Guest Post by Eric Peters
If you don’t wan’t your dog to run away, you leash him. The government doesn’t want you to run away, either – but has a different kind of leash in mind.
The commuter tax.
It’s called the mileage tax but like so many things being pushed down our throats the term used doesn’t describe what’s actually meant.
What’s described by proponents such as Rep. Peter DeFazio, a liberal Democrat from Oregon who unfortunately chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is a merely modern replacement for the gas tax.
But what’s meant is a tax on driving – and the distinction is critical to grok.
When you buy gas, part of what you’re paying is tax, about 50 cents or so in federal and state taxes, folded into the price. But where – and how far – you go aren’t taxed.
The commuter tax (and DeFazio wants a federal commuter tax) will tax them both – punishing you for distance – which means punishing commuters and others who need to drive more rather than less to get to and from their place of employment.
As well as just driving, period.
Put another way, it will be a new nudge – to use the word favored by the the coercive utopians pushing this – to get people to not drive as far or as much. To nudge them closer to cities they want the proletariat herded into – by making it cost too much to live “too far” away from them.
Interestingly, it will do this by punishing people who bought an efficient car – for the sake of reducing their cost to drive.
Which will go up, if this new tax comes to pass – as DeFazio and others in Congress, including a number of “conservative” Republicans such as Rep. Same Graves of Missouri are demanding.
Unless new subsidies are created to compensate the owner of, say, a 40 MPG economy car he will pay the same tax on his driving as the owner of an 18 MPG SUV if they both drive the same distance. There will no longer be any good reason to buy an “economical” car.
And both will have their driving tracked by the government.
The gas tax is anonymous.
You can pay cash. You don’t have to show your “papers.” Uncle has no idea how far you drive – or where.
Or how much tax you’re paying – if you pay cash for your gas.
The commuter tax will require that your car be leashed – electronically – so that Uncle knows everywhere you go.
How else could he tax you for how far you go?
And you will be leashed, as well – since the tax is applied to a specific person – you, the car’s owner – rather than anonymously.
“Papers” will be required.
Among other things, this scheme is also a nudge toward the cashless economy dreamt of by the control freaks and busybodies who constitute “the government – who cannot stand the idea that every single transaction isn’t known unto them. Worst of all, that there might be people out there “getting away” with not paying their “fair share” of taxes by using that loathsomely anonymous mechanism for transacting their business – cash money.
The mileage tax will mean the end of privacy as regards our mobility – as well as economically.
And the commuter tax would nudge something else as well – us, out of cars that lack the “tech” to be taxed in this manner.
Cars made before the OBD era, specifically.
“OBD” is the acronym for On Board Diagnostics – which every new car has come standard with since the mid-1990s. Every car has a universal OBD port – like a USB port for your devices. This port serves as the umbilical connection for scanning tools used to obtain data from the car’s computer memory – including “trouble codes” stored indicating the need for service – but also such things as how many miles the car has been driven.
A “mileage meter” is plugged into the OBD port and automatically reports your mileage driven to the government, which then duns you – probably via automatic debit from your bank account.
It works like a Smart Meter. The power company no longer needs to send a guy out to your house.
And more.
Smart Meters monitor electricity usage, just as your driving will be monitored. And both lay all the necessary technical groundwork for controlling usage – and driving.
But this commuter tax only works on cars that have this electronic leash – so to speak. Older cars – and motorcycles – with mechanical speedometers (and without computers) can’t be kept track of remotely. They are free range transportation. Anonymous. Untraceable. Easily “tampered” with.
That probably won’t be allowed.
Not directly, of course. These creeps are subtler nowadays; they have learned it goes down easier if done elliptically. No outright ban on older vehicles. Just a new regulation – or several – that mandate compliance with the commuter tax in some functionally onerous or economically untenable manner, such as that they be fitted with the tech necessary to keep track of their mileage
If you can’t afford to modify your older car or motorcycle so that it is “compliant,” you can no longer drive it.
Easy Peesy.
“That’s where we’re headed in the future,” DeFazio recently eructed.
If so, it’s a worrisome future – if you worry about the implications of taxing people for driving – as such.
And despise the idea of herding people into urban hives – so that the countryside can be opened up for the elites, like DeFazio, who are behind the herding.
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Herd us into urban hives, much easier to liquidate for non compliance. World is getting nuttier by the day and what can’t go on forever, won’t!
Great, more taxes. I get notices from the insurance company mentioning how if I install a device that tracks everything in my car, they’ll reduce my rates. Yeah right. The electric company has offered reduced rates if I install a smart meter, another, yeah right.
Yep, just got one of those notices from my insurance company today. Promptly processed it through my paper shredder. Tomorrow, I will call them and notify them that I am searching for a new insurance company.
Sounds like a few folks need to swing from lamp posts as a deterrent to the other asshats with such grand ideas. I wonder if these cocksuckers all have S/S protection 24/7?
Then SS has to be hung first
Creepy looking little fuquere isn’t he?
Very punchable face
Ban liberals.
Just what a man who has to drive 400 miles a week needs
The more you drive the more gas you use and the more taxes you pay at the pump. The system is already there. I think AZ shows 38 cents at the pump.
I usually agree with Eric but he’s a bit over the top on this issue. The problem is you need a way to pay for roads and the gas tax no longer works. Electric cars don’t pay gas taxes and a 50 mpg Prius pays far less gas tax than a Honda Civic even though they cause the same amount of wear and tear on the roads.
The milage tax addresses that. Everyone pays for the amount of road use they enjoy. This tax works especially well if it is based on miles traveled and weight of the vehicle.
However, while a milage tax could work well, government will fuck it up like they do everything. For example:
1) A milage tax needs to REPLACE the gas tax. But government isn’t too keen on replacing taxes. Instead they prefer to add new ones which means you will continue paying the gas tax after the milage tax is implemented.
2) When collecting the milage tax government should only get to see how many total miles you drove. But they always want more info including how fast you drive, where you drive, how often you drive, etc.
3) The milage tax should only pay for road maintenance and maybe road construction. But, like the current gas tax, a huge hunk of it, maybe most of it, will go towards non-auto uses like transit, sidewalks, bike lanes, administration.
4) The milage tax should be a local and state matter with no involvement from the feds. But if the feds aren’t collecting the tax how can they use the money to pay their cronies and apply rules to every state.
So the milage tax is good idea in theory, but like everything they touch, government will screw it up completely.
Defazio, the career politician from hell, has been fucking Oregonians since the 80’s, looking forward to the day when he goes out McCain style.
From
And as a way to “right” the “injustice” of their privileged positions, but without forsaking them, the “Progressives” seek to remold society (i.e., the “real world”) to resemble what they believe it should look like (i.e., their circumstances becoming more the “norm” and so no longer so “unjust”); and seek to redistribute wealth using other peoples’ money (with perhaps token participation on their part, for “appearance’s sake” if nothing else). This helps them to internally rationalize, and so justify, their existence, for the coming better world “needs them and their selfless compassion and superior intellect” to make it happen over the resistance of the boobs in flyover country who still (to use Barack Obama’s words) “cling to their guns and religion,” not to mention quaint but outdated notions like faith, patriotism and family. As far as Progressives are concerned, the new, more enlightened global governance regime built upon global “social justice” and a “green” / “sustainable” economy can’t afford to be held back by those knuckle-dragging, “traditional values” Neanderthals.
Hence we get campus speech codes. Hence we get the “nanny state” of “social engineering Fascism” dictating major life decisions (Obamacare); “nudging” us with tax breaks (or penalties) for engaging in condoned behavior (or unapproved behavior); imposing values taught our children (using public schools to override parents); and even day-to-day matters such as what they will be allowed to eat (“trans-fat” and “sugary drink” bans) or whether we’ll be able to buy them a “Happy Meal” at McDonalds.
It is not a stretch to imagine the Founding Fathers shaking their heads in dismay at what the Progressive revolution has wrought upon the “land of the free and home of the brave.” Did they fight and die so that the government they established could tell their descendants whether or not their doctor will be allowed to provide them with a particular treatment?
Did the “greatest generation” give their lives in places like the volcanic beaches of Iwo Jima so that government could dictate that their grandchildren can’t buy their own kids a “Happy Meal” at McDonalds?
At the hands of Progressive doctrine, have we not fallen far from our founding principles and founding spirit? And does anyone really believe that if not stopped, the Progressives’ usurpations against our founding values and individual liberty will not become ever more intrusive, stifling and ultimately tyrannical? Even when cloaked in assertions of enlightenment, equality, compassion and justice, tyranny is still tyranny.
When you get down to the heart of the matter, Progressives are essentially (social) Fascists, albeit without the spiffy uniforms.
Which begs the question: after 100 years of allowing the Progressive erosion of our Republic and Constitution, while we may still have the technical right to call ourselves “Americans,” do we still have the spiritual right to do so?
Q: Why are they called “Progressives”?
A: Because “Fuktards” was already taken.