[FairMaiden]

My organisation tried to lobby the government to implement a "vehicle levy" instead of gas taxes. Bigger vehicles create more wear and tear on the roads AND take up more road space so they should pay more for access than smaller cars. The idea was to make smaller vehicles more attractive w/o losing revenue. The car association that repairs your tires here also has huge political clout (unfortunatley most "members" just want a tire fixed, not a political voice and don't know about this) - and they put pressure on the local gov't to stop it.

[Starvid]

Wow. What an incredibly stupid idea the gov has thought up. I like Toecutters idea.

[Ayoob]

Seein as how we have to maintain the roads, this sounds pretty reasonable. What else are you gonna do?

[The_Virginian]

This is a ptopurri of burning sewege.

Tax Hybreds and you take away incentive to buy them! And what happens when CAFE standards are raised?

Hybreds are not that much better than what COULD already be in place. My gosh forls its late 2005, and I don't see much progress in domestics from 1989...

Sounds like GM is trying to shut down Competition...the best way they know how...like DeLorian and Packard.... A few stabs, a few arm twists.

Gas taxes are slush fund for CONgressCRITTERS to raid, never was only used for highway repair...just like Social (in) Security

we've been had.

Now a one time NON-STIFFILING FEE on the sale of 100% elecrics...and the funds by law dedicated ONLY to road repair...dis-inbursed by the Federals and by law not alowed to be withheld...might work.

Don't count on rational solutions taking hold...we are on the forefront of a bad period...

[CARVER]

[sarcasme]
The Terminator has a point, he could actually go a step further. Why should those driving a Hummer, or any other off-road car have to pay for maintaining roads? They don't need roads, so why should they pay for it through gas tax. All those roads are negatively affecting their off-road experience, they should receive some sort of refund, a small refund for every mile driven on those darn roads, which you have to cross to be able to get where you wan't to go. People can't even afford to drive their Hummer to the nearest cliff and drop it off, it's insane.
[/sarcasme]

[formandfile]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', 'T')hat should work. Though the "demand destruction" could be quite literal...

[The_Toecutter]

That's why new car sales should pay for the highways at the point of purchase. Might make people re-think the impact they are making, but without intruding into their personal lives, without increasing income taxes, and without taxing those without a car. Further, if the vehicle is tested and expected to last 150,000 miles from the test results and has a certain weight, it can be taxed accordingly compared to one that lasts perhaps 200,000 miles but weighs much less(and thus contributes less road wear per mile).

Auto industry might bitch. And so too would some government bureaucrats who would rather take another opportunity to control our personal lives more. But fuck them.

[dub_scratch]

This is a great step in the right direction but I was not clear if the proposal would include all cars to be charged on a per miles driven basis. I would assume that to be the case but the article is misleading to make it look like hybrids were being singled out (probably reflecting the reporters typical pro-car bias).

What we need to do for the efficiency of our car transport is to charge for road use, based on demand, and get rid of the current so-called tax (its not really a tax because most of that money goes into building car infrastructure). Gasoline then should then have a sales tax at the same rate of hats & baseball bats. And since sales taxes on hats don't go into a fund for building hat racks, sales tax on motor fuel should not fund motoring.

If we had a fair and flexible charge for urban driving, there would be NO traffic jams. And unlike today, people who drive the most would be the ones who pay the most. This would encourage drivers to reduce their long work commutes, which would dramatically reduce our consumption of oil. We should not discriminate based on vehicle either because a Hummer that is driven very lightly can consume much less petrol than a hybrid driven much more on price free roads.

I'm encouraged by this proposal. Perhaps we can finally see that the way toward fuel efficiency is not in the type of vehicles we drive but in the way government eliminates the massive subsidy of price-free road use. And then we can skip the hybrid non-solution as our current fleet of cars last much longer.

[falser]

Time article:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/27/ ... index.html

I can't even form a proper opinion about this except that this is ridiculous.

[The_Toecutter]

At $3 per installed watt, that's 3 gigawatts of wind turbines.

The U.S. has ~850 GW total installed electrical capacity, for comparison.

More money pissed away on entrenched industries that wish to keep profiting and keep us paying huge amounts of money for their services, as opposed to implementing as much as feasible pre peak the less expensive alternatives we have developed...


The Iraq war has cost us $250 billion so far, or $100 billion/year. That's 33 GW of wind turbines per year. $200 billion a year in corporate welfare, another 67 GW of wind. $50 billion a year drug war, another 17 GW of wind. $300 billion/year in national debt interest, another 100 GW of wind. $40 billion/year Homeland Security Department, another 13 GW.

Look what we're doing. Squandering all the wealth we have, siphoning it away to politicians and big business.

[jaws]

"Taxpayer money" and "wasted" generally always go together. If we're going to make a thread for every specific form of waste, we'll never stop making threads.

[Specop_007]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '"')Taxpayer money" and "wasted" generally always go together. If we're going to make a thread for every specific form of waste, we'll never stop making threads.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '"')Taxpayer money" and "wasted" generally always go together. If we're going to make a thread for every specific form of waste, we'll never stop making threads.

[Specop_007]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '"')Taxpayer money" and "wasted" generally always go together. If we're going to make a thread for every specific form of waste, we'll never stop making threads.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', 'T')he internet was invented with the aid of tax payer money! It was originally a DoD project to provide comms that would survive a nuclear war. I wonder if it will.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'T')hey were trying to create a military communications network, and what they got was a more advanced system for selling porn.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '
')
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Napoleon', 'T')he morale is to the physical as three to one

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '
')
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Napoleon', 'T')he morale is to the physical as three to one

[Graeme]

Americans are cautiously open to gas tax rise, poll shows

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')mericans are overwhelmingly opposed to a higher federal gasoline tax, but a significant number would go along with an increase if it reduced global warming or made the United States less dependent on foreign oil, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

"The tax would have to be earmarked for certain specific projects," one of the people polled, Rich Arnold, 54, a Republican who teaches criminal justice at Louisiana State University, said in a follow-up interview. Arnold said, "If it was a tax that would sponsor research for fuel cells or alternative fuel sources, I could buy that."

"If the tax is increased and oil companies reap the benefit, I would be against it," Fisher said. "But if the tax money went to the development of electric cars, I would favor the higher tax.

[gego]

Just goes to show the level of ignorance in the USA of the true nature of the problem. Anything the tax would be used for would just be a diversion of wealth and energy into dead end fixes. Such additional taxes would make it more difficult for those working on thier own lifeboat to accomplish their goals before the big dieoff gets in full swing.

I guess those of you who do not see yourselves as capable of successfully living your own lives need your little delusions about big daddy government taking care of you, in spite of a long history of the failure of collectivism, so the poll results do not really surprise me.

Actually, I take such thinking as expressed in this poll as a good sign that the majority will sit and wait for a rescue that will never come, hence those who are independently preparing will have a huge survival advantage when nature openly and violently commences her selection process.