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California Wants GPS Tracking Device in Every Car
HTS Member writes "California has a new excuse for more taxes. Claiming losses due to fuel-efficient cars, such as Gasoline/Electric Hybrids, California is cooking-up a new system to punish people who aren't using enough gasoline. They want to tax commuters by the mile. How would this be accomplished? By requiring everyone to install a GPS device in their vehicle, and charge them their "taxes" every time they fuel-up. From the article: 'Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that.. [a] team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.'"
They want to tax commuters by the mile. How would this be accomplished? By requiring everyone to install a GPS device in their vehicle,
I am hardly a tin foil hat wearing type but, the problem with this is that like every other means to create databases that track/document individuals or groups, they will eventually end up being mined for data that will likely violate your right to privacy. Just remember, Bush is pushing for the Patriot Act again and databases like this will simply be folded into devices like the Patriot Act.
As an aside: gawd, I hate their use of "patriot" that way, does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation? Whose idea was it to use "patriot" and why? It seems like the worst/most transparent type of label possible for such a group of laws that seek to strip away personal freedoms and rights to privacy.
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I am instituting use of the Slashdot search feature to accurately track Slashdot duplicates and tax appropriately:
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The roads has to be maintained.
I see more people carpooling (I pay the taxes, you buy the gas)...or even better, more people riding bikes (for those lucky enough to live in bike-friendly towns).
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Why not just read the mileage once a year when you get your car inspected and base the taxes off that?
what are the smoking!!! I have a GPS and I can tell you this will NEVER work. 1. GPS is useless in areas with lots f tall buildings like Boston for example (my last trip there my gps was a total joke. Jamming the receiver would be a piece of cake do to the low power nature of it and if they try to get clever and make it so my car won't go with out a signal there going to be a lot of cars stuck in parking structures.
If the unit doesn't get power, it can't operate. Or you can pull it off your car and leave it in your driveway. Fill up cherry cans instead of your car.
wasn't this already a topic a month or two ago?
Although I'd really like if said tax helped lower the price of gas. Maybe less people will drive 'cause of it, and less gas will be wasted; supply might go up a bit.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Why not have the car's mileage checked annually and just get a tax statement then ? I don't have a problem with the concept of people who use the roads paying more for the roads . . . I just don't want to be tracked everywhere I go.
Yeah tax by the mile... they tried that here in Holland. It didn't require a GPS device though. It worked with certain portals. Once you had passed one it would add an amount of miles to your pile.
- speeding fines.
- privacy issues.
Feel free to add more. I can't think of anything else right now.Completely diffrent.
Hmmm.
Now we can finally get rid of those pesky gas taxes!
Sounds typically Californian. Why not note the odometer yearly and asess the tax?
thats all i got to say about that.
-F. Gump
Need I count on my twelve fingers the many reasons this will not fly?
Also, the whole tone of the submission seems pejorative.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
That's a user fee.
Pay-per-mile highways.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Speaking of tin foil hats . . . I'd just get a tin foil hat for the GPS antenae . . . Then as far as CA government is concerned; my car never left home.
By the way, rather than a GPS unit on every car, why not just institute a smart toll system instead? Wouldn't this be cheaper, not to mention not being quite as scary from a privacy standpoint?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
so what happens when people start to realize that they're getting boned? they start taking city busses? it'd be pretty damn funny to watch the government eat the bill for the roads once everyone decides that they don't want to be tracked via their cars.
After decades of pushing for more fuel efficient cars, now they want to punish you for owning them.
And the next logical step will have to be requiring drivers to have them just to drive in from out of state.
Then the Federal government will have to standardize the units so that Oregon units cross-operate with California units.
Followed by insurance companies using them to determine not only how much you drive now (which is often done by the odometer), but do you drive in more dangerous areas, and hence should be charged more.
It will never end, except the the consumer will pay and pay and pay for something they never wanted in the first place!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So how much tax could California collect from a smog producing riding lawnmower throwing out the toxic fumes of 900 efficient cars. What prevents people from filling up with a hooptie that has a 100 gallon gas can in the trunk and taking it home then filling up the car? Or better yet recycling the tinfoil hat for, uhmm, more constructive purposes.
A jab with 220v will do nicely, by accident or on purpose. Or wrapping with aluminum foil. Either way, what then?
Not that I support their cause in any way, but to nitpick, why use GPS? Commercial vehicles have long tracked milage without using technology that could be used to track one's whereabouts. If they simply must know how many miles you drive, why not use an electronic odometer rather than tracking your actual movements? Or is it not just the milage they are interested in? Hmmmm.....
What a concept, really.
Sorry, conspiracy theorists, this has nothing to do with "punishing people for not consuming enough gasoline". This is about making people pay for what they use. Think of toll roads.
Now I'm not saying that the planned implementation, by any means, is sound. The concept makes perfect sense, but only if it replaces a current gas tax system. Otherwise it's just another tax.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
This smacks of influence by the oil industry to hold on to its revenues while the people are moving to more efficient alternatives (hybrid cars).
It's not like you can't find the GPS unit and remove it, or just disconnect it so it won't show up until the annual inspection.
And here in Texas, there's an alternative to it - tollways. Beltway 8, the Westpark Tollway - they get tons of traffic every day, and at a buck-twenty-five a stop, they rake in plenty of cash, too.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Wow! This is such a great idea! I don't know why nobody came up with it first! As a strong supporter, I would like to nominate my company, TrackingStats4Sale, to aggregate and manage the information that's gathered from this.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I thought every car already came with a device that did just that...
sig fault
Here in Massachusetts the powers-that-be routinely go after people who live in the state but register their cars out of state, usually up in New Hampshire. Mass. has some strict regulations about auto insurance, but NH doesn't require insurance at all. So some people who live near the border with NH register their cars in NH. It also saves on state excise taxes. Of course once or twice a year the local news carries stories of how the police troll the neighborhoods looking for cars with NH license plates parked in MA driveways so that they can give out tickets (if the same car is seen there multiple days). I can see a similar huge upswell of out-of-state registrations in CA if this draconian Big Brother law is passed.
Sometimes I might not motice the originals; the dupes would be good in those cases. If anything, News 12 in my city dupe far more with their news I think, often repeating it.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
It's called the Odometer.
I can see this being easily defeated, just wrap the device in tin foil.
Before you leave your house, wrap the device in foil, go about your business, and unwrap it when you get back home. They will never know you left you home, and cant prove you did anything wrong.
Don't live in California.
This is going to do so much damage to costs in business (think of anything that delivers). Why would I want to start my business in Cali when I can be far more successful in other states? I personally won't support it.
It's also hypocritical. It punishes success.
Berto
And they wonder why so many businesses left California for Oregon. Go figure. I guess this is a way to scare away residents now, too.
A love beyond compare...
Come on this is not cool. Its worse then a cumsumption tax. This is going to cause mass problems. I don't need big brother charging me for useing the freeways they are not trunpikes.
You are dreaming, or smoking.
Governments do not lower taxes once they have established them.
You will have a Gas Tax and a mileage tax.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Checking the odometer won't work because you will be paying taxes for all driving, including driving on roads that aren't in CA - driving that CA shouldn't be taxing you for.
How can anyone in their right mind make such a tax?
Aren't republicans against raising taxes?
Shouldnt we be raising taxes for people who are using lots of gas?
Aren't we trying to avoid being completly dependant on the middle east?
Maybe they're confused. We're start global warming on mars not earth!
Just fit one of these above the antenna. You can fake any journey or lack thereof that you choose.
Evil people are out to get you.
A per-mile use tax is in place in a lot of states. Its called a toll booth. Are there no toll booths on CA highways?
This is just stupid. What if you own a large ranch and drive around in it, not on public roads? What if you drive on (private) toll road freeways, like the one we have in Southern California? What about the people who will obviously find a hack for the system? What if you pick up your gas in a large plastic tank and avoid paying fees? This is ridiculous, and whoever thought this up should face electoral consequences.
A much better way to handle this problem is to simply track the number of miles that each vehicle is driven, from the moment that the vehicle has Californian license plates. California already has a system for mandatory smog checks. The technicians at the smog station transmit the results of the smog checks directly to the state computer system.
The technicians could also tranmit the odometer reading as well. Then, the state government could simply determine the number of miles that you have driven the car since the last smog check and could then send you a bill for the use of Californian roads.
So both my Ford Focus and Giant Urban Assault Vehicle get to pay the same tax, sure the UAV uses more gas, and tears up the road more, but if we both put 50 miles on the cars, then we both get taxed the same.
Tin foil! I knew this hat would come in handy some day!
For those not in the know, a pretty thin layer of tinfoil will block GPS signals quite effectively (faraday cage), thus negating the ability of this system to charge you for miles.
And of course, they're not going to be able to prosecute you for losing signal, due to the aforementioned problems with GPS signals in urban envoironments.
They next make us all were flexible bands around our torso and then assess a charge each time your lungs expand and contract ... gotta pay for all those clean air initiatives ...
I would be in favor of jacking up the gasoline tax instead. This would put more pressure on the enviromental offenders that drive SUV's and other inefficient vehicles. Afraid that this will punish businesses? Give them a tax credit or tax rebate for business vehicles that are legitimately needed for the business.
I live in South Orange County (mission Viejo) and work in North Hollywood (about 70 miles each way). My employer covers me for $0.375/Mile for my commute, but I wonder how much they would actually hit me with taxes, and if my employer would cover it. All GPS musings aside (everyone else will bitch about that), this tax would really kill people that have to pay for gas to drive far to work every day, and reward those who can afford to live close to their office. Is it a new trend to tax the more needy before taxing the more priveledged? Oh wait... durr.
Isn't this why we have freeways instead of toll roads already? We have taxes already on our gasoline, so if you want to save money, get a more efficient vehicle.
Continue to drive a gas guzzler and make sure I don't consider purchasing a hybrid later. Bad governance like this shouldn't be rewarded with a favorable outcome.
Certainly, it encourages carpooling and other mileage-saving techniques ("Hey neighbor, I'm going to the supermarket, need anything? You can return the favor next week.")
The tax can't be *too* much, or using a delivery service becomes more economical. Also can't you write off some expenses driving to/from work??
Either way, there's a disincentive to "just drive around"... which is good for people's wallets, and the environment. Of course. the CA. gov't might see even more decreases in revenues because of this...
Welcome to a world controlled by the Bush crime family. Those thugs are the ones ramming this through in CA. They hate our freedoms and want to steal them from us. These virtual chains have already be discussed at length at:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/
Please visit.
Recall.
...i could force my employer to give me more money when i cant balance my budget...
always mosh clockwise
Too much of a violation of privacy. Why not just tax all of these Hummers piloted by housewives talking cell phones I see here everyday in SoCal?
This guy is way out there
This article smells of Sensationalism. Note the lack of detail in the article.
...
Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogethe
Who are these "Officials"? The Governor of California? A low-level bereaucrat? There are plenty of low-level bereaucrat in sector 7-G who consider ideas which never really materialize.
Changing the tax structure at this level in California or Oregon would require some approval by the State sentate and legistlature.
Smells of sensationalism
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Banned those pesky fuel efficient vehicles!
Mandatory Hummers for everyone!
OCO is Loco
Besides the privacy issues, the cost of enforcement will be huge. Probably half the tax collected would go into setting up GPS units and having accountants go over this stuff. Besides, what happens for visitors from out of state?
Why not just increase the gas tax a bit. This will encourage people to use cleaner cars.
There are plans in the works that would replace the current UK system of road tax with a per-mile scheme similar to CA's or an increase in the number of toll-roads. Although it is true that paying £120 ($227) is extremely unpopular surely there's a better way to pay for our roads.
As far as wear and tear on roads, passenger vehicles and light trucks (including SUVs) are generally responsible for a miniscule portion of road wear. The VAST majority of road wear due to vehicle travel (as opposed to weather/expansion/settling/etc.) is from large trucks and buses. A fully loaded semi has up to about 10,000 times the impact of a passenger car (more commonly in the 500-2,000 range) as far as road wear goes.
The big issue is not paying for road wear (if we based taxes entirely on road wear due to vehicle use every trucking company in the country would be taxed out of business over night) caused by vehicles, but rather the road capacity they necessitate. A semi needs about 2-3 times the capacity (space) of a passenger car; passenger cars, SUVs, light trucks, etc. basically require the same road capacity. The purpose of this GPS system (which seems overly intrusive to me, even if it does make a lot of sense in many respects) is to base taxes on the actual cost incurred by a car - not for repairs due to wear inflicted by the car, but costs incurred by building and sustaining a road system with enough capacity to handle the traffic. The vast majority of maintenance work done on roads is not due to traffic volume, it is due to natural processes like weathering. Larger, higher-capacity roads cost more to build and maintain than smaller roads. From this perspecitve it makes a lot of sense to tax people based on how much they drive (how much capacity they use) rather than how much gas they use (which, as far as road wear and capacity goes, has little do do with the costs incurred).
In my opinion we shouldn't be looking at reducing gas taxes (they should and do provide an added incentive for people to drive more efficient cars), but it is reasonable to look at other criteria for basing taxes on as well. This GPS is just way too invasive; law enforcement already uses things like FasTrak passes to track people's movements, you know that they aren't going to be able to help themselves from getting hold of the GPS data (and in many ways it would be their responsibility to do so).
But this is effectively a tax hike. What would be nice is to see a reduction in my state tax, and this as incrememntal amount on top of that.
Instead of installing a GPS in each car, why not install a device that determines the distance traveled based on the number of revolutions of the wheel multiplied by its circumference?
(Oh, man--I should have gotten a patent for that idea instead of posting it on slashdot...!)
Seriously, cars have high gasoline consumption for one (or both) of two reasons:
1. They are big
2. They are fast
Bigger, faster cars do more damage to the roads and kill more people each year, so it makes sense that their drivers should have to pay more in gas taxes.
Like California needs any more laws that encourage people to drive bigger cars- they already have the loophole described in this article.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Sir, why is your car completely wrapped in aluminum foil?
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
Getting their grubby hands on our money. This isn't fixing an environmental problem, this is fixing a taxation problem. And those administering the shakedown don't care how Rube Goldberg their solution is, because someone else is paying for that.
That's just great. I think state senators need to have "REMEMBER THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES" tattooed onto their butts.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Lots of Californians license their cars in Nevada or so I have heard to avoid stupid goverment taxes & regulations.
we just read about choicepoint's data on consumers (i.e. names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports) being stolen. Now imagine if that same vulnerable database contained a record of everywhere you went. (Yes, I know people are already data mining cell phone records to get that, but I don't think we should make their lives any easier.)
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
So what? The people with gas guzzling cars do a disproportional amount of damage to the environment and our lungs. In fact there are all sorts of warnings about how lead from gas basically drops the IQ of city kids by 10 points or something. Encouraging them to get more environmentally friendly cars is good. And once everyone has fuel efficient cars, the gas tax will be "fair".
Also, the gas tax avoids privacy issues, and is way less expensive to implement.
Ok first we're forced to buy fuel efficient cars, and I can understand that and support that as it protects private and public property rights in land investments (acid rain, toxic runoff from pig farms, etc) and it helps with public health. Now they want to punish Californians for obeying the first set of regulations? This is why I am no longer a leftist, you cannot reconcile the pet causes of the left with one another. When it's not the environment, it's the poor, but what what happens when the poor have to be blatantly shafted to protect the environment through higher taxes and immediate costs that they might not be able to afford? You know what, if the big government politicians and media personalities want to force this on tax payers, let's add a constitutional amendment saying that they have to give up all of their assets to pay for the tax payers' cost of compliance. That means we go through Hollywood and Sacramento like a barbarian horde nationalizing assets to pay for the common man's compliance with these elitist, utopian schemes. I have to give a big round of applause to the politicians though because they prove libertarians right at every step of the way. We get called nutcases today and five years later vindicated by public policy. The only way out of this is to vote for a minor party because that's the only way to kick out these professional morons. That's really all they are, people who get paid to defy common sense and to avoid anything that can be construed as brain use beyond their brain stem. Part me almost thinks that the illegal immigration wave in California will be a blessing because introducing new, fresh blood into California might actually bring some sanity back to the state. Funny how my state, Virginia, is getting hit hard over its "underwear exposure law," but that wonderful bastion of progress, the People's Republik of Kalifornia is now debating putting big brother in their tax payer's back seats. No doubt that once it's proven modestly enforcable, it'll be latched onto some federal mandate and we Virginians will go to an annual auto inspection only to find out we need to spend several hundred dollars to help our government spy on us to be in compliance with a federal law that we never supported.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Why not install embedded GPS devices in everyone's skull? Then you can punish people for not consuming enough gasoline by taxing them for walking too.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Explain how this would be a disincentive to buy a fuel-efficient car? Are ONLY these cars being targeted for this tax? NOPE!
If anything, it's a disincentive to drive a lot. Maybe it will encourage people to bike more. That's a Good Thing (tm) IMHO.
Altogether, after RTFA, it sounds like a very fair plan.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
This is great for gas companies, but horrible for everyone else. It practically removes all incentive for buying fuel-effecient cars. That's not to say hybrids, because they aren't significantly more fuel effecient. Hybrids are just being used as the buzz-word to help push-through laws the gas companies have wanted for quite some time now.
It sure is great to see the "greenest" state in the country cracking down on people who are being environmentally friendly. I think this will be a still-born proposal like many others... But stranger things have become laws in the past. If this law does pass, I think I'll put my house up for sale and move to Arizon. Just a mile outside the Cailfornia border, you don't have to deal with this stupidity, and the prices of fuel, natural gas, and electricity are far lower.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
California has a new excuse for more taxes. Claiming losses due to fuel-efficient cars, such as Gasoline/Electric Hybrids, California is cooking-up a new system to punish people who aren't using enough gasoline.
This is a little off - they aren't punishing people for the amount of gasoline that they don't use....they just don't want to lose money as people use less. So they are wanting to switch away from a gasoline usage based tax system. Still, sounds like a stupid idea - people should be incented to switch away from fossil-fuels as much as possible.
And why exactly should I have to pay the same per mile as my SUV driving neighbors for road repair, when their vehicles are putting several fold more strain on the road?
And about putting foil around the thing: when you go to fill up the tank, the interogating device may note that you're getting half a mile per gallon or so and become suspicious....
About what you'd expect from the PRC (People's Republic of Califormia). M
Wow, the US has now effectively proposed to place a tax forcing people to purchase what is basically a high tech device and a downright luxury to the majority of people residing in the states, thats despite lowered costs. I doubt people would believe AMD forcing a person to buy its chips to be so whimsical and innovative.
Charging for miles driven while removing the tax for gas consumed will encourage the sale of more gas guzzlers and remove incentives for vehicle manufacturers to increase gas milage. Meanwhile, smog will increase. Any GPS scheme must be coupled with mandates for increased fuel efficiency, or everyone gets screwed.
They want to do it at the pump because it is easier to be taxed a little bit each purchase than have to pay an "income-tax" level payment at the beginning of the year.
Would you rather have to calculate your own sales tax and pay it all on April 15th?!
Once again proving that California is THE land of fruits and nuts!!!!!
Visualize Whirled P.'s
-b.
For all the bitching about the privacy violations (which are real and massive), I'd much rather see somebody address the real issue.
Roads are expensive. States have always found it equitable to put a tax on gasoline to pay for them. The more you drive, the more gas you use, the more you pay. Drive a fuel-efficient car, a thing we want to encourage, and your taxes go down.
Unfortunately, the competing goals are starting to come to loggerheads: people in highly efficient cars are using up the same amount of roadway, which still costs money, but they're not paying as much of the tax intended to cover it.
So the problem remains, and simply whining about privacy violations (real as they are) doesn't solve the problem.
You can raise the gas tax, encouraging more people to ditch SUVs and raising the price for using your hybrid. People hate that, but it's closer to fair. Eventually you may reach the point where you'd have to raise the tax per gallon through the roof to pay for the roads, even while the total tax remains the same. That drives people nuts, irrationally, but it doesn't involve the huge privacy violations, which they (again irrationally) ignore.
You get what you vote for er dont' vote for.
If you've never voted then STFU.
1. Emissions. Cars that use more fuel, pollute more. Not 100% correlation but still. Much more efficient and cheaper to implement than this GPS thing.
or
2. Based on damage to the road. Damage to the road from driving is more about weight and axle pressure than about miles. A large truck can do much more damage to a road than several hundred cars. On the other hand a large truck takes less space and clog the road less.
But you can produce some nice formulas based on those two assumptions and then decide how much less damage you can get by reducing maximum axle weight.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Hey, how about tying a GPS to my ass and then charging me each time I take a shit? I mean, clearly, it costs water and infrastructure and support personnel every time I need to take a shit.
Hell, we all know that taxes are designed to cover the costs of infrastructure anyways.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Why not just make all roads tollways? If they have tollbooths with workers, that could even mean more jobs.
Well, as scary as this is in theory, there is no substance to the article at all. No bill number, no names of politicians or agencies that are actually considering everything. I'm not going to loose any sleep over this until it sounds a lot less like vaporware.
San Francisco Photographers
I am instituting use of the Slashdot search feature...
Very daring of you (to call it a feature)!
The problem with their system is that California would collect the raw position/time data to accumulate distance/peak info by analysis. The position/time data would be stored by the state, available to other agencies, contractors and crackers. A California road use fee could be charged by mile, as reported by open devices, as an alternative to "boosted average" fee charged every registration. The open device can be inspected to ensure it's reporting only the aggregate mileage data, at the annual emissions inspection time or ownership transfer. GPS itself is only a receiver; it need not be spyware. We need any momentum in this California law to implement only the fees required for fairly paying for the infrastructure, and report only the anonymous info for the purposes of that transaction, to be deleted once charged. California laws, especially their vehicle laws, usually become widespread across America, Europe and the world, as car makers make the most of the California scale.
BTW, as much as this "punishes" efficient gas burners (taking the edge off their fuel savings by increasing the tiny fuel tax with a larger mileage fee), it also rewards people who avoid (personal) gas burning entirely, by using public transportation. So, if managed correctly, it could encourage the most efficient transport, mass transit, while accurately charging all drivers their proportionate costs of the road infrastructure currently subsidized by nondrivers (a purely hypothetical Californian).
--
make install -not war
Don't they already "pay" with their time in traffic as it is?
It would be _REAL_ simply to just raise the gas tax-and change the registration fees. This is the sort of thing that makes me glad I moved out of California.
If they're going to do this, it's only fair to do it per weight (pounds) per mile. Heavier vehicles cause more wear and tear to the roads than lighter ones do
Taxing gasoline is a straightforward way to address negative externalities associated with gasoline consumption. By increasing the price of gasoline, demand for gasoline is theoretically decreased, while the revenue of the tax is used to fund other programs, or even the externalities themselves.
The exernalities associated with the amount of "road miles I drove this week" is a much harder externality to address.
I assume the goal is to pay for the road you use; how much should I pay? What if I drove to Tahoe this weekend? The roads up in the Sierras cost a lot more to maintain than the flat portions of I-80 between Sacramento and Davis. If I live in Davis and drive a similar amount as someone in Tahoe, why should I pay the same?
Roads, with the exception of toll roads, are generally considered a bona-fide public good, like public schools and national defense. People are more willing to share the costs of the externalities of these goods, I would hope. Investing in them via taxes not tied to usage rates is the better approach. Should we start charging someone in New York city more for national defense/homeland security than someone in Kansas?
Don't people who buy more efficient cars, get a tax break? Like people who buy Hybrids and stuff? So if they are getting charged by milage now, doesn't it end up a wash?
Pretty Pictures!
and I am all up for a free gps device.
Except it wont be free. Most of the petrol taxes will go into funding this lunatic scheme.
Why not check in your odometer ever 1 year (with service) and pay then
Oh, I know, because we have to find uses for technology, big fucking deal.
This sounds like PLAN X made to look like plan Y, so not to scare people where plan X is, lets spy on people, and plan Y is let spretend to be eco conscious and pay our cousin a nice backhander for his faltering gps company.
Just fucking check your odometer in one a year for your fucking service and stop abusing our technology, that, erm, people died for! yeah, we own it, not you guys
public service announcement by "had to by stupid gifts to survive valentines day"
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I can think of a much closer to home enemy than the federal government with this technology. Think stalkers, abusive (ex-)spouses/significant others and so on. Not only will you be able to see where they have gone, but with a little ingenuity you could track someone wherever they go. That's who I would be more worried about in a case like this. Especially since I know someone going through divorce proceedings right now.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
- Users of toilet paper made from recycled paper products, because they're not supporting the logging industry?
- Users of wind, solar or other alternate energy sources, for not supporting "the grid"?
- Those wo live abord marine vessels (ie: houseboats or sailboats) year-round, for not paying property taxes?
The list can go on forever, people... We need to stand up against this bullshit!
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
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.
Isn't this backwards? Now, correct me if I'm wrong /. but doesn't Cali have higher emission standars than other states? So, shouldn't they be taxing the cars that are less fuel efficient and encourage drivers to buy alternative fuel/hybrids?
hack a day
WIthout arguing the stupidity of the idea....
Why GPS. That's seems overkill. Why not just allow the pump to read the odometer?
This is plain stupid. This sort of system would create more problems than it will solve it. For example...the GPS dies (does not transmit), what then? The driver should pay a fine for it? Let everybody that has a car registered in California pay once a year a tax for using roads no matter how much he drives. They could calculate the average miles a normal car drives and tax this, to everyone the same...the only difference could be the category of the vehicle (car, truck, bus, motocycle...).. Why complicate with advanced technology and create only more additional expenses to collect a little more taxes? Those californians are strange. :)
Governments do not lower taxes once they have established them.
So very true. My original home state of West Virginia instituted a food and clothing tax equal to the state sales tax (in other words, eliminated the sales tax exemption on those items) back in the 80s to solve a budget overrun. The tax at the time was touted as a temporary measure that would be rescinded as soon as the state's debt had been resolved. Of course, twenty-some-odd years later, that temporary tax is still firmly in place.
On the other hand, the WV state legislature did once pass a tree tax - you paid a tax if the number of trees on your property exceeded a certain number, an effort to surreptitiously tax those who might benefit from lumbering their land. The tax lasted about a month before public outcry over the stupidity of such a tax demanded that it be repealed.
that penalizes citizens for actually complying with previous legislation.
i know we told you to cut down on the gas, but...
sum.zero
California should sink into the Pacific Ocean and get it over with already...
This might be an old idea but verry easy to implement just pay a toll to use the road we have them here on the east coast they work and no GPS needed they also have a thing you hang on you sun visor to auto pay the toll so no long line at the toll plaza
Seems to me that they're taxing the wrong folks, the wrong amounts.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Mind you, I'm opposed to such a scheme; but I'm opposed to invasive GPSes sitting in my car even more. :-)
If revenues are falling because cars are getting more efficient, why not encourage the trend by raising the per-gallon tax? That would increase the pressure on anyone driving a hummer and make better fuel efficiency revenue-nuetral. Make it automatic, by changing it to a total dollar amount and having it calculated yearly based on the prior years gas sales.
With variations in altitude, it can be difficult for GPS to be accurate. Also, the military doesn't provide super-accurate GPS to civilians. In addition, all the driver has to do is cover up the GPS unit so it can't signal the satellite.
Governments do not lower taxes once they have established them.
Exactly, my state already one of the highest sales taxes, now wants to establish an Income tax also! WTF are these monkeys thinking?
Average 17-27% of your pay goes towards taxes before you spend your money. Then count in taxes on purchases, services, user fees, state charges, registration costs, required insurances, etc.
Enough money for Internet access and a Beer when done, if lucky.
One thing you non-Paradise people should know: this state has the dumbest legislators in the history of civilization. I mean, yeah, we all pick on politicians, but these people are STUPID beyond comprehension. One of them wanted to have government buildings laid out according to the "sepcification" of Fung Shui. They come out with statements that make you wonder if they shouldn't be in an institution chatting with Nurse Mildred Ratched. It's the reason I don't pick on Bush's intellect much. Bush is Richard Feynman and Stephan Hawking combined next to some of the California state politicos.
Anyway, Their claims are complete BS. I see more and more SUVs and I've seen maybe three hybrids in the past year of daily commuting. They're just upset because Arnold is forcing them into a fiscal weight loss plan.
The original poster didn't RTFA and I guess you didn't either before posting your flamebait. The article states that OREGON is testing the idea, not California
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Ever hear of Onstar? Ever hear of the black box under your seat? Got one of those new fancy cars with the built in map displays? If you believe that gps tracking in your vehicles isn't being done yet, then you might want to wake up.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
They could also accomplish this by running a cross reference between the address on peoples registration and the Tax ID # of their employer. Then validate against insurance information.
Not perfect - many exceptions immediately jump to mind (multicar family, unemployed, self employed, use of personal vehicle for work, corporate HQ in another city/county/state, ad nauseum).
However you certainly wouldn't need a GPS and a bunch of additional infrastructure to accomplish this.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
A bike.
Isn't part of the reason that one would tax gasoline to get lower milage cars on the road? Especially in polution ridden CA?
They could always raise the gasoline tax more and then allow right offs for business purposes.
Or use incom tax to add. Or do what the insurance industry does and ask what your commute is and tax you based on it, audit enough that people won't lie. It can't cost too much to verify and address and then verify a place of work. With any luck an innitiative such as that would help reverse suburban sprawl and urban decay.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Some stupid valley girl must've thunk this one up. Isn't this what a gasoline tax already does?
Principle of operation:
1) Drive a lot
2) Buy more gas (hugh tax included)
3) Rinse, repeat
Sounds like a sweetheart deal is brewing with someone somewhere...
"Now let's see, Mr. Jones, according to your milage report you left the warf area and drove straight across San Francisco Bay."
Let's see them tax me for that. That'll be the next insanely great thing. The box that lets you jam the GPS receiver and feed it fake coordinates. Then we'll have the jam proof GPS receiver, then the jammer for supposedly jam-proof GPS with instructions published on /., then a DMCA case against the person publishing the data, then Congress will pass a law saying it's illegal to possess GPS jammers.
Pretty soon we'll all be running Wild Weasel missions for one another. Cover me, I'm headed downtown!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Didn't you get the Bush tax cut? I got a check in the mail.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
This is so clearly silly and never going to happen
that it seems like a waste of time to
argue about it. Can someone please change
the subject?
cool, this just means that i'll have a source for cheap gps units after they realize that this system is un-enforceable and have to get rid of all those recivers. i have so many projects that could benefit from a cheap gps solution. THANKS CALIFORNIA --- "Take California" -Propellerhead
Be true to your word. Stop subscribing and tell the editors exactly why you're stopping. I'd do it, but I don't subscribe.
This just goes to prove that the State of California is more concerned with making money than the welfare of its citizen... Why does california, one of the richest states need more money... so that legislators can have larger paychecks and spend more money on gettin re-elected!!
I have live in california all my life and have actully seen the smog get better during the last 10 years. When I was a child almost half of the days we were not allowed to go outside since the pollution levels were so high. This has a direct effect on my health. see link
http://www.dieselnet.com/news/9711aqmd.html/
California citizens have encouraged more fuel efficient cars as the purchase of more effiecnt cars show.. If anything california should tax gasoline more.. even know it's currently $2.10 a gallon here.. Make it $3.00 then people will drive less, stop buying monster trucks for cars, and exercise more.. Something we all need.
Also the traffic is so bad in southern california that it would be cheaper for me.. since I only drive 30 miles.. but I sit in traffic for almost 2-3 hrs each day burning fuel.
What a scam.. I'm disgusted by the gov't of california..
If everyone switched to electric/hybrid then your not going to get the revenue.
.
Seems logical to me that they charge more for people that use more
Buy a bicycle.
Ignoring the privacy concerns, if these taxes are substantial enough I bet people living on the state's borders will just buy their gas out of state to save money. This is just like in the Philadelphia area where many people drive down to Delaware to do tax free Christmas shopping and buy cheaper booze by avoiding PA's state run liquor stores. I also thought that in many states you send in your vehicle registration to the DMV every year and write down your odometer reading. Wouldn't using the yearly odometer reading be an even easier way to tax drivers rather than installing GPS in every new car bought (or even worse, existing cars) in the state? I don't like the idea of paying taxes on how many miles I drive, but installing GPS seems like the most expensive and worst solution to something that can easily be solved through an alternative means.
I don't believe that this is a bill yet, because i was planning on writing a letter to my assemblyman, so i did a search on it, It came up with nothing, if someone could point me to this bill, or let me know that this is just an Idea it would be greatly appreciated. I, for one, think that this is the worst idea possible, do you want someone to be able to see everywhere you go, where you are at any given time? If It were to be required i would definately find some lead plates and surround the reciver with them. This makes me paranoid, especially given that i am watching 1984 at the moment.
Good grief!
:P
WHy are you so insulted when someone repeats an interesting story? Do you have perfect recall and never need reinforcement to consider news items that may have slipped off the attention of some of us?
Maybe you just like to be an "I told you about this on blah blah day." Your Troll appears to have taken its toll.
Ano Nymous
Road damage is approximately proportional to
cube of weight, so all those trucks that have the
sticker on the back saying "I pay $9999 dollars
road tax" are often advertising that they pay LESS per damage than lighter vehicles.
If the use tax was based on road damage I am fine
with that. Imagine how low the tax rate would be for bicycles!
Of course a complicating factor is that road damage is also likely to be dependent on which road is traveled and at which speed. I.e. an interstate is probably less damaged by a big truck at 60mph than a side road would be at 35mph. Sounds like the final system could be more byzantine than the IRS tax code.
Most people just don't realize how much damage the Bush family is causing in this country, and especially in CA & NY. The Bush idiots hate CA & NY for voting for the right candidate. They want us unemployeed and starving. Too bad all of the pro-corporate drones don't allow the real message to be told on slashdot. Instead, they worship the destruction of our way of life. It might already be too late to save this country from Bush, just as it was too late in 1937 to save Germany from Hilter.
... San Francisco wants to add an $0.17 USD tax on each plastic bag you get from a grocery store. The purpose of this lovely tax is to help the environment by recycling more plastic bags. Sounds like a revenue enhancement to me.
I think California wants to get people to leave. They pasted the Induce act, encouraging forward thinking companies to seek other places to develop paradigm smashing technologies.
Everything already costs more in California.
They are already 47th in $/pupil.
Why would anyone want to live or start a business in California?
But how would they know if you didn't have GPS on your car? Would there be some sort of checkpoint station in CA?
The phrase "big brother" comes to mind, with ill thoughts attributed to it.
My first reaction was negative...but upon further thought, a per mile tax would be the most fair way to PAY for that resource you're using.
What, did you think the road you drove to work on just showed up one morning?
This is just a transfer of the existing tax in a way it can't be avoided. Paying less tax because you get better gas mileage doesn't pay to maintain the infrastructure. Sooner or later you've gotta pay to play.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
You could even end up in jail with Martha Stewart and the Enron boys. White Collar crime does pay... you just have to wait 12 to 14 months (or 6 months with good behavior) to spend the money.
Perhaps the reason GPS is being discussed (rather than just checking the odometer... duh...) is so that they can attempt to distinguish how many miles are driven on city, state, and interstate highways, and divide up the taxes accordingly. Either that, or they're getting nice kickbacks from the companies who will implement all this technology.
taxing by the mile favors the owners of inefficient cars. the gps devices can be blocked (and hybrid owners are more likely to know how to block them). this is a joke. it will never happen.
if the state is worried about losing taxes on the hybrids, then why not raise the gas tax? Penalize the inefficient cars that cause more damage to the roads and environment instead of wasting billions on gps devices, tracking databases, and gas-station upgrades just to support inefficient gas-guzzlers.
Lets not forget to include this new tax on diesel and trucks (who do the most damage to the roads anyway) too. Ya right. The government goes after the teamsters. Like that would happen. No go after the non-unionized individual consumers (remember that you're a consumer now. A consuming unit. Not a citizen). Yep legislate lower emissions and better economy and when that works (at great cost to everybody)legislate just giving your money to the government.
Can anyone else say "Instant underground gasoline market?"
Sheesh. Does nobody in government have even the slightest connection to reality?
Governments do not lower taxes once they have established them.
You've got to be kidding. The U.S. federal government lowered personal and/or corporate taxes several times over the last four years, congress is always lowering taxes for one industry or another (they're known as "loopholes"), and Reagan lowered taxes considerably in his first term. And that's just off the top of my head.
Why not just use the car's odometer. Those who travel out of state frequently could merely sign an affidavit attesting to the out of state miles.
Why not just tax gasoline? Such a tax would be directly proportional to the fuel economy and miles driven.
Why would you need to use GPS, unless you wanted to track an individual's movements for ulterior purposes?
If taxes were the true motive for this proposal, they would have found a simpler way. This isn't about taxation, it's about tracking citizens - taxation is just a red-herring used to deflect criticism.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Since the tax is only collected when I fill up my tank, All I have to do is is own one car will a 100 gallon tank that I use to go to the gas station to buy gas. Then, I'll fill up my primary vehicle from my gas wagon.
Voila! Zero gas tax for me!
Why not just raise gas taxes to make up for the more fuel efficient fleet? That way, revenues can stay the same, but the incentive to switch to more fuel efficient vehicles remains.
Given what is driving around on California roads, fuel efficient cars can't have made such a big dent yet anyway, so the size of the increase should remain modest.
Do you have perfect recall and never need reinforcement to consider news items that may have slipped off the attention of some of us?
I find it sad that as a READER of this site and not a paid employee I have a better understanding of what is going on the front page than the editors do.
I rarely fail to notice a dup and perhaps the only time I do is when I wasn't around to view it the first time.
If you are getting PAID to do your job I expect it to be done well. I don't expect a half-assed bullshit job to be done when a simple search on the terms discussed in the article would have netted the employees a hit.
(a) I don't want government GPS in my car, and I'm not really a tin-foil-hatter..
... good luck on those pre-birth interviews. Welcome to epidemic central without public health.
(b) Too all you libertarians out there, if we dont have taxes, we dont have roads, teachers, schools, or wars (hmm....). How do unemployed find work if they dont have roads? How do kids get educated to work in your capitalistically-driven successful businesses. Or would you like to prepay for their education
...to raise the tax on the gas?
*blinking cursor*
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/s pecial_packages/governor_schwarzenegger/10134904.h tm?1c
Enlightening quote from above article: lawmakers have borrowed more than $3.4 billion from transportation accounts the last three years.
In other words, it's not that they don't have enough money for the roads; rather, it's just that they just want to raise taxes, period.
--AC (who lives in California)
you ASKED for this!!!!!!
Besides the invasion of privacy that would be used and abused this isn't any different than a standard tax. In fact it would be a far better tax if they had taken it to logical conclusion.
Lots of factors decide wear and tear on the roadways besides the distance traveled. There is also the weight of the vehicle to consider. That would easily be tracked with this.
So your light weight car that gets 40mpg weighs less than the Giant 9mpg SUV. Who does more wear and tear to the road ways? The taxes would need to account for that.
Just dive around where there are plenty of dense redwood forests, canyons and tunnels. GPS do rather poorly in those areas. Considering how many people around where I live spend 90% of their lives deep in non-GPS friendly terrain (Boulder Creek, CA; Felton, and so on), under equal protection (or oppression) under the law would mean these people would need to be followed, too, at what would amount to great expense. I'm sure the brains behind ideas like this live in the wide open of LA and Sacto.
As an aside: gawd, I hate their use of "patriot" that way, does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation?
I wince everytime I hear President Bush use the word 'Freedom' I feel his administrations machinations have left a taint on the word it hardly deserves. But you can go back decades and find in the darkest hours of civil liberties others having spoken similarly. Joe McCarthy was only looking out for America's best interests...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Most dipshit Americans do not even know what progressive taxation really is. Hell, I really did not know what it meant until I got on the Internet when I was in my late 30s. And I have tested genius IQ on more than one standardized test. So, I think we can assume that not too many Americans (or Californians) really realize what is going on with the destruction of our progressive tax base.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
... is a great place to be from.
I'm glad I don't live there any more...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Always trying to find new ways to get at my money.
Even though many US citizens whine(*) about taxes, you don't pay anything compared to EU countries where the average taxrate is 60-70%, not to mention VAT on all items, including food.
But then standard of living is higher for all.
*Typical whiner in the article: Its not fair that *I* have to pay for wearing down the roads.
It says through the gas pump talking to your odometer... not the same thing at all...
"When no-one around you understands start your own revolution and cut out the middle man"
to alleviate the exact same concerns is to RAISE THE GAS TAXES to compensate for the "less gallons per mile." You can get the same revenue per mile, plus this will increasingly put the squeeze on comparatively inefficent vehicles (which is always something the state of CA can get behind...) Heck, just index the tax rate to the average milage efficency of all licensed cars--no need to involve the legislature every year.
That's assuming that the "revenue goes down as efficency goes up" is the problem they're trying to solve. Which it probably isn't.
I think the article alludes to what the REAL problem they're trying to solve is--enforcing societal behavior through taxes. e.g. charging more for using certain roads or driving at certain times. Interesting idea in theory--but let's be honest. THAT'S the objective here. The "oh, my! less tax revenuye because drivers are using less gas!" does NOT need this kind of sweeping stroke to be fixed.
... In New Jersey we have these wonderful things called toll plazas all over the roads worth taking that employ some of the nicest people you will ever meet. They love to take your money and give you change in dimes.
Seriously, why don't they just put up some toll plazas. Its easier and will create jobs.
END OF LINE
Some one should invent that
But why use such an invasive and expensive technology such as GPS.
What about the odometer: when you re-up for license-tabs, the law would require you to submit mileage. You get taxed on that.
There will be fraud, but it wont be too bad if the inspection/emission tests are used as an opportunity to verify odometer readings.
What about miles driven out of state? Add a simple claim form that lets you take miles off. (This may not be such a big deal for most, as the other state driven in will eventually want their cut).
The odometer, less expensive and you keep most of your privacy.
The government is a beast which is never satisfied with less. That would diminish their power. No one should be surprised with this.
Case in point. Do you think these states actually want you to stop smoking? Of course not.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
With the FastLane toll-paying transimtters here in Massachussets, the government tracks how long it takes you to get from one toll booth to another. From there, you can calculate the average speed of the car between the two booths. I this isn't theoretical; the government actually does it. I know someone who got a speeding ticket in the mail but was never pulled over; it turned out that his Fast Lane reciever had signalled that he was speeding.
I can deal with that because FastLane is an optional convenience. If California's transmitters become mandatory and they do track people's speeds (which seems likely), I see that as a serious invasion of privacy. Could they use these GPS devices to track criminals with a warrant? Might these transmitters fall under portions of the USA Patriot act that allow wiretapping and such without a warrant? (That's not a rhetorical question; INAL and I seriously don't know). I understand that California needs tax money to keep the roads in good condition, and it makes sense that the people who drive on them should have to pay for them. But there are some major problems with the way this is being done. If these transmitters become mandatory and nobody makes sure that the law protects our privacy, then we could have an invasion of privacy like none other on our hands.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
There are roads that are not maintained by the government, and many people drive out of state on a regular basis. Sure it would be easy to read the odometer but that also counts the miles you drove on your private property if you have it, the miles driven in the private community that maintains it's own raods, and the miles driven around Las Vegas that one weekend. GPS allows them to set up tax/no-tax zones and is really the only way (besides toll booths) to keep things fair.
An amazing concept called "fiscal responsibility."
If tax revenues are declining, then trimming waste, fat and unnecessary programs should be priority #1, not soaking folks for more dough.
Remember folks, the more governments take in, the more they spend.
Connecticut instituted an income tax to close "budget gaps" for the first time about ten years ago.
Just a few years later, the budget gaps magically reappeared.
CNN was talking about this last November.
But the fact that it is being brought up again shows that they are still trying to push it forward. I'm glad that they haven't made any real progress with it yet.
Here is a list of government contacts in Oregon.
I'm not sure which one Oregon residents need to call to express their opinion though.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
I could understand if you object to the use of GPS to monitor how much you drive on the roads, since that is probably not the best way to do this and has some privacy concerns. However, you seem to object that they need to collect taxes to pay for highways. They were using a gas tax, so one could argue that your tax is loosely proportional to your usage of the roads. However, if better gas economy is lowering revenue from this source, tax revenues collected drops even though the miles travelled on the roads probably stays the same; you either have to find a different or additional source of revenue, raise the gas tax to increase revenues, or lower costs by performing less maintenance on existing highways and/or not build as many new roads. The GPS concept is a way to directly measure how much you use roads and tax you accordingly. You sound like many Californians I know: they complain about taxes but in the same breath demand extensive services, not seeming to gather that the taxes are necessary to pay for the services. They want their cake, but want to eat it too. If you want highways and want them maintained, you must be prepared to pay for them by some means.
I had your same thought, but then I realized that if you had to pay an extra $500 (for example) when you registered your car, you might remember to vote on election day.
One of the reasons we Commiefornians were so pissed at Gov. Davis was his decision to stop back-filling the Vehicle License Fee (car tax). He didn't raise it, he just had the state stop reimbursing the counties for 2/3 of it, and so the counties had to get that money from somewhere. Well, the end result was my car registration and everyone else's went WAY up, and that didn't help Gray at the polls.
Also consider that a large percentage of the population lives paycheck-to-paycheck. The idea of saving money for an unexpected expense, or even a planned one like a tax bill coming due, is foreign to them. Just like the government gets their taxes a little bit at a time instead of sending you a bill for $10,000 on 15 Apr, expecting that you saved an appropriate portion of your paycheck every month for the past year.
If this passes, I will not have one installed in my car; it will be the final straw to get me to leave this idiotic state.
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
...then simply charge twice the gas tax. That way, it will be more of an insentive for those driving the big whale cars around to get fuel efficient cars.
Wow, why do people like to make things complicated?!?
i'm quite sure people will find a way to subvert the gps and just have it report very small changes in position. say, 1/10th of a mile for every 10 or something.
First, it's not being seriously discussed by anybody who matters.
Second, the proposal did not involve anyone having to install GPS equipment in existing cars.
Third, this "story" is at least six months old.
Fourth, is Tuesday "Teach A Moron To Use The Internet Day"?
The movie just got the dates wrong.
Drivers of overweight, inefficient SUVs deserve whatever they get.
sulli
RTFJ.
I bet fuel consumption in California is not falling...
Why should you be taxed per mile when heavier vehicles damage or wear the roads down more? Fuel tax seems like the ideal way that these heavier vehicles can pay for their road use. They pay more because they cost more per mile driven.
If the fuel tax is not generating enough revenue, perhaps its time to raise the fuel tax? Not spend $300+ dollars to equip cars with GPS...
My last threes cars cost under $400 each and I've put about 80,000 miles on them total. I dont want to double the cost of the car with GPS.
This makes no sense to me. Its no suprise its coming out of California. As far as I know there is not a lot of home grown gasoline. All gas that is consumed is already accounted for and taxed. How on earth would putting GPS in every car be any more helpful than our current system. People already get taxed on their usage. With this propsed system, people in hybrid cars that actually pollute less could get taxed more if they drive further.
On the flip side I find it curious that there is no ranting about the democratic party where this idea originated. If a republican would have proposed this, There would already be 1000 comments as opposed to 74. Although I am impressed at how quickly someone tied this into the Patriot Act, indirectly blaming Bush. =)
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
Consider:
* Indirect expense: Everyone will now be forced to pay for the GPS system.
* Indirect expense: The service stations need to collect all of these taxes for the government. This will probably require some special equipment, a little training, plus the ongoing expense of running the system. Neat idea of the government: force someone else to collect your taxes for you. Someone has to fill out the paperwork and mail the state a check at the end of the day. Guess who will pay for this overhead in the end?
* Like all taxes, you need to collect it, review it, track down people evading the tax (like the person who leaves the GPS at home unless they plan on buying gas) and then you need to prosecute people who don't pay. This eats up some of the tax money.
* Reviewing the tax isn't going to be easy. You'll need to sort through the data and look for people who seem to be getting 300mpg, or people who only drive from their own house to the gas station. By the way, what about people at the border who never buy gas in the state? People in northern and eastern Cal could just hop over the border when they need fuel and NEVER pay this tax.
* Taxing travel in any way has a pretty direct effect on inflation. If every truck has to pay more to haul stuff around, then all goods that get hauled will end up costing more. Guess who will get to enjoy these new higher prices? Everyone!
There is ALREADY a gas tax in place. If you REALLY need more money, it is far easier AND less expensive to just raise THAT tax.
Or, just MAYBE... (I know I'm wasting my breath here) you could apply that same level of creativity to removing government waste instead of coming up with cumbersome new privacy-inducing ways to tax your citizens.
--This sig is in beta. Please let us know abut any errors you find.
The best part was including that amount in the next year's taxes. How's that for a slap in the face?
According to Transportation California "The high level of pavement deterioration on major metropolitan roads is a result of a significant increase in urban traffic, particularly from large trucks and other large vehicles."
Instead of this hairbrained scheme, they should be taxing trucks more, as they inflict much of the damage.
Hey it's not April 1 yet. This is nuts.
Did you check how the will administer the tax. At the gas pump.
So Put 10 Gallons in your Prius: $50. While the guy in the Hummer next to you laughs his ass off while his 10 Gallons cost $20.
Talk about killing hybrids dead. Who is sponsoring this idea; GM and Ford?
This would be so wrong in so many ways....
Simply use existing tax models: Offer a simple form where you can either claim a standard "out of state milage" deduction or allow an list of itemized deductions with documentation.
From there, you could also lessen the blow by some sort of program where people pay estimated taxed monthly or a withholding program based on gas consumption.
There is good reason to make whatever is done a 'pay as you go' rather than a lump sum. Do you want to get hit with another huge whopping tax bill when your registration is up?
The GPS scheme is DOA.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
I'll reply here to all the "Bush lowered taxes" fools.
Bush didn't lower taxes, he just shifted them. Dunno about where most of you live, but in the Northeast property taxes shot way up after the Bush tax cuts and the unfunded mandate that is NCLB. Add to that an increase in gas taxes, vice taxes, college tuition, various other fees and taxes (think cable bill, gas bill, electric bill, telephone bill, DMV fees), reductions in programs like Pell grants, Section 8 housing, and other financial assistance, etc., etc.
The Bush 'tax cut' is a farce.
Another great idea to help recover tax dollars that have managed to find their way into the pockets of the populace.
IMHO
Punishing the lesser polluters? Why, because they use less petro? "Reward" bigget polluters? I think this might have something to do with US and their control of some (if not all) oil rigs in Iraq. Because of that AND thought taxes and so on, they have a huge control on the price of petrol in the country. Now...it's hard to put pressure on the rest of the world because there are alternative oil sources however US can do whatever they want. They can get the oil from Iraq for cheap, undercut other provider's prices and get more money by increasing taxes on petrol and on it's usage. So i doesn't matter if you have a V8 or a 4 cylinder car. The difference is likely to be small to keep the car fueled. Four cyl may cost you less in petrol but the tax might even it out.
As many people pointed it out, this has nothing to do with pollution.
US wants to sell "their" oil and they want to control how much whey'll be selling it for. As they can't control the rest of the world they want to control their own people.
I think it's very abvious, it's all about the $$$.
California is outsourcing their research to Oregon in order to increase their taxes. Too funny. Also, in Oregon you're not allowed to pump your own gas (it's against the law) - this increases the cost of gas slightly, for the express and single purpose of increasing the taxes slightly and quietly.
If I pay to drive the roads, then I shouldn't have to pay TWICE to drive the roads.
100% of all taxes on gasoline should be removed then.
If this is only to capture back state, but not federal or local taxes, then at least 100% of state tax should be removable at time of gas purchase.
My mom says I'm cool.
Park your car in the parking lot nearby and then used approved gas cans. Just fill up at the pump and then transfer it to your vehicle.
Panic now, beat the rush!
I had a long economic model of how this might break down, but I have deleted it in favor of something everyone might read.
If this plan goes into effect, and all else remains equal:
1. A few drivers of inefficient vehicles will likely drive more, until they are paying approximately the same fees as before;
2. A few drivers of efficient vehicles will likely drive less, until they are paying approximately the same fees as before;
3. A few drivers of efficient vehicles who could barely afford the exact number of miles they need to drive each day will no longer be able to drive, and will stop driving/paying fees.
Most people in the short term will remain unchanged, and in the long term fuel-efficiency will be slightly less desirable as people replace their vehicles.
So short term, I suspect you'll see a very slight reduction in revenues and congestion, and a very slight increase in gas consumption.
In the long term, however, I suspect you'll see a levelling off of revenues and congestion, but a continued increase in gas consumption as some people move to less-efficient vehicles.
Someone earlier suggested this was probably being driven by the gas companies; my (admittedly non-expert) analysis suggests they might be right.
and Reagan lowered taxes considerably in his first term.
Do you know what he did the year after that? He raised almost all of them back to original levels.
Oops. Conservatives conveniently forget that one, don't they? It wasn't called a tax raise, but a 'readjustment' or something similarly silly. If Bill C had pulled it, we would still hear conservatives bitching about it to this day. Just another example of the hypocrisy.
This is just another case of California's government going off the deep-end.
The very idea that the tax should only be paid by those who directly use a given service provided by government is a bad one, as many indirectly benefit from services provided to others. Fast shipping? Roads. Not being robbed by people so uneducated that they have nothing to do but feed off of society? Public education. Being able to breathe? More efficient cars that pollute less.
Governments seem to talk of tax as a tool for public betterment and behavior control only until they find that they've budgeted themselves into a corner. Then they just do their best to tax the minority. In this case, that minority would be the people with the social responsibility to consider a more efficient means of transportation with no discernable long-term cost savings available (of course, I drive a sports car, so I'm going to hell).
What of the problems for California's citizens? I've had a GPS receiver displace my displayed position by several hundred miles for a brief moment. Will a person be taxed for error?
How long will it be before the police begin harvesting data regarding a person's wherabouts, akin to having a view of history obtained before a warrant was issued?
Just recall these people. Find out who they are and start a recall movement.
In Austin, TX they tried to build toll roads for almost ever way into town, but a determined group sprang up that started recall efforts against the mayor, etc and low and behold, we are down to 4 or 5 toll roads and dropping. I expect there will be almost none when they get done.
Recall these people. Don't take it.
Californian law makers decide to empty their skulls of brains.
Makes for some reading.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
But how would they deal with say...
If I just don't bring my car to the pump anymore? Just a big ol' gas can to then fill my car with later?
That said... I'm a bit confused whether or not this is for the hybrids only or will be charged to all cars in replacement of the regular fuel tax currently in place?
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
On one hand, it seems to me that charging people only for what they use is reasonable. On the other, there MUST be a better way to charge by the mile than tracking everyone all the time. Not only would that cost billions to impliment, but it also is for too intrusive. Something hooked up to the odometer seems more reasonable to me. On yet another hand, these people using less gas should be rewarded! It is a limited resource whose limits become more apparent each year and its use and harvesting are having detrimental effects on the environment. Also, hybrids are generally light vehicles and cause less wear to the road then, say, a gigantic SUV (whose owner, at least here in Oregon, gets a tax break if they drive more than 15 miles to work in it) which has snow tires on from November to March. On second thought, screw this. We should reward these people, not make every attempt we can to suck them dryer than a gas pump in 30 years.
Why not just raise taxes on gas? The roads will still get paid for, and it will increase the incentive to get a fuel efficient car, not decrease it.
So when the per mile tax goes into effect, gas taxes will drop right?
WOOHOOO!
This new tax is all the reason I need to drive a gas guzzling SUV. The drop in the price of gas will more than pay for the extra gas I'll be using!
I might even get one of those after market chips that throws the engine into SMOG mode to get a few extra horse under my hood, if you know what I mean.
BOO YA! This is great news indeed!
NT
While everyone is grumbling (and rightfully so) about the privacy issues raised by this, there is another tragedy that is taking place as well. One of the things that made (and somewhat still makes) America great is the public infrastructure we have. Public defenders, public schools, public parks, public libraries, and public roads are only a few examples of these benefits we have, and they represent the communal prosperty that we enjoy as a country. Over time, the quality and even existence of these things have been threatened by various forces. All of these things have faced budget cut backs or attempts at commercialization.
Certainly for individuals who can afford it, private schools, or pay-per-mile roads will benefit them more as they no longer need to support individuals who can't afford it. The whole point of these public services in the first place was to provide these basic utilities to the entire community and not a select few. It seems that we as a society have become much less concerned about the welfare of the whole, and only for the welfare of the rich.
That's what property taxes are.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Like this.
Why all this tracking ? Put tax on gas instead. That way gas guzzlers are harder hit than less poluting cars. Its a lot simpler and its a lot harder to track people that way.
TCAP-Abort
.. tax on all usage of toilet paper over two squares per week.
I've seen a few people suggest that they use the odometer for such taxes. If in fact tax refenue was the true objective, they would. When you get renew your yearly registration they could tell you how much you owe.
The real point is to get people used to the idea that it's OK for the government to track your every movement. As soon as people accept something like this, how long do you think it will be before they mandate chips under our skin?
It's not about taxes, it's about acclimation.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Uhhh... Sorry officer/tax man/governor.... My antenna must have been obstructed from a clear signal the whole time.....
;)
Yep. I'll get that fixed up right away.
The "patriot" in the "USA PATRIOT Act" stands for "Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act". As a matter of fact, USA doesn't stand for United States of America either, it stands for Uniting and Strengthening America--thus the full name is the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001"! Clever acronym, I'd say. So don't go around saying how this isn't "patriotic" because it's not called patriotic by definition.
Let me get this straight... California, a state that cannot and/or will not stop and/or track the illegal immegrants who are in violation of federal laws, proposes to track every single vehicle in the state? Um...ok
I've often thought that an interesting tax would be based on the emmisions of your vehicle. Basically, take the published emissions for the make and model, modify it based on your actual emissions test, multiply it by milage. Mechanisms for paying estimated tax would be provided (probably at gas stations) and paid monthly, with an adjustment and setteling as part of the vehicle registration process.
increase the gas tax?
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
So the problem is the aren't collecting enough revenue anymore? Option 1: Raise the gasoline tax, this will continue to reward people for using fuel efficient cars and continue the trend towards them. Yeah, they may need to raise the tax some every year to make up for fuel efficency trends, but so what. Option 2: Tax tires. This is also a reasonable measure of distance driven. You could base the tax on the estimated lifetime distance of the tires. Plus you get the money up front. Some people may travel out of state to purchase tires, but you could likely get bordering states to collect fees for you or pass similar laws. Both of these options charge residents for out of state driving, but that is a win for CA. I doubt that in the end, California will make the jump to track vehicles via GPS. That sounds like quite a bit of overhead when they already have a reasonable infrastructure in place to collect their taxes. Gas taxes will go up.
In addition to the GPS being a potentially unlawful search, the tax, if deemed to be prohibitive, may be a breach of the US Citizens' right to travel. IANAL, but this site offers a perspective that may be applicable to this situation.
"Oh no! People are using too much gas! We need to tax gas and stop them!"
"It's working! people are using less gas! You're brilliant!"
"But now the tax we passed isn't making as much! We must increase taxes!"
I'm sure us small government types would have been laughed at if we had suggested this preposterous scenario when the tax was proposed. Yet here we are.
The tax was, I'm sure, sold as an environmental initiative. Now the gov't has come to depend on the income, and will fight to keep revenue up.
--This sig is in beta. Please let us know abut any errors you find.
Drivers of overweight, inefficient SUVs deserve whatever they get.
Overweight and inefficient for what? My Suburban is just the right size for running over fags in their Le Cars.
Ok.. maybe throw a "Sideways" in there.
Who's the logicless moron that thought up this STUPID idea?
So dumb. This will NEVER happen.
Why do people waste time even thinking of stupid crap like this?
The registration fees are ridiculous in CA, and they charge based on your cars value, rather than a flat fee. We're still taxed for gas, and now another tax. I hate liberals. Even the gubernator can't get them to reduce spending.
why not just raise the gas tax all together in CA? Or would it just cost too much for the Governator to drive SUV? No wasting money on GPS system, figuring out how to tax people and bloating the Government.
I've always felt that the gas tax is one of the fairest taxes around. Not perfect, but pretty good. The wear and tear you put on the roads is generally related to three things: 1) how far you drive, 2) how heavy your car is and 3) how you drive (hard vs. gentle acceleration, etc.)
In each of those three cases added road wear equals additional fuel use.
Given the government's actions to promote fuel economy and reduce air pollution (I just got a letter from the air-quality management board offering $650 to turn in my 1985 car which still passes the smog checks with flying colors) I'm really surprised that they don't do the obvious: adjust the gasoline tax as needed to pay for highway repair.
In fact, given the popularity of huge gas guzzling SUVs I find the assertion that revenues are being harmed by a few hybrids absurd to say nothing of the fact that all the money needed to install, maintain and track the devices could, instead, go toward maintaining the road.
If more revenue is needed and gas taxes have to be raised so be it. I am not going to feel sorry for the few people who have to give up their Ford Extinctions or GMC Expletives.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
It would be great if property taxes only applied to estates over $1M. Even with a relatively inexpensive house, the taxes are quite burdensome.
Is this a chance to give Silicon Valley a boost by providing Hardware/software for this?
IMHO this would be a more practical approach:
- Put all cars into classes, based on milage per gallon, and the emissions. 1-10.
- Add tax to gas based on car as a percentile Hence if your car is an 8 (heavy emissions), it would be 8%.
For commecial vehicles, you can subtract 3. Simply because buses are good (keep people from driving themselves), and big trucks carry more with less emissions than several smaller ones. Also would put less of a burdon on commerce.
what does this solve?
1. No need for GPS
2. Puts emphasis on both cars that get better milage AND reducing milage.
3. Doesn't burdon a particular party.
That would be cheaper, and more inclusive.
IMHO this plan is an attempt to regenerate some electronic industries within the state, rather than serve a monetary, or ecologicial purpose.
Taxes are a lame reason to institute a technology, maybe its the only way a policy maker thinks though.
Me:"Hello, police, my car was stolen. Its a red Eclipse, 2001, my name is CrazyJim."
Police:"Ok, I entered you into the database, and I now have a trace on your car, its headed down I70 at 75mph. Heh, lucky you're not in it, I could have issued you a ticket just now. Anyway we'll have your car back to you by supper."
Maybe society is just retarded, but having stolen cars be a thing of the past would rock. Up until the thieves learn GPS bypass. At that time, you can play hide the GPS, and do multi-GPS. Not many thieves would be advanced enough to go very far though.
God spoke to me.
You city slickers... I tell ya.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
This is a good solution to the tragedy of the commons dilemna, and a good way to fund the highways that is fair - people who drive more pay more. Everyone has a stake, benefits from the resource and bears the costs.
If you don't know what the tragedy of the commons is, please find out before you ever comment about taxation ever again.
Besides, at least it's not like New York, where the bridge and tunnel tolls go to subsidize the subway!
Isn't this what the conservatives always wanted? Pay-as-you-go taxes?
Thanks alot, you bastards.
"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other."
-Reagan
This is my main problem with this concept, that the state feels they are entitled to more of your hard-earned money. The state of California has some of the strictest emissions and fuel economy laws in the country, and they have for years. Reduced gasoline tax revenue is the natural progression of these laws. Now the state wakes up and realizes that they're missing their piece of the pie, and they want to charge a use tax based on miles driven. This also, in a state that defines urban sprawl and is already a commuters nightmare. I hope this starts driving people out of California so they really start to see diminishing gasoline tax and/or mileage tax revenue and the whole stinking place collapses. It would serve them right! I live in a state that shares a border with California and I don't want this mentality to ooze across the state line.
Excessive drinking is fine...in moderation.
__|__
Honk if you're horny.
Could you point out the specifics of this?
As I recall the top tax braket was around 40% back in the Carter days and now it is below 36%.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
I bought a honda insight because:
A. It was the lowest emissions 'usable' car at the time of purchase.
B. It depended significalty less on fossel fuels, getting over 60mpg.
C. Gas was cheap
These things are important because:
A. fossel fuels extracted within the US contribute to the loss of habitat for wildlife and damage our landscapes (namely it affects critical things like water tables- which can decimate miles of landscapes if altered)
B. fossel fuels imported from unstable arab nations contributes to the conflicts we're seeing in afghanistan, iraq, iran, syria, Ukrane, and many other places.
C. fossel fuels cause an ENORMOUS amout of pollution.
How does this apply to the parent topic???
Putting the enormous privacy issues aside, it once again punishes people who have fuel efficient cars. People who made responsible automobile purchases have to STOP BEING PUNISHED. I paind extra money to drive a 68hp car because it has the least negative impact. Of course I'd love to buy a 340hp gas guzzling SUV, but I think it's irresponsible.
California aggressively encouraged people to buy hybrids because of their smog issues. Now that that initiative is somewhat successful they are panicking that they might start to loose tax revenue. It's insane. Are they gonna do the same thing if most people decide to stop smoking all of a sudden, like making an oxygen tax?
We already pay tolls and are taxed many ways for our roads. A tax on mileage could be looked at as an infringement on our basic freedom to simply live.
The bottom line is that this is probably just another creative way to help fund our wars. It's a state level initiative, but it's repercussions go deep in today's political atmosphere.
Only a fool believes this.
Bush did lower Tax. Other taxes had to go up because we could not AFFORD to lower governement payments.
But even if you are talking about total taxes, (which you clearly did NOT refer to originally), you are VERY wrong. Governments have in the past lowered net taxes. MANY times. It just takes a lowering of services to go with it.
The classic example of this happens just after a war, when the services lowered is national Defense. After WW II there was a significant tax lowerage, which lasted until the Korean war.
Instead of pulling crap out of thin air, try doing some research first. Start at this web site for more information about real tax cuts.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This is another example that democracy in our country is declining, not only on the federal level but even on the level of states.
In a democratic country public opinion would still matter and representatives would still represent the people rather than pocketing donations by various industries and following an Orwellian agenda.
I am supporting ACLU, EFF, and I am regularly writing our "representatives" but our country seems still do go down the drain at an increasing pace. I simply refuse to install a GPS system in my car or force my kids to wear RFID dog tags to school. Enough is enough and I hope others are also recognizing that this madness is getting out of control.
Governments can oppress people only that much and in fact the way things look like we might be at the threshold of civil disobedience and unrest.
Not to troll, but I have been hoping for something like this for YEARS. Hear me out.
If this comes up for discussion in your municipality, get the civil libertarians (like me) to agree to a GPS provision AS LONG AS government and cop cars are subject to the same, realtime publically accessable information.
I would personally write the code that posts these locations on a local map AND emails you when a traffic cop is slowly perusing your neighborhood. Think government incomes are low now? Wait until there is a perpetual line preceding an angry traffic cop! The end of traffic tickets is near!
Haven't they heard of odometers? It doesn't even require GPS!
Asshat. Hybrids use less gas per mile therefore hybrids are reducing the income per mile.
I see no problem with this. Now, a bureaucrat might think it odd that the GPS reports I drive one or two miles between fill-ups, and it seems to have real problems getting locks on the GPS satellites, but I'll be happy to keep swapping out those defective GPS units as often as they want to send me new ones.
Those orders for copper foil? Well, I've got some high-clock-speed computers and I need a little extra lining in the cases to keep the RF interference down to legal levels. I wouldn't want the FCC mad at me, now would I?
NPR had a story about this last month. First off, it's Oregon that's driving this project, not California, although California's interested in Oregon's results. Second, Oregon is currently testing a system that will work much like Mobil's SpeedPass system. Essentially, you'll have a GPS device in your car that'll keep track of where you drive. It can log your miles into zones. When you buy gas, it uploads the mileage info to the pump which then automagically adds the appropriate tax to your gas purchase.
The system as it is currently envisioned won't necessarily track exactly where you've been--just whether it was in-state or out-of-state. However, it promises to be able to do far more than simply track in-state or out-of-state mileage. It can also track whether any of your mileage was logged in a highly-congested area (much like London's congestion tax for driving in certain congested parts of the city), or during high congestion times (a rush-hour tax to encourage off-hours commuting), and tax you accordingly.
It remains to be seen whether the added cost of putting the devices in cars and equipping gas pumps with the readers is worth it, though.
Hey you idiots allowed a charismatic Austrian to take over the government, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?
As a person who actually lives in California, specifically the L.A. area, lemme give a biased perspective (with background):
The "freeway" concept was brought about because it was a PR message to get Cali folks to buy into having interstates built for them. The cost of maintaining them was a future generation's problem cos how could you sell folks back then on maintaining such vast expanses of roads when it was such a fiscally conservative state? It was short-sighted and we are paying for it now.
All Big Brotherliness aside, this GPS based "solution" is only the latest, simply ridiculous way to make up for that short-sightedness. The current gas tax is perfect since its a tax on consumption that affects that largest, most fuel inefficient vehicles most adversely. An 8,000 lb SUV does considerably more wear and tear on the roads than a typical 3,800 lb sedan (remember that these roads were engineered to carry smaller loads when they were built in the '50s and '60s. I'm pretty sure that they didn't envision passenger cars that had the weight of a delivery truck running about on them). If the cost of gas is your biggest concern, drive a more fuel efficient (and generally smaller) car. Or how about this: Add a vehicle weight "fee" as part of regular registration. You drive a big car, you pay the premium for this "right".
In a place where a truck/SUV monstrosity is seen a "bling-bling" conveyance for all of its road going room, make sure that the cost is placed where it belongs: squarely on the shoulders of the biggest vehicles. If you want the premium room, pay the premium price.
P.S. Please don't try to cloud the water with the semi rig argument as they already have a separate set of rule regulating them... and yes, I drive a little Toyota Corolla and carpool to work, when I don't take mass transit.
Freedom as in choice, not as in free-to-assume_everything_you_want_is-a-right. ~Q
Just keep on shifting the taxes from the rich and their H2s and Excursions onto the poor with their 7 year old Geo Metros. We could actually believe this if the fleet fuel efficency was actually subtantially increasing for automobile manufacturers, but it's not. This is yet another ploy to make the poor pay to keep the rich living in style. See also Social Security Reform, Tort Reform, Toll Roads, and Bush's Tax Reform plans.
Fortunately, in California, there's a way to legislate directly by referendum. We could amend the state constitution to require the death penalty for politicians who propose measures like this.
Sure, that's what property taxes are for. That's also not how California's property taxes work.
California Proposition 13 capped property tax valuation increases at a maximum of 2% per annum, with the valuation of the property being reassessed when sold. Two adjoining houses owned by Warren Buffett in Laguna Beach in 2003 had effective tax rates that vary by a factor of 10, because one was bought in the 70's while one was purchased in the 90's.
(http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/wsj.html for more details)
California needs greater tax equity, as its current property tax philosophy boils down to "sock it to the new guy".
Especially when a "relatively inexpensive" house in CA costs half a million.
I wondered why your post seemed incoherent when I read it. Then I realized... it was. Maybe if you weren't rushing to bash someone for a lack of pro-'pub zeal you would have taken the extra 8 seconds it took to click "parent" to see why the AC's comment didn't make sense to you.
NEWS FLASH -- somewhere, someone observes reality. Ultra radical, fringe of the fringe conservative froths at mouth, makes fool of himself.
Oh wait, that's dog bites man... no story there.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Your analysis is spot on.
File under: what to do when you are a hypocritical politician living large in a GREEN state.
Letter To Iran
Once you get to a point where every vehicle is required to have GPS, a lot of other potential uses arise. It becomes a lot harder to argue your way out of a ticket when you've got GPS tattling on you. And I would think the insurance companies would make a strong push to be able to use them for accident reconstruction.
The Cal govt needs a certain amount of tax income. If fuel efficient cars are lowering the tax they feel should be proportional to road use then they should raise the fuel tax (it's like, 50% in Oz). This has three big benefits:
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743 cs@cskk.id.au http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/
What's wrong with your system US?
Isn't there a single representative of the people who will raise a hell about this?
C'moon. It would be wiser to just raise fuel taxes than throw a ton of money at a huge project aimed at discouraging the people who try to conserver energy.
Heavier car=More road wear&More fuel used
Lighter car=less road wear&Less fuel used
Which one? Oh whic-fuck'n-one?
Yes! Let's make the system more favourable to the god damn tanks!
Bot Assisted Blogging
How about instead of reaching deeper into taxpayer pockets, these government bureaucrats do something to improve the efficiency of their spending habits?
That's the problem with government. They don't compete, nor strive to be efficient. When the getting gets tough they just stick out their hands and ask for more money, so they can waste it on pork barrels, paying over retail for everything, and acting like idi0ts in general.
No thanks.
eTrade SUCKS
... Why not raise the tax on a gallon of gasoline instead?
The proposed system makes no sense because people who drive more fuel-efficient cars will pay more mileage tax per GALLON than people who drive gas guzzlers. That's a strange way of encouraging more fuel-efficient cars.
Raising the tax on a gallon of gasoline would be simpler and actually promote fuel efficiency.
My bicyles
Not only is this a DUPE, but it was squashed and died LONG ago as one of the "funny" ideas the new DMV chief had.
All of a sudden, it's news all over again?
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
...but would this technology be compatible with the Microsoft Flying Car?
The Great State of California may be surprised to learn that all cars on the roads today already have the ability to report how many miles the vehicle has traveled. This amazing device is usually located either directly below, or in close proximity to the speedometer, and is often referred to as an odometer, or sometimes as a vehicle devaluator.
If they're really just interested in taxing by the mile, check the milage each year as part of the safety/smog inspection and charge accordingly.
Not to mention the inaccuracy or GPS.. If a car suddenly appears to jump 70 miles due to interference, will the driver be charged for that? And I guess it's free miles when solar flares drown out the GPS signals? Come to think of it, I like the idea of GPS much better than an odometer.. "I'm not sure who keeps stealing my antenna, officer. Damn kids."
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Why not just let police pull people over randomly, club them half to death, and take any money that happens to be in their wallet for the state coffers?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Be very careful you Norwegians with your government. It might be tempted to apply this measure to tax you when you go from Haugesund to Trondheim.
To do list for Windows
Screw that. If they try and stick GPS in my car, I'll just rip it out and let it sit in my house! This is the single most dumbest idea California has ever come up with. I used to think we were a cool state - just the fact that someone from California came up with this idea proves otherwise.
...Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
Isn't it about time we kick Kalifornia with its nutty ideas out of the union before they infect the rest of the country? I'm tired of hearing about their shit. They brag about how big they would be if they were a sovereign country. Well, let them be one and leave the rest of us alone.
I thought the point of the high gas tax was to encourage people to drive more efficient cars. So now that it's worked, the government's decided that it worked too well?
This reminds me of the New Jersey cigarette tax. They jacked up the price per pack to such a high point that most of the smokers quit. The result: the state had a budget shortfall because they didn't make as much as they estimated off of the tax increase--and actually took in less than the previous year.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
From the article:
Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.
Of course, Oregon isn't as much fun for the right-wing to demonize.
I'm not too surprised that CA needs new sources of revenue though. Since we only get back about $0.72 for each dollar we pay to the Republican-controlled Federal government, we've got to find some source of revenue that the red states can't steal from us to fund their creationism schools.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Well, increase tax per gallon.
.. while punishing the big honking SUV drivers. Consumers get to keep their privacy...
You will avoid all the infrastructure cost associated with GPS devises & gas station equipment
Why do governments always go for complicated solutions for non existent problems?
I predict that should such a device be plugged into my car my mileage would suddenly plummet to about 3MPG for no explicable reason. :-) I predict it will take mere moments for most gearheads to take care of these devices and begin recording only minimal mileage at the pumps.
California really does need to hurry up and break off into the ocean. The nutcases out there only serve to make the rest of us look bad...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Since you already have an odometer in the vehicle what advantage would the GPS provide for tracking mileage? It should simple enough to add an electronic readout if it needed. And then, why tax by mile at gas stations? If the state wants to have high mileage drivers pay by the mile the eastern "turnpike" system would work just fine. If they want to tax gas guzzlers, well they already do that. I have to agree with the tin foil bucnh on this; there's no good "tax" reason for a gps in the car, but plenty of law enforcement types would like to be able to simply query a data base to get a list of vehicles in the vicinity of a crime scene.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Also, a couple of notes on dupes:
We /. addicts obviously read religiously enough to know which articles are dupes, why don't the editors pay just as much attention?
If the /. search engine didn't suck so bad... Seriously, how hard is it to just write a page that redirects searches through google?
The rationale behind Prop 13 is quite sound. People were literally being taxed out of their homes by unrestrained reassesments. By capping at 2% per annum, you can plan for and save for your property tax payment. The theory is that eventually property turns over, and it will be reassessed at that time.
Case in point: my sister-in-law. Has moved 3 times in the past 10 years.
Periodically, there is a call to "revise" Prop 13. Usually by the CA Legislature. Gee, you think they want more money or something?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Once again, people can say good or bad things about Arnold being governor but this is definitely one of the bad things. When he abolished the Car Tax he basically told the state if you want funding you are going to have to come up with it on your own. Which means, we the people pay. Great job dumb a$$. Tax on road usage, increase in traffic fines (eg: red light violation was $271 but now is $351), etc. It is definitely an incentive to promote public transportation, however that has taken a hit too. There would be less cars on the road if the car tax was still in affect. The state needs to take charge and start taxing people based on the cars they drive: more taxes for those damn gas guzzling 11 mpg monsters (maybe a yearly, monthly road tax for all vehicles that exceed a certain weight: Hummer, Suburban, Expedition) and less for fuel efficient environmentally friendly vehicles.
Dear California,
I am sorry for trying to be a helpful citizen of your state. I am sorry for trying to limit my use of fuel to help lower air pollution and lessen the amount of gasoline that needs to be refined.
Call me crazy, but the lower revenues from taxes isn't due to fuel efficient cars. Since it's pretty obvious that not that many people even bought these cars, if that many new hybrid cars were sold, then you wouldn't have revenue problems because of the sales tax collected. More than likely the lower revenue is due to many people leaving the state, more people car pooling and driving less (because gas is already extremely expensive).
If you're worried about hybrids in the future, then raise gas tax in the future. It's a system that works and it's proven to promote progress and the environment.
If you're worried about revenue lost from hybrids, why aren't you worried about revenue "lost" from carpooling. Maybe we should have to pay per person in the carpool lanes, that will teach us for trying to evade taxes you apparently think we owe.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Big trucks do disproportionately more damage to the roads than cars. Think about it; what's more likely to crack pavement or rattle a bridge? A 1588 pound Fortwo or a 7+ ton Bad Boy?
And they want to tax based on mileage?
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Our roads in California a not very well taken care of, esp the ones that large trucks drive frequentally. Every year in California we hear that the Gas tax and other road taxes are being used elsewhere, it's pathedic. If they instituste this they are not looking to make the roads better, just for a way to tax people. And personally i'll disconnect my gps execpt for the weekends. I won't let the government know where I drive even if I'm not doing anything wrong.
You have no one but yourself to blame.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
we'll tax the street
If you try to walk
we'll tax your feet...
create a wealth tax for homes or other assets over $1M.
Don't get me wrong, I share your instincts (take from the rich, give to the poor), but I must say that right now I am pretty skeptical about taxation. Our government is using the money to bomb and occupy abroad and to build the foundations of a police state at home. This is the same government that is slashing budgets for social programs while giving handouts to huge corporations. Oh yeah, and there's a HUGE amount of pork and other waste (limos for senators, thrown in for good measure.
Why increase the revenue of this entity? The government is obviously not interested in redistributing the wealth in an equitable manner.
Why not just read the mileage once a year when you get your car inspected and base the taxes off that?
Because they prefer to have you bend over for them.
You can't take the sky from me...
Such a tax would do nothing to discourage ownership of large vehicles, since paying $5 mileage tax on top of $50 fuel is almost nothing (10%). For a small car, it might well be $20 tax on top of $20 fuel (100%)!
Wouldn't it be simpler/fairer to raise the tax on each gallon of fuel, and really hit the SUV owner where it hurts. Or is it un-American to tax fuel?
The tax here (outside US) is something like 50% of the final price of fuel, with tax concessions for primary producers, etc.
With each breath in, a flower somewhere opens; with each breath out, a flower withers away. In between lies beauty.
Sure, checking the odometer anually is nice for the people that don't leave the state. But what about the people that regularly drive in and out of state, or drive (instead of fly) places for business or vacation.? If I were to drive 1500-2000 miles out of state this year, I would not want to be taxed for those. That is why they are considering the gps. It would only apply to those in state. But taxing with gps, is a bad idea in general.
-Kruton
Why can I not find and group putting together a petition against this plan by DMV director Joan Borucki? Is the plan still just on the drawing board and it's just premature to be writing letters, does nobody care about paying for gps devices to track our movements, or are such groups being surpressed?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This reminds me of the idiot Toll road in Virginia, also known as the Dulles Toll Road. First they told us it would be temporary. Then for maintainance, lies, all lies! They make big money out of it, making people from other jurisdictions like Maryland, Washington, Pennsylvania pay tribute to them. We should all band together and eliminate tolls at bridges, roads, everywhere. Espeically for those poor souls in and around NYC. I don't know how they do it.
Every farm does have that, but it is illegal to fill any on-road vehicle from it. There is no gas tax paid on the fuel. Tractors are filled from it, but tractors are not used on the road. (There is a specific exception in the law for traveling on road to-from the fields, but only if a direct route is taken)
Every farmer I know drives the truck to town to fill it. I assume that once in a while someone checks to make sure they don't. In the case of diesel there is a dye added to off-road fuel that shows up for the next 7 fillups.
Buy an old pickup. Outfit it with a large tank in the bed such as farmers use for supplying petrol to tractors in the field. Equip with GPS. Drive that truck only to the gas station to fill the big tank, then back to the house. You get taxed for the one or two miles you'll drive to the gas station. Fill your fuel efficient car from the large tank in the truck. Sell extra fuel to neighbors who also have fuel efficient cars.
The classic solution to this "problem" is to put toll booths on the highway and charge people either for every booth they go through or for the amount of time they spend on the highway. The main problem with this approach is the overhead. In order to charge people based on the mileage they travel on toll roads it is necessary to build toll booths and to staff them with people. Another problem is the increase in traffic that tends to surround the toll booths on these roads. This idea of using a GPS in a car to log taxes owed to the state is an elegant new solution to this old problem. By using a GPS and having it read at gasstations (presumably automatically), the overhead of building and staffing toll booths is elimated along with the annoying side effect of increased traffic. Charging people based on the mileage that they drive is an old idea, but the implementation through the use of GPS is a brilliant new solution.
If they bought the car to save at the pump, then all they've proven is that they can't do math. Granted, i'm sure that there are quite a few that just like the idea of using less fuel, but i don't see how it follows that those people are more likely than others to know how to block the signal.
t _cost_to_own/
http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/18/pf/autos/efficien
\begin{rant}
These cars tend to cost thousands more than their non-hybrid counterparts ~5k in the case of the honda civic. Since our economy is based less on actual physical labor and more on leveraging the power of machines to accomplish tasks (i.e. trucks, mechanized farming, etc.), it is appropriate to state that the purchace price is indicitave of the energy used to produce the product. Since that energy generally comes from fossil fuels, $5k price difference roughly means that about 100 extra barrels of crude had to be pumped out of the earth to make the hybrid instead of the regular car. Now this number should drop as it becomes more efficient to produce these cars, but regardless, it is something to think about.
The question cali should ask themselves is why are the roads public in the first place? Would it not make sense to simply turn over all the maintenance and collection schemes to a regulated "RoadCorp [tm]?" ok why not?
\end{rant}
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I've heard that FastLane has a specific policy to not use their data for speeding tickets. There were a few tickets in the early days but due to the uproar, that practice was stopped.
Do you really know someone that got a ticket this way? If so, how recently and what speed were they going?
Only Congress has the authority to regulate interstate commerce. If CA tried to tax your travel through another state, the Federal courts or the Supreme Court would strike down that law as un-Constitutional faster than you could say Article I, section 8, clause 3.
That's not fair, that would benefit illegal immigration as they rarely register their cars and do not have licenses and would not have their cars tagged with the device. It's a dumb idea and everybody knows it.
Besides, we already pay consumption taxes at the gas pump, why punish those that use fuel efficient cars?
It ticks off enviros, low-tax conservatives and privacy freaks alike, it's not going anywhere. Why don't they stop worrying about these dumb ideas and focus on increasing capacity on our clogged transpotation arteries.
I believe gas (mostly diesel, actually) delivered to farms don't pay taxes. Or at least a lot less tax. Since tractors, combines, et al., accumulate most of their miles in the field it makes sense. If you're gonna whine about it, hey, you gotta eat!
Hasn't anyone ever heard of a toll road?
To me, that seems like an option that doesn't invade your privacy and still taxes you on how much you use the roads in that state.
I think state senators need to have "REMEMBER THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES" tattooed onto their butts.
As this Wikipedia article proves, California repealed that law in 1986.
Such a system is already functioning here in Germany since January. It is for commercial trucks only for now. There are special tracking gates on autobahns for automated tracking as well as toll stations for those who do not have an on-board unit mounted (like trucks from outside Germany, I assume). The project cost a zillion and went over a year late.
http://www.toll-collect.de/
Toll booths are a bad idea, particularly in California where there is a pollution problem anyway. As you arrive at the booth you hit the breaks, turning good kinetic energy into heat. Then you leave the engine idling for a minute (at best) while you wait in line, slowly creeping forward to the booth. Then you floor it to get back up to speed for the next 3 miles where you repeat the process.
Compare that to a gas tax. Stop every 250 miles and fill up. You do have all the stopping issues, but must less often, and there is almost never a line to wait in. The engine is off where it doesn't add pollution. As a bonus, this is something you have to do anyway, so there is no additional cost.
Toll booths are a bad idea and waste enough gas already. We don't need more of them.
I guess donuts will become very expensive with this.
Why not leave the GPS device in your garage?
http://pixelcort.com/
California is the absolute best place in the US to live.(in my opinion and at least 12% of the population)
:-) a paradox
My theory:
Anyone who can afford to live in California does...
The problem:
too many people in the Golden State paradise...
solution: Make it more expensive to live there in any way possible.
Eventually the "Less desirables" will be forced to just vacate and the elite can just have their own personal West coast. How is it that my income places me in the top 10% but I can't afford to live on California, where 12% of the nation lives
I don't see how this is specifically punishing hybrid car owners. Everyone would pay this tax depending on how much they drive, so the ones being punished are the ones that take long commutes to work regardless of vehicle type. SUV owners are still paying more in gas taxes than hybrid owners. If they factor weight/number of axles of the vehicle into account I can't hardly imagine a fairer tax system (the more you damage/use the road, the more you pay).
they'll drop the gas tax if this goes through, NOT!
I sell equipment for watching people but his gives me the creeps.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I do not think you would be tracked everywhere you go. There is no talk of a device that calls to see where you are or went. I think its some crude simple GPS that just measures miles traveled. Most of you are already tracked by walking around with a turned on cell phone. Maybe not exactly, but well enough. However, adding any more taxes is idiotic, its a matter of time before California comes up with another proposition 13 like referendum and will cap that in the butt.
Once GPS tracking of individual cars was possible, it became inevitable that some government somewhere would want to introduce it.
Taxing reasons, congestion charging, speeding violations, all reasons to want to implement it.
What Orwell didn't realise about 1984 (because he wasn't a sci-fi author but just brilliant author who used metaphor a lot) was that it won't be done by people watching everywhere, but by computers, and computers don't make mistakes except the ones their progammers made.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Ok, so they plan to try and tax cars by polling the odometer (or GPSr) or whatever..
I'd love to see how they plan to do that with my hand-built replicar. (or any other car that predates electronic speed controls..)
Maybe my Cobra just got a lot more affordable to drive after all.
If there isn't a lockout preventing pumping gas, I can't see how the government expects to see any compliance.
If these devices become mandatory at the pumps, how will California handle tourists with their own cars?
The capitol gains tax was most assuredly lowered. You have just been proven wrong by example. Prepare to be modded down.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Tell me about it. Having bought my first house last summer, I'm now paying about 3 times what the previous owner was paying in property taxes. Poop on that!
Never mind the logistics of setting up the infrastructure for doing this (which will more than likely make it not happen any time soon, if ever)..
Why is this such a bad thing, in theory? If you use the roads more, you ought to pay more in tax. Its only fair. That's why they tax the gas.
I have a better way to achieve the same thing. Why not just handle it at the DMV? When you go to renew your registration, they will check your odometer. Then your mileage will be multiplied by some kind of "handicap" for your particular car, based on its fuel efficiency and weight or whatever. Your tax will be based on that.
This way, you pay based on how much you use the roads, how much wear and tear your car might cause and how much polution you cause. Fuel efficient hybrid cars would pay much less.
The only thing is, people will certainly bitch about it because the tax will be much more noticable at the end of the year rather than paying a few cents a gallon.. even if it amounts to less overall.
OR: we continue to pay gas taxes, but when you renew at the DMV they use the same formula and give you a tax return if you payed to much! Now that would make some people real happy!
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
If the gas tax isn't generating enough revenue, why not raise the gas tax? Or is that too obvious?
First, who are these "officials"? Second, find out which elected officials support this idea, and finance their opponents (gotta find some first, though).
This idiocy wouldn't move forward if the boneheads promoting it were recalled and sent off to retirement somewhere.
Here's a different idea: make the tax high enough to double the price. Then, distribute the proceeds _equally_ to every _adult citizen_. Why? To compensate the citizenry for all the crap tied to the use of gasoline. And if they need more money for roads, then just add on more taxes. More gas taxes, that is.
Serve those Sport Utility Car drivers right.
Hey, wait! Don't we need to charge bicycle riders really big time? And what about pedestrians? How dare they use those sidewalks without paying for them.
Why do we need GPS. Isn't the normal gas tax sufficient.
For example:
If I don't drive, I don't use the roads, I don't buy gas, I'm not taxed.
If I do drive, I do use the roads, I do buy gas, I'm taxed.
If I use the roads a lot I pay a lot in taxes because of all the gas I buy. If I don't use the roads a lot I use less gas and pay less gas taxes.
If I drive a compact car that gets 35 mpg and have to refill a 10 gallon tank every two weeks I'm going to pay taxes on that gas used. Which should correlate to how much wear and tear I put on the road.
If I drive an SUV that gets 12 mpg and have to refill a 20 gallon tank every week I'm going to pay taxes on that gas used. Which should correlate to how much wear and tear I put on the road.
If they tax based on mileage then lighter more fuel efficient cars end up paying the same amount of tax per mile as larger less efficient cars and trucks which may actually place more wear on the roads they use.
Did I miss something?
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Nothing a little tinfoil of the GPS unit couldn't solve.
I think its funny.. and really sets the tone for the current government... Buy a fuel efficient car.. make less polution.. spend less... the state gets less taxes, so they have to figure out a way to rape us of our money to justify taking over other countries for oil...
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
Assuming the mileage tax is a good idea, it would be better to just get the mileage from the car's OBD which already tracks mileage. There's no need to require a device that can always report a car's coordinates.
mbbac
Aside from the fact that this is a complete invasion of citizen privacy and rather silly altogether, wouldn't it be easier to just assess a tax based on the mileage of the car between annual inspections? To account for road trips out of state, a few receipts from gas stations and a form for exemption/deductions wouldn't be too difficult--at least easier than a billion dollar electronic GPS infrastructure. It would be a cheaper way to collect assess taxes without spying on people.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
The best part was including that amount in the next year's taxes. How's that for a slap in the face?
Not true. If got the rebate check, you then paid the old tax rate the next year instead of the new reduced rate. You come out ahead either way, the plan was just to encourage spending by sending the rebate checks out early.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
hmmm
White power!
Kick all of the spics out! And let's not forget about the nignogs aswell...
You can't get rid of the blood sucking ticks until you get rid of the monkeys out of the room.
Bush did, and for everyone (Not just the "wealthy") =)
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
California should sink into the Pacific Ocean and get it over with already...
Anybody with even a minuscule ammount of knowledge in the fields of plate tectonics or politcs knows that the western half of California is shifting towards Canada.
...then they'll issue tax credits for fuel-efficient vehicles....
Would there be anyway that this system could back fire , thereby allowing some group of terrorist to monitor the movements of the most wealthy members of society to and from their homes ?
FTA:
"Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage."
and
"A computer inside the gas pump would communicate with your car's odometer to calculate how much you owe."
It talks to the GPS or it talks to the odometer - which is it?
GPS?
WAAS-enabled GPS is accurate to +/- 3 meters, or 9.84251969 feet.
Of course, there's no way to tell just how accurately the GPS will reflect your actual mileage since it will depend heavily on the frequency of your jaunts, not the actual mileage. If you assume that every trip has only 2 stops - there and back - then you're off by +/- 20 feet every time you get in the car to go somewhere. If usage is billed by the quarter mile, for every 66 two-stop trips you make, you pay a variance penalty.
Silly.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
why not maybe.... raise the fucking taxes on gas?
Some GPS firm sales rep. talked to someone in insurance industry and to someone in the state government. Someone is going to make a killing on this. I wish this someone was me!
You can't handle the truth.
sqeeze the fat out of your next hamburger.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Have a junker car or bicycle with trailer. Buy 10 gallons of gas. Put it in approved containers. Take it home in junker car/bicycle.
If you have the junker car, you will only pay for the distance from your home to the gas station. If you have a gas station close enough for bicycling, you will pay no tax on your gas.
They cannot prevent people from buying gasoline without having a car present--lawnmowers, leaf blowers, etc.
To just put a higher license plate tax on hybrids/electrics to account for road wear.
Won't someone think of the children?
Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001
thanks Google
Since everyone's using gas to drive those miles... and it's losses from less gas they are worried about... why don't they just increase tax on gas itself? Seems cheaper than building this whole infrastructure.
Hybrid cars are more expensive and better for the environment than their counterparts. So why tax people for buying them? That doesn't sound correct.
But, what makes more sense is to tax people who report LESS mileage at each visit to the gas station. Those are people who own the huge environmentally-devastating gas guzzlers.
Or, why not simply increase the registration fees based on the car you own? That's easier for everyone.
CA (think): "Need to get more gas tax". CA (says): " We're going to track your asses with GPS". People (yell):"WAAH WAAH WAAH priivacy! Why not just raise the gas tax"
CA:"The people have spoken they want us to raise the gas tax."
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Wear & tear on public roads is a function of the weight of the vehicle and the distance travelled on public roads. It really has no relationship to the gas consumed in the process, aside from the fact that lighter cars use less gas regardless of their fuel economy relative to other cars in their class.
So from the perspective of having a tax that actually is related to the government services it pays for, this is a great idea! Combined with differential licensing fees for different vehicle classes (cars, trucks, commercial rigs), it actually taxes the thing that is related to the provided service. Yay! A bit like a public version of a toll road, really, without the turnstiles and/or pass cards.
The problem is that there's no way to implement this concept without being very creepy (I'm already creeped out by private pass cards for toll roads!) Good idea in theory + no decent to implement it = crappy idea.
Not to mention, taxing fuel purchases pays for environmental issues caused by emissions that the state needs to pay for. The fact that the tax base is drying up means that this policy is WORKING and that California will have reduced expenditures in the future, in theory. Except that California shares the same atmosphere as Texas. Environmental-minded laws rarely work unless everyone plays along. See Kyoto.
Summary: Interesting but ultimately bad idea, and we're all screwed anyway.
This idea came from Oregon, and is entirely wacky. Yes, people will need tinfoil, but not for their hats, for their GPS antennas. A tiny bit of tinfoil will render the GPS completely inoperative.
Those who want corruption attack the weak states first. Oregon state government has become, in my opinion, very corrupt, so that's where the corrupters try their stupid ideas.
Apparently, this has very little to do with "a team at Oregon State University". That's just to give the idea a little credibility. If I remember correctly, the people behind it want to sell the electronics.
Suppose there is a system like this and it records that a teenager drove 10,000 miles in the mountains of Peru last month? What could the government do about that? There would be no taxes in California or Oregon for driving in Peru, would there?
A system like this would make war drivers very, very happy. They could make a very simple electronic device that would send GPS signals to every car as they drove looking for wireless connections. Can you imagine the court cases:
Accused: But judge, the records show that I was calmly driving north on I-5, and then one hour later I was driving more than 100 miles per hour through the streets of Moscow.
Judge: Will you certify for the court that you are not an alien with extraterrestrial means of transport?
Accused: Yes.
Judge: Case dismissed.
Anyhow, this story is a dupe of a dupe, by a Slashdot editor, Michael, who was duped:
Oregon Considers GPS-based Road Taxes
More on Oregon and GPS-tracked Gas Taxes
If you would like to read more about my part-time, unfinished investigation of state government corruption, see The idea cannot work. So why do they propose it?
This story should scare you, even if you don't live in the United States. Two men, whose family and business associates and friends have extensive investments in global oil businesses, are president and vice-president of the entire U.S. government. The president is a not-too-smart partier and heavy drinker who has been arrested three times. The vice-president also has been a heavy drinker and has been arrested twice for drunken driving.
Knowing all this, think how corrupt the lower governments must be.
Some of the Bush and Cheney arrest records.
Close but not quite -- taxes based on use are a great idea, especially for something like this.
But -- this isn't the way to do it.
Why not require mandatory vehicle inspections every year, like many states do already, and simply log the engine odometer between visits? Then, at the end of the year, you get a bill based on how much driving you've done. If they're smart, they could even make it come out of their state income tax refund, or something.
GPS tracking devices are not the way to do it.
....on Slashdot. But what the hell, there are a LOT of readers here (the polls often get a count of 20K responders within a day). So it is worth our while to spread our ideas here....
yes, i agree. Just as any business owner must ensure that his employers are within his control, so too, must we control our own govt.
But how do we do that? First, we have to sell our ideas to the public. I think the citizens own America, and that the job of the govt as our "hired man" is to make sure we get our cut, one way or the other. But right now the govt has sold out to the rich and powerful. We start to set things a-right by telling what we think, telling our story....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Press 4 to donate money to the Department of Homeland Security.
You can view roads in several ways.
... but isn't that what we want anyway? This is about California, not Texas).
They might be considered a public good - and the government should be proud to provide them. (This idea seemingly went out some time ago).
They might be considered an income source - in which case you should charge people for the use in some way. (Toll roads).
They might be considered a service, in which case people should be charged for the amount the use them - or, better, the amount it costs to repair the damage they cause. This would mean - for example - that highways would cost more than dirt roads, SUVs (being heavier) would be charged more pre mile than light vehicles. (Hmm, charging by the fuel amount used sounds pretty effective there, though some efficient low polluting vehicles would get a bit of a break
Damn, I think I'll just stick to my bicycle.
"Cats like plain crisps"
There is a company called NowAuto which has gps navigation devices that are linked to a central system... http://www.nowgps.com/ very interesting product.
Isn't THAT the "elephant in the room?"
Please mod parent as immigrant-bashing TROLL.the poster did not attack another poster! This moderation system is SERIOUSLY broken!
A non-electronic, low-power invention called an Odometer is available that will measure the distance a vehicle has traveled to a legally adequate accuracy.
This amazing device is already widely used in the auto sales, vehicle maintenance, and did-the-kids-take-the-car-out-while-we-were-gone industries.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I hope this is not a flat rate tax, as the fuel tax is now. 5 gallons in a hummer and 5 gallons in a hybrid pay the same fuel tax. If this GPS BS flies, I hope Arnie does not want to charge the hybrid he same price per mile as the hummer. There should be weight classes in this pay per mile thing just as their are for the yearly registration.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
The land of fruits, flakes, and nuts. Serves them right.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mandatory GPS tracking would suck... until the system is hacked.
"Why look, only I drove 500 miles again this year!"
By then pistols will have been totally outlawed as they are already in some places such as New York.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
See, if everyone starts to drive around Hybrids the gas tax isn't enough to fill the coffers of the state. The people running the state probably don't drive around Hybrids and don't care to because they like their big gas guzzling SUVs. At the same time, they had to promote Hybrids because everyone likes the idea of an environmentally friendly state. Now, the problem is those coffers again not being quite overflowing yet. If they raise the gas tax, that won't do a lot of good as the big gas guzzling SUVs will pay more which means those running the state much fork out more dough. BUT! If you tax on mileage, those cheapskate Hybrid drivers will bear the brunt. So, let's see... what to vote for... hrmm...
after all the crap they've put me through. im putting my money where my mouth is and already in the process of moving to florida.
my girlfriend's friends and my friends are doing the same. get the hell out of that state and let it collapse into another dimension like that house at the end of poltergeist.
california is a hell hole and not even the best leadership in the history of the world will be able to turn around the damage in a generation.
before i got my new job out here (in florida) i was talking with numerous coworkers who were commuting 2 hours ONE DIRECTION DAILY. the sprawl is too great to use mass transit. short of invention teleportation suddenly the commute times are only going to get longer.
and yes you too can get an affordable house in SOUTH CENTRAL for the low low price of $320,000 gunshot wounds come free!
really how much of your life do you want to piss away in traffic?
come join the mass exodus of young people out of california! california --- the new retirement community. where baby boomers go to die because they're already there and noone else can afford to move in!
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
"Periodically, there is a call to "revise" Prop 13. Usually by the CA Legislature. Gee, you think they want more money or something?"
Your school system is dying from starvation. For god's sake, you need to pay more taxes.
this is WHY america is on a slow boat to hell....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Just ride your horse.
Soooooooooooooo wasn't it part of arnie's political stance that he was calling out the other Governer on Taxes... it was a real strong theme of Arnies..
"Richard is Bad because he wants to tax tax tax".
Arnie is a dweeb. California deserves what it gets after thinking Arnie was an appropriate person to govern.. go back to school californias, get some education behind you, elect a good person who doesn't have corps in mind for their back pocket and then I might have some sympathy.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/arnie.php
Enjoy the movie that has become your life.
... to demonstrate to our republican overlords that I am doing my patroiotic duty to consume as much gas as possible in order to justify our wars in the middle east.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
It is GPS based, the article is just a bit vague, try This one instead.
Looks like it's time for me to get a bike.
Free will is just an illusion
Coined by George Orwell and used very effectively by George Bush. After all, what congressman could possibly vote against being a Patriot?
This has to be one of the most outrageous ideas I've heard, well, today.
Why not do the same as the Europeans and just put more tax on the gas itself. Tax people for having fuel hungry cars and for doing more miles. Very simple and you don't have to have complex databases.
Nor does Big Brother have to watch you.
since this article started out with the usual, "due to lack of revenue" excuse, i have a seriously better idea that
will kill two birds with one stone:
more frequent driving tests(not the written)
bird #1: you must take the driving test every three years, it'll cost 15$ - presto! instant revenue.
bird #2: we weed out the truly inept, suck-@ss drivers.
as a commuter that drives 64 miles a day through the san fernando valley(on the 101, ech) improving the driving
conditions by removing the morons would make me so much happier due to the increased safety. i'd gladly pay
$15 every three years to retake my driving test; i'm a good driver, so i don't have anything to worry about.
"...that's as white as it gets; all the bits are on..."
No doubt! That is laughable.
Take a look at your phone bill: see that "Federal Excice Tax"?
That's a "temporary tax"--to help fund the Spanish-American war. It's been temporary for 107 years now.
I think that war's over, man.
Another good example: income tax. Put in place with a cap of 2.5%. Seems to have gone up since then [so much, that financial advisers are beginning to recommend NOT doing tax deferals (e.g., 401K), because taxes will probably be higher by the time you are a pensioner].
You will have a Gas Tax and a Milage Tax AND a Vehicle-Registration Tax AND a Sales Tax [that already gets retroactively to people who move into the state when they already own a new-ish car].
...at least as a method of revenue generation for road maintenance. They are ultimately not a stable way to generate revenue because they put downward pressure on fuel consumption--good for the environment but we'll still need our roads maintained when we're all driving fuel-celled vehicles.
Furthermore they directly hurt the transportation/logistics industry directly and thus the whole economy indirectly. High fuel costs (including taxes) make operating costs for owner/operators and transport companies, and the cost of distribution gets passed down to the consumer. Big tractor-trailer units will be fossil-fuel powered for much longer than small-passenger vehicles so raising fuel taxes would really hurt--you could end up with commercial drivers paying huge taxes so everyone can enjoy the roads--not exactly fair is it? And don't use that "harder on the roads" argument--there are many many times more 4X4 SUVs on the roads (which incidentally are hard on roads too) than tractor-trailers on the road.
Taxation on simple mileage might not be the best either, as some people do not live in the state where they work, meaning people living in Nevada or Oregon could get a free ride and Californians who work in those states would be taxed for using roads that will not be maintained using that revenue. GPS is obviously too invasive on privacy. I'd say the best method of taxation would be during vehicle registration, adjusting the fee based on vehicle size.
Better yet, they should phase out consumption taxes altogether--they are "regressive" and hold back the economy. I haven't heard any notable economists defend very regressive tax regimes (lots of sales taxes and user fees) and most advocate flat or progressive taxes (based on income/revenue generation instead of consumption). Regressive taxes are only liked by politicians and ultimately it is hard to make them fair. In any case, maybe CA should stop spending money foolishly and passing idiotic laws that stand in the way of sound budgeting (is CA not the state that passes well-intended but loony laws like mandating that at least one-third of general revenue must be spent on education?).
Interesting debate..CA is a place I love to visit and provides endless entertainment but most definitely a place I would not like to live.
Duh. They should just set a required revenue level and have the rate of gasoline tax automatically increase to maintain it. As some people get more efficient, the proportion paid by gas guzzlers will go up.
I foresee that one of my cars will be driven very little but will suddenly start to consume tons of gas. The other car will become super-efficient and never see a gas station in its life.
I also foresee a brisk business in fuel transfer pumps. Better run invest in stocks of companies which make them.
My school system apparently has enough money to blow over $200 Million on a *single* school which has yet to open. Until they show that they can spend money wisely, I don't believe that they need more money.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
1. the government needs X money to pay for Y maintenance and Z programs
2. They got X from gasoline
3. If gasoline use goes down they don't get X
4. They need another way to get X
5. They will find a way to get it from you.
THat other way is coming, you will continue to pay X one way or the other even if your car uses no gasoline and does no damage to the roads. This is one of the problems with large and centralized government.
would be to lower everybodys taxes immediatly, THEN do the tax-by-mile thing. pay for what you use. I know thats what the republicans are thinking (assholes that they are), but of course, they wont do it right, they'll keep taxes at the same level, but charge other ways.
although the database of people's travels DOES bother me, a lot. then again, I dont live in CA anymore.
Property taxes are constantly going up. Every time I move, property taxes increase. Every time a house on my block is sold, property taxes increase.
Over the last 5 years, housing prices have gone up from ~$175k to > $500k in my area. Given that property taxes are a percent of the sale price, the property taxes have more than doubled on any property that is newly assessed. And a lot of houses have turned over in that time.
If the schools are hurting in CA, it has nothing to do with property taxes. Most property taxes don't even stay in the local community - they go to Sacramento for pillaging and redistribution.
I hate it when people want to increase the % of tax on anything. As prices, income and inflation rise, so should government revenues without touching a thing. Our government, like Governor Arnold S. pointed out, increases spending automatically whenever revenue increases as part of the system. That is part of the problem. We have too many programs, too much beurocracy, and too much spending in general.
Maybe if we cut back some of the wasteful programs, we could concentrate on ones that are important like education and public safety.
So.. you do your part to save fuel, be cleaner and you get attacked by the state government.
Nice move.. run more people out of your state.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Your car causes wear on the roads -- and the roads cause wear on your tires. Why not remove some/all of the gas tax, and replace it with a tire tax? Larger tires, for high-wear vehicles, would be taxed more than the mini-donuts of the Geo Metro.
- Rob Cottrell
Here in The Netherlands you get government subsidies when buying a hybrid, electric or hydrogen car.(Although the last two are not widely available yet)
This is because when you buy such a car, you as a citizen contribute to the reduction of CO2 and pollution in the air and therefor help the government in reaching Kyoto Protocol milestones.
So you actually get rewarded, because the government here wants to stimulate cleaner means of transportation and if i'm not mistaking a government that does not reach the Kyoto Protocol milestones will get fined, but i'm not sure about this.
So in a way you as a citizen here help the government in preventing itself from getting fined by Kyoto.
The subsidy is most often given in the way of a rebate when you purchase your car, which can vary from 800 to 4000 Euros(The Prius saves you about 4000($5200 US) last time a saw a tv-commercial about it), but can also be given in the form of tax-refunds.
So in short, when buying a prius here, they'll cut 4000 Euros($5200 US) from the price for you, because of the government subsidies
The same is true for household equipment, like washing machines, dryers, dishwashers etc etc. If they are energy efficient passing a certain threshold of efficiency(electricity and/or water), then you'll also get a rebate or tax refund...usually rangng from 100-200 Euros.
This seemed to work quite well, because in 2004 for the first time in the history of The Netherlands, less water was used in family homes on average...entirely because of more efficient household equipment.
And if i'm not mistaking more EU member governments work this way, because ussually the cleanest equipment(and maybe cars also) come with a certain sticker which is a seal of EU approvement.
I guess this is so, because Kyoto is not just an issue of one country, but countries working together.
"Why not just increase the gas tax?" -- because this GPS stuff is sort of self defeating.. They'll have to buy all the equipment, hire people to install / inspect / maintain it. Then hire some staffing to manage the install / inspect / maintain staff... Then they'll need a fraud inspection for every car probably annually / bi-annually... Then they'll need a system at the BMV to audit who has what in their cars... Then they'll have to pay some sort of insurance premium or whatever in case someone finds a way to kill themselves with this device... Then they'll have to set up shops to repair faulty units... Then they'll have to come up with a "manual taxing system" for people whose units have failed / are buggy... and then.. and then... and then..... Of course that's one way a politician can say "I've created XXX more jobs in my administration."
I should have been a politician... The fact that they are actually considering this angers me... Maybe they are thinking outside the box, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the box they have.... This probably spawned from the fear that voters view a tax increase with more hatred than an all new tax. Or that they did not want to stand out by having the highest fuel costs in the nation... Why not? They already have the highest electricity costs...
Anyone in california should be able to see past this gas tax fiasco and a more serious / real problem -- Less state tax being collected due to manufactuing jobs exiting to the south, IT jobs exiting to the middle east, and illegal aliens entering from the south working under the table. Taxing the income of McDonalds employees just doesn't cut it.. Instead of finding a way to take more money from an already highly taxed california population, they should be concetrating on how to fix their jacked up economy.
What are the costs of impementing this system and maintaining it? I suspect they are a heckuva lot higher than the current tax system where you just get your check from the oil distributors. So, once you implement it, you're actually making LESS money and have to charge even higher taxes to pay for the damn system and the burearucrats to run it.
Idiotic and stupid. Keep it the way it is. This flies in the face of California's environmental policies. Why not spend a few minutes and see where you can cut back spending (hint: stop giving non-taxpayers any money at all (read: illegal immigrants)) instead of wasting time AND money figuring out how to cripple your citizen's income?
I hope Arnie squashes this before it gets out of hand.
1) It turns out that almost all of the road damage is due to large trucks. SUVs and Priuses both do about the same amount of damage -- none. They both take up about the same amount of space on the road, too, so they really are using about the same amount of the road resource.
2) This is just the camel's nose under the tent. The real value is congestion-limiting taxation -- much as is done in London and Singapore, but a lot more flexibly. Note well that GPS knows both your position and time. So, given the initial investment of putting GPS in all the cars (say $1-2B for California) then it would be very easy to charge people, say, $2 for going south through the Sepulveda Pass between 8:00 and 9:30 on weekdays. Which one might well argue is less of a burden than just forcing everybody to crawl across the hill at 5mph for free.
Anyway -- I think this is a terrible idea. There are so many extremely good reasons to have high-milage cars that they need to be encouraged, not discouraged. Pollution is expensive in any number of ways, depleting oil supplies is expensive in even more ways.
Thad
disclaimer -- I've got two Prii
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
If California assesses the tax based on the odometer reading alone, one could possibly argue that they were unconstitutionally impeding interstate commerce, since California-registered cars would also be taxed when driving out of state.
But the GPS workaround really sucks for its invasion to privacy. It's only a matter of time before insurance companies get their hands on the data and jack up your rates for driving in "high-risk zones".
This will be great.
Think of the denial of service when I jam the transfer mechinism to report the mileage and no one can buy gas. The time to start jamming would be right before a holiday weekend. Excuse me, I need to contact some contract manufactures for some PCBs.
For the humor impared, I am being sarcastic, look it up.
That's interesting -- www.oregon.gov auto-negotiates the language over HTTP, and it shows up in French for me. Who would have guessed that there was a sizable French audience in Oregon?
I would have to say that the production of hybrid automobiles is not going to bankrupt the transportation department. The largest threat that transportation commitees should be working on is depletion of fossil fuels. It is estimated that within 50 years the Earth's supply of crude oil will be completely used up. Now this might raise an interesting question to the state government. "How much higher are we going to have to raise the gas tax in order to keep the roads maintained without actually selling any gas?" The hybrid car purchasers should be rewarded since they are helping prolong the inevidable problem as a reasonalbe alternitive is researched.
Vehicle A: A hummer. it weighs 6 tons, it gets 5 miles to the gallon, and it costs half a million dollars to purchase. (yes, those numbers are all made up)
Vehicle B: An 80cc Honda elite (scooter). it weighs like, 100 pounds. it gets 60+ miles to the gallon, costs well under a grand.
Who's damaging the roads? Vehicle A. Who's paying more for gas? Vehicle A. Who can afford to pay more for gas? Owner of vehicle A. Who gets screwed by a bill like this? Owner of vehicle B.
To me it's very simple. INCREASE THE PRICE OF GASOLINE. Those who are responsible with the roads, who drive smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles (gas/electric hybrid, for instance) are being penalized because daddy's little princess (or prince) wants to drive a big road-tearing military grade vehicle 10 miles to work every day. Make gas cost 10 bucks a gallon, people will take the goddamn bus to work, or drive a vehicle that is less damaging to the roads, or pay out the ass, and provide enough money for road repair.
To me that makes a lot more sense than keeping track of every (free?????) citizen's wherabouts.
If something I said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, I meant the other one.
GPS stuff like this is used in many cars due to OnStar, and a host of other things. I believe that the GPS-in-every-car idea is not bad. It could find stolen or missing cars, kidnappings, etc. Many of life's little problems may be solved. But, like the 6 billion other people in the world, This idea of 'Taxing by the mile' is an outrageous form of, quite literally, highway robbery!
Privacy concerns? The US Govn't already has our address, phone number, name, DOB, eye color - EVERYTHING! What's to prevent people from finding out where you are? The same thing that's to prevent people from finding out all of the aforementioned information.
Government is Halliburton's hired man. You are just its serf or cleric.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
GPS stuff like this is used in many cars due to OnStar, and a host of other things. I believe that the GPS-in-every-car idea is not bad. It could find stolen or missing cars, kidnappings, etc. Many of life's little problems may be solved. But, like the 6 billion other people in the world, This idea of 'Taxing by the mile' is an outrageous form of, quite literally, highway robbery!
Privacy concerns? The US Govn't already has our address, phone number, name, DOB, eye color - EVERYTHING! What's to prevent people from finding out where you are? The same thing that's to prevent people from finding out all of the aforementioned information.
Just increase the tax on gasoline to make up for the loses incurred by fuel efficeint vehicals. Add a dime per gallon tax every year for the next 10 years.
At the end of 10 years every fuel guzzler is off the road and you no longer have a traffic or pollution problem for just an average of paying an extra 55 cents per gallon over 10 years.
Plus it's easy to implement and no costly overhead to manage. There is also no security force monitoring your every move, which I consider a huge plus and well worth the extra 55 cents per gallon on average.
Not living in a police state... Priceless.
If the desired goal is to pay for maintenance and construction of state roads, then the optimal solution would be as follows:
But that is how a business would operate. To find out how a government would operate, take the rational business plan, throw it in a blender with 3 bullfrogs, a gallon of dung-flavored ice cream, and hair from an elder statesman, then puree until the motor burns out. Afterwards, bill the public for triple the actual cost of the roadways, skim half of that off the top, and burn half of what's left. With the remainder, do a half-assed job on the roads, and complain about inadequate funding. To actually collect the bill, assign one leeching bureaucrat to every productive person, to follow him around and assess a tax on everything he does. For best results, the tax on a person should have no relationship whatsoever to his actual use of the roads. Care should be taken to assess additional taxes, fines, fees, and penalties against anyone who questions the merits of the current system, and particularly anyone not likely to vote for you next election.
"This quote is a product of the Frobozz Magic Quote Company."
This system is already in place in Germany. I wonder why there are no descritions on this rated high. No German reaers at this time?
Anyways, the system is called "toll collect", since all major project names in Germany now need English names in order to sound "cool". A huge federal contract was awarded to a large consortium of super large companies, among them DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Telekom and Oracle. It was supposed to start working in the fall of 2003 and failed miserably. This was in many ways embarissing to both the companies and even more for the traffic minister. Not only was this system supposed to be a major export article and a boost to the German export economy (our economy largely depends on exports btw) but also a way to make money. Since the companies were found to be fault since they promised to have the system ready at that time (the on board units didn't work at all) they were supposed to pay the money the fed didn't get because the system was not in place. But their contract said otherwise and the whole thing became a huge blunder. Apparently nobody at the federal traffic ministry had really read the contract. You guys think Enron was bad? You obviously don't have the faintest idea what goes on in old Europe. In the US business meddles way too much in politics. In Europe it is the other way around.
The system started up finally in 2005 with over 1 year delay. Currently trucks pay for highways. Cars as well as anything not using a highway are not taxed. The system relies on GSM for data exchange and GPS combined with sensors at the entry points of highways to measure stuff like length, exchange data via short range radio and check license plates.
If You want to know more I guess You can google it up.
THere is a lot more to it than just Halliburton. And this is nothing new. It has always been this way. But WTC 911 emboldened the rich, the powerful, and now, with the Internet to expose them, their machinations are much more obvious.
But I essentially agree....the govt is the hired man of the rich, the powerful, the corporate lobbies. They do not act in our interests. Say it long and loud. That is a first step.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
the upper class (in wealth and assets) pay less than the young people and the lower and middle class, at least in terms of percentage of current income or assets.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I thought this was being talked about in Oregon.
This is getting ridiculous because it is the legistators that got us into this mess and they are make us pay for their mistakes. What right do they have to keep track where I go. If this does get implemented in California it beginning look like Nazi Germany when all of the Jews had to put the Star of Davids so they can be recognized.
Please keep our Constitutional Rights on our hands and votes these morons out.
There's no need for a new technology or overly complex solution for a problem already solved in many states. Using NY and NJ as an example, these two states still have tolls on major highways, but drivers using EasyPass can pass through them at 40-60 mph. And EasyPass (http://www.ezpass.com/) only cares about the number of axles you have, not the fuel efficiency/inefficiency of your car...
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Please mod parent as immigrant-bashing TROLL.
Yep, because everyone who disapproves of fellons (yes fellons) who are doing something illegal, hates people who come from other countries? Wee bit of a difference there?
This is a tax on the poor of California.
Think of it this way, where are the best jobs in California? In dense, very expensive counties of Orange county, San Diego County, LA County. Now where do younger average families who work in those counties live? In Riverside and San Bernadino counties. The younger less affluent ones have to drive longer distances, while those who have more, live closer to the higher employment areas.
To a degree, it is just like the cigarette taxes. They want to "increase" the tax on cigarettes to "fund healthcare" bla bla bla....what happens? More people quit smoking, so there is less revenue coming in. So, now they try to get more people to drive more fuel efficient vehicles to save on fuel, now they aren't receiving enough revenue from the fuel, because people aren't using enough. Their answer? Tax them per mile driven. The end result is more people will take public transportation, ride bikes, put off or stop going to the beach etc... Less revenue will come in as a result. What's next then? Taxing us for NOT driving? LOL.... Typical......government can NEVER EVER do without, but they expect us to.
It would be sort of sweet to have a "pay-as-you-go" car. When you refuel your vehicle, that fuel also has the assiciated tax & insurance. Eh Eh?
You are probably correct. The Governor of the state of California is personally responsible for the existence of the Hummer on US roads.
0 04/hummer.asp
A source: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/auto/car-guide-2
There's a perfectly good way for taxing road use -- taxing gasoline. In general, this has a number of positive effects:
1) It taxes miles driven.
2) It's simple and robust.
3) It doesn't invade privacy.
4) It encourages fuel economical vehicles.
It is somewhat unfair on people who buy small, fuel inefficient vehicles -- such as porsches and BMWs. I think they can afford it.
It's ironic that the alleged reason for Oregon exploring this system is that they fear improved fuel economy will reduce gasoline tax revenue. If so, good -- raise gasoline taxes more: it will create a virtuous cycle of improved fuel efficiency and reduced road use.
The main benefit of a GPS-based tax system is that you can implement congestion tax (tax people for using popular roads at peak times). The big question is just how big a congestion tax you'll need to levy to have any useful effect (the difference between a car registration that only allows off-peak downtown driving and one that allows peak downtown driving in Singapore is tens of thousands of dollars...)
Trucks travelling through Switzerland already have systems like this in place, which is used to levy road user tolls on them.
It's not technically hard. Minor GPS blackouts for a mile or two don't make enough difference for it to matter. And you can easily turn it off or rip it out, and they can easily notice and fine you.
But the stupidity of California introduce tax breaks for hybrids to reduce pollution at the same time as putting in an expensive solution to increase the tax paid by hybrids is staggering.
Sean
...such as:
1. this won't be a replacement tax, but rather an additional tax.
2. there will have to be some supporting laws such as "tampering with the GPS tracker on a vehicle punishable by $1B and two consecutive life imprisonment terms.
3. we'll need a complex DB to find people who travel virtually no distance between fuel-ups.
4. development of this database seems to have slipped some milestones... and GPS-Tax revenues are not quite what was expected, please raise the per-gallon gas tax to fund further development of the database and enforcement software.
5. compliance is up! but people have moved closer in and are now travelling much less. as a result, the few remaining in the outskirts are insufficient to fund the major highways... which are rapidly becoming unusable.
6. Our cities are cesspools of crime due to overpopulation and crowding! Gah! Home values are skyrocketing, no one can afford to buy a home of their own now and multi-family, 100-year leases are starting to become common. We need to find some more rich people to subsidize this housing market...
7. Interstate commerce is complaining because the roads are unusable and this is affecting delivery of goods and foodstuffs! Obviously we can tax the truckers to repair the Interstates... Everybody pays!
As usual, the government seems to be living up to my expectations of "a problem in search of revenue."
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
Let me get this straight: California, and to a lesser extend the U.S. government, have been badgering drivers for years to use more fuel efficient vehicles, drive fewer miles, and pollute less.
Now that it's actually happening, they want to screw over the very people who are helping them to achieve these goals?
Nice!
The government doesn't want competition in screwing over the people...
They could cut all government pay by 75%
That should help solve the gas tax problem...
This must be another briliant idea by the girlie men in Sacramento. If it's an idea supported by our governator, then it will be hasta la vista Ahnuld.
-- Call your representatives to stop taxes on SIGs
'Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that..
They already do this through a tax on gasoline/diesel. Drive more and you'll use more gasoline. It even accounts for people with more inefficient vehicles. It's simple and easy to enforce. What would be the point of tracking mileage via GPS other than to invade privacy?
it's felons, one 'L'
school is good..
How dare you find an efficient, environment friendly solution! Don't you know this is a capitalist, milk it dry while it's there, throw away society? It's about the buck goddamit, not sustainability! yeah that's right hippies, we're gonna tax yo ass for your tree lovin! punks!
.
How much more will we have to pay for our veggies and fruits if we stop illegal immigration?
IIRC, Labor is only 10% of the cost of a head of lettuce. Double the labor cost and you increase the price of fruits and vegetables a moderate amount. On top of that, many common farm products can be planted, maintained, and harvested in 1000 acre lots or better (wild-ass-guess for land size) by 1 guy in a machine. And I don't think any of those six big companies wich basicaly grow most of our food are going to hire paperless migrant workers to run $200,000 in equipment. Hire same to pick oranges? If they can get away with it.
How about for construction? How about when we eat out?
I live in cracker-white NH, and we seem to do just fine with legal workers, without over-inlated prices.
This is, of course, assuming all the caucasians who speak Americen style english as if it were their native language are in fact legal citizens of the US. This is a fair assumption.
The claim that we 'need' migrant, currently illegal immigrants is dubious at best. I have spent little time in the states that are greatly impacted by this issue, but I've spent lots of time in states that aren't, and we seem to hum along just fine, thank you very much. I'm not saying our immigration laws are perfect, but such as they are right now, anyone here in violation of our laws can go home.
The bigger issue here is that Vincent Fox & company in Mexico run such a shitty country that it would implode in civil war if people couldn't just jump the border to the US and look for a better life.
Mexico's failure as a state is our problem because of our lax borders. The border is basically a pressure-relief valve for them, and the Mexican government actually hands out pamphlets giving advice on border jumping. Why we don't kick their ass for that (diplomatically speaking, of course) is beyond me.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
To be a Californian!
"And then when there's a huge discrepancy when you get your annual inspections, you'll explain how?"
I've been an electronics design engineer, so maybe it is obvious to me, but wouldn't be to others. A hundred screwy things could happen to disturb the readings. It could not be proven that the person who owned the car did anything to change the readings.
They are talking about each person having an on board computer linked to a sensitive receiver getting signals from thousands of miles away. What about computer crashes? What about reboots? What about car electrical problems? What about people deliberately jamming the GPS signals with a battery operated transmitter left on the side of a road? What about newly installed equipment that is defective and is emitting radio noise? Even car alternators sometimes become very noisy. What about a woman changing a baby's diapers and putting a wet diaper wrapped in plastic over the GPS antenna?
This sounds to me like corrupt people taking advantage of the technical ignorance of politicians.
GPS only works if the people who have the receivers want it to work, and are willing to maintain it when it fails.
People from out of state use CA roads, too. They won't have the GPS tracker installed. What then?
What about truckers? Will they require all semitrailers entering the state to carry a GPS tracker in their cab while in CA?
If I'm driving on a toll road, will the tracker not count those miles against me because I already pay on that road?
As someone else mentioned, what about those that drive most of their miles on private land and not state roads?
I really don't think this will work like they want it to.
Ok. Let's assume I live in Southern California, just a mile from Arizona. I work and do most of my driving in Arizona.
Does this mean that California is going to charge me a usage tax for the miles that I drove in Arizona?
This is ridiculous. This may fly in California, but I'm willing to bet it will never make it in other states. I for one would do everything i could to get any politician supporting this defeated at the next election.
- dj
...but isn't gas usage essentially tied, more or less, to miles traveled on the roads?
What a stupid way to calculate a tax. Might as well just put taxi meters in all the cars sold in california/registered in california, so that when you go in to a DEQ center to calculate your emissions quality, you get your mileage bill then, because that's where they read it. Altering the little tag seals is an automatic $10,000 fine, etc.
they were planning to raise that tax later anyway; this is going to let them establish a *new* tax.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
So how much would it cost to equip every car in California with a gps system and then install the readers into gas pumps? How is this supposed to generate money? Lets say california has 36 million people. Now lets assume that 20 million have 1 car. Then lets assume that the gps system coststhe state $50 per car. 20000000 * 50 = 1000000000. Whoa, thats 1 billion dollars just to put the gps in the cars. Way to go Arnold.
As long as we're going to find new ways to tax people for using less gasoline, why not create a pedestrian tax, a bicycle tax, and a mass-transit tax SPECIFIC to those people who are obviously cutting into revenues from actual gasoline sales?
In fact, why don't we just track people themselves (GPS device implanted at birth) and tax them for every mile they move, regardless of the means of transportation!
This is nothing new, of course. Gas taxes were raised when fuel efficient cars started becoming available as early as the 1960's, and maybe even before that, when construction started on the interstate highway system.
So.. if I put my car up on cinderblocks, and crank my car, and just hit the accelerator and let the tires spin, these people are going to charge me tax for mileage I haven't driven? What about when I put my car on a dyno for performance testing? You gonna tax me for that, too? How about you get off a debt-backed economy, say to hell with inflation, and go back to the gold standard?
At least then we have actual worth, not national debt to allow for more taxes like this.
RFID + mileposts = Private Roads.
woot!
tax? for what? to pay these nothing-good-to-do to work out plans to screw you more? No way! We should let those tax-sucker rats go!
The social liberals tend to get more and more distrustful of the government yet the politicians that represent this line of thinking do more and more to make sure no citizen can defend themself. When the Big Brother world goes from being decades away, to a few years, to weeks and days, I think the liberals will wish they hadn't forsaken the second amendment as a relic of times past. Buy what guns you can before the politicians decide they are so scared of pissing off their constituents that they all support erasing the Constitution and removing arms from the populace. History repeats and nobody learns.
I live and drive long distances in California frequently. The vehicles that do more damage to these freeways are not even registered here. San Pedro/Long Beach is one of the two busiest ports in the country. So everything that comes from china, etc. to be stocked at Wal-Mart or wherever comes through by means of a)train and b) SEMI-TRUCK. Trucks hurt the freeways more than anything because they are almost always loaded just below the maximum allowed for a vehicle traveling on the road (reason for weigh stations) and in the case of trucks with an open bed or hopper, debris loss is frequent. I have seen many a windsheild broken because of this. And no trucking company would be insane as to register their trucks in California. Why? Because the government has painted themselves into a corner charging confiscatory rates for commercial vehicles plus the fact that these trucks rarely stay in the state for the majority of their life. Will California require them to place these transponders in their trucks to pay when they fill up at the truck stops throughout the state? I can't see how this would work. Even if they tried, the trucking companies (especially the independents) would revolt. Ideas like this make me think that this state needs to split. I'm not trolling, just reacting to the sentiment amongst my colleagues.
I love that word!
A man in Colorado recently was charged with stalking, for putting a GPS tracker on his estranged wife's car. So the state wants to track your every move, but you cannot put one on a car where you have half-ownership? It's still marital property until the judge "splits it down the middle, and gives her the better half" [Jerry Reed: She Got the Gold Mine-I Got the Shaft!]
I believe they're already using this as a revenue source.
Tweet, tweet.
Move here! Please!
I hate this place, so I'm planning to get out within the next 10 years or so. But not until I've cashed in on the ridiculous real estate market. And I need all you asshats to move here to help drive up prices beyond insane levels.
PLEASE MOVE TO CALIFORNIA! I NEED YOUR MONEY!
When I can triple my home's price in 10 years, I'll cash out and buy a fucking mansion somewhere nice.
I keep seeing everyone say large SUVs cause more wear and tear on the roads. Not necessarily true. You have to take into account vehicle weight against tread size and contact area. You end up with PSI, and a small hybrid with narrow smal diameter tires (as they often have to reduce rolling resistance) ends up having a similiar if not greater pressure per square inch, resulting in INCREASED wear. Sure the SUV's polluto more, but we aren't discussing taxing pullution, we're talking about road wear.
It would be the bane of slashdot editors if they enacted a peter charge for their entertainment.They think ten bucks an inch is outrageous? Just wait till cali adds that extra "sir" charge of two dollars on inch, that would cost them 12 bucks an inch, or 120 bucks, just for lunch!!!!
I've even heard they are developing a "peter meter" to enforce this law.
are already doing this by checking your last smog inspections (if available) to calculate your annual mileage and then charge you accordingly.
AAA is one I know certainly does this.
Traffic would be somewhat lighter if CA had (and will) build out more rails so all that heavy lifting could be moved off the roads.
Reduces the congestion, and the WALL of trucks along some freeway lanes.
It is not difficult to overcome some of the problems of GPS reception. Some handheld GPS receivers have a built in barometer to provide a sanity check for GPS altitude mesurements, which in handheld consumer GPSr units is notoriously poor. The same kind of check can be done by tapping into the vehicle's speed sensor. That provides a redundant system for tracking miles. No GPS signal: use the odometer, no odometer use GPS... Neither signal... contact the milage police. I'd be willing to bet that all post 1997 automobiles have all the necessary data available right there at the OBD II connector. Frank
I was thinking about the 5pound honda insight vs the 6wheel megatruck that JoeSixPack drives his kids to school in, which would make sense to do a factor of commercial vs. residential cars (under the theory that a construction truck would be loaded more often), and you could do the tax based upon avg weight per mile.
;-)
And yeah, what gives that Honda hasn't made anything more efficient than their early 90's cars?
Also to answer you and some cowards, I was thinking more along the lines of shifting power (ft-lbs) to other sources, such as burning fuel for direct power, eletric power (e-), regenerative braking, and all electric cars.
Crossing my fingers in hope that as soon as they pass this stupid law, we get a direct hit from an X9 class solar flare that takes out all the GPS satellites.
1. X9 solar flare
2. Takes out GPS
3. Pay no "Road Tax"
4. Profit
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
All this about taxes on road use are smoke screens hiding the real intent of such a law. This is an internal passport scheme for controlling and investigating all travel by any person or persons. Do you think for one minute that the 'short cut' you took across town to get to that construction site was not noticed? The government computer saw your vehicle traverse that area frequented by (fill in the blanks for objectionable members of society). You have now been identified as a 'blank' and all your associates are now going to now be assumed to be 'blanks' as well. When big brother wants to find out why you are a 'blank' and have been frequenting 'blanks', he can simply remotely turn off your gps/rc car from a satellite link conveniently installed by your car manufacturer in its 'computer', raise your windows and lock your doors....and then he can go collect your worthless spineless gluteous maximus for questioning in its new facilities for 'agressive investigative techniques' (torture).
Its the American way to drive around in massive SUVs with 45L engines getting 5m per litre when all you are carting around is the local under 6s soccer team. Thus, you are being taxed for being unpatriotic, for driving small, lightweight, japanese or european designed vehicles that are robbing MORE money from the government and hard working American Motor workers by being so efficient!
I really think the USAs motto is 'If we use all the oil first, then no one else can get it before us!'
Kep it simple stupid! Don't go wrapping anything in tinfoil... One thing us techies tend to forget...computers don't work too well when they are unplugged. Snip the cord/unplug it and there's no more GPS. Period. You can even unplug your VSS's (speed sensors) to prevent trackage, too. Oh, and there's no way they'll make the comm. between the car's computer and the GPS tracker mandatory for ignition re: the underground parking, out of state driving ideas. GPS tracking is a useless idea, it would only work on the morons that leave it turned on. Inject.
He should go after the ultra-repressive People's Republic of California...
Wouldn't GPS tracking of mileage mean people could register mileage even if it isn't running.. say, on a ferry. Of course, ferrys use a lot of gas, so maybe that's okay.
Hmm.. wonder what silicon valley venture capitalists are behing the scenes lobbying for this one?
You also forgot to include people like me: I own a small 2 seater convertible (Toyota MR2 Spyder). It's got better fuel mileage than those Sandcrawlers I see on the road, but I lay patches of rubber when the fucking pigs aren't looking. When was the last time a hummer layed a patch of rubber?
They should make it hard to pass. It's hard to drive a car without putting people at risk.
For example, Tulare County California sends 60% of its property tax revenue into the school system. At the bottom of the page, you will see that in 2003, almost $200 million in property tax was collected. That means $120 million went into the schools in one year. At 400,000 people in the county, each and every person is coughing up $300 for the schools, and $200 for everything else: justice*, roads, fire, welfare**, records, deadbeat dads, redevelopment, library, building permits, health inspections, Ag sealer, elections, tax collector, and administration.
Looking at the schools, we can find that for every one teacher, the school districts have one bonus person. Here is a sampling: that person might do or administer: Child Care, Tobacco / Drug / Mental Health, Resource Services (books / audio visual equipment), Planetarium, Migrant Education, School Health Programs, School-to-Career, Science and Conservation Camp, Vocational programs, New Teacher Training, Theatre Company. Here is a list of names of people doing these - the list is quite long - and that does not include school administration!
The basics: reading / writing / arithmetic - were they in that list? (No.) Or was it all "sweating the small stuff"? (Yes.)
And don't even get me started on thievery and corruption. The examples are legend.
The fundamental problem is the lack of fiscal responsibility. The worse the problems get, the more likely you will capitulate to the requests for more money.
In short, throwing money at a system designed to waste money is foolhardy.
*Sheriff, Jails, District Attorney, Public Defender, Probation.
**County portion thereof, which means mental health, medical not covered by state or federal, and financial assistance not covered by state or federal.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
"The reason you see those "no trucks over XXX pounds" signs is exactly because the amount of wear and tear on the road is proportional to vehicle weight."
I forget the exact figures but a vehicle that is twice as heavy doesn't cause twice as much damage but something many times more than that. I'm sure google will turn up the formula for those curious enough.
You know it.
Well, then perhaps the tax for road wear and tear should not be in the price of gas but in an annual fee based on vehicle size and weight...
...
and the carbon tax should be on the fuel so the fuel-efficient car owners pay less
Just my two cents...
Next step is putting these things on bicycles. They're even more fuel efficient, and result in even less wear and tear. Gotta nip that in the bud.
The loophole in Prop13 is that there is no cap on "special assessments" (MOST of which come into being without going thru any voting process, tho these idiots in California always vote for bonds anyway). Thanks to these special assessments, my annual tax bill comes to fully 2% of my property value, rather than the 1% mandated by Prop13.
:)
In response to another post downstream a bit, I've read that the Los Angeles Unified School District personnel roster is 40% teachers, 60% administrators. Would someone explain to me how any school district, however large, could *possibly* need 1.5 admins for each 1.0 teacher??
In the olden days, there was a principal for each school, and a dozen people on the school board, and that was the *entire* admin for any given school district. And kids were better-educated, too.
(I don't even know what article this is attached to. I just wandered in from Gripe2Ed, having noticed your recent post there.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Well, if you RTFA, it's because they're concerned w/ high MPG cars making an impact. Hence, this piece of crap proposal.
The article states that the representatives are considering the new system of taxation. Much like the percentage representation of 14-17 year voters in California that was recently consider, this idea is probably going to fail. If you are genuinely worried, you may be having a psychotic break and should visit your local physician. Otherwise, go watch that "How a Bill Becomes a Law" video, and understand that a small minority of lawmakers probably like this idea, and the majority think its too crazy to be implemented.
House? Half a mil? are you serious? Where I am looking to move, you'd only get that if you happened to live right next to a landfill or toxic dump site. Take a look yourself. Just put a simple 2/1 HOUSE (ie, not condo/townhome) for $500... not much there.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I'm not a citizen of California, but I'd suggest the pols there stop running the place like it's a welfare state and let people keep their damned money.
California has such high vehicle licensing fees compared to other states, that out-of-state registrations used to be a common workaround, primarily using Oregon (OR plates used to cost only $10 for any car, while the same car in CA could cost you *hundreds* to license).
CA cracked down hard on this practice, and now out-of-state plates are rarely seen, and are almost entirely legit. If you have an out-of-state plate, you'd *better* have a matching legal address.
Also, you have only 20 days to get new plates once you move into CA, after that they fine you when you finally do get CA plates. But they have no good way of checking up on that, so if you do have to register a car from out of state, tell 'em you just got in the day before, and save yourself $60.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Alcoholics generally have a lot of hidden anger. They see things in an angry, adversarial way. For example: Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000.
One thing was accomplished in Iraq. The oil profits that went to Saddam Hussein before now go to associates of Bush and Cheney in the United States and Britain. That's a huge conflict of interest.
The point of my comment is that there is a wide-ranging lack of attention to politics on the part of the people in the United States. The people are not doing their job effectively. If they were, small things like the subject of this Slashdot story could not have happened, and big things like killing Iraqis for oil profits could not have happened, either.
Are all you people fucking retarded?
The patriot act is part of the neoCon Death Cults plan to control everything by invading and snooping.
GPS in cars is a tool that would be used to snoop.
And for the little fuckers saying raise gas taxes, I ask you this, why hasn't the gas price came DOWN?
Every night you sleep the neoCon Death Cult get's their fucking hands into more and more shit. It's only a matter of time until public demonstrations turn into cival war.
Understand, it's like this because the neoCon death cult has learned to control the electronic vote. Now they can pass anything, elect anyone.
It's domestic terrorism.
1) Clause 2's content is misleading by introducting as "Duties on Imports" and concludes to the infringe of Exports.
2)Foremost, Duties on Imports only applies between inter-State transfer of properties; if the property does not change hands in its ownership, then there is no Duty because it isn't Import. It is either for Sale or NOT for Sale.
3)Duties on Imports does not apply to inter-Nation use of properties.
4)Duties on Imports is enforced in Admiralty law revenue; United States district courts. Any "government" making a claim on property held on land forfeits its lawful standing with limited liability sovereignty and becomes a corporator exposed to redress of grievances.
5)Only applicable to "State" chartered by Congress, not the several states foreign to District of Columbia. Congress is limited to that 10 miles known as Columbia. If you need Congress to breathe, then make a-due like muslims bowing and praying toward Mecca, but orient such to your Almighty God CONGRESS.
6)If Duties on Imports is not applicable, prove that its excptions will not be abused as a way to extort undue taxation for merely executing the inspection "Laws".
7)When Duties on Imports is being collected, demand an Oath be exhibited by Officer executing collection "Laws" and accompanying certificate from Treasury of the United States that the taxes will be PRESENTED into the Treasury of the United States not the "Secretary of the Treasury" and not the "Department of the Treasury" fictions exhibited by Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.
8)Enforcable only over "citizens of the United States" by 14th Amendment; those emancipated slaves, not manumit as freemen; by order of non-constitutional legislative courts, excluding state Citizens in common law.
9)Your emphasis falls on deaf ears; you are chattel, no different than an animal on Plum Island subject to Lab 257.
10)Only devotion to somthing other than Congress and its "United States" could preserve whatever is left of man from human. If you are the type of man (male or female) that opens bank accounts on someone else's behalf without their approval, then "United States" is your lord and Congress is your King, and the "person(s)" in Congress assembled as one is your Almight God. Warship with your Almighty God: Congress; pay its taxes to Congress-approved warship centers for guidance from the "State of" money priests and maybe you will be shown mercy if you muster any wealth that is coveted by your human superiors.
or
11)If you don't like the idea of there being a "God", just appreciate the inellectual aspect of taking all matter from sight and whatever left not voidable is considered God: the Truth emanating as raw uncontrollable force. Love is what keeps every molecule in your body adhering to your soul. Law is whatever you du(t)e(y); that is favorable to you, and causes no ill will to you: applicable to all.
12)United States (a corporation) of the united States of America is corrupt from the beginning. It was created as an affront to a greater corruption caused by Brittains commercial ventures the original estates. The only way corruption reinvigorates its charter is to enforce Trading With The Enemy Act and War Powers Act on its "citizens of the United States" / securities as though they are "domestic foes" until proven not. The only way to drive any corrupt foe away is through the Portal of Entry they came through: District of Columbia.
yeah I'm the taxman.
Everyone knows the mainstream media doesn't report real news anymore. Just neoCon Death Cult agenda, FUD, and entertainment.
If you want REAL news you need to have cable and listen to Democracy Now or Air America Radio.
If you want REAL CHANGE you better pass legislation to get those fucking electronic vote machines and their networks destroyed. And remove the corupt people that are counting our votes.
Shining a big light into the fucking CRACK that runs through America, that is Electronic Voting Devices and Networks, coruption, and the neoCon Death Cult.
You've seen the humvee the governor drives? I think you hit the rational behind this per-mile-tax right on the proveribal head.
like my sig says.. "d'Oh"
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
First, I don't understand the need for GPS. You can simply track mileage from the odometer. Sure, odometers can be tampered with, but just work towards tamper-resistant odometers. It's not as if GPS systems couldn't also be tampered with. Anything that stores data can be hacked.
Secondly, I don't mind "pay to play" tax schemes. Use more? Pay more. However, they have yet to show how this will LESSEN the tax base for conservative drivers. Sure, make the SUV soccer moms who drive to the corner Starbucks pay a lot more. No problem. However, these schemes always wind up as ADDITIONAL taxes, not simply reworks of existing revenue systems. This is a revenue grab, plain and simple, and it should be fought vigilantly.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
JSG was the first poster to talk about weight versus road damage, even if the post in lower in the thread. Asshat mods.
Don't forget weight. A 3 ton hummer puts a lot more stress on the road than a Prius!
Additionally, I thought we were supposed to be putting incentives in place to use more efficent vehicles? What happened to that?
Hey Reziac, didn't know you were a GripeLiner too!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Yep, all the way back to when it was purely an Infoworld column.
:)
Geez, now I feel old
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
As an aside: gawd, I hate their use of "patriot" that way, does anybody know the etymology of the word "patriot" with respect to this legislation? Whose idea was it to use "patriot" and why? It seems like the worst/most transparent type of label possible for such a group of laws that seek to strip away personal freedoms and rights to privacy.
While I'm sure the marketeers in the Bush Administration were specifically trying to come up with some clever acronym, PATRIOT is actually an acronym:
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
While I agree that this is still pretty lame, and that they deliberately tried to tie the notion of patriotism to this unpatriotic act, the acronym gives them plausabile deniablity that they were just trying to use doublespeak, and downright misdirection to hide the shameful legislation that is the US P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act.
Let me clarify:
One could argue that does Bush's drinking doesn't deserve to be brought up, either.
The "does" does not need to be there.
I happen to know a shitload of college students (being one myself) who have gotten DUIs.
Having been involved in politics long enough, I know that unless I state that I HAVE NEVER GOTTEN A DUI, someone will read that sentence as "I happen to be one of a shitload of college students who have gotten DUIs." I repeat: I have never received a DUI, nor have driven drunk.
Furthermore, I really know a shitload of college students who drink, and some of them have gotten DUIs, not most of them. More than too many, however.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
The idea here (I'm a california resident) is that someone that drives 100 miles in a 10 mile to the gallon SUV will pay the same as someone driving a hybrid thats getting 50 miles to the same gallon of gas. The intention is to make up for lost revenues as cars become more fuel efficient. So penalize the people that drive energy efficient vehicles. And give BIG SUV drivers a tax break... what a great idea. Anyone have a place to hide?
Bush did, and for everyone (Not just the "wealthy") =)
Everyone? Then how come I only know one person who got their taxes cut? And, big surprise here, he's the wealthiest person I know.
Bush lowered taxes for the wealthy and cut programs that help the not wealthy. That's a fact.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
this idea is obvouesly a money makeing scheem, but i wounder how much of the gas and tabbaco tax is just another way for the govemetn to try and controle socitty /me puts up tinfoil unbrella
Are you sure you dont live in Canada? As far as I know Bush didnt cut their taxes. I know 65% of the american public got theirs cut. But maybe they are all millionaires or something.
Are you intolerant of intolerant people?
Yea, I figure it must be the lunatic fringe that's after this idea. If you consider the implementation case with the students id badges (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/16/2 341200&tid=158&tid=126) which is, or was, further along in it's implementation, the parents were strongly against it. Now why would those same adults, or at least the ones in the Cal state legislature, support the idea that each car, and hence themselves, would be trackable in the same manner?
Does anyone else see an inconsistency here?
How is "You're eating your own seed corn, pay more taxes" a TROLL, for god's sake??
Ayn Rand, burn in hell, if there is a god.
In an efficient market, price equals marginal cost. Marginal cost of software: zero.
Where did you get this obviously false statement about efficient markets?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
That is, provided that they're not trying to track you / keep tabs on where you've been.
Every year (at least in Louisiana) you have to get an inspection sticker (or brake tag) on the back of the tag is a space for an odometer reading (once again at least in my state).
Why not just compare readings with the one from the previous year & pay a tax on the spot?
Yeah, I know it might mean paying $500 for a brake tag but those of us in New Orleans do so already.
Just an idea.
Does this mean the SUV driver will pay more tax to, or will just the smaller car pay more to even out with the SUV? And shouldnt the SUV pay more anyway since they afflict more damage to the roads? I mean if your going to be charged more for tring to help the U.S. become less dependant on other countries, then we might as well all buy SUVs to, and enjoy the fun and pay less.
Every time I see a 65 year old lady climbing down out of F550 series Ford with duelies which gets about 10 miles per gal, I have to think to myself this is probably part of the reason my daughters will be paying 4 bucks or more per gal when they get older, and so I'll drive the small cars and pay higher road tax to help make a better future for my and all kids, and to ballance with the old hogs who abviously don't give a shit about the future, (r) or (d) I don't
take sides.
I don't know about any other GPS receivers, but with my eTrex, the position has a tendency to jump around a bit. Especially with heavy tree cover, it jumps around a lot. This, I assume, is the unit trying to extrapolate my current path with a lack of signal. However, it can sometimes jump fifteen or twenty feet off the way I'm going. What's to stop it from jumping a mile off and making me pay another ten cents?
It's been said before and I'll say it again. It won't work, the system has too many flaws, stop worrying.
And I'm from California, so don't accuse me of not seeing the problem from the eyes of the Californians. This would never pass.