Sort of like a “pet ID” chip … for you

(No, unfortunately, this one is not an “April Fools” joke.)

Some 35 years ago, Americans first became generally aware that there could be a “gasoline crisis” — that our dependence on imported oil could combine with taxation, price controls, and other “well-meaning” government interventions to create fuel shortages, lines, all kinds of chaos.

Suddenly, those little imported cars that got superior gas mileage no longer looked like toys meant only for hippies and college professors.

But imagine that someone, 35 years ago, had said, “Watch out! If you let them legislate that cars have to get better gas mileage, they’ll eventually use the fact that we’re burning less fuel as an excuse to install tracking devices in our carts, so they can tell where we are every minute of the day.”

That person would have been dismissed as a paranoid fruitcake, right?

The Nevada Department of Transportation hosted a meeting in Reno March 30 to announce a new study on alternatives to fuel taxes to pay for road maintenance. With new cars and hybrid vehicles using less gas, fuel taxes haven’t kept pace with the government’s “needs,” explained NDOT Director Susan Martinovich.

By 2016, officials estimate Nevada could face a $6 billion shortfall in road maintenance needs. And Nevada isn’t alone. According to a 2008 estimate, the whole country was $140 billion short in highway funding, with the problem growing as gasoline taxes increasingly fail to cover the mounting demand for money.

One idea being considered by Nevada, the federal government and 15 other states is charging motorists for “vehicle miles traveled,” replacing gas taxes with a fee assessed on the actual amount of driving a person does, thus penalizing those who went out and bought vehicles that get better mileage, while rewarding those who kept their V-8s.

NDOT, along with the University of Nevada, Reno, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will study how such a system could be implemented.

Nobody seriously believes you can count on drivers to voluntarily report mileage driven. So most studies so far support wireless communication devices or Global Positioning System receivers installed in cars, which could record mileage driven, time of day traveled and the type of route, NDOT officials say. Car manufacturers could be required to install GPS devices to determine mileage and fees. (Assuming anyone but the government is still manufacturing cars, a few years from now.)

Such a system would also allow authorities to track down your exact whereabouts at any time, should you be wanted for questioning on suspicion you’ve been paying cash for medical services, using incandescent light bulbs or Freon refrigerant or full-sized toilet tanks, failing to pay your new federal “Value Added Tax” on proceeds from Internet or yard sales … any number of new “crimes” that would have had granddad scratching his head in wonder.

Scott Rawlins, NDOT deputy director, says privacy is a central issue in the debate.

“Some say we don’t want Big Brother following us around,” Rawlins said. “How do we protect the privacy of those vehicle owners and not have that sense out there?”

Read it again. Mr. Rawlins isn’t against tracking us. He just hopes they can come up with a way that prevents taxpayers from having the “‘sense” that we’re being tracked.

NDOT officials muse they could also take odometer readings during annual vehicle registration, or plant “cards” inside cars that automatically store mileage data, with the information recorded at card-reading stations where billing is determined.

What about out-of-state tourists and truckers? Nevada has lots of those. When “smart cards” or GPS devices replace the gas tax, would they contribute nothing at all to Nevada road maintenance? Or would these “smart cards” somehow know to remit mileage fees to the states in which those miles are driven?

Or would the new miles-traveled tax be added ON TOP OF the existing gas tax?

“If there is an opportunity to have another tool, I want that opportunity,” NDOT Director Susan Martinovich told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Not “a different tool,” but “another tool.”

Leaving aside a cheap handgun and a nylon stocking pulled down over her face — the favored “tools” of others who believe with Ms. Martinovich that they’re not getting “enough” of other people’s hard-earned money — here’s a tool:

Sue the federal government under the 10th Amendment. Tell them Nevada will be happy to maintain all the “post roads” in Nevada … and we’ll be glad to keep 100 percent of the fuel taxes Nevadans now pay, to get the job done. Thanks for offering to let us continue sending most of that loot to Washington, so they can dole back two-thirds to us with speed-limit and helmet-law and seat-belt strings attached — thanks (that is to say), but no thanks.

And if the courts don’t go for that, at least demand that the federals stop diverting targeted fuel tax excises into “Urban Mass Transit grants” and other “mass-transit” boondoggles.

This is America, where highways mean freedom, and freedom comes first.

One Comment to “Sort of like a “pet ID” chip … for you”

  1. MamaLiberty Says:

    Another thought… eliminate the “good old boy’s club” of preferential treatment in contracts awarded, and all of the built in waste/fraud/inflated costs of union labor.

    Private roads would be the best and ultimate answer, but in the meantime a strict overhaul of how roads are built and maintained is very much in order.

    And not just in Nevada, of course. Everywhere.