OT: CA road charge program. Lol…

[Coronita]

http://www.dot.ca.gov/road_charge/

“Road charging means drivers pay to help maintain the roads based on the distance they travel or a period of time they use the roads, rather than the amount of gasoline they consume.”

“The Legislature created a Road Charge Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) to study road charging because the state gas tax is not able to generate enough money to fix all the 50,000 miles of roads in California. As cars become more fuel efficient, many drivers are paying less gas tax, which continues to reduce the amount of money used for fixing roads.”

Lol. Sounds a lot like,
1) Since people are doing a good job conserving electricity, we aren’t making enough money now. So we need to raise rates.

2) Since people are doing a good job conserving water, we need to raise water rates to make up for lost revenue.

3) Since people are doing a good job driving more fuel efficient cars, we need a way to charge people more to repair the roads.

[spdrun]

Simple solution: tax tires, only allow use of tires with a California tax seal. Make the penalty for driving on worn tires extremely harsh, and also make them part of a smog inspection.

Tire wear is roughly proportional to miles driven and vehicle weight.

This would come with none of the snooping implications that an electronic tolling system has.

[spdrun]

Also, do your part. Flood them with amusing contact information for “interested parties”, and have them waste time/money contacting people.

http://www.californiaroadchargepilot.com/sign-up/#volunteerform

Register as:
Privacy Hound
aka Seymour Buttz
666 4th Amendment Road
Nowheresville, CA 66666

[email protected]

or similar.

[an]

I find it kinda amusing that they give people credit to help spur solar, EV, drought tolerant landscape, etc. Then when solar reduced usage, EV reduced gas tax revenue, drought tolerant landscape reduce water usage, they charge us more. What were they thinking would happen when they hand out those rebates?

[paramount]

This is all about wealth redistribution and socialism/communism which dominates California politics.

The largely socialist/communist California assembly understands demographics well; and they understand that the bulk of this commie tax will come from the generally more conservative suburbs. And that a good part of this money will go to their supporters (and not roads).

It’s the same motivation for charging light pickup truck drivers a huge yearly surcharge/tax/fee just because they drive a pickup. Most of these assembly members understand that the majority of their supporters don’t drive pickup trucks.

We already pay enough taxes in California – start rolling back the outrageous pay/benefits for govt workers and California will have more than enough money to maintain roads.

[joec]

[quote=paramount]This is all about wealth redistribution and socialism/communism which dominates California politics.

The largely socialist/communist California assembly understands demographics well; and they understand that the bulk of this commie tax will come from the generally more conservative suburbs. And that a good part of this money will go to their supporters (and not roads).

It’s the same motivation for charging light pickup truck drivers a huge yearly surcharge/tax/fee just because they drive a pickup. Most of these assembly members understand that the majority of their supporters don’t drive pickup trucks.

We already pay enough taxes in California – start rolling back the outrageous pay/benefits for govt workers and California will have more than enough money to maintain roads.[/quote]

I don’t think a day goes by where I read the paper and don’t see some kind of chicanery that goes on with our country/state. Everyone is in it to get their own (me too if I knew how to get my share probably)…

Last week, I think it was the guy who setup Charter schools and stiffed all the schools he setup where he got 5% or something.

This week, I read the UC Davis Chancellor apparently had a side gig making 70k with Dewry college (scam school) and also was on the board of Wiley and Sons (textbook maker…so does anyone see why we keep having to get NEW text books each year?!? and I think she pocketed 100k+ there?). This is of course, on top of her 450k+ or so salary as UC Davis Chancellor…

There are some calls for her to resign, but not a day goes by where there is some bribe/special interest crap that goes around in our world now…

Our tax laws with all these companies like Facebook paying 8k or so in tax for ALL of the UK is insane and stupid. Not to mention Amazon, Google and Apple in that camp also. Those companies with billions in revenue pay less taxes than you and people wonder why our infrastructure is down the shits…

Part of the problem with taxes is that the ULTRA rich people and companies pays little or none of it.

I really think our whole system is pretty f-cked up and unless something is done to change it or at least make it more fair/equitable, I don’t think it’s going to make anyone want to pay their share since you see the ultra wealthy abusing the crap out of the system.

As a poor bloke, you can tax poor people all you want, but at the end of the day, some guy making 100 bucks can only be taxed for 100 bucks…

Go after all the corporate cheats and you will have more revenue so you won’t have to hit everyone else so much.

Of course, you now run into the problem of our politicians being “bought” by these corporate companies so good luck trying to fix the laws to benefit anyone else.

At the end of the day, the wage slave (W-2) will get hit since its the easiest to go after them, rather than corporate tax reform.

[svelte]

I guess I don’t object to an alternate way of charging folks for road use…as long as that means the end of the gas tax. Which I know will never happen. 🙂

[svelte]

[quote=joec]
I really think our whole system is pretty f-cked up and unless something is done to change it or at least make it more fair/equitable, I don’t think it’s going to make anyone want to pay their share since you see the ultra wealthy abusing the crap out of the system.
[/quote]

I really need to bone up on Roman history, as every once it a while I see great parallels even though I my knowledge of the Romans is limited.

My wife and I ate at Kaminski’s this weekend and they had the fight on. Whatever that “sport” is with no headgear, gloves, or apparently even cups. My mind raced to the gladiators of yore. Why have we moved to watching blood sport on TV to entertain ourselves? I fail to understand.

Your comment on the system getting corrupted reminded me of the demise of Roman civilization…

[no_such_reality]

Tax the trucks hauling from our ports and farms out of the state.

[all]

The roads need to be maintained and the salaries and the pensions need to be paid. Gas tax, use tax, income tax, toll… the money has to come from somewhere.

[spdrun]

The money doesn’t have to be taken in a way that lets the filth in Sacramento or the in$urance companies where every vehicle is at every time. A consumables (fuel) tax works well enough now. A similar tax on another consumable (tires, vehicle batteries, whatever) would work just as well tomorrow.

Before we implement vehicle tracking, time to implement strong data protection laws. i.e.
(1) Data with no legitimate use must be deleted after x time
(2) Data must be deleted at customer request once billing is completed
(3) Sale or transfer of data is prohibited without explicit customer request
(3) Punishment is one lash on the arse with a rotan cane for each customer where the law is broken, given to any knowing party. To be administered by the customer themselves.

[all]

[quote=spdrun]The money doesn’t have to be taken in a way that lets the filth in Sacramento or the in$urance companies where every vehicle is at every time. A consumables (fuel) tax works well enough now. A similar tax on another consumable (tires, vehicle batteries, whatever) would work just as well tomorrow.
[/quote]
Out of state trucks (so big business) benefit from tax on tires, or batteries. I would vote for increased tax on gas (and I do not drive EV’s).

[paramount]

[quote=all]The roads need to be maintained and the salaries and the pensions need to be paid. Gas tax, use tax, income tax, toll… the money has to come from somewhere.[/quote]

The roads can be maintained by pulling pensions.

Pensions do not need to be paid.

Mine was taken away. Sure I got back what I put in, but that was it.

No, no – pensions do not have to be paid.

Californian’s are already heavily taxed – the money to maintain roads is already being paid.

[Author]

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