Oregon Lawmakers Propose Mileage Tax On Fuel Efficient Vehicles 686
Hugh Pickens writes "Facing a $10 billion revenue shortfall for transportation financing, the Oregon Legislature is expected to consider a bill to require drivers with a vehicle getting at least 55 miles per gallon of gasoline to pay a per-mile tax after 2015 to offset the loss in tax revenue for fuel efficient cars at the gas pump, where the government has traditionally collected money to build and fix roads. Oregonians currently pay 30 cents per gallon, a tax that is automatically added at the pump, but as cars become more fuel efficient and alternative fuel sources are identified, state officials project gas tax revenue will decline. 'Everybody uses the road, and if some pay and some don't, then that's an unfair situation that's got to be resolved,' says Jim Whitty of the Department of Transportation. Opponents of the Oregon proposal say it will hurt a new industry. 'It will be one more obstacle that the industry and auto dealers will face in convincing consumers to buy these new cars,' says Paul Cosgrove, a lobbyist for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Other states, such as Nevada and Washington, are also looking at a per-mile charge and a Washington law that would charge electric car owners an annual fee goes into effect in February. Oregon did a pilot study of the mileage tax (PDF) where participants paid 1.56 cents per mile and got a credit for any gasoline tax they paid at the pump. Although initial media portrayals of the system were almost uniformly negative, 91% of test participants preferred the mileage tax to paying gas taxes."
Re:I'd like to see the Texas legislature try. (Score:4, Funny)
We should (Score:4, Funny)
We should tax all foreigners not living in our country.
TROLL: Look, mommy wants to "guide" you! (Score:4, Funny)
It's not a penalty, you faint-hearted, lame, shit-eating excuse for a tree hugger. It's an attempt to spread the cost of BUILDING roads fairly across the people who USE those roads. It's about how miles rolled diverge from gallons pumped; not how your little junkmobile sips fuel while barely being able to push its thin-walled, plastic self down an onramp faster than an old lady in a walker, all the while you're bleeding off what little speed your tiny, tiny engine has managed to impart to your sorry amalgamation of mismatched parts as you leave skinny little tire marks dodging squirrels in abject fear of thousands of dollars of body damage.
Personally, I think you little turdlets in your I'm-so-hip tinycockmobiles should be penalized by being run off the fucking road, where your little texting-phones would get driven through your misshapen skulls until they met your little white earbuds in an explosion of angsty fucktard granola-fed brain matter. Then your remains should be fed to wildlife, while your complete piece of shit can't-go-in-snow junker gets crushed and recycled into a respectable 4WD with a bench seat so that adults with functioning gonads can sit together, rather than strapped into your paper-thin faggotty bucketass seats, seatbelts on, faces perpetually ready for immersion in a fucking airbag. We'll hang a rainbow-colored, bio-degradable kitchen apron on a reflector post to celebrate your erasure from the planet.
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong.
In fact I am a rocket scientist - my graduate engineering work involved simulations of chemical reactions on space shuttle heat shield tiles under re-entry conditions to evaluate catalysts to try to prevent exothermic recombination of atomic radicals on the surface.
So shut the hell up. You have no idea who you are talking to or what their knowledge and experience base is. And you got caught blowing out a stereotype straight out of a conservative radio talk show which was utterly and completely wrong in every possible way.
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, F=ma. Could you please tell the class then if when you drive you keep the pedal floored? Or at some point do you stop accelerating and move at a constant velocity?
I keep the pedal floored until I'm half way to my destination, then decellerate at the same rate for the remaining half :)