News From Orwellian Oregon

Written By D.

The traffic on the Irony Super Highway doth get better and better in the land of Tax-a-Lot. MORE PUNISHMENT COMING YOUR WAY FOR CONSERVING GASOLINE. Oregon,as well as other states and the feds, are looking into ways to tax the miles you drive by installing GPS devices to track it. I bet the good people of Oregon will get to pay for the devices too, why not add insult to injury?

WHY? Because fuel efficient cars use less gas and the state will lose revenue on the current gasoline tax. Hey, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090103/ap_on_re_us/mileage_tax_10

Forget the tax for a minute, what about the invasion of privacy? Don’t let the article fool you about them not being able to track your travels because that is what GPS locators do. If the tax was their only motive, then why not just have drivers list their mileage at the beginning and end of the year and submit it on their state tax form? They will probably argue that GPS will prevent cheating, but there really is no good answer to that question is there? That’s because every electronic device ever created can be beat with a cheat and GPS is very easy to jam.

So, our reward for conserving gasoline is to be taxed AND spied on. Beam me up Scotty!