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You’ll learn in the first half of the video, for instance, how high-speed rail is like raising baby chicks (you’ll have to watch to understand). Around the 25-minute mark, you’ll hear about how the Obama Administration wants to divert revenues from the gas tax to all sorts of schemes (such as mass transit) that violate the user-pays principle. The video doesn’t address the fundamental issue of whether there should be any federal role in transportation, but it’s a great primer about current issues in transportation policy. comments on ~18:00 mark are interesting. |
Surpise surprise, Government Motors wants higher Gas Taxes so peopl ebuy their products:
General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he's confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker. From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110607/...#ixzz1OcYRawaR People will start buying more Cruzes and they will start buying less FTFY |
All this talk about how taxes should be collected...
The more fundamental question should be, "How much of GDP should gov't control anyway?" And "what is the proper role of gov't anyway?" Today estimates run between 35 and 45%. I think it should be 15% or less. The proper role is to protect liberty, not to "provide". |
But if the Gov't can provide Cruzes?!
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Government Motors has become yet another mouthpiece for the Obama administration. General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson told the Detroit News Saturday that he wants a $1 per gallon hike in the gas tax. Consumers already facing nearly $4 a gallon prices at the pump aren’t going to be pleased to see that figure jump overnight to $5, but the left and its crony capitalist allies don’t care what the public thinks. Mr. Akerson wants to use the power of government to make buying a Chevy Volt, GM’s entry into the electric car market, more economically attractive. Such marketplace intervention is apparently needed because a mere 481 Volts were purchased last month, despite government subsidies and incentives worth thousands of dollars. By comparison, Ford sold 42,399 unsubsidized F-series pickup trucks over the same period. That’s almost one big gas-guzzler every minute. The bureaucratic class at the state and federal level wants you to think the opposite is the case. They perpetuate the myth that gas-tax revenues are dangerously low because everyone is driving a Prius or some kind of electric car. “In the past, the Highway Trust Fund has been largely user-supported through fuel-tax revenue,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s blog explained last year. “However, technology and behavior have changed enough that this approach is no longer sufficient.” That’s the line government transportation officials have been peddling to justify proposals for per-mile taxes, converting the nation’s freeways into permanent toll roads and raising gas taxes. The claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Gas-tax revenues did fall during the Great Recession, but they’re back and on the rise. Even at their worst, motor fuel excise taxes were often more stable than levies on property, sales and income. Consider the numbers from Virginia. Gas-tax revenue declined 2.7 percent in fiscal year 2009 - the largest such decline in the last 20 years. During the same period, individual income-tax collections fell 6.3 percent. The Old Dominion’s drivers are getting back on the road. The latest available figures show gas tax receipts jumped 7.3 percent in April and are up 3 percent for the year. At the federal level, receipts were up 5.3 percent for April and a similar amount for the fiscal year through April. The excuses cooked up to justify new ways to soak motorists are bogus. Mr. Akerson’s efforts to impoverish his own customers serves as an important reminder of the danger of allowing government and Big Labor to take over a private company. |
I love reminding people that a $40,000 hybrid car is not a solution to $1/g fuel cost increases. It is a great solution to bankrolling company who gives a substantial portion of its profit to a street-gang union that certainly funds The Democratic National Labor Party.
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A 40K car that costs 40K to produce.
Nov. 23, New York Times: In his new book, "Overhaul," Mr. Rattner, who faces legal troubles unrelated to his work on the auto task force, writes that the Volt, which is priced at $41,000, is costing around $40,000 apiece to build. "At least in the early years, each Volt would cost around $40,000 to manufacture (development costs not included)," he writes. In an interview a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Rattner said he had learned of the Volt’s costs in the course of due diligence during the G.M. bankruptcy process. "I don’t know the precise number," he said. G.M. was nonetheless “right to do it,” he added, even in the absence of profit, because the program helped quiet critics “who’ve said for many years that the company was behind the curve." ...Mr. Rattner agrees that the Volt program will be valuable for G.M., but he's convinced that electric vehicles will not be a profit center for automakers anytime soon. “E.V.’s are everybody’s latest fantasy," he said. "No doubt they are important and they are real, but they won’t have an impact on profitability and sales for the foreseeable future." Unanswered questions: how much $$$$ is a 10-12 hour charge at 110v? Does money grow on trees? |
I don't know if this has been settled or whatever, but it would never happen. The state of ny and nj each tried to propose this. Everyone flipped a Shit because of how the funds would be distributed. And how to prove the cars were driving on those states' roads and not some other state's decrepit roads that desperately need construction. So they proposed to use gps transponders. Then came the invasion of privacy issue. So it pretty much had way too many elements that no one could decide on and the proposal became history. As for hybrids and ev's give everyone a tax credit for buying crx's and early 90's civics so they can spend their money on useful stuff not on automakers that can't create useful cars or stay out of the red. |
watch after minute mark 25:00 on the video I posted.
---- The gas tax was originally created to be exclusively dedicated to highways-so states could maintain them. then a republican increased and split the taxes to fund mass transit projects. then a republican increased and split the taxes to fund deficit reduction. then a democrat increased the tax and directed the increase directly to fund deficit reduction. that was later redirected back the general Highway Trust Fund. in 2008 the fund was depleted and required a transfer of $8 billion from general revenue funds by an act of Congress. It's basically a fucking joke and a general slush fund. The increases in the tax were never inflation based, yet today we have huge numbers of cars on the road; the idea that this tax hike that GM wants would somehow incentivize people to but a shitty Volt is completely left field. |
You'd be amazed at how much road maintenance costs. Something like 1 million bones to repave a 1/4 mile to a moderately owned 6 year old road. Not discounting that It's all bullshit. Just musing that a dime won't get you a tasty breakfast and a hooker anymore. What they should do? Let NATO handle all the over seas bull shit and have our troops build roads instead of getting shot at, sleeping in trenches, and driving through ied infested areas. Insanely unlikely but it would make more sense spending-wise than putting an inexperienced crazed marionette in power that will have to be off'ed in a few years. |
I know it costs a lot, and why they have the tax in the first place. They should be spending the money on the intended purpose-the tax was created solely to maintain highways.
At one point it helped fund the Korean War. Currently 20% of it helps fund mass transit projects, recreational trails, historic preservation, and scenic easements. It doesn't make sense for a fund that is paid for by rural and urban drivers to subsidize mass transit in metropolitain areas. Most of these projects have excessive cost to benefits ratios. Another large chunk of the tax goes to "paying down the deficit". I'll end with this: A good example of this is the North Shore Connector, a 1.2-mile extension of the light-rail line in Pittsburgh, which is currently under construction. Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn recently criticized this project as one of the three most offensive uses of federal stimulus funds. If it had not been for $62.5 million of economic stimulus funds, construction of the Connector would likely have been halted due to cost overruns. Not only has the cost increased from an original estimate of $363 million to $528.8 million, but, as noted by the Allegheny Institute, the project was scaled back in size after the federal government agreed to provide most of the funds. Consumers will not be willing to pay even close to the cost (more than six dollars per ride) that would be required to cover just the annual interest on the money invested in the North Shore Connector. The money spent on this project could be used to buy a brand new $40,000 SUV for each of the 11,500 riders per day that are expected to use this 1.2-mile section of light rail. The federal government would get much more for its transportation dollars if it used all of them for maintaining and expanding highways and bridges and left transit funding to local governments. If the federal fuel tax were eliminated and each state raised its fuel tax by the same amount, more money would be available for roads and highways. The Pennsylvania Constitution prohibits using state fuel-tax revenue for purposes other than funding roads and highways. Using the money paid in fuel taxes exclusively for roads, highways, and bridges would eliminate some of the funding gap faced by Pennsylvania and other states. In addition, a variety of innovative approaches to highway construction and maintenance, including public-private partnerships, could help reduce costs. To make up the remaining shortfall, citizens might be more willing to pay higher fuel taxes if they could be confident that the money was being spent for highways and bridges with spending priorities better reflecting drivers' priorities. |
I can't believe I work for these assholes. It makes perfect sense though when I consider the recent push for me to conduct business in a manner that strips me of dignity and responsibility to the American tax payer.
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More on Government Motors:
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...olt-factory%23 GM all solar-powered Volt plant: Solar paneling which cost $3 million to purchase and install – buy only saves them $15,000 a year in electricity. This means that for the plant to break even via savings on the green investment, it will have to operate – without solar fail, while making unprofitable cars no one wants – for two hundred years. (If you read my post on Bill Clinton's Newsweek article, this is how people plan to save the economy) ---- Seven months ago Obama said our investment in GM would make us money, today he says, "The government will lose less than 20 percent of the $80 billion used to bail out the U.S. automobile industry" and even add, "The losses are less than the administration originally expected". ----- GM has recalled plenty of cars over the last few weeks: http://www.news.com.au/business/gm-r...-1226013821384 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...75D35620110614 http://articles.economictimes.indiat...g-transmission http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchin...t_12677155.htm http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41619773/ns/business/ http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12466415 http://www.daytondailynews.com/busin...m-1012351.html http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/l...shColumbiaHome http://biggovernment.com/smotley/201...off-the-carts/ Hard to make a profit when your cars are falling apart. ---- I'll leave you with this: President Obama didn’t ramp up his taxpayer-coin choke hold on General Motors to save it – he did it to make it easier for him to exert his ideological will upon it. He did it to be able to eviscerate bankruptcy law – throwing bond holders over the side to the benefit and illegal betterment of his union allies. He did it to be able to close down Republican-backing car dealership owners. He did it to be able to handpick the CEO – again, the eternally malleable, like-Left-minded Akerson – to help him execute his Government Motors Picasso-esque warped worldview. Thus is Government Motors both a cause and an effect of President Obama’s push to mutate America into a Socialist dystopia. Serving not only to move forward the Leftist agenda, but also as a visual aide for how Obama thinks a private company should operate. The private sector not being one of Obama’s favorite places – quite possibly because he has repeatedly demonstrated complete bewilderment at the concept. Having described his brief time spent there as being like “working behind enemy lines.” Having repeatedly excoriated the profits necessary to make it possible to expand, hire more people – and send all those tax dollars to Washington to which he then has wasteful and punitive access. So GM is to serve as Obama’s business model for his fundamentally transformed America. Broke and broken, unprofitable and unpopular. But engaging in all of the radical Leftist pet projects Obama wants – so none of that other stuff really matters. Behold Government Motors – quickly becoming the quintessential embodiment of the Obama Vision for America. |
Remember this oldie but goodie from Obama?
“Let me say this as plainly as I can. If you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired just like always. Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it has ever been. Because starting today, the United States will stand behind your warranty.” Today, GM is trying to say because of the bankruptcy (which wasn't even supposed to happen after the bailout) they are seeking to dismiss the responsibly to repair a flaw on the 2007 and 2008 impala "because the flaw predated its bankruptcy" They reason "New GM’s warranty obligations for vehicles sold by Old GM are limited to the express terms and conditions in the Old GM written warranties on a going-forward basis. New GM did not assume responsibility for Old GM’s design choices, conduct, or alleged breaches of liability under the warranty.“ http://mobile.reuters.com/article/id...10819?irpc=932 So we were forced to bailout GM to make good on the auto unions contracts, but it seems that some contracts are more equal than others. |
Jesus titty fucking christ this nation is in trouble.
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Sigh.
Sometimes I wonder if we can be saved. It's going to take a major event, and probably a lot of dead people, to change anything. |
Originally Posted by FRT_Fun
(Post 762218)
Sigh.
Sometimes I wonder if we can be saved. It's going to take a major event, and probably a lot of dead people, to change anything. Following the Constitution is a pretty major event. |
Originally Posted by Braineack
(Post 762221)
Following the Constitution is a pretty major event.
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