So... Who lives in the city and doesn’t drive much at all?
Oh yeah, Obama voters!
Who lives out int he rural areas of the country and already pays taxes at the pump?
Yep, Red State voters.
B*stard...
[Flint] Let's see if we can predict who won't have to pay. Union members, Government employees, Anyone who makes less than $15,000 a year and drives a Cadillac or Escort....
[just me] Drive tax: all union workers, government workers, welfare recipients will be exempt...
Everybody on the list wins a kewpie doll, for coming ever-so-close to the real answer.
It's a race tax, specifically a "white tax". The idea has been around forever -- 40 years and more -- and it's related to the reparations idea.
When New Orleans elected its first black mayor in the mid-70's, Ernest "Dutch" Morial (daddy of the corrupt Marc Morial, also mayor later on), he sat down with his political cronies and ran out a long list of "white tax" proposals: real-estate surcharges on houses and even churches bigger than "so big" (i.e., they had white people in them), employment taxes exacted at the workplace, and so on. There were about a dozen proposals on the list, some of them obvious non-starters.
The idea that survived was an ad-valorem surcharge on automobiles driven in the City of New Orleans, which would have to have a special license plate tag (jurisdictions in e.g. Virginia were already doing this) to show payment. The idea was, this was the way to tax white commuters who might live as far away as Lumberton, Mississippi, who were driving in to work in the city.
That is the real genesis of this idea, barfed up by Obama's kitchen cabinet from the ancient storehouse of "fooling Mr. Charlie" legacy japes and exploits. The peg is revenue, the occasion is exigency (real or concocted), but the motive is racial animus.