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Congress Mulls Research Into a Vehicle Mileage Tax
BJ_Covert_Action writes to let us know that an Oregon congressman has filed legislation to spend $154.5M for a research project into tracking per-vehicle mileage in the US, and asks: "Do we really want the government to track our movement and driving habits on a regular basis?" "US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) introduced H.R. 3311 earlier this year to appropriate $154,500,000 for research and study into the transition to a per-mile vehicle tax system... Oregon has successfully tested a Vehicle Miles Traveled fee... the [Oregon] report urged a mandate for all drivers to install GPS tracking devices that would report driving habits to roadside RFID scanning devices." Here is the bill (PDF). The article notes that the congressman's major corporate donors would likely benefit with contracts if such a program were begun.
I thought the Republicans were the evil ones trying to take our rights away... weird.
Can't they just read an odometer
Isn't that what the Federal Gasoline tax does?
With the RFID hacking efforts, one could potentially change the identification number so that your car reported its mileage on another vehicle. Then some old fart is wondering why he's paying thousands in taxes when he just drives from home to the pharmacy and the occasional trip to the local buffet restaurant.
Already exist, it's called the fuel tax.
Why do number of miles driven matter? I'd think the central concern is wear on roads, which is also dependent on the weight of the vehicle. So they want to charge based on weight*miles. Guess what? A vehicle's gasoline usage is closely related to this; big heavy vehicle, more gasoline used per mile. So they could just increase the gasoline tax.
It seems to me that gasoline taxes cover this situation adequately without Big Brother being a back-seat driver.
Quite a few states have emissions testing every year or every other year. Make them get a sticker that also has the mileage. The next year, you figure out the difference. Pay the tax. Odometer fails it's the same as if ODB readiness fails.
How often are these RFID checkpoints going to fail? Devices fall off cars, etc.
Let me guess, there's a GPS tracking company in someones district.
How is this better, in any way, than a higher gas tax? A gas tax is easier to implement (and of course already implemented, so there is no additional infrastructure/bureaucracy required to increase it,) doesn't have privacy concerns, and encourages better gas mileage to boot. I guess some elements of the auto industry might like it since it de-emphasizes fuel economy of cars...
Anything more than an odometer or fuel tax doesn't pass the smell test.
GPS could only add value for law enforcment and automating speeding tickets.
Are they planning on buying everyone a GPS device because I just don't see how this study can cost $154.5 Million
You want us to give The Man complete GPS records of all driving?
Am I the only one who finds that terrifying?
Clearly we do. Every chance the US Voting Public gets, it votes for more and more government. Every single election candidates come out openly for more government control of everything, up to and including yard sales already. Why would we stop there? We're headed towards 1984 as fast as we can, and hell with that silly bit of toilet paper called "The Constitution".
Nick
ass fucking every member of congress with a flame thrower
I'm not particularly opposed to an tax on my odometer, but GPS is way over the line. You want to know how much I drive? Fine. You want to know where I drive? Fuck off.
Besides, the gasoline tax is already a mileage tax. It has the added bonus of being a bigger burden on those who drive low efficiency vehicles.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They actually already have this, it's called Property and Gasoline taxes.
Brilliant Idea. Cause if we want to levy more taxes on the people that drive more, we need to track every car and build an extensive system of RFID scanners that covers the nation.
Of course every car already has a mileage based tracker build in. Its called the gas tank. You simply raise the gas tax, and you're done. In the process you also reward people with fuel efficient cars, and you make it easier for alternative fuels and electric cars to be competitive.
I suppose higher gas taxes have no lobby, while the RFID industry obviously has one. /sigh
Since related articles were omitted for this story... For previous discussion on slashdot, please check here.
:)
Please feel free to read that discussion and put your copypasta in this thread so we all know not to mod them up.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
HELL NO.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
If they could come up with some way to tax gas purchases, it seems like it would track miles driven. Of course, they'd have to come up with a whole new administration to collect this tax on gas....
Or they could pass a resolution that all fuel tax is used only for road-related projects.
I'd like the public option (or even better, single payer). But I think I will pass on the car surveillance system. We already have a tax on how much we travel, it is called taxing gas. Large vehicles that waste gas and are harder on the roads naturally get taxed more than smaller fuel-efficient vehicles. I see nothing wrong with this system.
Hmm, maybe they are worried about tax revenue once electric cars come out? That would make a little bit of sense then. But I'd rather just have them read the odometer once a year than track me. On the upside though, if my car was ever stolen, the government would know where it is!
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Or, instead of forcing consumers to buy some expensive gadget that could potentially be used for invasion of privacy, we could just use the simple odometer that is installed in every vehicle nowadays. The extra time spent having a person verify the odometer reading every year when the tag is renewed is nowhere near as wasteful as creating a whole new electronic system. That is, of course, if you're going to insist on having this sort of tax.
Quick hint.. What happens when gasoline isn't the primary fuel source for vehicles using Federally funded roads? GPS, while it's too big brothery and invasive, would charge you for miles driven and not for how much _gasoline_ you use.
Since this does nothing relevant that gasoline taxation doesn't already do, one can presume that it is intended as a tracking device.
If this is actually introduced, it will sooner or later be used to track down some horrible terrorist/paedophile on the run, and no one will object. The next year, it'll be available to track down whoever they want to track down, and if attitudes wiretapping are anything to go by, they won't need a warrant. Lucky it's such a blindingly stupid idea that they'll never actually implement it, right?
Right?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Recycle Congress.
Yeah.. like a society who wants the "Gov'ment to keep its hands off my Medicare" will let "THE MAN" put GPS into cars. Glenn Beck would have a field day with that one.
I'm sure that there will be an ACLU lawsuit all over this. If not, there should be.
What kind of fucked up idea is this anyway?
And I suspect that if it comes to pass the tracking unit in *my* car, it would somehow mysteriously fail.
You honestly think they wouldn't charge both taxes?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
How the fuck can ANY study cost $154,500,000 That's one hundred and fifty four million, five hundred thousand dollars. I don't care WHAT they're proposing. A traffic STUDY with that kind of price tag should get a resounding and unanimous "FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING FUCKS!" from anyone voting on it.
I normally don't use so much profanity on slashdot but it's not like I can get any more obscene than what's being proposed.
Wear is a minor concern. Revenue is the real problem. Since people have started buying more fuel-efficient cars, and driving less (something that the government has been pushing), there is less revenue from gas taxes. It's almost like there are consequences that people didn't intend. Imagine that.
Will these proposed devices be capable of being fitted in a positive earth vehicle? I suppose I could convert it to negative earth, but that would detract from its originality
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The state legislatures are getting in a lather over the idea that gas-electric hybrids will reduce their gas-tax-based state income. It's all rather reminiscent of the year 2000 panic over computer glitches - based in a sliver of truth, but WAAAAY overestimated. They're looking to use these mileage-based taxes as a way to future-proof, but as you mentioned, the better solution is to just increase gas taxes proportionally with the fraction of gas being used thanks to improved technology, so revenue can keep up with increased expenses, while keeping the burden on those who do the most practical use, rather than taxing a hybrid the same as a cement truck.
Ryan Fenton
First, who spends the time digging through the Congressional Record for this kind of stuff? Congress considers thousands of ideas every year, from the brilliant (health care reform) to the idiotic (Bridges to Nowhere). Most are DOA. Second, this bill would establish a "pilot program" for alternatives to a fuel tax. What's the harm in trying out some different ideas? Third, check opencongress.org and you find that this bill has (OMGWTFBBQ!) been referred to three committees. What a scary threat to our rights!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Because everybody and their dog in Portland is/has been buying a Prius (or other hybrid), and the State isn't getting what it used to from the gas tax. Of course our vehicle registration fee is a joke compared to our neighbors to the North (the State of Washington).
If you where actually technically suave you would know that more efficient vehicles means less gass tax revenue.
That's what they are loking to deal with.
Now the GPS side will never happen because it just really isn't feasible to collect and audit that much data.
More likely when you get a smog* check you will have your mileage noted and a tax spread out from then until the next check.
Possible you just pay an estimated tax for none business vehicles with the option of doing it in a detailed way.
If they based a tax on 12K miles, that would be close enough for most people to warrant not going to a odometer check.
*As more and more cars go electric, the smog check will be completly replace with the OD check.
Anyways, to rave becasue we have a gas tax is very short sighted and typical of people who aren't in government.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Mileage can easily be determined by looking at odometer readings. You can even do that at annual plate renewal time, although yeah you could encode it into an RFID scheme too.
Calling for GPS is shenanigans, either on the part of somebody trying to sell GPS chips or on the part of the government for tracking purposes. Or both.
-- Alastair
Insisting that the gov't spend the gas tax money they collect for roads, to pay to repair roads instead of funneling it off to pet projects that have nothing to do with roads.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I'd just add an RFID-blocking cage to my car interior (think tin foil). They could probably still trace me if they really wanted too, but it would stop the reporting to the roadside stations.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Nothing more than a slaver and travel baron violating my Matter of Right to Public Vehicular Travel.
The Right of Owner determines the use and tax to the renter; does that bastard think the State has a controlling interest in the automobile and the road to convert them into private securities?
Typical behavior of a somone that would deny the people are the fact that built the roads without any due to maintenance, just so the book-keeping would maintain a private entity to fleece the public for the cause of commerce in driver licensing to enter heavy vessels to trod hard on the pavement. Send all the heavy cargo back to the rails where it belongs, you undercutting and lazy legislators.
We'll just automatically apply speeding tickets when you go over the speed limit.
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
Instead of spending billions on tracking everyone's movements, how about just raising fuel taxes? (Oh, right, see above.)
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Great. Now my view of the horizon will be clouded by tax cheats with blimps tied to their bumpers.
WHy do you think they will be taxed the same?
Most likely it will be based on category, so the cement truck is charged more then a light hybrid.
And Gas vehicals are on their way out. Slowly, but definitely going.
As far as gas tax goes, CA has seen a pretty large drop in gas tax revenue over the last 10 years.
The issue could be solved temporarily by raising fuel costs, but that's not a long term solution.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Good point. Trucks cause the most damage. In Europe they have tax incentives for haulage/trucking companies to use tri-axle trailers and extra axles on the tractor units since they spread the load out better and do less damage to the road. You never seen these in the US (I've never seen them in California anyway).
Drill baby drill - on Mars
We can prevent that changeover entirely by making gasoline-fueled vehicles cheap compared to other types.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Can't seem to evade these cops, it's almost like they've got a tracking device on me....
You mean to tell me Mr. Officer, that you're giving me a ticket for speeding two weeks ago?
I'm being taxed on miles traveled after I was taxed for the price of having my car towed? It was a flatbed, the tires didn't touch the ground!
Wow, I've never seen 15 minute parking enforced so timely and yet so viciously...they've got tow-trucks lined up around the corner just waiting...
"install GPS tracking devices that would report driving habits to roadside RFID scanning devices."
Why? Cars already have to go in for inspection, just check the mileage then and tax appropriately.
Another poster said something about taxing gas more. Not to say we shouldn't be taxing gas more, but that doesn't really work as gas consumed does not reflect mileage driven.
If you want to tax those who drive the most (or really those that pollute the most) wouldn't a straight gas tax work. Sounds like a mileage tax is just a way to reduce the tax on really big vehicles.
Again shifting the tax burden away from those who drive Escalades to the Portland airport to fly to San Fransisco for the opera and onto those who drive the VW buses from Eugene to Oakland for a Dead show. Just seems unfair some how. Are you sure this guy is a Democrat!
Unless you drive an EV like the Volt or the Tesla...
And disabling the GPS would be trivial.
Idiots.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It might be a problem for any aircraft on final approach...
Then put the tax on tires. You can't roll back the odometer on a tire.
Best regards.
Except as cars get more efficient, the get less taxes. Anyone looking ahead will recognize that eventual cars will be all electric. So you need to replace the lost revenue.
So levy taxes on the electric utilities. Why go to all the complication of tracking everyone's mileage when you can simply tax them through their electric bill? The infrastructure already exists and the government already regulates and taxes electric utilities!
Taxing mileage eliminates the incentive to drive more efficient vehicles because it assumes all vehicles are the same. A Hummer and a Prius would be taxed the same even though the later is far more fuel efficient.
Petrol? Check. ... (check out this nice long list of the tax rates applicable in Maine for an example).
Diesel? Check.
Electric? Check.
Natural Gas? Check.
Hydrogen? Check.
Bio-diesel? Check. (yes, even if you grow and process the bio-diesel yourself you still have to remit its fuel tax)
No, the real "problem" is that too many House members constituents would throw them out of office if they tried to tax fuel-guzzling trucks and SUVs at the true proportional-use rate of those vehicles.
In a state where the government prevents you from pumping your own gas, this isn't a big surprise.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
It's just like the fucking water companies. They tell us to "conserve water! It's precious!" (buy higher mileage cars) and when people start doing so, it hits their pocket book, so they raise the rates for water (or want to add new taxes). Fuck the government and the two-faced way it deals with the public. You want to know why nobody cares about the government or politics? It's because they can't win no matter which way they vote.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
What happens when gasoline isn't the primary fuel source for vehicles using Federally funded roads?
You tax electricity. MUCH easier and the metering infrastructure already exists. The car has to get power from somewhere, so tax the energy consumption wherever it originates. Taxing mileage is stupid and provides incentives for the wrong behavior.
Can't they just tax the fucking fuel?
Oh, wait...
They will track me and my "habits" over my cold dead body.
And yes, I'm aware the government can arrange that for me.
My family owns a couple miles of private dirt roads. You're going to tax me for driving on my own road?
If you consume gasoline you already are being taxed for that very thing. Same with electricity for an electric powered vehicle.
The UK and the EU have been considering this some time. There were consultation papers available on the UK Dept. of Transport website, and they noted that compatibility with a European system was required.
Our scheme was allegedly directed at improving congestion on common routes in rush hour. I estimated that using RFID tags in number plates and pickup loops on commonly congested roads would achieve that aim at a cost an order of magnitude lower than installing a GPS unit in every car, along with a cellular infrastructure to download the data.
But that's not what it's a about, is it? A fuel tax is a much better instrument, as it addresses efficiency as well as mileage. It's also cheaper to implement, and hey, already in place. Occams razor suggests that since the stated aim is addressible by much cheaper means, another aim is the true goal.
And the only other goal I can think of that's satisfied by a mandatory GPS tracker with a wireless data uplink is of course, ubiquitous surveillance of the movements of all vehicles.
I find this amazing, where are all the individual thinkers?
/. thinks "Wait the politicians work for us and the government should not increase our tax burden when I am already hurting financially and the government is currently wasting so much of its resources."
/er that suggests the federal government gets out of the highway/road funding business, lowers citizen taxes and lets states decide how to handle it? Why should a man in Florida pay for a bridge in Alaska? Why should a man in Alabama fund a highway in CA?
Has the US public school system so corrupted our understanding of government that nobody on
Where are the patriots that say "Perhaps increasing taxes on Americans right now is a bad idea in terms of economic policy and individual liberty?", who think "Why are we all supposed to work for the American dream of become something great or someone successful only to discover our reward is a higher tax burden? Why are we taxing success?"
Where are those who are opposed to the patriot act? So you believe it is wrong for the government to listen to your phone calls, but you have no problem with them tracking your vehicles location with a remote GPS monitoring device? Are the chains any less effective if they are invisible and electronic then they would be if they were cold and steal? Government has no right to know this private information.
Where is the
Are we so lost from the ideas of the founders that we just lie down and submit to excessive taxation these days?
Respect the Constitution
Probably not, but if they do it would only be for a little while until all private vehicles are electric.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
no, a lot of people who use the term 'The Man', think the government is one entity and wears tin foil hats are scaredy cats as well.
Actually, we think of them as many tiny (figuratively) men who want power in their little fiefdom. Some folks who want it: one politician uses the data to tax and then spend money on politically popular programs (known as "buying" votes); the prosecutor, wanting to make a name for himself, uses the data to go off on some witch hunt (hmmm, why do all those middle aged men have to drive by the grade school?) so he can eventually get elected Governor or into the Senate; the cops wanting to throw their weight around find out what roads have the most traffic and start ticketing everyone who drives over the speed limit +/- 1 MPH - see Arizona on THAT one; any other Government official that wants to grab power.
Just look at the TSA. They're supposed to screen threats of folks that might commit a terrorist act, instead they're stopping folks doing things that are completely legal and confiscating things that they have no business confiscating..
No, when the Government gets power, any power, they find an excuse to abuse it and the slope isn't slippery with them: it's covered with wet ice.
And it's aluminum foil! :-P
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
That is just blatant pork-barrel, palm-greasing guv spending at it's worst.
I could do it for $140 mil.
Call me!
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
My hobbies and lifestyle require lots of personal driving over long distances. Therefore, I am against this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I sure miss the Bush Administration / Republican controlled congress because it at least paid lip service to personal freedoms.
Now lets see:
*We are likely to end up with GPS in our cars
*A 3400-3800 dollar tax for existing
*Still likely to have some form of national ID forced on us
*There is no end in sight to the invasive personal information searches for air travelers
*Our financial records are going to accessible to *any* government agency that can claim some relationship to your health care no matter how obscure.
Any notion this is a free society is rapidly evaporating. I know I am going to get reams of replies about how Americans are still so much more free than X; but that is not the point! Its not about being freer than someone else or better than, its about being the freest society we can be. Frankly our government is drifting down the road of some type of neo-fascist totalitarian system. Its a long way from something you could describe that way but the seeds are being planted and the garden tended. This is very similar to how the Third Reich got its start, and no I am not saying Obama is anything like Hitler, what I am saying is that he and the current congressional majority are creating the conditions where an Hitler or a Bonaparte can find support and come to power.
I fully expect to be walking down the street in the next ten years and hearing the equivalent of "Papers please" pretty often the way things are going..
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Here's the seven criteria from the bill itself. I'll attempt
to save the goverment the $154.5M evaluation cost by doing it
here for free:
(A) protection of personal privacy,
GPS in every vehicle and RFID at the roadside to scan vehicles as they pass.
This one ought to just be a deal killer right away. Anyone who cannot think
of five ways that this will erode personal privacy shouldn't be allowed to
write new laws.
(B) ease of compliance,
How many vehicles are on the US roads today? How many are added/removed each
day? What is the MTBF for a car-mounted GPS unit? How many will fail each
day? Who pays to fix them?
How many miles of public roads will need RFID readers? How often will these
fail (or be vandalized/stolen)?
(C) public acceptance,
No just no, but HELL NO!
(D) geographic and income equity,
Poor people can't afford to install GPS in their cars. Large states (TX)
have lots more roads than small states (anything in New England).
(E) integration with State and local transportation ... but the horse may have already left the
revenue mechanisms (including demand management systems),
This one has some promise
stable. I'd bet money that the existing systems installed in each state
are totally incompatible. Will I have to pick up a new RFID tag at each
state border crossing when I drive on vacation?
(F) administrative, cost, and enforcement issues, and
Minimum administrative unit becomes an individual vehicle. Compare this
against the current fuel tax where the unit is the gas station. There
are three orders of magnitude more vehicles than gast stations. Nuff said.
(G) potential for fraud and evasion. ... wait for the first "Black Hat" convention
Yes. Don't believe me
after this goes live and I'll yell "TOLD YOU SO".
do you realy think that the government would take one second or one dollar to find your car for you?
"you see this here GPS is a tax device, You will ned to talk to some one in law enforcement about your lost car."
"if you can provide us with a police report, we might be able to stop taxing you on the miles drivin while your car was 'missing'. It usually just takes 4-6 weeks to process."
-- Sig under construction...
Increase the gas tax. That's so freaking simple, and it IS also the best solution. No need for complex and intrusive mileage checks (or, even worse, GPS tracking), no need for complicated, unenforceable and prone-to-corruption mileage tax for the car manufacturers, no need for expensive ($150 million??!!) studies that would be inconclusive anyway.
Tax the gas, and you get everyone on the bandwagon: people will want to consume less so they spend less on gas. Automakers will want to indulge the market with fuel efficient cars. It's so simple, it's mind-boggling the govt. isn't doing it. Just do it, damned!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I am pretty sure there's a small document called the constitution that has rules about this kind of thing. Funny!
Right now, red states are receiving massive net subsidies from blue states, and a significant part of that goes to their road infrastructure.
In different words, while California can't make ends meet and its roads are falling apart, people in Alaska, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Alabama are driving around on roads paid for by California and Massachusetts tax payers (and cursing those damned welfare liberals while they are doing it); every resident of those states gets, on average, more than $4000 in federal benefits more than they pay in federal taxes.
So, before we tax vehicle use more, let's first balance things out so that states pay for more of what they actually use themselves.
...look for who's going to benefit. From the article:
Many of his largest campaign donors stand to benefit from his newly introduced legislation. Honeywell International, for example, is a major manufacturer RFID equipment. The company also happens to be the second biggest contributor in the current cycle to Blumenauerâ(TM)s Political Action Committee (PAC), the Committee for a Livable Future. Another top-ten donor, Accenture, is a specialist in the video tolling field.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Tracking vehicle mileage is not even practicle. Yes, you can track miles driven via gps tracking, but the entire process, including data collection and compliance, would be extremely complex. How would the state possibly begin to enforce and monitor this and mandate everyone to buy a GPS device or some type of tracking system? As far as the research costing so much money, maybe they could read comments on Slashdot to get their answers for free.
So... wouldn't the damage to the road (and the need for such a large repair expense) be offset by the decreasing size/weight of the electric cars ?
... cos we are all Socialists at heart
Big brotherly, invasive, and also pretty expensive to implement and administer, and easy to abuse. Not to mention that a heavier car puts more wear on the road so if you're going to recoup by wear and tear, by and large the gasoline tax is already a relatively accurate gauge of road usage. A car that weighs three times as much will put more wear on the road per mile driven, but will also use more fuel and therefore pay more fuel tax. Problem solved. Already.
Plus, the current system is very hard to cheat. If you drive your Gas/Diesel car, you will burn fuel. You can't put tinfoil around the gas tank and make a cross-country trip "not count". With a GPS-based system, you're going to run into all sorts of issues with GPS satellite acquisition that makes the system unreliable even ignoring the inevitable cheating. And you'll have to have a whole new enforcement system and bureaucracy to handle cheating, inaccurate readings, etc.
As people get into lighter and more efficient gasoline/diesel cars, engage in carpooling, ride their bikes, etc, the decreases in fuel revenues will be matched (in large part) by a reduced need for road maintenance and building new roads. Not entirely, but then again we didn't stop driving when gas hit $5 a gallon, now did we?
As new untaxed or untaxable fuels start coming into vogue, we have to accept that those users will be paying a lower share of road maintenance. Where the alternative puts basically zero wear on the roads and basically zero pollution (like bicycles) we just accept that that's one less car on the road and therefore the roads will wear out more slowly.
Where the alternative fuel doesn't reduce actual road wear while avoiding road tax (electric, vegetable oil conversions, natural gas, etc) we have to make a decision as to whether to try and recover the cost of wear and tear from that user by implementing a special tax for that specific class of vehicle, or to consider the reduction in pollution and other factors as a societal benefit.
No system is going to be 100% fair. But the gas tax system is simple, effective, hard to cheat, and about as fair as we can implement cheaply. Vehicles that put wear and tear on the roads but don't pay for that wear are *exceptions*, and should be handled as such. There's no need to retrofit millions of cars already on the road with an expensive new piece of equipment to recoup losses that they aren't causing.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
This is about as egregious as Santorum's idea to block public access to NOAA and pay a second time to get all their info from Accuweather, a major contributor of his. A suggestion dumb enough for a Republican but made by a Democrat.
*picard facepalm*
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
This is essentially what petrol taxes are, and they have the added advantage of inversely scaling with a vehicle's fuel efficiency.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
This is why I drive a 25+ year old car. No black box, no emissions in PA, and I suspect no milage tax in the future due to the difficutlies to implement.
Plus, by keeping it on the road, I feel like im saving the environment by not spending all the energy and materials for to build a new car. I also keep at least one mechanic employed for about 1/4th of a year for maintenance and repair.
MOD PARENT UP, not down.
Fraud Alert: This is my best understanding. This is a new part of a very old effort. I remember protesting it many years ago.
There is some company in Oregon that expects to sell the equipment that would track miles. Quote from the article: "Honeywell International, for example, is a major manufacturer RFID equipment. The company also happens to be the second biggest contributor in the current cycle to Blumenauer's Political Action Committee..."
The mileage-tracking would download data remotely, using the same radio wave band used by wi-fi, or close. Every car would have the new equipment. A little aluminum foil over your car's antenna would stop the functioning of the system.
Quote from the article referenced by Slashdot: "... the report urged a mandate for all drivers to install GPS tracking devices that would report driving habits to roadside Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) scanning devices." How long would it be until a hacker reported that his vehicle was in Canada? Maybe, "Oh, yes, yesterday I was driving in the Kamchatka peninsula, after a long trip around the moon."
The biggest problem is that even the study would be extremely expensive for taxpayers ("... $154,500,000 for research and study into the transition to a per-mile vehicle tax system...") The second biggest problem is that buying the equipment would make Blumenauer's friends rich and taxpayers poor. The third problem is that it wouldn't work. There would be many, many failures in the equipment.
If that is true, it is fraud, an attempt to profit by using government power to do something bad for everyone, and US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) should be recalled as soon as possible, and barred from ever again participating in politics.
Often the actions of the U.S. government seem shockingly corrupt.
Someone would get the money, "$154,500,000 for research and study", even if no working system were produced.
Any new fuel or power source for automobiles will be taxed to a similar extent as the current petrol taxes, so this is not really an issue.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
Well, since gps in phones are killing the GPS makers, they needed to find a reason to start selling them again.
It isn't that simple. Because road damage is a function of the cube of the axle loading, a Hummer causes a dozen times more road wear than a Yaris, but uses only two or three times as much gasoline and therefore pays only two or three times as much in gas taxes. So the Yaris owner pays more than his or her fair share in gas taxes to fix the roads.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
An odometer won't tell us whether someone was driving on roads. I shouldn't be taxed for driving around on my own property, should I? If states adopt this, as Oregon evidently has, well, Oregon can't tax you for miles driven in California, can it? I can't say I agree or disagree with this proposed tax, but I do know that using a GPS over an odometer is not a case of teh ebil gubermint wanting to spy on you. There are legitimate reasons to do so.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is outrageous! I have something that already tracks my mileage, it is called an ODOMETER. I am on the lowest tier of my car insurance and every few years they ask me for odometer reading and I give it to them. Wow, that was so hard. No tracking. No high-tech.
If they need to extend this concept for taxing, fine. Drop 100% of the gas tax and go to a mileage tax based only on the odometer reading. Make it part of an annual inspection (that most states have anyway). But I will NOT install some government sponsored tracking device in my vehicles. Period.
While the CRIMINALS-IN-CONGRESS are UNTRACKED.
P.S. : Ditch Mitch (a.k.a Miss McConnell)
Yours In Gulag Kentucky,
Philboyd Studge
News for Paranoid Cynics!
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I was disgusted when our state gov spent the money for the first and second study for this. And now I am ashamed and disgusted that good ole Earl has decided to show the rest of the US just how dumb we are here in Oregon. Any idiot that has used a GPS knows this is a BAD solution. Simply either increase the existing gas tax, or implement a mileage tax gradient based on GVW during registration renewal.
where i come from, they tax me how far i walk, by seeing how much thread i wore out on my shoes.
They are planning to tax the air i breath by how much oxygen i used up also.
The official reason they want GPS is that different states have different taxes. So they want to know the miles you drive in each state. There's of course also talk that if they get this, they can use it for toll roads; urban congestion charges, etc.
Having a hacked RFID would BE the reason you'd be pulled over. The enforcement officers would note that the license plate doesn't match the assigned RFID to the vehicle. It would be as obvious to an officer as driving with an expired plate registration. These things can be checked while the officer is driving behind you.
Tax = (miles)/(miles per gallon)
That way cars with higher fuel efficiency get a better tax break.
And this way, we don't even need the GPS in the car! We can put the tax at the fuel pump!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Correct. I'm pretty sure any gasoline taxes you pay while this system is in effect will be applied as Gas Tax Credits. Provided you keep your receipts you will most likely be able to claim these when filing your taxes.
Except the damage done to roads is exponential in regards to weight. If you drive say a cement truck, sure you are only getting say 5 mpg (highway mileage) and you pay 10 times the tax as a diesel vw jetta (50 mpg highway) but you are probably doing 1000 times the damage to the road.
him to see if he is receptive to a better and cheaper way to implement a VMT, but he and his staff refuse to listen to anyone outside his district. The point that this issue impacts everyone seems to be lost on him.
So if you are in his distrct, please contact him with ways that don't need GPS and RFID to implement them.
Thanks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Doesn't anyone where find it quite odd that this is a representative from Oregon - one of the most government-get-out-of-my-ass-leave-me-alone states in the union?
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Coming from the state that won't allow you to pump your own gas I'm not too surprised that they'd come up with a law to tax you for driving. Next thing you know they won't be able to take directions with out GPS. Poor gas station clerks are going to have to explain a simple map.
Yes, but the problem is that as more and more bybrid and pure alternative fuel cars use the roads, less and less tax money will be available for road upkeep.
Only if the tax structure never changes. How likely do you think that is?
Imagine in 20 years if _every_ car were 100% electric (won't happen, I know). That would be a _huge_ drop in taxes earned through gasoline sales.
So tax electricity. The meters already exist and there are no invasion of privacy issues. Furthermore it provides an incentive to reduce electricity the same as gas which is a good thing. A mileage tax provides no incentive to be especially efficient.
Basically this is an early change over to a system that will work regardless of fuel source.
The feasible options are gas and electricity. It's far easier to tax electricity than to create a whole new tax infrastructure for mileage measurement.
There's an easier way. Easier to draw up the legislation, easier to implement, easier to maintain and administer, less administrative overhead, less hassle for all concerned, more difficult for individuals to effectively circumvent...
Yeah, so anyway, the easy way is to just put an excise tax on gas. Simple. Effective.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Don't have a "per mile" tax and waste all this money trying to work out how to implement one, just do the same as everyone else and tax the fuel. You achieve the same end result, with the added side effect of encouraging people to drive more fuel efficient cars.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Oh wait - that's unconstitutional and will just transform the US into a communist country like the PRK.
This really can't be anything more than a massive government boondoggle. I blame this idea on american voters who think that the gas tax is the devil. The money for roads has to come from somewhere, and if the gas tax isn't doing it, it will come through some other tax.
Personally, I think gas is too cheap anyway. Raise the gas tax on gasoline, and you'll see an explosion in public transportation, fuel-efficient cars, etc. Yeah, there'll be an initial hit on transportation business. But if the tax is raised incrementally, it can be done slow enough to keep up with improvements in fuel-efficient technologies.
Then again, I don't expect politicians to stand for this, nor for enough voters to understand the concept.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Just because he/she is taxed now because of an energy source limitation doesn't mean they should be taxed in the future when the ability not to presents itself.
Do it by weight of the tire or perhaps based on the max weight rating of the tire. Apply this when sold.
The tax would need to be added in gradualy and there would be cross state border issues but no tracking needed.
It would be more directly related to the wear on the road.
The idea is not to tax people for miles driven on private roads.
Of course the gas tax does that anyway....
Nothing would please me more than if those elitists scum in power to pass the "Straw that broke the camel's back" Act only to have it backfire spectacularly on them as millions of angry drivers mob the local state government houses and D.C. with their "GPS-Gas-o-tax" meters in their hands ready to throw them through the windows of their legislator's offices.
I mean we already pay gas taxes, and even though they SAY they would remove the other taxes, are you really gullible enough to think they would actually drop one revenue stream in leu of another completely. Instead they will put the tax on the people selling the gasoline which will mean gas will stay the same price but the taxes will be "backloaded" while they mandate expensive meters be installed in everyone's car. And then demand the people driving pay even MORE money to the slime in power.
This will essentially turn everyone's car into a TAXI cab.
We are an Automobile society and I hope they pass this because this is one of the moves they could take that could lead to something that would make the French Revolution look like the Peaceful Well Mannered March on D.C. last weekend.
"Let them have GPS"
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
while I realize this is a corner case:
My 83 diesel benz, once started can run without electricity of any kind. As a result, I could start my car at home, disconnect the battery, and off I go (at least during the day). Also, I can start the car direct from the battery and starter solenoid contacts, without powering the dash.
1 buy old Benz or other mechanical injection diesel
2 ???
3 profit by way of reduced tax bill.
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Unconstitutional.
Invasion of privacy.
Needlessly complex.
Congress has borrowed money from the road trust to go towards the general fund.
Regressive.
No way of knowing if you are being taxed the same as your neighbor.
Completely insane.
How? This seems like it would be very easy to evade,
I should think the answer is obvious. If you live in a building there is already a meter attached to your house. There also is one attached to nearly every business in the country. Virtually all electricity used in the US is generated by the grid and is ALREADY metered and taxed. The electric company does a good job of collecting and shuts you off if don't pay. No DRM system is necessary and it is very difficult to dodge.
If you want to tax off grid generation there is an easy solution for that too - sales tax. The infrastructure already exists, the enforcement mechanisms are in place and it's difficult to dodge.
What is our problem? We come up with more and more complicated systems to do the same thing. Roads are built by the government because we want the cost shared. Usage should not be an issue. Drop the freaking gas tax and just up income taxes across the board. Any usage taxes are both completely regressive and only create loopholes and layers of burocracy. They basically say that the more you make, the bigger your rights are to public services and works which happen to have tolls.
Your outrage is a little misplaced here. You're still going to be paying way less for fuel thanks to increased efficiency. Even the gas-guzzlers will partially benefit when general demand is reduced. Taxes are a small percentage of the cost of fuel - basically, what this gas-tax increase would do is makes it so everyone pays roughly the same in amount of taxes as they did before, but still way less in total thanks to using less fuel.
That's not to say your outrage is not correct - but the more correct place for that outrage is that we fund so many important things by way of fuel taxes. Consumption taxes hit the poor and working classes, dollar-per-dollar, much harder than the richer classes - and that includes fuel taxes. It also creates crisis scenarios whenever the consumption rate is reduced - which is a dumb way to fund the things an entire society depends upon so deeply.
A better tax base would be a wealth tax, progressively affecting those who benefit most from the fruits of society - those who are able to earn the most and control the most of the economy paying society back in part for the power they have been given thanks to the usually invisible effort of so many.
Ryan Fenton
A 1996 study agrees with you: http://spc.kau.edu.sa/Files/320/Researches/47112_18679.pdf
Skip to "conclusions" on the sixth and seventh pages for my point. The number of miles matters, of course, but so does the tire pressure (related to the weight of the vehicle, and also related to the fuel economy).
Higher tire pressure increases fuel economy, but also increases wear on the road, which pushes the cost of trucking onto taxpayers (instead of coming from truckers in the form of gas taxes).
If Congress wanted to reduce the cost of repairing roads, they'd enact preventative measures to keep roads from being mangled under the overinflated tires of truckers. And then maybe we could go back to using highly-efficient trains for shipping over vast distances.
I don't know about you guys, but once I read this:
I really didn't need to read any further.
I could just have easily rewritten the summary to say, "Another company sponsoring a bill through one of its purchased representatives that would net it a bunch of money."
Not nearly so interesting when interpreted that way.
Question everything
Just because he/she is taxed now because of an energy source limitation doesn't mean they should be taxed in the future when the ability not to presents itself.
And just because he might avoid a tax in the future due to a quirk in the present tax code doesn't mean he shouldn't be taxed in the future. Even if he never drives a particular vehicle off his property, he still relies on the road infrastructure and needed it to get that vehicle to his property. He can suck it up and pay his share.
It is called a gasoline tax. The more gasoline you use the more tax you pay. The lighter vehicles that use less gas also damage the roads less.
http://nwbagpipes.com/
Exactly. They're exceptions now, and at such point as electric vehicles become common you can mandate that all new ones henceforth will have some kind of integrating ammeter, a tamper proof odometer or whatever.
That's not going to be tomorrow, next week or even next year. No point rushing some half-assed system into place.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Do you think they can't match your credit cards with gas pumps already? Hell, when you book a domestic plane ticket, they know what IP address it was reserved from, the service you used, and so on.
The time for fighting for your privacy is already over. You lost.
YET ANOTHER IDIOT, MORON, DEMOCRAT, BIG GOVERNMENT IDEA!!
Get this big government democrat out of congress!!!!
Congress wants money for projects??? Great! They already have a wonderfull source! Reduce thier own salaries and those of thier staff by two thirds and use the savings! They already make too much money now.
Remove the Czars and thier staff - there is more money to be used on idiot, moron, democrat projects.
impeach b.o., impeach all dmocrats.
deport all illegial aliens, after all, they are criminals - they entered illegally.
less government.
lower taxes.
no public health plan - i don't want the government taking more of my money and wasting it. They say they will use the savings of the current fraud and waste? Great. start by eliminating the fraud and waste NOW. Then come back and ask for more money. Oh, wait, I forgot, to get rid of the waste and fraud THEY WOULD HAVE TO GET RID OF THEMSELVES! Great idea.
There is an identical study currently in progress by the University of Iowa. They only needed $12 million to conduct it. www.roaduserstudy.org
There's no way I'm going to let the government know my position, but I would not mind disclosing my velocity.
Just keep swimming.
In the current system, the higher the value of your vehicle the more you pay towards infrastructure taxes. I don't think that this reflects the proper value system. You should pay more taxes to support transportation infrastructure if: 1. Your vehicle is fuel inefficient 2. Your vehicle is heavy / places more strain on the roads 3. Your vehicle creates more pollution Assuming a general agreement with these values, then it seems to me that a tax on gas @ the pump approximately aligns with these values and doesn't require technical infrastructure or "big brother" to implement. Gas at the pump should be expensive as hell. It will serve as an incentive to carpool, drive more fuel efficient vehicles, etc. Our dependence on [foreign] oil already is one of the country's greatest problems and it isn't going to do anything but get worse..
Evolution: love it or leave it
NO GOVERNMENT TRACKING OF MY MOVEMENTS OR ENERGY USAGE!
YET ANOTHER IDIOT, MORON, DEMOCRAT, BIG GOVERNMENT IDEA!!
Get this big government democrat out of congress!!!!
Congress wants money for projects??? Great! They already have a wonderfull source! Reduce thier own salaries and those of thier staff by two thirds and use the savings! They already make too much money now.
Remove the Czars and thier staff - there is more money to be used on idiot, moron, democrat projects.
impeach b.o., impeach all dmocrats.
deport all illegial aliens, after all, they are criminals - they entered illegally.
less government.
lower taxes.
no public health plan - i don't want the government taking more of my money and wasting it. They say they will use the savings of the current fraud and waste? Great. start by eliminating the fraud and waste NOW. Then come back and ask for more money. Oh, wait, I forgot, to get rid of the waste and fraud THEY WOULD HAVE TO GET RID OF THEMSELVES! Great idea.
I'm a progressive. I'm for universal single payer health care...
HOWEVER.. tracking cars? taxing milage?
Go fuck yourself Government. This is why we cant get Universal Single Payer Health Care. Its because of stupid shit like this, that people equate any government program with evil.
SOME government programs are ridiculously stupid and evil. There is no need to tax people on milage, or track them with GPS.
They just want to know where you are at all times, and profit from it.
Do something once for the people. Give us back our tax dollars, in the form of Universal Single Payer Health Care.... and not in payouts to GM, AIG etc.
Sorry, took me a minute to see your point - you mean that you'd simply deny the GPS unit any electricity.
Very true.
Trouble is, GPS is a expensive enough system to enforce in corporate and rental fleets, and currently there is little in the way of cost to the end-user for allowing the GPS to work properly. If you use a company car to get where you are going, you don't care whether the GPS works because it's not costing you anything.
There are going to be a lot of ways to bypass a system like this. It's going to need to be tamperproof, and have a tamperproof connection to your car's electrical system. That means it's going to be expensive, as in costing a lot of money that will have to be reclaimed somehow. And nothing is tamperproof.
Yes, people who abuse it will probably be fringe cases. But a lot more people will have the opportunity and the means for abuse than the current gas tax system does today.
We'd be dropping a load of money to change the way 95% of the auto fleet for the foreseeable future works in order to capture the other 5%.
It'd be cheaper to simply add a penny to the gasoline and Diesel taxes and pocket the difference, or look at vehicles that run on alternatives and figure out ways to recapture the cost of wear-and-tear they put on the roads based on some other criteria.
And possibly some of those exceptions would include the use of a GPS to measure mileage. Though I think the good old Odometer would work just fine. It's not tamperproof, but neither is GPS, and the Odomoeter's already there.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
While gas guzzlers will remain more expensive, the difference as a percentage of total vehicle cost is reduced by implementing flat per mile taxes. For example, two cars - one that gets 15 mpg the other that gets 30 mpg. If gas with taxes is $2 and I drive 10,000 miles per year I'll spend $1,333 on gas at 15mpg or $667 on gas at 30mpg. Paying only 50% as much with the more fuel efficient vehicle. If they add a $0.10 per mile tax, my total gas + tax cost will be $2,333 at 15mpg or $1,667 at 30mpg. Now I'm paying 71% as much with the more fuel efficient vehicle. So the % savings is reduced.
Why should I pay a tax based on how much I exercise my right to move around at will? Don't people get this simple fact:
Freedom is not freedom if you cannot afford to be free.
-- $G
At the current price for gasoline where I live in Indiana, 2.36, the taxes are ~23.4%.
That's not a small percentage.
"They'd never be that dishonest, money-grubbing, or plain ol' stupid."
Hacked GPS: "All this year, driving in Costa Rica, where there are no U.S. taxes."
Government to a grandmother with an old car, worth less than the failing GPS: "I see you've been driving on a restricted military reservation. You will go to jail. And what's this about you driving in Borneo?"
Would you like to put a gps on my bicycle so you can tax me for sidewalk repair? How about something in my shoes so the mall can tax me and pay for the floor to be re-surfaced. I'm going to create a new tech startup the produces a devices you can wear that blocks all RFID signals in a 30 yard radius. I will be the coolest man alive! This idea, isn't only dumb. Its so full of holes it stinks like cheese.
Just no.
Visit my Forums?
THIS is the important sentence: "has filed legislation to spend $154.5M"
Say it with me, Swedish Chef style, "PORK! PORK! PORK!"
This has nothing to do with gasoline taxes or reclaiming lost revenues. This is purely a way to increase State Of Oregon revenue by having the federal government pour $150 million into its coffers.
The result is predictable. They'll cut-and-paste some of the arguments from this thread as to why it's unenforceable, too expensive, or not a significant technical improvement over the odometer. Then they'll announce that they've saved billions by coming up with a simple solution - use the odometer. Unless, of course, Oregon has a major GPS manufacturer who just happens to be able to handle the Government contract for millions and millions of GPS units.
Garmin AT
2345 Turner Road SE
Salem, OR 97302
Huh, whoda thunk it? Garmin's got a major presence in... Oregon. Wow, incredible coincidence, that.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Because hopefully the purpose is to handle taxation to keep our roads and interstates in shape .... why not take that wasted $154mil and put that into the roads right now... that's a good start.
Think about it - $154mil to 'study' how to spend another $300mil? $1bil? $2bil? to 'implement' the outcomes of their study...
riiiiiggghhht...
This smells of yet another obviously transparent excuse to take one more step towards a police state.
What they actually want is an ifrastructure to spy on everyones actual location in realtime. This whole taxed road usage is just a cover story to get it implemented.
If they really just wanted to just know a cars mileage, they could just take an odometer reading. No need for a GPS. They could even do that when you go for a smog check, so no actual justification for road sensors either. Its obviously a scam.
Its not just off road usage. It is also out of state or out of country usage. An odometer wouldn't work. How would you back up your documentation for refunds or deductions? When I file taxes, I need receipts to get deductions, not just my word.
But there is an easier, simpler, low tech way of doing this. It's called 'the turnpike.' You get a ticket when you get on, you pay based on mileage when you get off. Why should my taxes go to support roads I don't even use? We could have a glorious free market of roadways all competing for out transportation dollar. Oh, think of the quality of service compared to the sad and sorry state of affairs we have now with an evil socialist state run road system.
Extra credit for anyone who can explain why an all private road system is a very bad idea.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There has got to be an ulterior motive to this proposal.
Why?
There's no need to GPS track a vehicle to know how many miles it covers each year. There's this nifty thing called an ODOMETER that already tracks that information, and the numbers already get written down in the annual / biennal inspections. And it's already a serious crime to screw with odometers, and there's already a legal mechanism in place to take care of when you need to replace a broken odometer.
I don't know where the push for this bill is coming from, but it fails a deep, fundamental common-sense test, making me highly suspicious.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Blumenauer is my representative. He's a smart guy and would certainly be aware of the tradeoffs. And based on my knowledge of his voting record and his stated positions, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that there's a direct correlation between his corporate donors and his legislative work.
The funny thing about emissions testing is new/recent cars have to have it done. And the only time I've heard of a new car failing the test is do do bad software in the car, or a sensor that is bad even though the emissions are fine. And for my 25+ year old classic car ('72 Opel GT)- I don't have to get emissions testing at all. WTF?
The whole emissions testing is a scam at this point. Test my care when it's 10 of 15 year old, not 2 or 3.
The program served it's purpose of enforcing lower emissions long ago, now it's just a racket for the state and few business owners to keep ranking in money.
Never let a mediocre career stand in the way of a good time
What if everyone started telecommuting? Would they then charge a tax for working at home?
Title 13 USC section 9 regulates privacy of information collected in the US Census Bureau. Section 9 requires information gathered by the Bureau be kept confidential and be used exclusively for statistical purposes.
- 1980: Four FBI agents enter the Census Bureau's Colorado Springs office with a search warrant authorizing them to seize census documents. No confidential information is ever released because a census worker holding off the agents until her superiors resolve the issue with the FBI.
- 1982: Local officials try to obtain confidential census information, the Supreme Court upholds the law and denies access to these records.
If there were measures such as these that required information gathered by these devices be used exclusively for the purpose of taxation on road usage, and enforced, I could be convinced to use one.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
But you repeat yourself. Why?
Let's just plant one of these bad boys in everybody at birth, coupled with a multi-gas back-of-the-throat brethalyzer. Then we can just start charging for general milage(why limit ourselves to vehicular movement?),carbon emissions, control drunk driving, levy fines for public belching...
For those who want to protest, Representative Blumenauer's phone number is (503) 231-2300. Anyone can protest, but this is Blumenauer's district.
More about the bill: H.R. 3311.
Blog coverage: OpenCongress.
More coverage: H.R. 3311 is an oxymoron.
Under your scheme everyone who can't afford to purchase a fancy new hybrid or all electric vehicle will fund the highway system for those who can!
Are you rich? Do you vote Republican?
I think that it is possible to come up with a worse plan than what you proposed but it's going to take a few minutes of thought.
Fuck that and fuck you.
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
Better a gas tax AND a hefty graduated annual excise tax on oversize trucks and SUVs with poor mileage. Make it simple, say, $200/year for every MPG under the mandated 35MPG average. Want to drive that 12MPG Excursion or F-350? Fine. That's $4,600 a year, please.
Hope the overcompensaion was worth it.
The average European family does just fine with compact cars like Fiats and VWs. If they can do it, then so can the average US family. (Of course, the average US family may need to go on a diet first. But then again, that will improve mileage too!)
Seriously, According to the U.S. Department of Energy, we burn roughly 400 million gallons of gasoline day-in and day-out. And roughly 60% of all of the petroleum consumed was imported, with 13% coming from the middle east (shipping is easier from SA). Finally, from 2000 to 2007, the US new fleet fuel economy has averaged 23.1 mpg, with light trucks and SUVs making up about 40% of the vehicles on the road.
So, LTs and SUVs make up 40%, but since their mileage sucks they burn 55-60% of the fuel. Replace SUVs, and we immediately save 120 million gallons each and every day, cut imports by 30%, and IMMEDIATELY and totally cut our need for Middle Eastern oil.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
for my car.
We already have this... its called "GAS TAX"... there is no better way to tax mileage, than to tax gas, combustion never lies.
Why do you limit your frustration to Democrats?
Republicans are evil also, they're just louder and dumber about it. Democrats are smarter and stealthier.
There's a reason that Vampires infest pop culture when Democrats are in power, and Zombies when Republicans are in office.
Government is the problem. Down with the undead.
-FL
If they MUST install a gps in my car I want free turn by turn driving instructions. Better yet Full onstar capabilities for free (Well actually paid for by the tax collected huh). They say they have to because they plan to charge different rates for different roads. How about they forget that plan. I agree I will pay the flat per mile tax even if some of those miles happen to be in Canada or Mexico. Divide the monies gathered at the federal level by the total miles of roadway (or total number of drivers) and then apportion to the states by the same measure.
It would be easy to make an aftermarket tamper-proof odometer. It could use an accelerometer in a completely sealed and tamper-proof shell. Think of it as an airplane's black box. The digital circuit could be designed to only allow the numbers to go UP, and it could be cheap enough to be discardable.
well, you could make it an option.
a) do nothing, and when you register your vehicle each year, you pay an extra tax (we already pay taxes on registration anyway) based on your mileage and car type.
b) get a GPS and pay less (or more) based on a complicated schedule that takes into account the roads you travel on, etc. But this would probably be as complicated to understand as doing your taxes and people would probably think they'd save money and wouldnt. Having the GPS could probably reduce your insurance too, if you drive slow and limited mileage. But make it an optional thing.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
So, you want to tax those people that make a meager living doing real labor like construction, landscaping, farming, and the like, all of which require heavy-duty vehicles? You stupid weanies think things through about as well as the politicians do. "We'll solve the world's problems by imposing our mindset and way of life on everyone" doesn't fix the world because too much relies on others who are willing and able to do things you can't or won't (dirty labor, violence, etc). Take your narrow view and fuck off.
And yes, I AM a tech-minded 1st worlder that programs for living. I still realize the need for blue-collar.
This whole idea just reeks of a Big Brother type of scenario in any country and sets a very dangerous precedent for the entire world. If the American government is so concerned about people driving too much unnecessarily why not just tax petrol (gasoline) more heavily like they do here in Europe?
At least for a state gas tax. You can't read the odometer and determine what percent of your driving day was in Oregon versus Washington state. Therefore a mileage tax wouldn't work.
They've been pushing for this in Oregon for a while now. As I understand it, the GPS unit isn't a black box, and a lot of time has been put into privacy concerns. I think one solution had it being read at the pump, and then immediately deleting its contents after being read. Very limited range transmission, it only recorded miles/location, and the location was just 'oregon' or 'not oregon'.
However, for a Federal gas tax, I have no idea why'd they'd want to implement GPS. Odometer reading would work just fine. Just have a tax applied to your tag renewal each year based on miles driven.
Either way, I hope they still have some differences in tax amounts based on vehicle size and weight. I shouldn't have to pay as much as a Semi Truck.
If you record the position of a vehicle with a GPS device, you can determine if the vehicle is speeding, or not. This information can then be used in an automated speeding ticket system, which should eliminate all needs for a mileage tax.
It's called the Gas Tax. Why would you need anything more than that?
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I wrote the following to my Oregon representatives in December of 2007 (obviously it had no impact and now the pols and their pals want huge sums to validate their view): "I read recently in the Oregonian (online) about ODOT attempts to study mileage taxation measured by onboard electronic technology and all of the problems and costs to get this implemented. Given that federal mileage requirements are changing as well as industry improvements, taxation per gallon is no longer a viable option for fairly assessing transportation taxation. Rather than costly, complex ODOT technological solutions I present below an alternative you might consider as it is far simpler, cheaper, and matches Oregon's existing procedures. Mileage Tax Cards To me the solution is very simple. Just take your vehicle into any gas station once a year between say March 15-April 15 (any 30-90 day period before taxes are due) and let the station mail in your mileage with VIN number. Ignoring this directive is grounds for losing vehicle license and/or driving license. You're then taxed on a mileage basis when you report it on your state return which is automatically compared with already mailed in mileage card. Just some of the benefits are: independent of age of vehicle charges only those that use the highway system does not lend to spying on citizens privacy costs nothing to citizens and minimal for state no cost or retrofitting of technology or continuous maintenance of technology on all vehicles trivial to "update" tax rate per mile since not done at pump Some points to understand are: 1. As for paperwork, I was envisioning a simple carbonless 2-layer postcard. The top of the card is mailed into ODOT/Revenue and the copy is kept by the consumer (submitted with tax return if necessary). The card is "mark sense" so the attendant fills in date, VIN, mileage, and driver signs. Postage is covered by state. Setting taxes and updating them on every gas pump in the state is far more complex and costly than 1 postcard per year per vehicle. 2. "Electronic" or other high tech systems all suffer the same weakness as e-voting, i.e., no legal or paper trail. If e-voting is so great why does Oregon mandate mail in votes? Are votes so worth so little that they can be done by mail along with income taxes but mileage must be electronic? All it would take with an electronic system would be a few hundred lawsuits charging that it did it wrong. It is harder to lie/cheat with a paper trail. 3. Although police and DMV could also verify mileage cards they are already overburdened while Oregon is one of only 2(?) states that mandates hiring thousands of workers to "pump gas" and I have watched many of these employees often doing little or nothing. Filling out a mileage card is perhaps a 30 second task once a year per vehicle. Also many states mandate frequent vehicle checks, e.g., smog devices, where one could get a mileage card filled out. 4. Commercial vehicles (truckers) that often cross state boundaries can fill out a card(electronic sensor) when they meet the first truck toll stations at the Oregon borders then they are charged per mile. 5. For non-commercial vehicles (ordinary citizens) one fills out a card at the same way stations if one is say going on vacation to Yellowstone and then again on reentry to Oregon. It would probably not worth doing if one is going to Vancouver or even Seattle for the weekend as the mileage is a trivial part of the average 12K+ per year per vehicle although one could prove it on a tax return with appropriate Seattle receipts, etc. 6. If one lives in Oregon and commutes to Vancouver everyday then one will still be charged the full amount as it is too laborious to do cards, however, one is still receiving out-of-state wages while being a resident and is still charged as 100% income so I seen no unfairness of paying 100% mileage as mileage would be considered a tax, not to mention the mileage to Vancouver is trivial but the traffic is not. Just some ideas. I strongly support mileage taxation instead of a gallon tax, but the challenge is to find the cheapest, easiest, and least intrusive method. Right now, I have heard of nothing as cheap and easy as annual mileage cards."
The gas tax has no real away around it. Really hard to cheat then its built in to the price of gas.
You put control of the taxation in the hands of the car owner and they will cheat.
RFID?
-Just pop the transponder in the microwave for 2 seconds.. no proof of tamper.
-Swap transponders with a car you don't drive much.
-Clone transponder.
GPS gizmo?
-Hit gizmo with a cheap tazer or ignition coil.. "Maybe my car got hit by lighting?"
-Cover antenna with tinfoil before you leave...dont let it get a lock anywhere but your driveway.
-Fuses blow out sometimes ya know..
Odometer check?
-Unhook speedo cable or magnetic pickup. Ill just use my GPS-Nav unit to tell me my speed.
-Swap dash clusters
-Bribe the meter readers.
etc...
You drive a new car with the odometer embedded in the ECU? No big deal.
"Tuners" hack and mess with their computers on new cars all the time.. would take about 1.4days for someone to come out with a way to manipulate a digital Ode if there was this big of a demand.
Here's a idea congress: Stop burning millions of tax dollars on wasteful "studies".
I have to return some videotapes...
This isn't about restricting your right to move around at will, it's about providing the privilege of quality roads and infrastructure to move around on. Hybrid electric cars aren't the real worry here-- eventually we *will* need a new road use taxing system as we ween ourselves off of gasoline. For now we can raise gas taxes, but eventually we need a new source of income for road maintenance.
I still will never be convinced that a GPS based solution is the answer. This reeks of a corporate pet project.
+1 Disagree
Tax the damned gas and move on. It's sooooo much simpler that way.
Table-ized A.I.
There is never gonna be a GPS in my car, or any other device to track my movements! Fuck these corpoate controlled bastards!!!!!
May I suggest the tag "TinFoilCar"?
Since we're talking about reporting via RFID... I'd give this program a week before the RFID packet is cracked, spoofed with lower mileage readings, and the source to do so made public.
Under what Constitutional authority do the Feds get to collect State taxes? You don't really think the States will see any of that money (or data, for that matter), do you? At least not without all sorts of extra-Constitutional strings attached.
-- Alastair
You want to help write the law to exempt commercial vehicles? Fine. Just make sure some real estate asshole can't loophole his way in by claiming his Hummer is for "business" use. (Which, incidentally, happened when the IRS allowed higher tax breaks on "heavy" vehicles used for business. Every Tom, Dick, and Dick suddenly saw a way to get a Hummer or F-350 for "free".)
Like it or not, what "everyone" does has an impact on everyone else. One person expressing their personal freedom and "individuallity" by driving an oversized truck or SUV is one thing. Multiply that by 100 million people, however, and we suddenly have a problem.
The fact of the matter is that you and I and everyone else pay more for gasoline and in city and highway maintenance fees for every one of those vehicles that's on the road. (Not to mention minor things like imbalanced trade deficits and polution and climate and losing our children in wars in the Middle East.)
Yes, we need blue-collar. But the rest also need to learn not to buy a super-truck just because they've got a small dick and a terrible self-image and need to overcompensate. "Yes, I'm a manly man, driving a manly truck... right down to the corner supermarket to pick up a loaf of bread."
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Everyone benefits from roads. Even the people who don't drive on them. IMO they should migrate to getting road funds from property taxes instead of looking to roll a new scheme that's easily broken and abused.
How about they tax gas and/or mileage but it acts as CAR INSURANCE... that way we get rid of these bastard insurance companies... and everyone on the road is covered. TA-DA!
Groundbreaking research reveals it wasn't all Dick Cheney, turns out its just always been Congress turning the country to crap.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
Okay, so we're looking at 154,500,000 USD, right? The Federal gas tax is 18.4 cents.[tax] Average gas mileage is, say 22 MPG.[miles] Or, we pay .8 cents per mile. This means the study costs 18,472,826,890 miles---18 billion. We drove 1,444 billion miles last year. So, this "only" costs one percent of our mileage tax.
But, this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, as the information collected is unreasonable---there are less intrusive measures (odometer).[fourth] Of course, there are a lot of you who think the Constitution is outdated and prefer a flexible interpretation.
[tax]: www.gaspricewatch.com/usgastaxes.asp
[miles]:http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html
[total]: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/09juntvt/09juntvt.pdf
[fourth]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
"cyclists (who pay nothing) have more rights on the road than drivers who's taxes and fees actually pay for the roads"
As others have pointed out, you don't know what you're talking about. "92% of the funds for local roads come from property, income, and sales taxes". Your gas taxes pay for highways, but even they are subsidized by general tax funds.
Wah!
Tax the gas. Tax it hard. Mileage only hits one problem, and doesn't even hit that one well.
Taxing gas is a good approximation of wear on the road, moves us to cars which pollute less and start less wars, and reduces costs of health care (asthma and other pollution-based illnesses).
The goal of 'smart' roads and 'smarter' cars is going to require MUCH more information than this, and is admirable. How the information is retained and re-used is another story entirely.
I am totally for use based taxes, the more you drive the more you should pay, but on the same level driving a more efficient car should net you a break.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I forget where this was exactly (California?, Georgia?), but once upon a time there was a "water CRISIS" (a CRISIS must always be written in all-caps to illustrate the urgency of the problem and the need to act now, and think later). This city/state/whatever studied the problem long and hard. There were two solutions before them - build a new and expensive pipeline to increase supply, and the much cheaper alternative to tell everyone to conserve.
And so from on high they declared: "we shall run out of water - thou shalt conserve!" (side note: please note the "we" and the "thou").
Some people whined, but in the end, they did as they were told and started conserving. Now, several years later, the lawns are brown as the temporary lawn watering bans are still in effect, pool sales are down, and most interestingly, water prices have gone through the roof. Despite every citizen doing with less, and the overall amount of water used even perhaps going down, the cost per gallon has gone up. So now, for the same price as before, you get less water.
It's a true story. (And remember, water is something that quite literally falls from sky.)
Now we have the same approach to gasoline. "Buy more fuel efficient cars" they declare, and then they realize the crisis - fuel tax revenue will be down... They need some way to make up the revenue, right? And this is the result.
DRILL FOR NEW OIL INSTEAD OF MAKING US PAY FOR YOUR LAZINESS!!!!!!!!
The real kicker from the article is this though:
"The money diverted from the fuel excise tax on non-road related projects must be made up for with a brand new VMT tax, the report argued". Honestly, only the government could see too much money being diverted from their rightful target, and declare the need for a NEW tax.
So, how's all this hope and change, working out for ya? That criminal Bush starting to look pretty good to you, yet? (at least he was targeting terrorists with his spying... but I suppose this equal to everyone [except them of course - they'll have exemptions as national security will require no one knows where they have been]).
There have been studies done that show that the vast majority of road damage is caused by heavy trucks, passenger vehicles have very little impact. Sorry no links, use the google.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
even good guys make mistakes. I really don't see the point of this boondoggle, and the downside--more government surveillance--is huge. I agree Earl is generally OK, but I have yet to hear a persuasive argument as to why we need this.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
....Want to drive that 12MPG Excursion or F-350?...
You are forgetting that such vehicles already pay much more in gas taxes. Large heavy vehicles use more gas and thus pay more tax, but I suspect you want a nonlinear system, where the tax goes up even faster than the gas consumption. This is similar to how they charge utilities, at least electric power nowadays. It used to be that the more you use of something the cheaper it got, but now for many commodities is just the other way around.
All theory is gray
Raise the gas tax. Why do we need an intrusive parallel monitoring system. I'm waiting for the first time a divorce attorney subpoenas the records. This is a violation of privacy and evidence of America's slouch towards fascism.
Roads are useless if you can't afford to use them. Taxes on use of the highways are very different than taxing commercial traffic. People should be free to move around the country without fear or taxation.
-- $G
The current constellation of GPS equipment is pretty darn old. The Air Force is pretty freaked out about the whole thing, actually. And, recent attempts to send up replacement satellites have failed (I think the last one didn't even achieve orbit). In it's current state of disrepair, the entire U.S. built GPS network is literally one bad day away from failing completely.
I can't see any good coming from this, even without the RFID/GPS craziness (which just screams police state to me, but then I'm like that.).
I called Representative Blumenauer's phone number and talked with Mr. Willy Smith there. I didn't know that members of Congress cannot be recalled.
Apparently no one in Rep. Blumenauer's office has any technical knowledge whatsoever. That's what Willy Smith told me. Apparently no one in that office realizes that their complete ignorance could possibly be a concern.
Mr. Smith told me, "Representative Blumenauer has never done heart surgery. Does that mean he cannot introduce health care legislation?" First, Representative Blumenauer knows a lot about heart surgery if he has read news reports over the last 20 years. He knows, for example, that heart surgery often fails. He knows the sociology of heart surgery because he has heard his friends and family talk about it.
Second, yes, if he doesn't thoroughly understand something, he should not make expensive proposals about it, especially since it seems that no one in his office wants to learn. Certainly that is the impression I got from Mr. Smith. Although we had a friendly, respectful conversation, nothing I said seemed to make any difference to him.
Wi-Fi and RFID are entirely voluntary technologies. They depend for their operation on the idea that the users want the technology to work. When the GPS on a United Parcel Service delivery truck fails, the central office can call the driver on his cell phone. The driver will be happy to say where he is. Failures are unfortunate, but soft and friendly.
Tracking the location of every car is NOT a voluntary use. Any failure or accidental interference would be a reason for a court case.
Mr. Smith told me that many people say very negative things about legislation introduced by Representative Blumenauer and other senators and representatives. So, why should he listen to me, he implied. Good point.
People are, at present, saying very negative things about President Obama's health care bill. Generally what they say is poorly expressed. But certainly they have some reason for complaint. President Obama is trying to accomplish something in a way that is socially impossible. Hillary Clinton tried another confused bill, and her ideas were rejected, also. However, although many people don't like the health care bill, no one seems to think that President Obama intends to profit personally.
One of the problems with Representative Blumenauer's actions concerning the 2009 H.R. 3311 bill is that, to a lot of knowledgeable people, they look like criminal fraud. He has taken money from companies that sell GPS technology. He is proposing that those companies get a huge amount of taxpayer money, for a study. That means that the companies can spend taxpayer money, but they don't have to produce anything useful. Maybe a study could cost $100,000. But $145 MILLION? For something that any technically knowledgeable person knows immediately cannot work well? That looks like criminal behavior.
Can Representative Blumenauer be ignorant of the fact that people don't want to be tracked everywhere they drive? Certainly, people think, he cannot be that ignorant. Therefore, they think, when he completely ignores the issue of privacy, he must understand what he's doing.
....you'll see an explosion in public transportation...
It seems that public transportation advocates only ever consider cost of money, not time. Where I used to live in the Bay Area, there was a pretty good transit system, but still, a 35 minute trip by car would take one and a half hours by public transit, specifically bus. Someone who has to take the trip twice a day, would have almost 2 hours taken away from their life daily. That amounts to over 400 hours a year.
In rural areas, such as where we live, cars are essential. Of course, the government would like nothing better, than to herd everybody into cities, where they can more easily control them.
All theory is gray
To prove such power won't be abused all elected positions should have the tracking system installed in every vehicle that they use for a year long trial period.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
They could always just buy what they want to buy, based on their preference and not your narrow do-as-I-say worldview. Or not.
Who really thinks the Government would actually get rid of the gasoline tax for this? We'd just end up being taxed for both.
It used to be that the overhead of keeping stock and labour to handle those transactions (like purchase order processing) was a significant portion of the manufacturer/distributor/retailer cost. So by dealing in larger volumes, that portion of the variable costs would be decreased and volume purchases reflected that. However with computerized banking transactions, Just In Time stocking, and flatter distribution chains, businesses have decreased those variable costs substantially and don't gain as much from large purchases.
That said, those issues are generally not as much of a problem for government. First the gradation tax complexities are mostly externalized and don't affect them directly, although they do have economic consequences. Second they apply across the board and therefore don't provide a competitive disadvantage between companies, although they may wind up causing a long term competitive disadvantage with other countries. Taxes on citizens, as opposed to corporations, don't have the same repercussions since citizens aren't as easily mobile between countries as corporations are. So the private citizens get the shaft when it comes to taxes.
However, what historically happened is that low energy costs were a commons that were exploited and which encouraged poor efficiencies. By increasing certain costs through taxation (and sometimes thereby better reflecting hidden costs), the end result is better efficiencies (from better ROI on efforts to avoid those costs) that benefit everyone. Because some people are driving their gas guzzlers less or swapping them in for smaller vehicles as a result of gas price increases, gas prices dropped as demand decreased. Of course a big part of that price drop was that banks and other speculators didn't have the money to drive up the price of crude too and a herd mentality as all the speculators got out of that market - the recession and drop in consumption couldn't explain that big a drop or the price bounce back long before signs of economic recovery, but out of control speculation does. But while I would most prefer to see better regulation of commodities markets to decrease speculation and avoid artificial inflation of prices rather a repeat of what happened in the last few years, I also would prefer (slightly less) to see the monetary surplus in transactions go to a government program that provides benefits to the country rather than go into some speculator or manipulator's pocket.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I thought gasoline taxes already accounted for this sort of thing. That is the more you drive your car the more tax you pay in taxes. If you're one of those idiots that must drive an 8mpg SUV then you undoubtedly pay more in taxes than someone who drives a midsized or compact car. Is this fair? I think so.
This tax will unfairly target the people living in the country and the poor.
My parents who live out of town about 45 miles and drive into work everyday, so they can own an affordable home, and try to live a modest life on extreme poverty incomes.
I'm really getting tired of the tax more attitude. You could do crazy things like, oh, stop funding wars, bailouts, giving away corporate taxes loopholes on hiring outside the country... We dont even do Tariffs popular, we actually allow other countries to out sell us due to the lack of tariffs.
Its like we have the right side with corporate greed and the left side with tax crazy attitude.. Oh wait. It is like that...
Bad enough, my governor of Washington is trying to pass an INCOME tax, on top of our taxes... Freaking crazy.
Since it doesn't look like anybody actually READ the report Oregon put out on milage taxes I'll provide a link to the report. The reports themselves are in the top right of the page. http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/HWY/RUFPP/mileage.shtml They realize there is a privacy issue. Transportation Research Board (TRB) who conducts millions of dollars of research each year realizes there is a privacy issue. They are working on it. Please stop yelling "The sky is falling" so loudly and let's have a well informed, civil discussion about this. The gas tax hasn't been increased in ~20 years, so we'll have to pay for new roads somehow. If you hadn't received a raise in 20 years you'd be looking for new sources of income too. On top of that, vehicles are getting more miles to the gallon (a good thing), but are still damaging the road the same amount and paying less to do so (a bad thing). Either way, I think I'm late to this discussion, but they are worthwhile reports to read and should be attached to every discussion on this topic. I'd guess this paper should be read too, but I haven't read it myself. http://financecommission.dot.gov/Documents/NSTIF_Commission_Final_Report_Mar09FNL.pdf
All of those self righteous pricks in their Priuses can bend over and take it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Try thinking! We already are taxed per mile driven by fuel taxes. We are taxed extra per mile driven for vehicles that are heavy & less efficient. We are also taxed for miles not driven. And we are taxes for miles not driven on road. Do you not pay road tax on gas for your mower, weed eater, chain saw & boat engine? Maybe an exemption for gas burned off road & idle time gas? Obvious the issues are citizen control, data gathering for prosecution of people in wrecks & increasing corporate profits. Try this, "You were recorded @ 42 in a 40 zone, so you are responsible for her hitting you in your lane." Dealers must report miles on odo when cars are sold, so leave your GPS @ home while driving, then wait for prosecution after car is sold. Be sure to carry your GPS equiped phone so car mounted GPS can be verified.
The Three R's of Portland
or
Why Portland Sucks
"Latte Town" was coined a few years back and is the most appropriate term for the City of Portland that I have ever heard. A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface. Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland's dirty little secret is revealed. Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about. Drive through any neighborhood surrounding the downtown area and the impression that you get is that Portland is nothing more than a series of elitist ghettos compromised of rich white homosexuals, rich white yuppies, rich white hippies, rich white trust funders, and rich white kids from the suburbs pretending to be street people. Where's the diversity? Well it doesn't exist but the average Portlander likes the concept and in their eyes the different shades of rich whites all constituent diversity. In a series of articles I will attempt to breakdown and explain these subtle distinctions between the various factions of lily white, latte people that make Portland what it is.
The Artist-Intellectual
The visitor or newcomer to Portland is bound to be struck by the sheer numbers that belong to this group. They seem to be everywhere and are in fact everywhere. They are the reason that all the coffee shops have tables and chairs. The artist-intellectual fancies himself as a poet, a writer, a musician, a filmmaker, etc. You get the drift. They spend most of their days idling around the coffee establishments that one finds every 10 feet. They are usually equipped with a notebook that they use for their poems, journals or their artwork. No one ever gets to see the contents of these notebooks. More often than not they have a beaten and weathered paper back copy of some book authored by Kafka or William S. Boroughs. They love to discuss their favorite subject, themselves. Given the opportunity they will prattle on for hours about their poems, art work or the film they are making. You never get to actually see any of their work but you do get to hear about it. Their lives are like one never ending semester in grad school. Initially I believed these losers but then got to thinking. What would an aspiring actor, artist, musician, filmmaker being doing in Portland Oregon, a latte town? Why wouldn't they be in NYC or LA? Because they're phonies, that's why. Here's how it works with these clowns. They flunk out of college in New Jersey so their parents send them to Reed College in Portland in hopes that they will get their act together. They drop out of Reed but stay in Portland while still on Daddy's tab or some trust find. One Saturday Josh or Seth drifts down to one of the hundreds of hippie craft markets downtown. Some hippie is selling didgeridoos that he made I between bong reps. Josh buy one and takes it home where he proceeds to get baked after which he blows a few sour notes into the didgeridoo. The next day he's a musician. Not really but that's what he's telling everyone at the coffee house and pretending is good enough for a Portland artist-intellectual, in fact it's everything. In three months he will switch his designation from musician to filmmaker and then onto to something else 3 months later. As long as it sounds cool he will keep this charade up and no one in his circles will call him on it because they are doing the same thing.
The Activist
This group is usually comprised of people that used to be part of the artist-intellectual group in Portland. They have gotten a little older and may have finally, after 12 years, obtained a liberal arts degree from Portlan
Ok. Here is my "thoughts" on Oregon.
Fixed that for you.
Actually, Oregon is better than most states on taxes. We're rated 10th best in the nation for businesses, and we're at 26th (just over the middle line on the cheaper side) for personal tax rates. Our top state income tax bracket the highest in the nation, but in spite of that, our overall state/local tax burden is 9.4%, which beats the national average of 9.7%. Oh, and our property taxes are middle of the pack, and we have no sales tax at all. We're also a net donor of federal income taxes rather than a net leech, unlike most red states.
But I wouldn't expect someone ranting about people living in tents without electricity and eating dirt (mixed with copious hostile profanity) to be actually living in a world based on facts.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Increasing the tax and pushing people to more fuel efficient cars will actually make the funding problem worse, not better.
This is true. But so what? Which is more important? Ensuring that roads are paid via taxes on cars or discouraging the use of vehicles that burn copious amounts of fossil fuels?
A better solution is to find some other way to fund roadwork. After all, we don't pay for elections via poll taxes or for public schools by taxing having children. Why must we pay for roads via use taxes when everyone benefits from them?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The Supreme Court has already rulled in such a way that a tax such as this would be in effect unconstitutional. Rowe v.s. Wade said that we have an inherrent right to privacy. This of course, does not just extend to abortions.
How a "right to privacy" IMHO extends to abortion is a bit of a stretch. Certainly, the government or any other person knowing where you were at what time etc. etc. etc. is not nearly as big a stretch. Personally, I believe that people should refuse to give all sorts of private information to the government -- the government certainlly can't be trusted to keep private information private as illustrated by "Joe the Plumber" who became a political target simply for asking Obama a tough question and all of a sudden his financial and other information was harvested by government workers and plastered all over the front page of the various media outlets.
Rowe v.s. Wade has given us a right to privacy ... we simply need to stand up for it.
Damn, everyone's really dismissing this out of hand.
But just think: if such a tax DID pass, it could raise as much as $154.5M!!!
Compared to other developed countries, it is.
When I need to go to the grocery store or visit a friend it stays parked at my house and I drive my economy car. But by all means bring on the punitive taxes.
What is your vehicle registration like in Oregon? Am I missing something?
It doesn't matter what the price of water is, you'll still pay less if you use 5 gallons rather than 10.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well I do only use bicycle, in germany. I stop at all red light, go at all greens. I put my arm horizontal to signal a turn (well before turning). There is no week without a vehicule cutting my right priority, passing me over and turning right before my nose, or seeing my arm signaling me turn left ACCELERATE to not wait and apss me over. There are bicycle driver asshole, and tehre are auto driver ass hole. But BASICALLY both have the same DUTY and RIGHT on the street.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There isn't always a lane, and the law says a CAR should have a safe distance from a bicycle when they pass them. Guess what ? The car which do that are in minority, and most car pass over bicycle on road at roughly 5 to 15 inches. Bus are the worst offender. For the rest of your psot, I agree that a guy willingly breaking law is an asshole. But my experience is that there are FAR MORE car having dangerous habits on road for the OTHER, than there are bicycle having dangerous habit for OTHER (they might have dangerous habits for themselves which is another matter).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Fine, when they're breathing their own atmosphere, killing their own kids with their aggressive driving and getting themselves killed invading foreign countries for the oil.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's too obvious. There must be something wrong with it. I know - it will make people cheat the tax system by getting more fuel-efficient cars. Terrible idea.
Come to Poland you don't need visas, yet. ;-)
Actually I think the word you are looking for is bribery...not fraud. Fraud is when you say something you KNOW is not true, in order to scam. as you said yourself this guy is dumb as a stump. On the other hand taking a big fat check in the promise of getting a bigger fat give to your buddies out of the poor stupid taxpayers pockets? yeah, that would be called bribery. maybe a little criminal conspiracy thrown in for good measure.
And is it any wonder that folks have simply quit giving a shit? I mean, they don't even bother trying to hide the thievery anymore, haven't for a good 2 decades or more. After all, who is gonna bust them? You got better odds of getting hit by lightning than getting busted stuffing your pockets while in congress anymore. When was the last time they went after senators and congressmen? What...abscam? And hell, all you get to vote for is "rich spoiled corporate ass kissing suckup" A or B. The Pepsi challenge gave you more choice than that! So sadly this asshat will probably get our....err I mean his money, blow lots of cash like a drunken sailor in Vegas, and then retire from office to a cushy bribe passing....err I mean lobbying job, probably with the corporate pimps that he is whoring for now. Damned sad, but all too true.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Your post is pretty reasonable except for the above paragraph. Whereas the above paragraph was off-topic and uneccessary, I have to admit my entire post is off topic. But I'm compelled to speak up anyway.
Wny would you think that what the president is trying to accomplish is socially impossible? He's trying to bring health care up to the standards enjoyed by the majority of the developed world. His plan represents the minimal change required to the current system to accomplish certain laudable goals. One could say he is trying to provide universal health-care, but one could equally say that he is trying to legislate and regulate away the worst abuses of the health insurance corporations. The system he is proposing (minus the public option), is essentially the system enjoyed here in Switzerland, and I can personally attest that the system over here is so vastly better than the one in the states that it is difficult to describe. I've had a couple of really good job offers in the states in the last few years (I am American), but I've remained here largely because of the broken health care system in the U.S. The practises of denial of coverage, retroactively denying coverage, and the thousands of smaller rip-offs perpetuated by those companies is simply terrifying. It's so bad I can't imagine anyone not having personal contact with at least one person suffering from these abuses, which frankly should be criminal offenses.
Perfection might not be achievable, but an improvement of the status-quo is not only achievable, it's laughably easy to achieve it. It would be very hard to make it worse.
That said, the GPS proposal is laughably bad.
Both parties are bought and paid for by special interests. Screw them both. Neither can justify having my support.
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Seriously- they'll have to kill me first.
Do we REALLY need another tax? I try to stay out of political mine fields like this, but good lord, when will there be enough taxes? Pretty soon, we'll just sign over our pay to the feds, and they will take care of everything for us, except we'll still have to buy food, fuel, clothes, etc., but since we are giving all our money to the feds for everyone else to get help, we will be left holding a HUGE bill, and a large stick we can sit and rotate on.
The only thing that will come from more taxes are less people willing to work, because erverything will be given to us if we are lazy and just ask the feds for assistance with everything. Kinda makes you wonder why we keep increasing budgets for so called humanitarian projects like health care, food stamps, no child left behind, anti-bullying bills, bridges to nowhere, research on why pig crap smells so bad, and twenty million pet projects that simply HAVE to have funding or the world as we know it will collapse.
IMHO; there should be one more law that says, you cannot be a governmental elected official such as a senator or congressman, nor can you work for them if you have more than a degree in underwater basket weaving. One of the reasons this once great nation is in trouble is because the people that know how to bend the rules to their personal benefit are the ones making the rules.
I know I'll get flamed for this, I know I'll be modded as a troll, but it's time those of us that have brains and know how to use them took our brains out of their back pockets, dusted them off and started using them instead of simply whining about everything that has gone wrong with society. I'm doing my part, I am running for local government so I can make a difference, what are all of you doing?
Greetings and salutations...
Once again...money to a politician is like crack to an addict.
Having said that, here is my situation. I drive an f350, not because I think it is the greatest vehicle in the world, or because I tie too much of myself in the vehicle I drive. I have the truck because at this point in my life I am moving a lot of stuff around that will not fit in the Prius. Also, for what it is worth, I specifically bought a diesel truck, to maximize the mileage I would get. While 17 MPG still means it is painfully expensive to fill up the tank on the truck, it is a LOT better than the 9 MPG or so that the similar gasoline powered truck gets, and, is not bad for a vehicle that weighs close to 4 tons.
Adding taxes, especially with the economy being in the state it is now, would push a huge number of people like me into bankruptcy and, likely end up adding to the costs to society. Not only that, it will give MORE money to the politicians...and see my first sentence for how I feel about that.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
But I pay the same for 5 gallons this year that I paid to use 10 gallons when they told me to start saving water. THAT is the issue.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
You know, I'm not sure I'd get all worked up about a bill that has no co-sponsors and sent into committee in July. That's likely where it will languish until it dies.
All Congressional actions on H.R. 3311:
7/23/2009:
Referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, and in addition to the Committees on Transportation and Infrastructure, Energy and Commerce, and Science and Technology, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
7/23/2009:
Referred to House Ways and Means
7/23/2009:
Referred to House Transportation and Infrastructure
7/24/2009:
Referred to the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit.
7/23/2009:
Referred to House Energy and Commerce
7/23/2009:
Referred to House Science and Technology
7/27/2009:
Referred to the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation.
This doesn't mean the issue in general isn't worth paying attention to (as well as tracking the bill on the off chance it does get some action), but the mere introduction of a bill doesn't mean it's time to go all-out in opposition.
We already have a per-mile tax for drivers. It's called the gas tax. pfft
So what do they do for people that don't have computers in their cars?
I have 3 cars made in 1966 (Ford Mustang) and two in 1968 (Ford Mustang and Chevy Suburban). I don't own a new car and unless they outlaw old cars I will never own a car made after 1969.
So old car fanatics like myself get to bypass this tax then I assume.
This doesn't even sound logical. I have checked out a few GPS tracking companies and the cost of these devices is not cheap. I wonder who they think would pay for this.
A suggestion: Get your thoughts in order and give him a call.
put the $154M toward research into BETTER F*ING ROAD MAINTENANCE METHODS.
How come only dumbshits get to be congressmen?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Moving about without fear is definitely a right all Americans should have. Without taxation... now you're getting into some social fundamentals. All Americans are taxed in one way or another. Right now you don't pay any highway gas taxes if you want to grab your pack and hike or bike it. In the future I can't imagine that changing. However, highways that can be navigated by modern cars cost money to build and maintain. Have you ever been on a toll highway or bridge? Before our *tax supported* highway systems were built, toll roads were extremely common. It does not infringe on your rights to ask you to pay for the public infrastructure you use.
It all boils down to somebody paying for road building somewhere, we just need to ensure taxes collected for road building aren't too obtrusive into our travels. You say roads are useless if you can't afford to use them-- millions of people can't afford a car or gas now (or even choose not to). This doesn't mean they aren't free. Owning and operating an automobile is *not* an "inalienable right" everybody is automatically entitled to. You need to earn your car and pay to operate it.
This topic isn't about paying for highways- everybody should understand that highways cost money (currently paid for largely by highway taxes), it's about how that money is collected. Would you rather it be an increase in your income taxes? A tacked on sales tax? Toll roads? There are hundreds of options, most of them terrible. Maintaining the roads should remain as it largely has on the people who use them most. Gas taxes were a decent (albeit not perfect) means, but that won't apply as the nation starts shifting to electric vehicles.
+1 Disagree
Or the government could just stop spending so much money...
Here's why.
During the peak, there is more travel demand than roads can handle. The result is called congestion. In congestion *everyone* pays. Not only through wasted gasoline, but also through wasted time.
One might assume that the answer is to put down more asphalt, but this isn't the case. Why not? For three reasons.
1 Roads are part of a network. If the whole network is strained (as is generally the case between 08:00 and 19:00 hr) increasing the capacity if individual links doesn't help. Only if there are clear bottlenecks (pieces of road that are of lower capacity than the surrounding network) does building roads help, but such cases are rare.
2 Widening roads in an urban environment can be prohibitively expensive because of all the buildings you need to knock down.
3 Last but not least, if the price of travel during the peak drops, more people will want it. E.g. people who leave before or after the peak will then return to it, and in doing so destroy the relief brought by widening the roads.
So by and large we're stuck with a mismatch between demand and supply, and the only thing that we can do is to find an economically optimal distribution of road access.
Now some people's time is worth more money than other people's, depending on their travel motive, personal circumstances etc.. Sorry, but that's the way it is. The economically optimal distribution of road access would be to auction "road slots" so that people can choose: pay with time or pay with money. Since allocating road slots technically feasible (yet), electronic road pricing is the next best thing.
So that's why it's needed (and fairly unavoidable), despite being unpopular.
I agree about the privacy aspects, but it's possible to build systems that toll but don't collect personal information.
I know they are not smart enough to think of this themselves, so who is the xxxhole that is helping them out?
I sure miss the Bush Administration / Republican controlled congress because it at least paid lip service to personal freedoms.
When was that - when they were violating half the Constitution (NSA wiretapping, torture, indefinite detentions w/o trials or lawyers) or when they had people arrested for wearing anti-war shirts to Bush rallies? Whereas people are perfectly free to bring loaded pistols and rifles to Obama rallies.
And then when these transportation-nazis bitch about lettuce being $6 a head, we can point at the punitive tax levied against the trucks that hauled it to market.
I too drive a truck, and it's damned rare that I'm not hauling some sort of load with it.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yawn.
Cash. For. Clunkers.
Combine that with rebates for farmers & construction, and soon the only people paying out the nose will be those with their V10 Corvettes and vanity Hummer SUV's. And I'll cry them a river.
I believe you are correct on all counts...
It occurs to me that the same study could be accomplished through linking to the GPSs in people's cellphones, using volunteers and a little cooperation from one of the providers, at a negligible cost to taxpayers.
But $157M?! That's about $41 per resident, so call it $100 per vehicle, or somewhere around 1 to 2 months' worth of gas tax on the average driver. Perspective, anyone??
But... none of it at ANY price is worth the intrusion on our lives.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I guess the lesson we learned from eliminating most toll roads and replacing them with the highway system is lost on you completely. Going back to toll roads is a take away. Taxing travel is a take away. If it uses fuel - be it gas or electric current, the model we have works.
-- $G
I give up. All I'll say is that taxing fuel is a good model, but it breaks down when that fuel is pulled from the same power lines that run everything else.
+1 Disagree
From what I can see in the other responses, we are dealing with two issues:
1. The issue of per-mile taxing
2. The issue of the proposed method
Personally I can see a lot of sense in drivers having to pay more if they drive more; perhaps I could even accept having my journeys tracked in detail with a GPS device or similar. Whether we like it or not, the more advanced society gets, the more eyes there will be to look at you and remember what you did, and as far as I can see, there is much to be said for having something record your behaviour objectively, rather than having a bunch of witnesses remember you "behaving suspiciously" because you are the wrong colour or wear the wrong clothes or whatever. A reliable, neutral record will work both ways. What I am so sure about is the fully automated reporting; when we rely too much on autonomous technology, things can go wrong in a big way without anybody finding out; and it can be very expensive.
The second issue is what I can't accept - the details of the proposal stink. It is ridiculously expensive, easy to circumvent, there are dubious business interests involved - and there are far cheaper ways of achieving more or less the same. Eg. one could use a modernised form of the system used in many lorries in Europe - a device that records your mileage and drive time on a paper disc; just make it fully electronic. And instead of using the excuse of "avoiding cheating" to make it very expensive, just make cheating difficult enough that most people won't bother; the loss to fraudsters will still be cheaper than trying to make a watertight system.
Then shift the tax to electric. Just don't tax mileage.
-- $G
You said, "Why would you think that what the president is trying to accomplish is socially impossible? He's trying to bring health care up to the standards enjoyed by the majority of the developed world."
I very much agree with the President's goal. I share that goal. But he is trying to do too much at one time, and he and his advisers have little understanding of the problems, in my opinion.
We do consulting that combines our knowledge of technology with an understanding of the underlying sociology, so we are particularly aware of the problems.
I spoke with a doctor who makes $4,000,000 each year doing specialized operations. He found a way to avoid the intended effect of laws designed to protect sick people with no insurance from overcharges. He told someone on whom he operated that he would charge one amount, but actually charged almost double.
A doctor like that, and there are many like him, will not cooperate with any change in the system. And he has the money to fund crazy attacks.
As many have said, the health care bill is very poorly written.
Excerpt from the section, SEC. 1173A. STANDARDIZE ELECTRONIC ADMINISTRATIVE TRANSACTIONS [My punctuation standard]: "(6) IMPLEMENTATION AND ENFORCEMENT: Not later than 6 months after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a plan for the implementation and enforcement, by not later than 5 years after such date of enactment, of the standards under this section."
Translation: "Please support a very expensive bill that fundamentally changes something very important. It is certain that you will pay. It is uncertain what we will do."
I strongly support improvements in health care in the United States. I believe that those who propose the bill have our best interests in mind. But they haven't finished their thinking.
The bill [PDF] is 1,017 pages long, and affects everyone in the U.S. enormously. Every part of it requires public discussion.
The bill makes changes to other laws that are themselves EXTREMELY complicated.
Another quote [My punctuation standard]: (3) DEVELOPMENT OF DATA REPORTING STANDARDS: (A) IN GENERAL: The Secretary shall develop and implement standardized data elements and definitions for reporting under this subsection, for contract years beginning with 2012, of data necessary for the calculation of the medical loss ratio for MA plans.
Translation: "We will tell you later how it will work."
Very few who comment on this bill have read and fully understood the implications. I haven't. Have you?
Is it unreasonable for some people to oppose important changes when they don't understand those changes?
Why are you so determined to tell other people how to live? I prefer freedom. If you try to tell me how to live, you can go fuck yourself.
Making a tax based on the mileage of your car is stupid. Passing laws dictating to auto manufacturers how fuel efficient their vehicles must be is stupid. Instead of all this un-needed complexity, why don't they just tax the snot out of gasoline like most of the other industrialized nations do? Then you don't have to worry about mileage-based taxes or government mandated mileage because consumers won't want to buy anything else, and you can use the money you make on those taxes to fix the damn roads around here.
Ever hear the phrase, "Your freedom ends the second your fist hits my nose."
Translated, to a certain extent whatever I do impacts you and whatever you do impacts me and the rest of society. As such, you are not "free" to do anything you choose. You can't stand in the middle of the street and shoot anyone you want with an AK-47. You can't walk into a store and steal whatever it is you want, just because you want it.
Freedom walks hand in hand with responsibility. Responsibility to yourself, your family, your friends, your community, society in general, and, ultimately, your country. Some people, unfortunately, are totally irresponsible, and unable to see past the end of their own nose, or past their own petty wants, needs, and desires. Or to see how what they want impacts everyone else. As such, we have laws, rules, and regulations, and enforce them for the greater good.
Which brings us back around to the F-350. You want one just because you want one? Fine. But that want has an impact on everyone else, and as such I'm saying that you need to pay for those externalities. Price too high? Too bad. I'd like a Porsche, but I can't justify the price nor the impact.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The impact on everyone else of my F-350 is made up, invented by people like you so you can control people like me. Why do you think far leftist big government types have always been hand in hand with the environmental extremists? Any invented environmental effect is an excuse for government to stick its nose in.
"The impact on everyone else of my F-350 is made up..."
It gets around 12 MPG, yes? That means to carry you and your SO around it uses FOUR times as much fuel as a new Prius. Or translated, we could put three-to-four other vehicles on the road for every "Super Truck" some jerk is driving around.
So, 3-4x the fuel. 3-4x the demand for fuel. With a fixed supply and greater demand prices rise for everyone else.
How then, exactly, is the impact made up? It either gets crappy milage, or it doesn't? It needs 2-3x the materials to build one over a convential vehicle, or it doesn't? A friggin replacement tire needs 3x the material of a Prius tire, or it doesn't?
Come on, grow up, and put away your toys....
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The supply of oil is not fixed. As the price increases, previously unprofitable sources become profitable. And you could make your argument for anything. Fat people? Eat 3-4 times what could feed a starving child! That should be illegal! Big house? That could shelter 3-4 more people! Small house? In other cultures, that would shelter 3-4 more people!
Or you could look into something called "freedom". Alternatively called "individual liberty" and things like that. It's good stuff.