A black box in your car? Some see a source of tax revenue

Why would they need a box in the car for this? Here in TN we have to take our cars to an emissions testing station and pass in order to renew the tags once a year.

They take the odometer reading and add that information to the registration. Thus it’s easy to compute how many miles the vehicle as been driven in a year.

And no, this cannot be avoided by just “turning back the odometer” since that has been a crime in most states for decades and decades and, besides, now they “plug” into the vehicles at the inspections station and can detect tampering.

I’m not advocating this type of tax (it would never pass here in TN), just pointing out you don’t need boxes in the cars.

[Article] As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system ....

Oh, they're short of highway funds, are they?

Well, boys, answer us this one:

How much money is being diverted from gasoline taxes [in Texas, a bunch] to political slush funds and "special [crony] purposes" and "exigent, emergency [ditto again] needs"?

Get the answer to that, and you'll see what they're really after.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants road taxes as a "replacement" for the state personal income tax we've never let those b*stards have in the first place.

Note item: In 1991, the Overlord Media began bashing the kettle drums for a state personal income tax in Texas. At that time, Texas had fairly high property and sales taxes, and the come-on lie was that Texas would reduce these taxes if only, oh, if only progressive, high-minded, bien-pensant Texans (that's why I never want to be French, for even 10 minutes) would agree to the state income tax.

Trouble was, available information from California showed that they, too, had high sales and property taxes at rates of burden on the individual that were very comparable to that in Texas -- plus a 9/.3% state personal income tax. And California's budget was in "crisis", floundering, at levels of overall taxation on the individual about 50% higher than in Texas, and the state was going broke because of Prop 13 limits on legislative confiscation, oh woe was them! Their lege had pissed away the 9.3% income-tax revenues and was holding out the begging bowl for more.

Texas voters didn't sway, and the Lege durst not defy them by imposing the state income tax. So we still don't have a state personal income tax.

Thus it’s easy to compute how many miles the vehicle as been driven in a year.

Good point, but 1) how many miles were driven out-of-state (assuming the State is trying to exercise its own tax power)? And 2) there is another tile to this, which is police control of the population.

This isn't totally about revenue. It's about forcing on people the attitudes and reality of life as a slave.

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