All Roads will be Toll Roads

Thanks to improved gas mileage on modern vehicles and a steady increase in hybrid and electric vehicles, the gas tax just isn't what it used to be.  Therefore, government now wants to tax based on the odometer rather than the gas tank.  Well, it is government; they'll probably tax both.  The plan is to install a GPS in cars and then send out the bill based on how many miles the car went during the billing period.  Every road instantly becomes a toll road, even dirt roads.

Interestingly, I am sympathetic to the idea, especially if it was actually used to maintain the roads (unlikely).  It charges based on use, which is exactly how it should be done.  More miles equal more use and thus a higher tax.  I like toll roads, especially if they are privately owned.  Private owners have a vested interest in making your time on the road pleasant.  You are unlikely to take the toll road again if it is full of potholes.  On the other hand, government would far prefer to spend that money buying voters; not a lot of people vote based on the state of government-maintained infrastructure.  Also, with the GPS, there would be constant information on road usage so the money could be funneled to high use roads.  In fact, it would be possible to have the tax allocated to specific stretches of road; it is always best to limit politicians' discretion in the spending of tax dollars.

Of course, there are drawbacks.  If you want less of something, tax it.  By taxing miles driven, people will drive fewer miles.  Would a truck pay more than a Smart car?  It would be logical to charge based on the weight of the vehicle, thus taxing motorcycles less than SUVs.  If it didn't differentiate on weight, the return of the gas guzzler would follow.  If the gas tax was repealed (unlikely), the price of gas would drop overnight by 40 cents a gallon (varies by state but that's an average).  The tax also provides a nice lever to prod the people toward mass transit.  The higher the tax goes, the more likely people are to take the bus or hop on a subway.

I do not like the idea of a GPS in the car that the state monitors.  We have far too much government monitoring as it is.  Better to have the odometer read during yearly inspections and a tax be assessed based on that.  The tax could be part of the car registration cost:

"Mr. Smith, you drove 20,000 miles over the past year.  Your tax is $300."

Oh, did I mention that Oregon - the start up for this new tax - is charging 1.5 cents a mile?  That is the starting point.  When the income tax was introduced, the top rate was 7% but look at it now.  I foresee a higher tax and calls for bullet trains, a beloved government mass transit boondoggle... er... project.  If gas taxes were actually spent on roads and bridges, we wouldn't have a problem but, as I mentioned, potholes rarely appear in political ads.  Better to take that money and spend it on a new school or a convention center with a politician's name on it; that will attract some votes.  The same will be true for this new tax.

Shutdown Failure

As predicted, the Republicans folded, the media place ALL the blame on them, and they got nothing to show for the effort.  Failure.  It is odd that the Republicans repeatedly offered to open the government throughout the shutdown but the Senate and the President continually said "No."  One of the Republican offers was to give the President everything he wanted though it required that all members of Congress and their staffs must be on Obamacare like everyone else.  Harry Reid squashed that and the media didn't hammer him for it.  I wonder how that would have played had it been a Republican Senate that refused to reopen the government in order to protect such perks.  Think the press would have shrugged and continued to blame the other party?  I suspect not.

Some say this hasn't been a complete loss.  The shutdown shined a light on government and the citizenry has the lowest opinion of it since records have been kept.  Also, the Republicans have successfully placed themselves firmly in opposition to Obamacare, a program that is off to a rocky start to say the least.

Sleepy Hollow

I watched the first two episodes of this new Fox series the other night and have to say I am unimpressed.  The basic plot is that Ichabod Crane beheads a Hessian soldier during the Revolutionary War but dies in the process.  He comes back to life in modern day thanks to some witchcraft.  Ichabod joins forces with Abbie Mills, a police officer - a black woman in trousers! - to fight against the forces of evil.

In the pilot, the Hessian - now a headless horseman - is back and searching for his head.  The best part about the episode was that Clancy Brown gets beheaded.  Clancy Brown played the Kurgan in The Highlander, a movie about immortals who can only die when their head is chopped off.  Good casting there.  The rest is hard to swallow.  Ichabod explains that he was General Washington's specialist in fighting witchcraft and demons, which is why he had been dispatched against the Hessian.  Abbie is won over far too easily (massively imperiling her career with little basis), Ichabod accepts his resurrection much too quickly, and the police bring him in as a consultant far too readily.

In the second episode, the forces of evil seek to resurrect a powerful witch who was burned during the Revolutionary War.  The big problem here is that witches weren't burned in America, they were hanged.  And the last batch of witches hanged was at Salem in 1692, not 1780.  Such historical illiteracy always grates on me.  Furthermore, Ichabod knows of the underground tunnels that run beneath Sleepy Hollow and he discovers a stash of black powder still there.  Seriously?  Not only that, it proves to still be highly explosive after two centuries in a damp underground tunnel.  Sigh.  Another goofy thing is that Ichabod is still wearing his 1780s clothes in the second episode.  Couldn't get something modern?

On the positive, I did like how he tossed aside his pistol after firing once.  "It has more than one shot?"  Awesome.  His exchange with Officer Mills about how he had always favored abolition was quite amusing.  Better yet was when he complained about his incarceration and gave an impassioned statement about his rights.  But the best was his shock that breakfast should cost nearly $5 and 40 cents was tax.  That is nearly 10% and we went to war with England because it was 2%.  Yes!  There is some accurate history!

At one point, our heroes learn of a prophecy that says two witnesses will spend seven years together in an effort to stave off the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; targeting a 7 year run for the series?  Overly optimistic.

Debt Crisis Yawner

Again with the default talk and the manufactured panic, all to convince the American people to further rob their grandkids to pay for current services.  As I noted in a previous post, a default is when you fail to pay the interest on your debts, not when you stop paying for current services.  The government can layoff several departments worth of employees and that isn't default; that's economizing.  As George Will noted, "Default is a choice."  The government need merely service the debt in order to maintain the full faith and credit of the US.  That is about 10% of the budget...  er... continuing resolution (we don't do budgets anymore despite US law that requires them).  If the debt ceiling is not raised, that puts the ball in Obama's court to pick and choose how the incoming revenues are disbursed.  He would have to CHOOSE to default.  Sadly, I wouldn't put it past him.  He has actually spent shutdown budget repeatedly blocking off National Mall.

The Republicans might be on to something with the shutdown and the debt crisis.  They have long claimed to be the party of small government (disingenuously) and this gives them the opportunity to achieve that.  Failing to raise the debt ceiling will force government to spend within its means and the shutdown can be made permanent.  Heck, the government is still 83% open, hardly a shutdown.

Of note, neither party wants to diminish the power of the Federal Government.  A sizable minority of Republicans - the Tea Party Caucus - have the party over a barrel.  Boehner cannot pass anything without their approval unless he does so with Democratic votes.  Such a move breaks the Republican caucus in half and ends his speakership.  Much as the rest of the Republicans hate that, they understand that to ostracize the Tea Partiers is to cripple their majority.

Back to the Debt Limit, imagine what the last 5 years growth would have been like had it not been raised.  Six trillion dollars of borrowed money would not have inflated the growth numbers.  Consider that gross domestic product (GDP) is defined as follows:

C + I + G + (X - M)

That is, Consumption + Investment + Government + (eXports - iMports).  Note that government spending is reckoned in the figures.  Thus, by borrowing all that money, the government goosed the numbers.  Consider if I took out a $100,000 loan this year and counted that as income.  Wow, this would be a really great year.  That is what the government does every year.  And even so, our growth has been pathetic, hovering at 2%.  Cutoff the borrowing and the truth will out.  Almost everyone in Washington is afraid of the truth.

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me for five years, I'm an Obama voter."

The quote is from Charlie Martin.  Here's a link to the article:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/10/14/i-told-you-so-obamacare-edition/

Bias

The federal government has been in partial shutdown since Oct. 1 after the Republican-controlled House refused to pass legislation to fund government services unless the president's health care law is delayed or defunded. Obama has refused to negotiate over his signature domestic legislation, otherwise known as Obamacare.

I read the above passage on Yahoo News.  How else might it have said the same thing?  Let's try a bit of a rewrite:

The federal government has been in partial shutdown since Oct. 1 after the Democrat-controlled Senate refused to pass legislation to fund government services unless the president's health care law was left unaltered.

The first lays blame for the shutdown on the Republicans and the second on the Democrats.  Both of these statements are true.  In which case, it is hard to lay blame on only one party.  The fact that it is laid on one demonstrates a bias of Yahoo News.

http://news.yahoo.com/arizona-de-fuhrer-barton-obama-134942788.html

Who Saw This Coming?

I follow Instapundit (http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/) and came across this today.  The Obamacare rhetoric has finally met the Obamacare reality and some eyes have been opened.

 

Cindy Vinson and Tom Waschura are big believers in the Affordable Care Act. They vote independent and are proud to say they helped elect and re-elect President Barack Obama.

 

"I was laughing at Boehner -- until the mail came today," Washura said.  "I really don't like the Republican tactics, but at least now I can understand why they are so pissed about this. When you take $10,000 out of my family's pocket each year, that's otherwise disposable income or retirement savings that will not be going into our local economy."

 

"Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."

 

The entire article is available here:

 

http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_24248486/obamacares-winners-and-losers-bay-area

 

Here we have a teachable moment.  As Ms. Vinson said, she wanted everyone to have health care but she assumed someone else would pay for it.  Yes, the Obama voter is always generous with someone else’s money.  I have tried for years – with disappointing results – to impart this lesson.  Government does everything less efficiently and more expensively than the private sector.  I also like how Mr. Washura ‘laughed’ at the Speaker of the House until he discovered that Boehner was trying to keep that ten grand in Mr. Washura’s pocket.  Hey, maybe Boehner has a point.

 

Of course, I don’t take these two to be evidence of massive failure.  Anecdotes can tell whatever story you want them to tell.  However, while selling Obamacare to the nation, Obama quite clearly stated that if you liked your current plan, you could keep it.  I suspect that these two are not the only ones who didn’t get to keep their current – and much less expensive – plans.  If only someone had warned that this would happen.  Oh, wait, I did.

 

Obsession

Majority Leader Harry Reid accused the Republicans of being 'obsessed' by Obamacare and couldn't figure out why.  Let's have a look at the history of big and controversial legislation.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 - now widely credited solely to the Democratic Party - was passed with 199 Democratic votes (65% of the Democrats) and 166 Republicans (80%).  Not so controversial when you look at the votes but viewed so today.  Anyway, very bipartisan.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was even more lopsided with 400 votes in favor vs. only 104 opposed, getting the majority of each party.

The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (part of LBJ's War on Poverty) passed with 32 Republican votes and 254 Democrat votes.  Clearly not a favorite of Republicans but still able to coax about a sixth of them to vote in favor.

No Child Left Behind (2001) passed with huge bipartisan support, 473 to 53.

Medicare Part D (2003) passed by a very narrow margin, but enjoyed bipartisan support.

The Authorization for Military Force in Afghanistan (2001) - which has become extremely controversial since it was approved - had almost unanimous support, passing 98 - 0 in the Senate and with only 1 vote in opposition (Barbara Lee of CA) in the House.

The Authorization for the Iraq War (2003) got 263 Republican votes and 103 Democrat votes in favor.  Of course, not long after this, most of the Democrats denounced their votes with claims of being 'lied to' by the administration.  Nonetheless, this now hugely controversial vote enjoyed considerable bipartisan support.

The Affordable Care Act (2010) got 279 Democrat votes and 0 Republican votes.  Also, not to be overlooked, it had 34 Democrats voting against it.  The opposition to the bill was bipartisan but not the support.  Here is the most consequential legislation in decades and yet it was passed on an entirely partisan vote.  Why is anyone surprised that the party that voted 100% in opposition would be so determined to undermine it?

The President and the Democrats continually say that the Supreme Court upheld the law.  Yes, but the President has dramatically altered what the Supreme Court approved.  He has delayed the Employer Mandate (without benefit of Congressional Legislation), the cap on benefits, subsidy based on income, and about half the deadlines.  The President has offered more than 2000 waivers from the law.  He has provided for the Congress to get health care subsidies not available to the common folk, effectively exempting them from the law.  The law did not provide for the Federal Government to setup Exchanges but they've done it anyway because half the states declined to do so!  This is not the law the Congress passed or the Supreme Court found Constitutional.  Presidents do not get to rewrite laws to their liking.  Considering this, why is anyone surprised that some are adamantly opposed?  This is not the rule of law.

Great Line

On Special Report tonight, Jonah Goldberg noted that 7 security personnel were dispatched to the World War II Memorial to protect it from World War II veterans, which turns out to be two more security personnel than were posted in Benghazi.  Ouch!

All or Nothing

Not surprisingly, there is heat on the Republicans for the government shutdown.  So, per my suggestion, the Republicans have sent over some piecemeal bills to fund this or that part of the government.  The Senate (run by Democrats) has refused to vote on them.  Thus, even though the Democrats could ameliorate the pain of the shutdown by simply passing the continuing resolutions for those functions of government that both parties agree upon, they have opted not to do so.  Why?  The reason is clear: a piecemeal approach will allow the Republicans to take the pressure off.  After all, how many Americans are going to complain if the shutdown is reduced to only the Obamacare Exchanges?  The Democrats need AS MUCH of the government shutdown as possible so that they can pressure the Republicans through the media and public opinion.  With each part of the government that is reopened, the pressure diminishes.  In short, it benefits the Democrats to have the shutdown be as onerous as possible.  Who shut down the government again?

As for Obamacare, it is too soon to tell but there are certainly signs of failure.  President Obama compared the glitches in Obamacare to those of IOS7 for Apple.  Apple had some glitches and fixed them.  No one suggested that Apple stop selling iPhones and iPads because it didn't work perfectly.  That strikes me as a weak comparison.  The government is not REQUIRING people to buy Apple products but it is requiring Obamacare on pain of IRS fines... er... taxes (thank you, Chief Justice John Roberts).  Even Obama cheerleaders at MSNBC and CNN have been unable to purchase insurance through the exchanges.  Yes, this will improve.  However, if three years of preparations have resulted in this kind of rollout, the final product will probably make the DMV look efficient.