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Every few years, someone pushing a startup to investors comes up with an acronym or buzzword which rapidly becomes the new hotness in those circles. One of the most pernicious is “as a Service,” which takes regular things and finds a way to charge you a regular fee to use them.Automotive companies just absolutely loved the sound of this, and the industry is rapidly moving to implement subscription services across the board. Even if there’s hardware in your car for a given feature, you might find you now need to pay a monthly fee to use it. Let’s explore how...

The California Legislature is looking at a voluntary program that would tax motorists for every mile they drive.KCAL9’s Bobby Kaple reports that Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, introduced a bill to test out the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax because the state’s gas tax was no longer bringing in the revenue it used to due to people driving more fuel efficient vehicles.The program is modeled after ones in Oregon and Washington.“We want to do as Washington and Oregon have done in a much bigger state with much longer commutes…to make sure that we find out whether it would work, whether the...

Sick of the gas tax? What about a tax on every mile you drive? A new bill going through Sacramento would tax drivers for every mile they are on the road. The state gasoline tax of 52.9 cents per gallon could be replaced with a "miles driven fee" of $0.05 cents or so per mile driven, under state legislation proposed by a Bay Area lawmaker. State transit officials note that there's not nearly enough money available to fix the many bridges and roads in California that are in desperate need of repair. A federal highway fund, based on taxes on...

As the person at Netflix responsible for content delivery, I spend a lot of time thinking about Netflix’s Open Connect CDN and its interconnection with ISPs. We are proud of the performance we’ve achieved through our hundreds of Open Connect partners around the globe. In fact, Netflix has a mutually beneficial relationship with nearly every ISP in every market where we provide service. But this is less the case for the largest ISP in the U.S., Comcast, which is trying to become even larger by acquiring Time Warner Cable. Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for direct interconnection to reverse an...

WASHINGTON -- The federal interstate highway system is showing its age, and, faced with the cost of repairing all those bumps and cracks, some states want to ask motorists to pay tolls on roads that used to be free. When the interstate system was created in 1956, a federal per-gallon gasoline tax was enacted to provide a stream of revenue for the Highway Trust Fund. The federal government paid 90 percent of the construction costs, with the states making up the rest. That model worked for decades, but no longer. Americans are driving less because of the economy and higher...

President Barack Obama is hailing pay-as-you-go budget legislation he signed Friday night as one in a series of crucial steps needed to snap Washington out of a destructive pattern of overspending. “Now, Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else,” Obama said in his radio and Internet address released Saturday morning. “After a decade of profligacy, the American people are tired of politicians who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk when it comes to fiscal responsibility. It’s easy to get up in front of the cameras and rant against exploding deficits. What’s hard...

Pelosi’s PAYGO Ployby Robert Bluey Published on October 14, 2010 Four years after Democrats campaigned on the promise of using pay-as-you-go budgeting, their record is dismal. Since gaining control of Congress in 2007, they’ve gamed, ignored or employed PAYGO on 32 occasions to justify new spending or tax increases. Once hailed as a budgetary tool to stop deficit spending, PAYGO has become a gimmick House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) has used repeatedly to provide cover to her liberal allies. “Democrats are committed to fiscal responsibility through pay-as-you-go budgets, so that our children and grandchildren are not saddled with mountains of...

House GOP Leaders Push for ‘Cut-As-You-Go’ The Wall Street Journal DECEMBER 1, 2010, 3:51 PM ET By Patrick O'Connor In another nod to conservative activists, House Republicans want to impose new rules that would make it harder for Congress to create government programs. Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, who’s leading the Republicans’ transition to the House majority, is asking colleagues to support a change to the party’s internal rules that would require lawmakers to cut spending or eliminate programs to offset the costs of any new programs established under fast-track “suspension” bills that require a two-thirds majority for passage and can’t...

At least that's what Erick Erickson of Redstate is alleging: I almost missed this. It happens around 11am. The Senate is going to vote on an amendment from Senator Tom Coburn. From an email friend: The amendment would require the Senate to be honest about its ridiculous spending and post the full cost of all PAYGO violations online for taxpayers to see. The Democrats have drafted a side-by-side amendment, to be voted on tomorrow as well. This vote is meant to give cover for members to vote against the Coburn amendment, and still be for “transparency.” Their amendment would simply...

The Senate voted 60-40 Thursday to require that new legislation be paid for, despite no Republican support. "Strict pay-as-you-go budget rules created record surpluses in the late 1990s," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in applauding the passage. "And when this standard was abandoned under President Bush, it created record deficits." The House passed the bill back in July.

This time, Microsoft may have outdone themselves with a proposed patent of such breathtaking hubris that it makes their previous FUD pale by comparison. If it comes off it will either be a licence to print money (Redmond’s version of Quantitative easing?) or the biggest Pyrrhic victory in the history of computing since Steve Jobs refused Bill Gates and hardware vendors a licence to use Apple’s OS and software. When you first read about Microsoft’s proposed patent you are suffused with the glow of righteous anger but before you get carried away, stop. Stop and think. This patent might just...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday proposed a $9 billion water bond measure that would earmark more than half the money for dams opposed by most of the Democrats who dominate the Legislature. The proposal eclipses the governor's previous $5.9 billion bond plan, in large part by adding a third dam project in Contra Costa County. Whether the lawmakers will go along with dams - and how much they are willing to pay for them - will be a key part of the negotiations in the Legislature's upcoming special session on water projects. Senate President Pro Tem. Don Perata, D-Oakland, has...

BELLEFONTE -- One of up to 10 Interstate 80 toll booths would be put up in Centre County near the Clinton County line and another would be located 40 miles to the west in Clearfield County, according to unofficial plans seen by state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Benner Township. Corman, majority policy chairman of the Senate Republicans, made the disclosure during a news conference Monday where he assailed Gov. Ed Rendell as "irresponsible" for holding the state budget "hostage until he gets everything he wants done." The senator said the I-80 map he saw is an early draft and could change...

Luis Fernandez, who will graduate in May from Cal State Fullerton, put himself through college and has a stack of receipts to prove it. He paid for his education, all $12,800 of it, in cash. "My parents have always said, 'If you don't have the money to pay for it, then work for it,' " Fernandez said. So he did. Fernandez, 24, who came from Mexico with his parents when he was 8, worked at a Westminster drugstore and wrote personal checks to cover his college fees. He decided not to take out student loans. Although the pay-as-you-go method worked...

There are very few absolutes in politics, but let's be clear about this November's election - a vote for any of the proposed bonds, Propositions 1B - 1E and Prop 84, is a vote for the same type of fiscal recklessness that led to the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003. Think about it. Since 2003, tax revenues have exploded in California - up $20 billion annually. The Governor's Workers' Compensation reforms are an underappreciated reason for this increase and the economic activity associated with this increase. Unfortunately, the Legislature, Democrats and some Republicans, and the Governor, have spent...

Those in support of Proposition 1B would have us believe that bonding is the only way our state can raise the money we need to achieve our desired transportation goals. They would say this because lawmakers don't have the spine for hiking taxes to pay for these projects. Let's set the record straight. The majority party in Sacramento rarely meets a tax increase it can't support. The fiscally responsible members of the Legislature understand that higher taxes and bonding are not the only way to fund transportation projects. The belief that bonding is needed completely ignores the fact that during...

No one can seriously question one of the two major assumptions behind the $38 billion worth of construction and repair bonds proposed on the Nov. 7 state ballot. Traffic relief is a must in myriad parts of California. Port security isn't a tenth as tough as it needs to be. Who can argue against battered women's shelters and housing assistance for senior citizens, veterans and working families? Overcrowded public schools need relief. And the levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta area are a disaster waiting to happen. Taken together, all those realities make up one big assumption behind the...

Politics: Two policy groups say plan would increase state's debt SACRAMENTO - Two nonpartisan policy groups on Tuesday said there are major problems with the $37.3 billion public works package that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature put on the November ballot, representing the first opposition to the plan by an organized group. The Reason Foundation, a nonprofit libertarian think tank based in Los Angeles, and the Performance Institute, a San Diego-based for-profit that describes itself as nonpartisan and dedicated to improving government performance, said the bonds would dangerously increase the state's debt load without providing clear benefits to residents....

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. has developed technology for people to pay by the hour to use a computer in their own homes, much like how many consumers use a pre-paid card for cell phone usage. The technology, called FlexGo, will be used as part of efforts to sell computers to lower-income consumers in developing countries, where Microsoft is eager to find new money-making opportunities but is battling software piracy and other barriers. Redmond-based Microsoft, working with computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. and others, plans to launch a second trial of the FlexGo plan in Brazil beginning Monday. In the next...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers Saturday attempted to pick up the pieces of a historic bond package for new schools, roads and levees and restart negotiations after a bitter defeat of the plan at the hands of Senate Republicans early Saturday morning. While time may again be running out -- the official deadline was Friday for placing bonds before voters June 6 -- lawmakers agreed that Schwarzenegger's plan isn't dead yet, even for June. After meeting with him Saturday, Assembly Republicans and Democrats agreed to keep negotiating today. The Senate voted 24-12 along party lines -- three votes short...