Posted on 03/08/2013 5:22:06 PM PST by Kaslin
Well, it took longer than I thought, but a government has finally out-greened itself. In the great state of Washington, the legislature wants to tax… wait for it …breathing.
“Holy exhalations!” you say, “Is it true?”
Yes old chum, I’m afraid it is. It would appear the folks on Washington’s equivalent of a capitol hill have come up with a transportation package that tabs out at 10 billion clams, which is a lot, even for a coastal state. Okay, that was a lousy play on words. MOVING ON THEN…
Actually $10 billion is a lot of money, even in a day and age in which the national debt probably increased by that much in the time it has taken me to put the period at the end of this sentence.
So from where will all these dollars flow? Well, from a gasoline tax naturally. Anymore you can’t have a left-wing state without a gasoline tax on all of those icky carbon spewing vehicles. C’mon, you should have been able to guess that one on your own!
But according to a handy flyer provided by the Seattle Times, a gas tax is only part of the plan. There is also an increase in the commercial gross weight fee, a Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, a Hazardous Substance Tax, two bonds (“Bond” is a nice word for “taxes”, by the way.) and… drumroll please…a $25 tax on bicycles that cost more than $500. The legislators in Washington figure that should garner about a million bucks for roads.
What?
Yup, Washington State wants to tax bikes. The legislature there want to tax gas saving, non-polluting bikes powered by the human machine that emits no disgusting substances to befoul the air. You might be tempted to say “Hey, bicyclists use the road, they ought to pick up at least some of the tab.” And you would be right. But according to one legislator, it is the amount of carbon exhaled by cyclists that merit them getting hit with this tax. And imagine my chagrin when I discovered it was a Republican spouting this bit of nonsense. In an article on The Examiner website by Mikael Thalen, GOP State Representative Ed Orcutt is quoted as saying: “A cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride."
Insert laugh track here.
So, a Washington Republican finally succeeded where Jacque Cousteau, Sir David Attenborough, England’s Prince Phillip, and Ted Turner could not- he has pinned climate change onHomo sapiens. And apparently also on his semi-high-end bike.
I know folks who eschew cars for bikes because of the cost and because they want to lessen their personal carbon footprint. That’s fine, do as thou wilt, oh pilgrim. They are put out by motorists who don’t give them the space they need, or call them “dirty hippies” as they drive by. Conversely, I know motorists who are annoyed by what they perceive to be an elitist attitude by cyclists, who seem intent on making themselves a nuisance on streets and roads. That’s a debate for another time. (Personally, I just wish they would not ride so close to the white line on the side of the road. I always think they are going to swing out into traffic.)
What is germane to this discussion is that bicycles have at best a barely discernible impact on roads. That, and in this case we are essentially talking about what amounts to BREATHING TAX. The problem with that is breathing is one of those things everyone does. Unless you are a fetus, a corpse or an astronaut, you are at this moment inhaling and exhaling; and apparently inflicting damage on the atmosphere.
A story goes that Mark Twain was once trapped by a bore who lectured him at length on the Great Hereafter. The man said to Twain: “Do you realize that every time I exhale some poor soul departs this world?” Twain is reported to have replied “Really? Have you tried chewing cloves?”
Apparently for the elected officials of the Evergreen State, chewing cloves will not suffice.
They feel it is time to tax people simply for existing.
Courts would disagree. Not just in the case of bicyclists, either.
I was just meeting one absurd statement with another. Any taxes that would have to be charged need to reflect actual costs that bikes inflict on roads. Very few people, and there bikes weigh enough to do any damage on the roads.
I am not advocating everybody ride a bike, but if they did, there would be no such thing as pot holes and roads would only have to be replaced about every 500 years.
My main opposition to taxing bicyclists is that, for low income earners that is often their only way around. Their alternative, if bicycling were to be made unaffordable, is simply dependency, because they wouldn’t be able to afford to work at all. We Freepers bitch about the dependents not working, so what do some here want to do, make those close to dependency dependent.
I personally will gladly absorb whatever small cost that a bicyclist might cost, in terms of road, knowing that they might be working as a dishwasher, as opposed to being on welfare. Sure, some might be some jerk yuppie, who makes if hard on everybody, but most bicyclists are not jerky yuppies.
The argument for bicycles’ lack of wear on the road also applies to motorcycles. Yet motorcycles have to pay road tax to maintain the roads and signals, and bicycles don’t. They should have to pay like motorcycles, or motorcycles should stop being taxed.
I would also point out that bicyclists cannot be held responsible for their misbehavior on the roads. They have no license to prove they are familiar with the road rules, or to be taken away for misbehavior. They display no license plates for other road users to report misbehavior to the authorities with.
You want to be an equal road user, you have to accept equal responsibilities in my book. Otherwise, you stay on the sidewalk.
While I agree with you that motorcycle wear on the road is fairly minimal, more than bicycles and less than cars, the best way to handle it is that roads get paid through tax on gasoline, not any other tax. That’s something to lean on politicians about. Politicians should not be allowed to get away with sneaking other taxes through to pay for things that other taxes were originally set up to do.
If you want bicyclists to be an equal partner, they need an equal share of the road. That would also mean licensing kids, and fining them directly and impounding their bikes when they break a rule on the road.
Actually, they cause the same amount of wear in multiple tests - negligible to undetectable. Zero equals zero.
Also, what of diesel, electric and natural gas powered cars? If you only tax gasoline, why should these people get a free ride?
Tax *all* road users or tax none. No free riders.
Don’t have a problem with that, as that is what other countries do with bicycles. But no equal share until they are equally regulated and responsible - that means licensing, registration, safety inspection, operator licensing and appropriate use taxation. If I have to do it for a motorcycle, they should be held to the same standard.
Otherwise? Stay on the sidewalk.
People wear out sidewalks, when they walk on them. So they should be charged a walking tax to pay for it.
Pedestrians do not wear down sidewalks beyond the normal weathering caused by exposure to the atmosphere. Proven by multiple studies. Sorry.
Also, more proof that bicyclists don’t obey traffic rules: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YEmBBWdxwQ
I guess you’d rather have a new welfare recipient than foregoing any neglible tax revenue collected from bicycles. That’s a reasonable trade-off in your mind, I guess.
Now, just to be clear, I am not necessarily against collecting some form of taxation, the best way being upon the purchase of the bicycle, rather than trying to collect a yearly fee. And it certainly wouldn’t be worth the time for the cops to pursue all bicycles to ensure their fees are paid. You gonna pay a $60/hour cop to ensure a $25.00 yearly fee is paid?
However, if you consider the nearly neglible wear on the roads or the fact that bicycles don’t need much room, the amount of taxation would be very small, pretty much negligible. If you ratio the road taxes on a $25,000 car to what it would be on a $600 bicycle, it really is almost nothing.
Like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7AVC1YCcO0
or this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPb3nnqdDo
or this? The bikers weren’t even on the road and this driver still wanted them off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFM5QiAd3QA
or this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqjkAcLHtr8
I can also produce a thousand videos showing how drivers routinely try to harm bicyclists, at no fault of theirs.
Who pays for the bike paths? I’m not allowed to drive a motorized vehicle on them.
Then you should stop taxing motorcycles as well. Same logic.
Motorcycles need the same room as a bicycle (less when going up hill, actually).
Motorcycles cause the same wear (or lack thereof) on the roads as bicycles.
Motorcycles pay a yearly fee that’s not based on the value of the vehicle.
It’s not really worth paying a cop to go after motorcycles for their yearly fee either. But they do that anyway.
I just want the fees to be fair and equitable for all, and for bicyclists to be able to be held responsible for their actions like any other motorist. Conduct they get away with would get my motorcycle license pulled and my bike impounded in a heartbeat and that has to stop. They need to have some skin in the game and they sure as hell don’t have that now.
The problem with that is I can set up a camera on any busy street and most motorists so recorded will not be behaving badly - but the majority of the bicyclists WILL be.
Also, low income people won’t ride bicycles *now*, even in places where they are subsidized.
Huh? You are out of your cotton picking mind
LOLOL - actually, the republican has a good idea.
Interesting how the media responds to a little tittytwister.
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