Posted on 07/06/2006 1:25:43 PM PDT by proudofthesouth
I heard about the following on Fox News today and could hardly believe it. Thought fellow Freepers would be interested in this. After all, what starts in the western part of the U.S. usually heads eastward.
In 1919, Oregon was the first state to tax gasoline. This fall, the state will launch the nation's first high-tech experiment to tax drivers for the miles they travel rather than the gas they buy. The program is the first step in a long-term plan to replace the state's gasoline tax, which pays for about 40 percent of Oregon 's road projects. As in many states, Oregon officials are worried gas tax revenues won’t be able to keep up with the rising costs of road building, especially with improved mileage from both traditional and hybrid cards...............see link for rest of article
http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=32957
(Excerpt) Read more at stateline.org ...
is that for your state gas tax or federal gas tax,
I believe I pay about 23 cents per gallon state and 18 cents per gallon federal
I bet that guy doesn't wear seatbelts when he drives his car either, as a symbolic protest against the "erosion of personal liberty."
Precisely. That's the whole point. The bottomline, this is a tax increase proposal.
I've said this before...Everything is approaching an Orwellian state. How do you stop terrorism...? You track everyone's move with Big Brother Watching you. And it's starting in Oregon with GPS!! This is great.
nope.. next bracket up. the soccer moms that drive some kids to daycare, some to school, goes to work, gets one kid takes him to soccer, another to ballet, one home, goes to the store, back to get kids, then home.
what i'd like to know is how will this tax apply to delivery drivers, truckers, otr salesmen, and state owned vehicles? what about car dealerships, will they have to charge taxes for test drives? what about rentals, who pays for it?
I was going by the tax rate in the story.
I live in NC and it's 46.something for state/federal taxes at the pump.
good analogy
this is just another tax on top of the existing one on fuels...next comes idling tax, or scenic route tax
Well, they could add an RFID unit to the license plate
you already have to have. Wouldn't matter what vehicle
you have, if it drives and has a plate, it can be tracked.
London, Singapore, HK tax road use. doesn't sound so unreasonable to me, as long as the unit is used only for
assessing the road tax. We already have toll roads.
Here in the "workers paradise" of Wisconsin we had a gas tax which was placed in a "highway trust fund" to facilitate infrastructure repairs. The fund grew over the years to $100,000,000 and some genius in Madison floated a bill to subsidize the urban bus system in Racine by $1,000,000. After all, it was only 1% of the trust. The next year Milwaukee lobbied for and got a $10,000,000 subsidy for the County Transit Authority. This went on for several years with ever larger withdrawals. Eventually someone noticed the overall declining nature of Wisconsin highways and bridges and suggested it was time to undergo some repair work. They looked into the cookie jar and the "highway trust fund" was completely depleted. (No big surprise, that!) The answer that Madison proposed was to increase the gas tax, meanwhile bus riders all over the state were paying $0.50 for a ride.
The moral of this little story is: "Never trust a politician with a trust fund."
Regards,
GtG
I hope you are not saying....you wouldn't have a problem with the State/Feds tracking your every move...As well as your speed, and your habits.
Have you considered that your argument can be understood that driving cars is dangerous to other people? Why not mandate motorcyles for all personal trans then you reduce gas consumption greatly (50 to 100 mpg), serious accidents, and property taxes. Having been a motorcycle rider, I learned early that the most dangerous thing to a motorcycle was car driver paying no attention. I always gave myself a dump out option and always watched car's front tires rather than there turn lights. There is something strange that happens where car drivers don't see motorcycles. One other point, your illustration of car on car impacts doesn't account for disparate height and weight of cars. I would not like to take a 40 mph impact on the drivers door of a Honda, but could easily handle it with a Ford Pickup.
See post 73.......
All I said was this might be a deterrant to car theft.
Basically the same thing happened in OK.......
Obviously, such "logic" passes for smart, in the liberal world, and the fact that the peons don't get it, and just keep electing those "smart" ones, gives the rest of us some insight as to...(fill in the blank).
What about all the people traveling through Oregon to somewhere else. Will they be taxed also? The every encroaching government drives me up the wall. Considering moving to Tonga or the South Pacific once I make enough money. The US is on a collision course with a meltdown of epic proportions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.