High Tech Gasoline Tax Grab

Let's see you say that when everything you buy goes up in price accordingly. Food, clothing, and any product you use as a consumer.

Trucks use fuel too, or did you forget that?

--------------------------------------------------- "Iraq has developed a chemical weapons capability." - John F. Kerry, October 1990

Incrementalism fools people as simple minded as yourself. Are you a government employee?

This sounds like just one more scamster politician who wants to establish a new bureaucracy to provide jobs for all his buddies and relatives. We already have meters useful separately or in combination to "calculate how many miles a vehicle travels between refueling", they're called the odometer, the how-much-gas-is-left-in-my-tank-o-meter and finally the how-much-went-in-o-meter at the gas pump in the station. If politicians want to collect more gas tax revenue they should just put their balls and jobs on the line and raise taxes at the pump without all the techno razzle-dazzle.

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Exactly, they want to average the tax for all drivers based on milage driven. But currently, if you drive a tank you fill up more often and therefore pay more tax, if you drive a putt putt and get incredible gas mileage you pay less tax. I guess they're more worried about their tax source than getting everyone into small fuel efficient (less tax) automobiles.

Which is just like the government. Use too much, we'll tax you.

Use too little, well, we'll tax you some more.

When are these morons going to get it?

--------------------------------------------------- "Iraq has developed a chemical weapons capability." - John F. Kerry, October 1990

The website makes it clear that Oregon is worried about already decreasing tax revenue in light of more fuel efficiency and less miles traveled due to higher pump prices. So ... no matter if you drive a moped or an Excursion, Oregon is trying to extract a tax per mile driven on "their" roads. It's a shift from a fuel use tax to a road use tax ... a tax that they can increase much easier.

Shouldn't the tax also take into consideration the amount of road damage done by various sized vehicles? The gasoline tax did that in a round about way by taxing heavy vehicles (lower mpg) more per mile than mopeds (high mpg).

The DOT fella (Mr. James Whitty) was interviewed recently on an LA radio station. The interviewer asked that very question. Whitty rationalized that heavier vehicles were being taxed for actual road damage while the same tax was levied against lightweight vehicles for .... the space that take up on the road, not for any actual "damage." Honest!

-- As if we don't pay enough taxes now here in Oregon. With the continued high rate of unemployment here, and rising taxes, among other things, this is liable to become a retirees only state. The politicians should concentrate on attracting more manufacturing businesses, which would create more jobs, which would mean more people paying gas taxes.

Every day is a good day- it's just that some are better than others.

Oh my ... how Republican! And in Oregon yet! LOL

What did you think of the invasive technology Oregon intends to use to bring about this new tax collection?

The one that reads off of the odometer isn't near as bad as the GPS deal. Oh yeah, they'll pass a law that makes it illegal to track a vehicle in real time. That ought to work about as well as the speeding laws and the murder laws and the drug laws and the..................................... Then again they could just raise the gas tax, but that would hurt the politicians in their SUVs. Typical Oregon- Here in Multnomah County a surcharge on your income tax was passed to pay for the schools because the state didn't have enough money to fund them. (used to funded from property taxes, but that's another story) Then the local paper runs a story about Hillsboro (just over the county line) having fewer school enrolees than last year, so they actually have extra money from the state, and are having a problem deciding what to do with it. Nowhere in the story did it say anyone mentioned returning the overage to the state to help out the districts that were still in the red. They pretty much put the logging industry out of business, cut the fishing fleet catch in half, and are expecting high tech to be the backbone of the economy. It probably will be, but the natives won't get much out of it, what with now having one of the shortest school years in the country. I guess the high school grads will have to work at the golden arches and feed the imported high tech workers.

I have a friend who recently relocated his family from southern CA to the outskirts of Portland. He's a long time electronics engineer for ESI. Oregon *is* doing all they can to attract high tech, clean, industry.

My point exactly. I work for a food service contractor at Intel. You would be amazed (or possibly not) at how few Oregonians work there compared to folks from other states and especially the large number from other countries. And Intel is the largest employer in the state, by far. Barrett (the BOSS at Intel) was on the news the other day saying that Intel would go where it was good for Intel. A rough quote was that as long as they could find a suitable labor force in Oregon they would stay in Oregon.The proof of this is the 2 billion dollar plant they're building in China. It's not an R&D facility, but 2 billion dollars worth of plant will provide more than a couple of jobs. I'm all for conservation, but if the treehuggers have their way Oregon will be a huge federal park, with no motor vehicles allowed anywhere inside. Here's a laugh for you Philip. We just got done with local elections here. A former sheriff ran for mayor of Portland, and got the majority of the votes. But not an overall majority, so there'll be a runoff. The local rag, the Oregonian, reported that HE caused the runoff, not the politician who came in second to him. So much for unbiased reporting LOL.

Oy! I hear the political bias's only goes further socialist as you move into Washington state. Is it something in the water or some sort of airborne pathogen? LOL

My personal theory is that it's some kind of airborne pathogen carried by spotted owls. LOL

Phillip, I have found reason to like you. It took awhile but we are there now.

Bob Muse

Bob --

What exactly would that reason be? I can't fathom it from the inane exchange I just read between him and this guy who thinks he makes a lot of money?