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 ...
What do you expect from a bunch of tree-huggers?
Maybe if you were a competent driver you wouldn't be rear-ending people, it's not the gold plated cars causing the high insurance rates it's inattentive people causing accidents.
"States are losing money because of more efficient cars...well you can't have it both ways."
Another manifestation of liberalism as an untenable political philosophy. You can't be for Big Labor and Big Environment, for example. One wants to pave over the land, the other wants it left unpaved, but both adhere to liberalism in its worldview.
The same idiots screaming for a smaller carbon footprint are the same idiots now taxing those gained efficiencies out of existence.
Despite that, they are moving forward. Only a big government would do this. A business could never afford to. GPS on every car - no politician in their right mind would get behind such a thing - even in a blue state.
>>>Won't this require some type of 'big brother' monitoring system?
The microchip in EZ Pass would work.
There have been various schemes kicked around to make EP Pass required across the board.
This tax scheme would do it.
Those TollTag/EZPass transponders work up to 160mph - at least the ones here on the Dallas-area tollways do. (Someone with a bike went through a toll zone at 160 and his tolltag read correctly - not me! Someone in a Mustang went through one at 132mph and his tag read correctly, too.)
Don't give the totalitarians any more ideas.
They are already in need of a slap down.
>>>>The cars also will have Global Positioning Systems (GPS) so drivers will not be charged for driving outside state borders -- the tax is only meant to be applied for use of Oregon roads.
And then....the drivers would be subject to a USE tax from other states!
Get her a motorcycle!
How will this "bill" be paid? Right now, gas taxes are rolled into the total price of gas, so it really doesn't hit you in the face how much you're paying in tax. On the other hand, a bill in the mail or a fee tacked on somewhere where it can be calculated will be much more noticeable.
this idea has been kicking around in Utopian-kook think tanks for several years now....a by-product of the opinions that a) the world is going to run out of petroleum soon, so how will we finance our big heping govt. if we can no longer tax it? and b) let's create a dis-incentive for people to move out to the suburbs and drive more miles.
Sounds like Oregonians are going to be the lab-rats for this. Original plans call for mandatory GPS monitoring of all vehicles to get the mileage totals right, so get ready for total surveillance out there!
However, I can't say that I will never be in a wreck that's my fault, or at least that I'm responsible for (my fault: I'm not paying attention. My responsibility: my brakes give out). However, I think that motorcyclists can cause unnaturally high insurance rates because wrecks with them are inordinately costly. Motorcycles cause everyone to get much more insurance than they would if it were just cars.
Sure, just motorcycles could work, except that some of us have children, and in some places, it rains or drops below freezing.
>>>This was talked about here in California too....I don't see it happening.
That is just what I said about our sales tax increase.
I was wrong.
It will take the American geek community maybe 60days to put together a hack for this black box then we will drive for free.
The ones here in Atlanta work at 85-90 mph apparently on our only toll road. Which is already paid for I might add way ahead of schedule, but those booths are still collecting quarters.
"Mr Smith, while performing your background investigaton we discovered that you have amassed 2023.2 hours driving over the speed limit' and on June 12th 2004 you spent 3 hours at Porky's strip club. Would you like to make a written statement explaining this?"
...and of course the ACLU is once again hypocritically silent...
Next comes the law enforcement module that calculates speeding fines, traffic light violations, etc.
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