It was the next logical step, I guess. The California state government, which has been teetering in and out of bankruptcy for quite a few years now, had seen its gasoline tax revenue start to dry up. Because people in California just aren’t buying that much gas. All of those hybrid cars and whatnot. And California is happy about reducing its carbon footprint and pollution and all that. It’s just that they also want more money. And that’s when some brilliant bureaucrat came up with the (Vehicle Miles Traveled) VMT Tax:
“We want to do as Washington and Oregon have done in a much bigger state with much longer commutes … to make sure that we find out whether it would work, whether the public would like it or not,” [Democratic Representative Mark] DeSaulnier said.
It’s unknown how much the tax would be, but Oregon currently charges its volunteers 1.5 cents per mile. “All of those things would be determined. We would let the agency determine that because this would be a voluntary program,” DeSaulnier said.
Yes, and I’m sure the VMT tax would stay a voluntary program. Who in the universe is going to agree to pay an extra tax based on the mileage he drives? I’m sure he is not going to get a waiver, so he doesn’t have to pay the gasoline tax at the pump. Isn’t that crazy? That’s like the “extra withholdings” tab on your tax form. I really don’t understand why anyone would voluntarily give more money to the civil government. But I’m not from the West. There must be something in the water.
Or maybe DeSaulnier meant the VMT tax would be voluntary the way Harry Reid thinks income tax is. ((And by the way, if you haven’t seen that video, it’s irrational comic gold. Go watch it now. Here’s the link again.)) I don’t know. I expected this to come sooner or later. It exposes the fact that big government liberals really aren’t in the environmentalism business in order to benefit the environment. It’s about power and money. As usual. One of the unfortunate side effects of the environmental programs’ successes in California was shrinking tax revenue. But thanks to VMT taxes, they can have their green façade and eat their big government pork pie too. Yay!
CA. and Obama gave the Obama moochers big cash rebates off the backs of others to buy glorified golf carts. Now they are going to try and get everyone to pay more. Some smarter States are wacking electric cars with fees to offset the loss of gas taxes and it won’t be long before there will be an electric surcharge despite the fact that lying Democrats are being sneaky, per usual, and trying to deny it.
Which “backs of others” are you referring to? Surely not the 1%. Heaven forbid that any billionaire be inconvenienced by the rest of the country. If anything, they want more, more, more and voting for Republicans will give them that. Why don’t you give them everything that YOU have (after taxes)?
You’re already paying for OIL SUBSIDIES. How idiotic does one have to be before he catches on? The Republicans you vote for represent billionaires and oil companies – not you.
LOL! STILL spewing 2008 Obama campaign lies? How do you like paying $7500 towards each rich person’s new electric toy? Oil subsidies? Over 1/2 goes to wind and solar scams, another 25% to the ethanol scam. Obama gets FAR more off a gallon of gas than Exxon does. But you sound like a real jealous Obama moocher. How long you been on the dole? You still haven’t admitted to us how long.
You lie more than MrMalibuBarbieLABobE. What a leftist zombie you are gloompocket. Useful idiot ring a bell with you?
Oil Subsides, Yes….AND BILLIONS FOR GREEM ENERGY,Which Isn’t helping AT ALL!! BY THE WAY…THE 1% DEMOCRATS ARE STILL DRIVING THEIR BIG CARS!!
Unlike, Obama and his people who let GE pay NO taxes, cut deals with big Pharma after publicly villifying them etc etc ad infinitum and ad nauseum… I’ve got news for you…….
Public records show that Demorats are typically welathier than republicans in Washington and Elsewhere. Tech leaders, Hollywood types etc etc are MOSTLY Leftists. They also weasel their way out of taxes and give less of their incomes to charity… Bezos, Soros, Gates, Buffet, almost ANYONE in Hollywood, all these filthy rich people are DEMOCRATS. IF the republicans are the party that lets rich people keep their money how are these people so rich and why do they still suport Democrats?
You just keep drinking the kool aid while “they feed you lies from the tablecloth” : ) http://www.kjv-truth-ministries.org
Oh, okay then, well I guess one of the riches men in the world, George ‘sorry-@SS Soro’s isn’t pulling Ovomit by the string like a little black puppet?? No one in this country will ever know the truth about how much this man gave to ovomit’s campaign. EXPLAIN TO ME HOW ONE STATE HAD 100% VOTES FOR OBLAMYA??? I KNOW YOU CAN’T BECAUSE IT WAS RIGGED AND BOUGHT.
YOU WOULD PROBABLY BE THE FIRST PERSON WHO WOULD WANT TO PAY FOR HOW MANY $H!Ts YOU TAKE A DAY?!
HOW MUCH IS 18TRILLION MINUS 9 TRILLION? WELL THAT IS HOW MUCH DEBT THAT STUPID MAN YOU CALL A PRESIDENT HAS PUT OUR COUNTRY INTO. DOES THAT SOUND REPUBLICAN TO YOU? BTW, DID YOU GET A FREE CELL PHONE FROM THE OBAMA HOOD WELFARE RAISES?
MORE people will leave!!! These politicians ore NUTS!!!
Yes, Californians, you DO get what you vote for.
This might inadvertently be a blessing in disguise. Perhaps, our illegal occupants with drivers licenses in Calif. will reconsider their invasion and do a Uturn back to Mexico.
I’m afraid not. “They just keep coming”.
We could make billions by taxing all the illegals for every mile they drive north of Tijuana.
It would be rather easy to see how much tax would be paid with a VMT tax versus a traditional tax on each gal of gasoline and diesel sold. California known the information about what cars and trucks are currently registered and they know how many tax dollars that they are collecting on gasoline and diesel fuel. I would guess they know hoe many gals of each type of gasoline (low versus high octane) are sold or can get that easily from refineries that supply the state. They could make a rough estimate by just assuming each car drives the same proportion of gasoline sold to calculate miles driven by cars. Same could be done for diesel trucks and cars.
Then calculate how much tax would be brought in based on the tax per mile for each tpe of veicle. you know the state will start the tax lower than it will be in the future so it is stupid to say the government can measure drivers’ reaction to the new tax. Also people will drive less when confronted with a mile per gal tax IMHO. And people will not spend big bucks to buy electric or hybrid vehicles when they are paying the same tax as gasoline and diesel users. Also drivers will try to buy non ethanol fuel since you get more mile per gallon with it by about 20% or so and don’t ruin you car’s pistons and rings.
And rest assured Democrats WILL raise the tax per mile, which even the 47% and the moochers will pay.
They really are trying their hardest to get everyone but the moochers to move out of the state.
quit your job and go on welfare, its the californian way , go to the beach , have fun , barry will provide
Like pushing string uphill, or herding cats! Only in your mind; as Archie would say!
The CA “blend” is already the most costly to refine/blend…and, it is only used in one other area…Denver, CO. Just who do they think is going to “add on top” of that over $4/gal snot they are forcing them to use now, eh?.
Just look at the current Fed push… DOT repairs needs more money, because they gave all the reserves away to bike paths and “special buses”…Check CA’s current income/revenues vs actual “road use/repairs” expenses..I’m betting that LESS THAN 50% gets to where it was originally intended…
Besides: as I recall… only in CA could you see 4 or 5 Caltrans guys leaning on their “handles” while one Jose’ down in the hole was actually digging or working!… The biggest bunch of frig-offs there ever was!… Very similar to CalFire weenies! worthless.
I was about to respond to Montana, but I glanced down and saw my favorite fella, Woonsocket who is a screaming LIBERAL!! Global warming is just another diversion and a farce that the liberals support. It’s their champion cause this yr. because what else do they have to campaign on.
This should be for everyone even their people in high offices… Obama wants everyone to do this, so better watch our own State, then we need to stop this ASAP
When is Cali-fornication going to drop off into the Ocean.
At this point, I wish they WOULD give CA back to the Mexicans.
don’t worry they are coming along with the Russians, Chinese.
10-4, thanks for your service.
LA is almost there already.
Global warming is real and everyone should pitch in their fair share to help reverse the effects. That’s EVERYONE, including the richest people on the planet. The response to the dependency oil has been dismal because of a rigged govt. that rewards those who make the 1% richer.
The response with green energy isn’t designed to be cheap. It’s supposed to be designed to work. If it can be done cheaper, so be it. Global warming is real and the CO2 levels being produced is off the charts compared to over 1 million yrs. ago.
“Last time carbon dioxide levels were this high: 15 million years ago, scientists report”
You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.”
” You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.”
http://phys.org/news174234562.html
Sure wish we had some of that phony warming this Winter.
Are ALL Democrats gullible?
Uh . . . . . yep!!
There is absolutely no empirical evidence for global warming. It is nothing but computer models and as we know about computers, garbage in, garbage out. Tell me how they measured CO2 levels 15 million yeras ago. Temps have remained constant for the past 17 years in complete contradiction of the computer models. Your rich liberal political gods will keep their cushy lifestyle while the rest of us live like peasants. They will laugh at useful idiots like you chicken little. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Libs rule by fear There has to be a bogeyman to fight so they can hide the fact that they are shafting you. You are a pathetic little beanpocket.
Well according to Wikipedia, which I am sure we can all agree isn’t exactly any kind of conservative forum, :
The Miocene /ˈmaɪəsiːn/ (symbol MI[1]) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene period and extends from about 23.03 to 5.332 million years ago
The earth went from the Oligocene through the Miocene and into the Pliocene as it cooled into a series of ice ages. The Miocene boundaries are not marked by a single distinct global event but consist rather of regional boundaries between the warmer Oligocene and the cooler Pliocene.
The apes arose and diversified during the Miocene epoch, becoming widespread in the Old World. In fact, by the end of this epoch, the ancestors of humans had split away from the ancestors of the chimpanzees to follow their own evolutionary path. As in the Oligocene before it, grasslands continued to expand and forests to dwindle in extent. In the Miocene seas, kelp forests made their first appearance and soon became one of Earth’s most productive ecosystems.
Wow, sounds pretty good like one of the most productive plant and animal development periods ever!
So, if plants and animals proliferated so incredibly and maybe as much as any period of time ever around the 15 million years ago time period that you mention what is the beef with how things were during that period of time 15 million years ago or so?!
Sounds like a virtual garden of Eden; what is so wrong with that.
Maybe we should be wishing for more of that.
Maybe we should be embracing co2 as the plant life giving gas that it is, and those plants as the animal life giving sustenance that they are.
Then maybe we could have a virtual garden of Eden and proliferation of plants and animals like happened on the face of the earth at that 15 million years ago time that you talk about.
Also, the link you post does not suggest a negative impact only that there is indication of historic variations of CO2 levels and that there probably was no permanent ice on the polar caps and that the sea levels were probably higher before the CO2 levels started dropping.
That would actually seem to be a positive indicator suggesting that most all the prior earth’s history was both warmer and more prolific as far as plant and animal development than the recent history of the earth.
Also, about the water levels rising, well only when the ice that melts is over land will any water levels rise.
And with everyone screaming about the ice over Greenland and Antarctica having melted so much already without much if any increase in sea level well I am not sure that one is as dramatic as is propagandized.
And anyone building right on the oceans with any common sense knows that there are all kinds of hazards building on the coastline besides the just the water rising —-
So, woopie one more hazard to add to the other thousand hazards of building on coast lines.
First off, for the majority of the last 600 million years CO2 has been 5 to 15 times higher than now. We live in a time at which CO2 is alarmingly low, as plants cease to grow at 200 ppm, and we were at 280 ppm not long ago.
Also, 80,000 direct chemical CO2 readings clearly show that CO2 has been much higher than now during three periods of the last 200 years. It was by cherry-picking the data that the “scientist”/criminals could claim it has always been low until recently.
Their global warming by CO2 junk science model claims that the upper troposphere (at – 17 deg C) is warming the Earth’s surface (at 15 deg C). It is thermodynamically impossible for a cold body to warm a hot body. Otherwise the walls of a room temperature too would serve to cook us.
Also, as we contribute only 3% of the annual CO2 budget and CO2’s half-life in the atmosphere is about 5 years (not the 200 to 1000 years claimed by the propaganda ministry IPCC and NASA, respectively), even if CO2 caused any warming, our contribution is undetectable.
The Four Seasons Are More Real!! You Pitch In With Your Fair Share…..We’ll keep The OIL!
High tax rates is a large part of what got California into the fiscal mess they are in now.
Yet another reason I am glad I don’t live in California.
Doug, I am writing a book entitled, “Why I Am Glad I Don’t Live In California”. It’s up to 500 pages now and this news should get a couple more pages out of the press!!
What will Californians do when professional truck drivers stop at the state line and refuse to drive within the state? We have no choice to stay home or take public transportation. Miles driven is what our pay is based on. Miles from shipper to consignee is one of the measures that freight prices are set from. How will they export all the produce for California growers? This reaches a lot further than at face value.
Democrats. There has NEVER been a tax that they did not like
In a tourist driven state, fuel taxes are what generates revenue (I’m from Central Florida) mainly from tourists. I wonder how they are going to enforce it with tourists autos? Have a “weigh station” like booth at all lines and check people’s odometers when they come in and go out??? Just another level of bureaucracy that will wind up costing more than the tax revenue brings in. Typical Demlibtard ploy!
Anything that generates income for any government agency is a tax. Remember that people. I don’t care what service it might be for such as a driver’s license, fishing license, or whatever… These fees exist for one reason and that is to generate income for government agencies. Most all these ridiculous charges didn’t exist a hundred years ago. That was because our average government representative was generally an average citizen who had an issue with the government and usually served no more one or two terms to accomplish the goal that caused them to pursue an elected office to start with. Career politicians were a rare beast at that and earlier times. Today most legislators (both local and national) are attorneys; many of which believe all should be such.
When I was in high school; “The U. S. President” earned $50,000.00 a year, a congressman or a U.S. Senator earned $600.00 a month with no retirement income whatsoever. Their primary source of income was by giving commencement speeches and the likes for exorbitant fees at the time and till this day still use for additional income. And incase you didn’t know; they now earn 100% retirement income after serving just one term with life time medical care. A congressman and U.S. Senators annual salary is nearly $200,000 a year and I have recently seen where one congressman is complaining that that is not enough. Most of us would love to be in that “Briar Patch” And I have not included all the other financial benefits that they have seen fit to award themselves with..
When the world wakes up and realizes that the U.S. Petro Dollar is worthless which for the most part will cause a world wide economic collapse and welcome in
“The New World Order” which will be a CATASTROPHE like no other that has ever existed. It will be like pure hell on earth. And wew will have brought this on to ourselves.
Yes and the IRS was suppose to be voluntary.
Wonder when they will tax toilet paper as you use toilet paper?
My, my, my. . .will this make up for all the illegal aliens that do not have car insurance? But they don’t work anyhow and most likely live off handouts from the government which is buying their vote. Wonder what hollyweird has to say about this. Don’t you love big government, even if it is in the state.
Sorry but the argument that more fuel mileage means less tax income is wrong. Even tho the cars are getting more miles per gallon, there are more cars put on the road each year which will off set the more mileage.
There is 7,139,000 gallons of gas sold daily in CA. The tax is 63.9 cents a gallon 18.4 cents is federal tax. That comes to about $456,182,100.00 a day for road repair Now multiply by 352 days.
Now do that for all 50 (or as oblammer says 57) states. The real problem is congress took the road use tax out of the road fund and put it in the general fund.
Time to register you cars outside of commie California.
I drive over 100 miles daily. That would cost me an additional $15.00 a day if I lived in that liberal Utopia. And it will hurt the poor people the most because affluent people can afford to move closer to work.
California liberal politicians just keep finding more ways to drive people and businesses out of its State.
To Woonsocket: the system did not allow me to reply directly, so I will do it this way.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Democrat) told President Nixon (in the early 70’s) that unless Global Warming was addresses, New York City would be under water by the year . . . . . . 2000!!
Anybody take a boat ride down Broadway lately? How about a gondola ride down Wall Street? Once again, Climate Change is crap!!!
Answer these questions for me Woonsocket. If we could:
– get rid of fossil fuel and replaced all vehicles with electric cars
– manufacture everything globally without ANY pollution
what answers would you give the people (currently, liberals blame Climate Change) when a huge hurricane wipes out a city, a gaggle of tornadoes move across middle United States, or we experience a hot, dry summer?
You and your ilk could no longer blame Climate Change, so now what?? Let me guess . . . .too many people! That’s right, we need to rid our planet of too many people. Wake up dude!! It’s crap and has been for over 50 years.
Tax Wall St; tax the rich – working people are already paying too much in taxes – the sales tax is one of the most evil and regressive taxes ever implemented – working people do not need more taxes.