, work, shop, and send our kids to school. The idea that "...it's only a 25 minute commute..." is simply absurd.
d'oh -_-
wisconsin's a nice place, undeserving of the boring midwest reputation. i'm an east-coaster, moved to milwaukee, and there's a good balance of blue-collar'd square-headedness and bohemian artistry. plus a sky-high bars/miles^2 ratio. madison's a great college town too. green bay sports the only publicly-owned football team, and even little old ladies state-wide are fans.
i don't want to troll, so i won't comment on much of the rest of the midwest ^^
I agree that it sounds evil worded this way (or thought about this way), and yet, the pragmatist in me agrees (I assume) that there is some validity in the approach.
I've always thought that a fundamental flaw in Communist theory (as espoused by Marx as opposed to as practiced by any real regime) is that it ignores the fundamental flaws of human nature. As a species, "doing the right thing" tends not to be a driving force for us. As my old world history teacher used to say, "Communism would only work in two places - heaven, where they don't need it, and hell, where they already have it."
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
At least the californians aren't being taxed for wearing fluffy directors pants. Or was that for not wearing fluffy directors pants..?
With the gas tax, people who drive gas guzzling SUV's pay more than people who drive efficient vehicles. It's a very efficient tax to collect and is generally quite fair. Heavy SUV's and trucks do more damage than their light efficient counterparts and they pay more. That just makes sense.
If the revenue isn't high enough to cover expenses, make the gas tax higher. People get all nutzoid about raising gas taxes but it makes much more sense than this crazy plan. Gas tax ends up being somewhere around $100 per year for the average car (10,000 miles/year, 20 MPG, $0.20/gallon gas tax.) That's nothing compared to the rest of the taxes we get slammed with. Raising the gas tax will cover the gap without the $100 per car wasted expenditure and it gives people incentive to drive more efficient cars.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
"You hear that... NO EARTHQUAKES!!!"
Good enough reason for me. California is too crowded, too dependent on cars, and while the weather is nice, I'd rather have land that didn't move underneath me and no riots or police beatings or car chases or wildfires or recall elections or...
Well, you get my drift.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
I notice that every step of the way, the government finds an incremental way to gain legal power over the people that are supposed to be running the show. And each time they do it, they make sure not to cause too much of an uproar. After people get used to it, they take a little bit more.
Of course you'll get the people who always support the government no matter what they do, so they'll concoct a reason to believe that they're helping us.
"Let us install a surveillance camera in your bedroom. It's for your protection"
"Just because you're in the privacy of your bedroom doesn't mean that you're not breaking the law. If you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear"
As for this law, I think installing GPS in the cars would be a trojan horse of sorts. At first they'll market it like the reason it's there is to help you or to help with emissions monitoring, but long range goals are predictable and it's only a matter of time before they start monitoring your speed with it and sending you tickets in the mail for speeding in the Nevada desert.
Isn't this the kind of stuff that gasoline taxes are supposed to take care of?? Since most of populous CA is nowhere near a state border, just raise that. The best part of this, is that if you don't drive, you don't get taxed directly. Who needs more technology for this?
And this will sorely punish the SUV owners that the tree huggers keep bitching about simply by virtue of fuel usage. So, in a way, you are getting taxed by the mile and for having an eco-unfriendly car.
Granted, the whole idea is utter bullshit to begin with...
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Tell me what good mass transit will do in an area where you have 10 miles between bus stops at the least. Better yet, 10 miles between houses. I'm in an area where Urban transit won't work except for certain routes cause there aren't enough people to support it.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
And no low income person should pay ANY type of tax... In a capitalist system like ours, the top 50% should be able to pay all taxes for everything. After all, they have like 85% of the wealth.
The problem with that is that the idea, by design, would encourage a further separation of the classes, or even a secession. It would help destroy the balance of power in the country (and it's bad enough already).
Think about it, the rich feel elite enough as it is, if they're the ones that paid all the taxes, what would they need the lower classes for? They'd look at everyone else as dead weight, a burden on their backs. They'd be able to abuse their power even more than they do now and point to the fact that they bankroll *everything* in the country, and that they should have more voting power than the poor majority who don't pay for anything.
This reminds me of shadowrun's version of the grid. Next thing we know we are going to have car geeks worldwide having to remove the gps just to avoid speeding tickets.
My GPS can display my speed. If a GPS was built that ONLY displayed or output speed, then it would be a simple matter of integrating over time to get distance with the information about precisely where the car had been being left out. Of course internally, the GPS would have to know location, it just would not have to report it. Would they do that? I doubt it.
What about those of us who live in areas where public transportation is not an option, and the nearest set of places to work a --real-- job are roughly 15-25 miles away at least? I drive a much longer stretch of road, that on average, has fairly light traffic.
Why should I be forced to pay more for something I have little control over? My car gets 30+ mpg, isn't a hybrid, and I have to drive quite a ways to get anywhere (Gotta love GA Suburbia) - so again I ask - why should I - when faced with little other choice - be forced to pay more?
"The Samurai who does not fear death becomes invincible."
Kiss My Ass.
It didn't just lower the taxes. More importantly, it made it so that the tax rate could not be more than 1% of the value of the house and that the tax rate could not increase by more than 2% each year unless the property was sold. The idea here was that grandma who bought her house in 1930 for $15,000 wouldn't get kicked out of her home that is now worth $1,000,000 because she can't pay the $10,000 per year property tax.
It was definately not a crazy idea. Taxes again are getting worse and worse in California. We already have an around 8% sales tax (actually varies by county and city). Our state taxes are very high as well. Property taxes, while restricted by Prop 13, are still high because of the high price of homes in California. Add to that the fact that you basically need to have a car in California to get anywhere (i.e., car payments, maintainence, tires, brakes, gasoline, insurance) and the cost of living in California is as high or higher than anywhere.
I'm personally hoping to inherit my parent's home. But even if that happens, I'm not sure how I'd be able to afford the increased property taxes. I think I'd manage, but it would be a heavy burden.
My other first post is car post.
It should also be based on the weight of the passengers in the car (i.e., a fat tax). It's only fair, since heavier people put more wear on the roads.
My other first post is car post.
James Whitty, who heads the Oregon pilot project for the state's transportation department, maintains the GPS would detect only whether the car is inside or outside of Oregon and how many miles it has traveled in state - not its every movement.
"There are people who hear 'GPS,' and they think it's some exotic military device," said Whitty, who said the state will not have the ability, or desire, to monitor drivers' traveling habits. The Oregon device would be a "glorified compass," he said.
Joan Borucki, chief deputy director at the California Transportation Commission and a member of the California Performance Review team that made the recommendation here, insists the device could not track residents' whereabouts.
If this is true, why not just create a device that is no more than a 'glorified' trip odometer that resets itself everytime the motorist fills up for gas? There are far fewer concerns about vehicle tracking in that instance.
All it's going to take to bury this one is a quick call to your representative, or a letter.
Ask a bunch of questions:
who will pay for the devices?
What about shared cars?
Does travel outside the state count?
How about the tourists?
Rental cars?
and on and on and on.
It will die the same death Oregons proposal did.
Blogging because I can...
Why does everything think that people are migrating here from other states? If you stopped counting the immigrants coming from across the border, you would see a massive exodus from the state over the last several years. Try to rent a Uhaul out of the state and see what I mean. They'll practically pay you to drive one into California.
Life in Orange County
So I take it you don't eat!? Don't forget that every piece of food you eat starts with some farmer in the boondocks, and for them to produce that food they need affordable fuel.
>> Let's be honest here, Not everyone can drive a primus around.
>
> In fact, no one can, because it doesn't exist. Maybe you were thinking of the Prius?
The Primus does exist, although they are quite difficult to "drive around".
So they want to charge you not only for the miles you will drive, but some roads and highways they will charge more for than others. They claim all this is because of people buy more fuel efficient cars. Huh since when is reducing gas consumption and reducing emissions a bad thing??? But I guess I could take the GPS off and put in on my grandmother cars. That will keep my mileage low.
How stupid are these people??? If you leave the current gas tax it has it only way of adjusting it self. People who drive more, buy more gas. People with SUV's and other gas guzzlers by more gas. Even illegal aliens with no license and unregistered cars, still pay gas tax.
Then we shall we get into the invasion of privacy with the GPS tracking everywhere we drive.
Aparrantly children in California are all under the impression that the water from a faucet is completely unsafe to drink.
Personally, I drink bottled water often, but I buy it by the case for about $5 (for maybe 24 half-liter bottles). It's convenient to keep bottles in my car for when I'm thirsty and stuck in traffic.
My other first post is car post.
You may not believe but there are other ways of taxing based on road mileage. Every vehicle has an odometer which tracks the distance travelled - use that.
In New Zealand, we have a tax on petrol to fund roads and other useful things. Because diesel vehicles can get vastly different fuel efficiency they use a Road User Charges (RUC) system.
You can buy RUCs from many places like post offices or AA stores. You must keep your RUCs up to date or you face a fairly steep fine (I think it's 3 times what the RUCs would have cost you). The police check the RUCs every time they do a routine stop. Normally the distance travelled is measured from the odometer however large truck and trailer units will often have a hub mounted distance meter (I don't know why).
Fairly simple and doesn't involve expensive privacy-invading tracking units.
And while we're about things - don't bother whinging about increased taxes. The price of petrol in the US is about a third what much of the rest of the world pays.
...but the dealer wouldn't care either way. They'd give you the trade-in value based on 100k miles (i.e., next to nothing).
My other first post is car post.
And just tax breathing since you are exhaling a greenhouse gas. Hell, why not tax living since you are consuming valuable resources and taking up space. This is getting nuts.
At 18.4c per gallon, the average gas tax for a prius driving 10,000 miles a year at $2 a gallon is about $70. The proposed GPS devices cost around $100 -- over a year of gas tax per vehicle. Consider that there are 40M people in California, and each will probably have 5 cars in a lifetime, factor in installation and maintenance of roadside stations and this becomes some real money. A simple 'no parking' sign costs hundreds of dollars to install, these babies will cost 10s of thousands each.
In any case, the argument that high mileage vehicles have lowered gas taxes is outrageous. I don't know hybrid sales numbers, but gas prices have increased substantially since the Prius was released, and every report I've read says gas mileage is way down from its high, thanks to SUVs, trucks, and beefed up engines. A little math should bear out that gas tax has increased, not to mention CA state sales tax, which is applied on top of gas tax.
It doesn't really add up, the gas tax is doing fine and this would cost so much to implement. Other than plots to spy on the populus, I'd say this is this could be back alley to toll-roads and more complex pricing schemes. Once the GPS infrastructure is in place, it doesn't require a whole lot of code to change the tax rate for people driving through 880 during rush hour all by their lonesomes. It could also lead to commuters becoming political footballs -- the SoCal contingent arguing the NoCal lemmings aren't paying their share and vice versa.
so what is to stop me from just disabling the gps device?
I wrote:
And no low income person should pay ANY type of tax... In a capitalist system like ours, the top 50% should be able to pay all taxes for everything. After all, they have like 85% of the wealth.
And you wrote:
The problem with that is that the idea, by design, would encourage a further separation of the classes, or even a secession. It would help destroy the balance of power in the country (and it's bad enough already).
Think about it, the rich feel elite enough as it is, if they're the ones that paid all the taxes,
Who care what they feel? When you take 60-70% of their incomes it REDUCES THEIR POWER. They still have enough money to buy mansions and fancy cars, but they do not then after taxes have enough to manipulate the voters and the govt through media propaganda. There has been a reduction in income tax in the last 25 years (from 70% to about 5-10% for most of the truly wealthy, mainly due to an outright drop in top tax rates and an increase in loopholes. This has given the rich (and the corporations, their surrogates) much more money, obviously, and they have used it to wreak havoc in America, busting unions, outsourcing jobs, increasing immigration, buying the American govt almost outright.
I say disempower them. Cut their nuts off--neuter 'em!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I think that's a wee bit overkill. There's already tax for gas and your car and everything else. The products you buy are more due to transport, this would most likely increase it [think about the trucking industry going millions of miles everyday]. Furthermore, who needs the taxes? It may be a good idea but its also a privacy intrusion. Ok it may be useful for jacked cars or other crimes, but so what. There are already somewhat [not very] efficient ways to do that as it is. Also, there wont be taxes on motorcycles, mopeds, and other kinds of vehicles. Quick, everyone buy a harley!
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
I used to live in LA, and the public transport SUCKS. If i have to go to irvine to see my aunt, it either takes 4 hours and 30$ to reach there (a 40 mile trip), or i can drive down. So to discourage people from driving, they should have more efficient (and cheap) public transportation. Doing something on the government scale can definitely earn some $$s for the state.
So what's to stop people from just filling up gas canisters, instead of directly into their cars? I'd do it, if it saves me a few hundred a year.
And also, the article didn't say if this GPS system only charges for miles traveled on public roads. My Grandfather's pickup never leaves his property, except to go to the gas station. Should he be charged for the "wear and tear" he puts on his own gravel?
* Jaw drops *
Rural parts of states live off of our dime in the cities
Um, you do realize that without the rural parts of the state you wouldn't eat, you wouldn't have any materials to manufacture with, you wouldn't even have a friggen job since nearly everything we do to make money starts in a rural part of a state.
Further more every dime going from city to rural comes back in the form of cheaper everything. Look at the big picture before you sign a death warrent on farming. Unless you want to pay triple prices for a steak since they now has to come from another country.
The biggest of trucks are electric. What you say?? here: AC solutions for haul trucks
Actually most cities live off the the suburban tax base. Oh yea the cities are such a bastion of money for the rural areas. Not really. If you look at places like New Mexico and Texas a large amount of the tax base comes from west texas and and east New Mexico from the oil. Plus you will just pay more for the food you eat and the cloths you wear if you tax the rural areas more. :)
Besides if you can afford 600k for a loft or 3k a month for rent you can afford more taxes. Soak the rich right
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
There is no place on earth that doesn't experience earthquakes.
Yeah, right.
But IIRC, they also only go up to about 35 miles per hour. Not truely effective for road travel.
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
The agriculture industry in the central San Joaquin Valley produces about 1/10 of the California "GDP". (That doesn't include the Imperial valley down around San Diego.)
10% of GDP is 10% of GDP, whether it comes from an urban area or a rural area.
The only place where lower taxes come into effect is the endpoint sales tax on groceries. Sales tax revenues are consumed locally - so you don't really lose.
FWIW, since Ag takes about 3% of the population to produce that 10% of GDP, we are actually more efficient than you: it's you who are the moocher.
If you really want to shift roads expenses to us rural people - go for it. But don't be surprised when the delivery cost on food becomes astronomical to you people who are so foolish to live so far away from it.
Maybe you want to let that sleeping dog lie, eh? Or, you can continue to stab at it with a sharp stick. What do your brains tell you?
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
this is the most retarted idea ive ever hered. Why don't they just tax gasoline. The amout of gas you use is proportional to how much you drive. If you own a big gas guzzler than you can afford to pay more at the pump. Im supprised they could find a tax as regressive as a gas tax and make it even MORE regressive. sheesh
It's not no one's fault, you know. You chose to live in a place built around cars, probably with little accomodation made for anything else. So did a lot of other people. The more people who do that the less options there are. Public transportation won't be improved because everyone has to have a car, so even when they don't need to use the car, they're more likely to do so anyway...the public transit won't be used enough to be good (a bus every hour and a half doesn't even count as having a system IMO...I lived somewhere like that). Not that there would be money to pay for it, with it all going to pay for the upkeep of roads.
Why should you, and all the other people who helped make the bed you all now have to sleep in have to pay for it? Because someone has to, or your whole system, which you are dependent upon, will collapse, or at least degrade.
On the plus side, the more of you who get frustrated with having to pay for your unhealthy, inefficient lifestyle, the more people will be clamoring for alternatives, and maybe suburbia will get some of it's problems fixed.
Me, if I can't find a job in one of the handful of US cities which ISN'T a fucking wreck when it comes to it's infrastructure choices, I'm staying overseas.
Wouldn't it be easier to just tax gasoline sales? If you wanted, you could put in some multiplier based on the fuel efficiency of your vehicle to determine how far was actually driven with the amount of gas purchased.
Just seems like it'd be a hell of a lot easier measuring gas flowing through a nozzle than tracking where cars go after they've filled up.
It isn't strange at all. The water here tastes like shit, even if you put it through a brita. The water that comes out of the tap at my apartment alternates between coming out chalky white or chalky brown. It dries the my skin out after I shower. Thats why we only drink bottled water. Fortunately it is cheap if you buy cases of it. I live in downtown los angeles now, but the water tasted just the same when I lived in pasadena. I've been drinking bottled water my whole life. Maybe the water in San Francisco is better, but I doubt it. The tap water is great in Lake Tahoe though!
Los Angeles, nice place to live, terrible place to visit.
Why not you? You're using a lightly-used road that is probably incurring more per-car costs than a heavily-used road. You're not car pooling. You have ~40 mile daily commute. Who, would you argue, should pay? I'm sure you have a very good reason for not moving closer to your work. That's fine! But there's no reason the economics of transportation should be excluded from such decisions. You already drive a reasonably fuel efficient car -- great! You will bear less of a burden than the H2 drivers making the same commute. And when you buy your next car, there will be even more efficient cars than you current one on the market due to demand.
If you have two cars, you could fill up with the car that has the lower mileage, and siphon the gas over to your high milage car.
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
My thinking though is that it unfairly hurts people who use a light to medium weight truck for work purposes, who are using the road in a consitant amount.
Many countries in the worlds already make concessions for work vehicles. I just think that we don't need technical equipment in cars to charge for usage of roads. We already have the means to handle this through gas taxes. However, I think any California guvernor trying to increase the cost for California drivers will find himself voted out just as fast as Gray Davis, even if you're a famous movie star.
In communist California, Car drives you!
CA recently passed laws increasing the smog testing for older vehicles. Cars companies were very pleased with the legistlation, since it will entice people to buy new cars to replace their othewise perfectly good old ones.
News Releases
2004
* November 15 -- RUFTF meeting Nov. 19
* May 12 -- OSU, ODOT give gas tax alternative first test
* May 11 -- Road User Fee Task Force to meet May 14
2003
* November 7 -- Road User Fee Task Force to meet Nov. 21
* October 8 -- Oct. 10 RUFTF meeting cancelled
* January 10 -- Task Force weeks new revenue system for roads (opinion piece)
2002
* November 13 -- RUFTF to meet Nov. 15
* September 4 -- RUFTF meeting in Salem Sept. 6
* July 2 -- RUFTF public hearing and formal meeting in North Bend
* May 31 -- RUFTF June 4 meeting announced
* April 30 -- RUFTF to hold public meeting in Pendleton
* April 26 -- Road User Fee Task Force to meet May 3 in Pendleton
* April 4 -- April RUFTF meeting
* March 1 -- RUFTF to meet March 8
* January 22 -- RUFTF meeting Feb. 1
2001
* November 21 -- Governor, Legislature announce Road User Fee Task Force members
Modern cars have pretty much 100% tamper-proof odometers - why not just read off the number of miles you drove between smog checks or whatever?
Is it some complication like they can only charge for miles driven with California?
www.sjbaker.org
Actually, California is heavily in debt because of their shoddy accounting practice and spending WAY more then they could get through tax.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
got them into the fiscal mess and now they think the same thing will get them out...
Get your torrents...
I have a cousin who commutes 90 miles each way, for a number of reasons, the most important being that he had a choice of living closer to work or having enough money left over to feed his family. Given the half-million dollar houses in town or quarter-milllion dollar houses in the suburbs, and the high gasoline taxes and even worse gasoline prices (thanks for the war, Mr. President!) he's stuck with for living out in the sticks, why the hell does he need to be fucked out of what little he has left? The drive alone costs him four or more hours a day, on top of the ten he works, the hour getting out of the house, he has maybe two or three hours a day to spend getting to know his sons.
Why the hell does the state need more of his money? Maybe he deserves it on account of not being a rich corporation.
Ah, fuck it. This is what I get for posting under the influence.
This is not my sandwich.
We'll raise fuel taxes, and everyone will starve to death because farmers won't be able to grow food anymore.
paintball
Um, those are NOT electric trucks. Those are diesel turbine based electric trucks. Diesel turbines generate electrical power that drives motors on each wheel. Direct drive in a vehicle that big is prone to all sorts of problems with weight loading (picture putting your car in park while pointed downhill, now try and put it into gear).
The motors are high-torgue, but they cannot generate speeds necessary to move cargo economically.
Youf forgot sales tax on toilet paper
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The tourist question is not so easy to answer. Getting other states to adopt this is going to be very tough. That means lots of drivers not paying the taxes. However, I really don't want to debate these questions, because they are not the real point.
The point is to ask the reps lots of questions. Demand responses, then ask more questions about those, all the while making it known that you are a voter and a voter that knows lots of other voters.
Elected officials rarely hear from more than a very small set of those they serve. When an issue gets loud and it consumes their time and staff resources, that issue gets far more consideration.
It's really the only check we have against industry lobby influences and budget constraints. If they think they can just get more money, they will.
Now, I am not always for the lowest tax, but the tax needs to have a clear need and be well invested for a return I can see. This also means existing taxes need to show this being true before new ones are acceptable.
There are a lot more questions that can be asked too. How about commercial vehicles? They do the most damage, how do they fit into this new tax? What to the companies think about this? Perhaps the lobby might be on the peoples side on this one, particularly if a stupid staffer goes on record saying the tax will have to apply to them too!
It's about noise. Make it and that goes a long way toward nipping stupid things like this in the bud, early before they get traction.
That's all.
Blogging because I can...
Hmmm. How about no! If you actually looked up at how much the red states contribute to the GDP, then maybe you'd realize that perhaps we should have let the south secede after all.
Ever the ones that are full of it Hockey (shit). California already collects 16 billion a year off of motorists, 18 cents a gallon, but the funny thing is they only spend about 4.4 billion of it on roads and transportation. So exactly what is the problem here?
Boo hoo we don't have enough money we need more for the roads.
It's like a kid coming home from school complaining he didn't have enough money for lunch to his parents, but they come to find out instead of buying lunch, he is spending his lunch money on comic books instead.
Of course, it's also going to be the most opposed because it hits everyone and no one can get out of it.
Or maybe it's because the citizenry knows the government is horribly inefficient and a gas tax would soon be followed by a hike to the sales tax, the annual license tax, road usage taxes, rinse, repeat.
We need to repeal the government and privatize the roads.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
When you go to register the car, they can read the odometer and assess mileage based on the difference in reading between registrations. Doesn't sound very difficult at all to do it that way.
Then again, I suppose you don't get to prop up Silicon Valley with something that simplistic.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
I didn't read your comment. I tried to cancel about half a second after I hit submit, while the page still hadn't loaded, but apparently slashdot managed to store the comment to the database. Suffice to say I am a dipshit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't most modern train engines work on the same idea? The drive train is electric, powered by a diesel powered turbine that spins a generator?
The trains seem to have quite a range of speeds available to them. Gearing may be difficult, but it does not seem impossible.
Sounds like an unreasonable search to me. Not that Big Brother, Inc. gives a rat's rear end about the constitution anymore, except perhaps when caught with both hands a little too deeply in the cookie jar.
America: it was nice while it lasted.
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Now I am glad to see this posted.
The only thing I dont understand is
this is not stated louder by everybody.
I mean on average the distance traveled
is VERY much proportional to the gasoline
consumed. So if one [CA] wants to tax
according to mileage, add tax to gas.
The only reason i see for the "GSP tax"
is that they need another place to milk
the same cow (umm, no pun intended), since
gas taxes are already to high. Paying
30-50$ per gas stop is a bit of a sticker
shock (for me at least).
I'm thinking of people who are independent contractors of such. People with their own tree trimming business, roofers, pizza delivery boys(admittedly, they should not be driving a 1 ton crew cab for that!)
And probably my own mentality, of not wanting the state to know how much gas I use for work, and then for my own pleasure.
Well living in California I'd think that any guvernor trying to add additional taxes on cars will have a short lived career.
We Californians love our cars a little bit too much than is good for us.
-- Vote for Cowboy Neal, say NO to taxes on SIGs...
It could be he is a roadie for primus and drives the tour bus.
That's okay as long as there are some oil producing countries left for invasion. C'mon folks, let's burn the remaining oil as quickly as possible so that nobody else can do it. Just for the heck of it (like, why does a dog lick its balls? Because it can). In 30-50 years it's all over anyway. So hummers are the way to go, not this steenkin' hybrid crap. Let's have fun!
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
Sure, keep deluding yourself that China can't do all that and better in a truly open market.
Heavy cars use more gas and damage the road more.
Cars that use less gas are better for the environment. Remember that tax break many states give hybrid cars to encourage people to buy them?
The state realizes hybrid owners are saving too much in gas taxes, so they propose to put a GPS in every car.
This makes no sense.
If you really think hybrid drivers are getting too good of a deal, then reduce the hybrid tax break.
Remember, California, we want more efficient cars on the road, not less.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Looking at the comments between the privacy concerns and the technical issues with GPS people on /. have valid concerns about this. If only someone would invent a device that could be intregrated into a car that would track the amount of miles it has traveled.....
Sean.OutaHere()
Taxing people based on how much they drive is a good idea (because as it stands, the costs of driving are highly externalized -- e.g. the people getting the benefit from driving more are not necessarily the ones paying for it)
The people who drive more pay more. Gas taxes are a fixed price per gallon, so if you buy more gallons, you pay more tax. This is essentially a "mileage tax", modified with a discount for people who have efficient cars and an extra surcharge for people with inefficient SUVs.
I don't see why tracking actual mileage would be better. Gas usage is both a good and anonymous stand-in for mileage, as it is directly related, and has the additional benefit of encouraging resource conservation.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There is no such thing as god.
I work for a big fortune 500 in Orlando, FL
You must be very proud of yourself. Couldn't make it on your own, huh? Had to suck on the teat of a FORTUNE 500 company? I understand.
I guess that no matter how much I make, I should subject my wife and two children to a crappy community with drugs and violence?
You're already subjecting them to living with you, so I'd assume that a life of drugs and violence would be an upgrade for them.
Sounds like another pain in the ass to avoid when filling up my motorcycle. On Topic though, Fuck paying by the mile. A 400 lb motorcycle doesnt wear away the road as quickly as a 2500 lb car doesnt wear the road as quickly as a 7500 lb Humvee etc. Making Pay by mile reasonably fair would be more complicated than its worth, just up the gas tax if they need (ha!) more revenue.
http://www.homle.com/aer/2004election_by_iq.png
You know, it is actually possible to pinpoint where the idiots live.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
You'll rev the odometer just before going to the dealer, so you'll sell a "gold condition" 10k mi car to him.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
it's a computer, live in my car, was paid with my money? I can hack it. Indetectably.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
So that you'll know: down here in Brasil we have a place called Planalto Central that has roughly the area of three to five Texas (it's basically one-third of our country, that in turn is bigger than continental US). It's one big arenite-basalt rock. No seismic earthquakes, the only (less than 3 richter) localized tremors are terrain accomodation, not seismic activity. No volcanos, no quakes. AT ALL.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Rural areas consume more in taxes than they put in. It's just indirect. Instead of getting a check from the "Dept. of Welfare", they get subsidies, pork barrel projects and ungodly sums spent on a bloated military.
Oh, Edmund, can it be true? that I hold here, in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green?
It's GPS, it requires line of sight. It could be very simple to block the signal out and drive around for free.
They will also need to monitor you entering various parts of the cities and then do a cross-reference to your travel data. So they might as well just have a congestion charge system as used in London and save everyone the cost of messing up their cars by fitting overpriced GPS hardware (can you say monopoly).
Yes, because Christians only vote for Republicans...
They should also make the GPS feed available (in some way that doesnt allow someone to mess with it and defeat the system) so that people can plug in things like in-car navigation or whatever.
After all, what is the point of having a car with one government mandated GPS for this and a second GPS reciever for in-car navigation.
actualy I'dd advise not to drive with primus
42
I'm tired of hearing that rich people are necessary so that poor people can have jobs. You bought into the neo-liberal propaganda, big time.
What is needed for job creation is capital and capital mostly is borrowed. You can have a well functioning economy where the whole capital comes from savings of what you would call "poor" or middle income people and is allocated through the banking system.
No ultra-rich investors are necessary.
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
GPS in new cars to calulate the tax you owe ? Second-hand car prices are going to go up - sell your used car in California !
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
This being Britain, of course, it would doubtless be levied in addition to the existing car tax and fuel tax (and congestion charges if you drive into London) instead of replacing them. And they'd probably make you pay to have the damn transponder fitted to your car in the first place - and then charge VAT on top of it!
You must think in Russian.
I'd even pay MORE for such a system, where I would only pay for my car, my insurance, the gas I use and the miles I drive. No more taxes, road taxes, car taxes and whatever other taxes they impose on me/us right now!
Don't confuse the will of California with the will of the USA.
Several years ago, Connecticut abandoned all toll booths in favor of a gas tax. Gas isn't as cheap as surrounding states, but there's no money wasted on the tollbooth infrastructure. Or GPS units.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
You forget that when you raise gasoline prices, you are raising prices for everyone. Think about the companies with the huge fleets of cars and trucks. This will get very expensive.
-- Bryan
Wouldn't taxing gasoline accomplish the same thing? If you tax gas, then you're effectively taxing people based on the amount that they drive.
Why spend all this money when you could effect all drivers at once - raise the gas tax!
That way if you drive a big H2 or SUV then you pay more tax per mile you drive.
If the truck drivers and movers of industry bitch then offer to send a 'rebate' check for all the receipts they summit on a yearly basic (that way the government gets the money and collects the interest while they hold it). This did not really work in Canada as it cost the highly efficient government bureaucrats more to process the receipts then they could collect in interest - so they kept the price the same and stopped offering rebates.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
Next up for taxation is sex. Soon the state of California will put a "special" chip in or around our groin area to determine how much sex we have and tax us accordingly. For a lot of us geeks, we'll come out shining as we are like Vulcans - sex once every seven years. Unless you're a chronic masturbater, then you're in trouble. Ha!
But seriously, what a ridiculous proposal! Why doesn't the state of California propose more public transportation? My sister lives in San Diego, and the public transportation is aweful compared to other big metropolitan areas like Chicago or New York.
I go out to San Diego about 3 times a year. Each time, I see a new road extension being built or the highways widened. They should be be expanding their Coaster rail system (or similar). This also makes sense since California is worried about keeping pollution down.
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
For years the trucking industery has had this in operation ... all the domed cans on the roof's of semi's track the semi to within 3 feet. The data is feed back to the company that tabs up how many miles the truck moved in each state that figure is than multiplied by the road use tax (from .31 to .55 (ohio i belive) per mile, depending on state) this is why truck stops don't charge semi's fuel tax. Instead the charge for how many miles, it was forced when trucks started fueling in a cheaper state and driving thru another without buying fuel. Often trucks fuel in indiana or pennsyvania in order to avoid giving Ohio any money. States started to see that fuel taxes were going down and discovered that peopel would by the cheapest gas (DUH!!) even if it ment from out of state.
I'm told you are what you eat, does that mean I can be you by tomorrow with some A1?
that they don't institute this in texas, everyone in the state would be broke within a month.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
The man has a point. Putting all additional tax on fuel would have multiple benefits: 1) No additional hardware to put into cars, no doubt at the vehicle owner's expense. 2) Fuel-efficient cars are encouraged while gas guzzling SUVs are discouraged. 3) Avoiding tax on fuel is much more difficult than hacking a GPS tracking device. Bottom line - it would keep things simple. Alternatives would totally needlessly complicate things.
exactly. And my orignal point was to dispute the poster who said that only diesel engines have the torque available to move a truck. Electric motors have the best torque curves across all speeds compared to combustion engines. Electric trains and trucks are usually direct drive, or fixed gearing to avoid complexity and failure points.
Obviously, the electricity has to come from somewhere. But an electric drive-train opens up many other options: regenerative braking with a battery, dynamic braking which is more reliable and conisitant than mechanical brakes, and constant RPMs on the diesel for efficiency and reduced wear.
Da comrade!
!hoD
It must be called Skynet in honor of the "Governor." I'm sure CA can get a liscense if there is a copyright issue on the term.
Germany is about to start a similar system for trucks soon, called toll collect that already got the local big brother award back in 2002. Once such a system is in action for trucks, no doubt it'll be only a matter of time untill police will push to have it implemented in cars too. Pretty orwellian.
Life has become the ideology of its absence - T.W. Adorno
Yes, the problem is real and they need to find a solution, but this isn't it. What about bi-annual inspections that look at your odometer readings or something non-invasive like that. If that's unacceptable to them or to the people, then they need to find something else. Or simply raise the gas tax accordingly. That's the best way to do it. Let's do some math. We'll keep simple, rounded numbers.
Gas Price (Tax Incl.)- $1.00 / gallon
Gas Tax - $.40
Car A - Guzzler - 20 mi/gal - 10 gallon tank
Car B - Hybrid - 40 mi / gal - 10 gallon tank
After 400 miles of driving, the guzzler has paid $20 in gas, while the hybrid has only paid $10.
Now, as more hybrids hit the road, up the gas tax to $.60 and gas is no $1.20. After another 400 miles, the guzzler has paid $24.00 while the hybrid has paid $12.00.
So the guzzler is paying twice as much of the tax increase as the hybrid. It increases the revenue for the state while continuing to encourage people to drive hybrids. There are already hybrid SUVs on the roads and, whithin the next few years, you'll probably see hybrid versions of most vehicle-types. Hybrid owners will complain that they're now paying more taxes, but the truth is, they're still paying significantly less in taxes than they would be if there had been no tax increase and they didn't own a hybrid. The people who own gas guzzlers are still disproportionately taxed - as they should be since most gas guzzlers weigh more and put more wear and tear on the roads (at least until we get more hybrid SUVs) and they create far more pollution.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
do not welcome the Calizonia overlords!
Please leave my state. All of the CA. asshats moving here to AZ. are going to fuck up the gun ownership laws, smoking laws etc.
I do not want to be a mini california, and frankly you guys are nuts.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Why not adapt the I-Pass system from Illinois Tollway, its an existing system and the cost of development would be alot less than a new one.
Even though I agree that we as a nation drive to much. We dont have the public transportation systems in place to really get over our car addiction. The American dream of a house in the burbs, and the idea that we are entitled to this, has essentially doomed us to this fate.
This proposition will probably be defeated by public opinion. Its a tax that will adversly effect the drivng poor who must commute long distances for jobs that have moved out of the urban centers.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Is all that tax money used to pay for road maintenance or does it go into the general treasury?
Some states here have sales taxes dedicated for transportation, but more often than not the legislature co-opts it for the general treasury.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
" Every year during my review, I just pray the words 'slashdot.org' aren't mentioned."
I just had to say that your sig both made me smile, and a little nervous. I think I know how you feel.
I am at work now.
like g-a-r-y, only different
While I agree it's the perfect tool, I wish that we would stop calling them "sin" taxes. For one, not all of us believe in "sin". For another, wouldn't it be more appropriate to call it (ab)use taxes? Think about it: you (ab)use your lungs (through smoking), you pay to fix them; you (ab)use your liver (through drinking), you pay to fix it; you (ab)use the roads, you pay to fix them. That way, you're not forcing morals on anyone and just being more honest. I know it's mostly semantics, but the idea of a "sin" tax just bothers me.
Nathan's blog
So P, S, Rayleigh, and Love waves (i.e., seismic waves) aren't transmitted from those seismic zones through your central plateau (basalt)? Maybe the magic Smurfs keep the waves out, much like the smoke from the smoking sections stays out of the non-smoking sections of the open-room restaurants.
Oh, wait, you said that seismic waves are due to "terrain accomodation" instead of "earthquakes." Maybe that has something to do with the earthquake weather y'all get down there?
Damn, I wish I'd known that before I got my Geophysics degree. Oh well, I guess I can just go ahead and go into the glamorous world of fast food.
Yeah, right.
These court decisions, and the various legislative responses to them, led people in the relatively wealthy areas (read "people who care enough to vote") to limit their property taxes dramatically. In the end, school funding is equal -- yes -- but equal at a very low level. People remember the tax cut and the 2/3 vote necessary to raise taxes, but they don't remember or even know the political environment that caused it to happen.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Sorry if I'm repeating something already said by someone else, but, umm, don't cars already have a "distance travelled" device that must, by law, not be tampered with? I think it's called the odometer. WTF do they need a GPS for? That just reports location - calculating distance is a side effect. Were they just trying to come up with a more expensive way to track something that is already being tracked by every car in the state, or are they, idunno, trying to slip a tracking device through on the back of seemingly innocuous legislation?
Tin foil hat? No. Either they're stupid and wasting money (for not using the odometer), or they're lying.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Oshkosh is working on a hybrid truck which means a diesel engine with A/C electric torque motors. There are several benefits to this as well as some potential downsides such as decreased overall efficiency when using a pure D/E drivetrain on a highway truck. Obviously some large off-highway trucks used in the mining industry as well as loaders, etc. are D/E now because of the flat torque curves of electric motors and the elimination of mechanical complexity of routing power through the vehicle using transmissions. BTW *any* engine can be used to move a truck with torque amplified by the correct gearing. The total power will determine speed and load ability. It just so happens that diesel is more efficient as displacement increases, a fact supported by the use of diesel engines on large ships.
When he says he is in favor of amending the Constitution to permit the foreign born to run for president so long as they have been citizens for 20 years and been residents for 20 years?
The ONLY person that applies to is Arnold. There is just no way that Henry Kissinger could run
Tru Googleing Hatch and Amendment and see how many times the good Mormon from Utah proposes this amendmen.
The public record prohibits dispute where: (1) Hatch proposes the amendment; and, (2) Hatch supports Arnold's candidacy; and, (3) Hatch is openly biased towards his Church.
Incoherent? Inarticulate? Not where Mormons operate with the authority of God in their public policy pronouncements.
Dispute the facts.
- the state will not have the ability, or desire, to monitor drivers' traveling habits...
i on s/news/news/article_208035
Obviously they can track driving habits, and admittedly that's why they want to use it. Now you can call it a "glorified compass", and you can even have the easter bunny install it, but that doesn't change the fact that it tracks your global position. That's what a global positioning system does.--[James Whitty]
they couldn't tell where these people have been. That's just not going to be there," [Joan Borucki] said.
--http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/08/19/sect
Interestingly enough, I've lived in California for most of my life and I've never experienced a single earthquake. So it's not like everywhere in California is having earthquakes all the time.
I wouldn't mind experiencing a mild one just to see what it feels like.
Just in case you did not get it the soak the rich was meant to be a joke.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's OVER, man. Game Over. It's OVER, man. Game Over. It's OVER, man. Game Over.
The Streets of San Francisco are out on DVD?
No way!
We can _import_ more food from _third_world_countries_??? Where, by God, do you think much of the food we produce goes? And do you honestly think that the American agricultural system makes food _more_ expensive? American farms are not simply a man and his family out cultivating the earth with hand tools. American farms are massive highly efficient crop growing mechanisms. American farms grow so much food so cheaply that we practically give it away to many third-world countries that can't grow sufficient food for themselves. While there are a few specialized subsidies that I don't fully grok, like tobacco farm subsidies, many of the subsidies paid to farmers (in the midwest, at least) are in the form of "We'll pay you _not_ to grow crops on this plot of ground". These are in place usually for things like erosion management, not welfare or crop price management.
The other part of your post, that rural areas consume more in tax dollars than they contribute, seems rather suspect. Could you please post a source for that information? I live in the sticks and I work in Chicago. I see both sides every day. Taxpayers payed for millenium park. Tax payers paid for the skyway. Tax payers paid for soldier field, the destruction of meigs field and its subsequent conversion into a park. Tax payers paid for the renovation of lake shore drive, expansion of McCormick place, hired trucks that sit idle, and the destruction and rebuilding of every major route into and out of this city for the last couple of years. Taxpayers carry the burden for Cows on Parade, Bobblehead baseball player statues, wrought iron railings on just about every damned thing, new planters around every city administration building, and a towing program that steals people's cars and sells them to the towing company at scrap prices. Tax payers pony up to dye the river green, host the Taste of Chicago, and put on the air and water show. When massive amounts of rain or snow fall, the farmers smile and welcome it. A city sends out hundreds of taxpayer-sponsored workers to clear the snow or put up signs and block traffic on flooded streets that the taxpayer-sponsored storm sewers aren't maintained properly to drain. That's only a small percentage of the money-sink that each major modern city has become and doesn't even include the welfare state (government assisted or provided housing), the salaries of the thousands employed in the bloated beurocracies, or the added law enforcement/fire protection required in a major city. If you have information indicating that rural areas are consuming more than their fair share of tax dollars, I'd like very much to see it, because I just don't know where the equivalent amount of money could possibly go.
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I'm not sure about wherever you might live, but where I'm from, even the most desolate rural road gets more traffic than that. Roads that are as infrequently used as you describe are typically covered with a thin layer of gravel and are not really maintained at all, so there is not all that much money being spent to keep them up. Most roads in rural areas see way more traffic than you describe and are maintained in the following manner:
That's it. That's the entire maintenance schedule. Now, compare that with, say, Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the more subtle points of maintaining an urban road like stripes (rural roads typically aren't afforded the luxury of actual stripes...) and traffic controls (...or traffic controls), but the point is, take any one component of the budget used to maintain a single Chicago street like LSD, Michigan, Clark, State, Wacker, Roosevelt, etc... and spend that money where I live. You could repave, light, and paint stripes on every road in my town for what Chicago spends on landscaping alone for one of their roads in a single year.
This entire thread is a fabulous illustration of just how little grasp city dwellers have of what goes on in the land of well water. Lots of "brilliant insight" based on "facts" I can only describe as "delusional"
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Think about the companies with the huge fleets of cars and trucks.
Oh, the poor companies with huge fleets of cars and trucks! Their thousands of miles of driving and beating down the roads with their heavy loads should really get a break. We should take up a collection for them. A bake sale, maybe.
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
Schwarzenegger was elected largely because the people were angry about the vehicle tax. His first act in office was to roll the tax back to pre-Davis levels (despite the fact that the state was in the red).
Now, a year later, he's busily raising...VEHICLE TAXES!
You gotta admire his panache.
Yay my first trollllll!! Well I was a bit hot about this but having lived in Canada half my young life (born there) and the US the latter I will ask that the Canada MIND ITS OWN FLIPPIN BUSINESS.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
For what it's worth, there's effectively no such thing as corporate taxes; corporations charge as much money as they wish to make the profit they desire. If you increase the tax they have to pay, they increase the price of the goods or services they produce commensurately. Reducing the taxes they pay will have a reducing effect on prices as well, albeit somewhat slower - the 'float', so to speak. This holds true for monopolistic industries as well as those which have decent competition, because generally each competing company is paying the same level of taxes.
"The Samurai who does not fear death becomes invincible."
They buy services. They buy people. They trade intangible things. They buy companies. I don't think they spend that much on material things. A flat sales tax would necessarily tax these immaterial things or it would be horribly regressive.
Look up again the size, frequencyt and intensity of the seismic activity IN THE MENTIONED 23 areas. Ohh. BTW, I lived 4 years inside the Paraguaçu zone hehehe... in the city of Paraguaçu (the center of it) itself. And, guess what? No quakes whatsoever in four long years.
... where I do live now) are in the Basaltic plate.
Just FYI, only 13, 14, and 17 (it's Paraopeba, not Paraopebas, and it's not close to Brasilia, it's even closer (200+km) to Belo Horizonte
Now, what earthquake weather? This is interesting, because I have never seen any reference to it.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
You would answer my question, but... hehehe... I will admit my error:
"no quakes that could be felt without using instruments whatsoever in four years"
as in... I could not feel any quakes in four years, but I guess people living in LA could. And I was in the center of one of the 23 seismic zones in my country. Ah, but if you'd like: 6 months after I moved back to Belo Horizonte, they registered an 2.9 richter quake in my old town. Yes, they do register one -- each 20 years.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The Feds determine what is a car, a light truck or heavier vehicle for emissions and CAFE purposes. Yes, this means something can be classed as a truck by the Feds when determining its pollution limits and possible guzzler penalty, and as a car by your state government. Crazy, isn't it?
Sustainability and energy independence essay