In Which the Washington Bureau Chief Drools Over Cars Whilst Pretending to Comment on Tax Policy

by Eileen McGuire-Mahony | 3:24 am, December 30, 2008 | Comments Off

Some government monkeys find it easy to make policy recommendations because the sorts of things that concern some of us – like privacy and civil liberties – are non-issues in their world.  Indeed, if you consider getting more money and power for the government as the only ends to be served, policy is pretty damn easy.

Transportation funding is a popular target lately.  Colorado has seen its share of Blue Ribbon shenanigans while the city of Denver is testing a program to wring more money at parking meters that it ought to ashamed of.  Yet, no matter who many pudgy meter maids in poly-blend shorts we’ve got scurrying around LoDo, we’ve got nothing on our northern sister state.

Historically, we have had to watch out for Oregon, and they are still hard at work to hold their preeminent place as progenitor of dangerous ideas.  The state’s governor, one Ted Kulongoski, is asking the legislature to pass a bill using mandatory GPS implants on cars and satellite tracking to charge citizens by the mile.  Serene in a way only possible to those who don’t think through their positions, Mr. Kulongoski has found that gas taxes won’t work because a relentless campaign to cut down on driving has also cut down on gas tax revenue.  Clearly, this calls for more state intervention.

Oregon state officials have all the cooing assurances one would expect: privacy concerns will be ‘paramount’, data on driving habits will never be collected, and the state itself won’t install the GPS devices.  What they mean by this is that steamrolling over the privacy concerns of citizens will be made a paramount goal.  Thus, a government vetted company, likely run by some legislator’s morally bankrupt and mentally deficient brother, will be awarded a contract to install GPS devices, most likely at the vehicle owner’s expense, on privately owned cars.  They will, because they’re just that trustworthy, retain no information on when and where people drive.  You’ll just have a government monitored tracking device on your car against your will, while gas stations will have similar monitoring devices on their pumps to read tracking data.  What could ever be wrong with this?

Of course, tracking data will be maintained, by the assortment of companies who buy the contracts and by the government.  it will find its way into the hands of countless contractors and employees.  It will be a stalker’s field day and it will spawn an entire black market industry as people have these odious tracking devices removed.  Soon, Oregon’s citizens will hear grand talk of how many other illegal activities could be curbed by tracking people’s driving habits, and since the devices are already on cars, why not?

The Oregon proposal will forgive the $0.24 a gallon state gas tax in favor of a 1.2 cents tax for every mile driven.  Now, these are numbers and you can do math with numbers.  So long as you pay 24 cents a gallon, you’re further ahead of the game the better your gas mileage.  You maintain your car and save the racetrack style driving for special occasions.  In this scenario, your cost per mile to drive keeps dropping the better you do on fuel mileage.

At 20mpg, you’re equal to the proposed mileage tax of 1.2 cents a mile.  But most of us still do better than that.  You’ll pay 0.96 cents a mile if you get 25mpg, 0.75 cents at 32mpg, and so on.  If you can hit 40mpg, you’re down to 0.6.  Become the preening green owner of a hybrid and you can brag about the 0.4 cents a mile it costs you and Al Gore to motor around at 60mpg.  The current scenario simply rewards those who own efficient cars.

But in the eyes of the government, that’s a problem.  Something must be done to reclaim what it sees as money it is entitled to.  Despite a massive push to get people to drive fuel-efficient cars and cut down total driving having been the government’s own idea, it intends to punish us.  The flat fee per-mile, compared to the standard gas tax, punishes the owners of efficient cars while giving a tax break to the owners of sports cars, massive luxury sedans, and SUVs.  Let’s explore this theme, shall we?

Consider the Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4 FbG par Hermes, a cute little 7-speed sequential manual transmission mid-engine touring sedan with 1001 HP and a top speed above 250mph, providing unparalleled comfort for you and one of the many, many friends you will have if you actually own this beast.  Given 9.6 seconds, it goes for 0 to 100mph, and back to 0.  After an unfortunate road-testing incident when a bird hit the grill at 205 mph, the grill is now solid titanium.  The drag co-efficient is 0.36.  It has full time all-wheel drive a 4.5 power to weight ratio.  And it can’t go on a road trip unless you intend to have a fuel tanker follow you.

Yes, all of this wonderfulness requires fuel, 5.82 mpg in the city and 9.76mpg average.  At top speed, it takes 770 pounds of downheft to keep the car on the road while the entire 26 gallon tank goes dries in 12 minutes, equating to 2.05mpg.  The Veyron is simultaneously the fastest, the most expensive, and the least fuel efficient production car in existence.  It is ridiculous.  It is outrageous.  It will reduce leftists to stupefied, intolerant rage and it is, therefore, a very good thing.

With a $1.7 million base price tag and a total production run of 300, don’t expect to see too many of these.  But it serves a point.  Even using the official EPA fuel ratings of 10/12 city/highway, this is just the kind of car that would be picking up a nice tax savings under Mr. Kulongoski’s plan.  Averaging out the EPA numbers to 11mpg, Oregon is proposing to give a 1.8% tax refund on fuel to people who can afford to maintain a car that takes $25,000 a set tires.  And 1.8% back on the tax for a year’s fuel for a car that requires 93 octane or better will add up. Should the Bugatti need to use its top speed to flee a mob of angry GreenPeace ninnies, that 2.05mpg represents a 10.8%  savings from a gas tax to a mileage tax.  You’ll be counting coin while the eco-police are still picking road grit out of their dreadlocks.

Likewise, you could play James Bond in the Aston Martin DB9 for the same eye-wateringly bad fuel economy while driving something that looks slightly less like the lovechild of an alien and a lawnmower.  If you want to pull up in something that could be the alien parent, try the Lamborghini Murcielago.  Take the kids along in the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, a supercar that seats four even if the 599GTB Fiorano is sexier.  Hell, thanks to Saab and Mercedes Benz, there are even station wagons that earn spots in the EPA bottom ten.  And all these luxury cars would get tax breaks under Kulongoski’s proposal.

The crucial point here is at 20mpg.  That’s the point where 24 cents a gallon for fuel and 1.2 cents a mile cost the same.  Above 20mpg, we’re all getting screwed.  I myself drive an Audi TT Quattro Roadster, the kind of car that will make you sneer at the very existence of automatic transmissions.  It is also the kind of car that will get you dangerously accustomed to taking effortlessly smooth hairpin turns in fifth gear while your co-pilot mixes martinis.  I say dangerous because I recently learned that not all cars have this performance characteristic when I took my parent’s nice, sensible sedan up the I-25 corridor.

Showing that the EPA may not know a damn thing about fuel economy, I get an average 27.4mpg, far better than what www.fueleconomy.gov says I should.  Presuming I would ever be daft enough to drive in Oregon, the switch from a gas tax to a mileage tax means a 32.49% increase in the cost to drive one mile for me.  Meanwhile, my poor, dear parents in their practical car would take a 53.3% hit for their responsible 36mpg.

The numbers get really bad once you get into the cars made with fuel efficiency as the defining point.  If owning a sleek sports car with a four-inch clearance and duel-chrome exhaust is the equivalent of riding a fine thoroughbred, then buying one of these pious self-indulgences in eco-snobbery is like saddling up the family cow for a night on the town.  The only thing that a cow will every have in common with an automobile worthy of the name is the bespoke leather.

At least the people who settle for accelerating from 0 to 45 in the time it takes to read a State Department memo get the reward of a car that is fantastically cheap to drive.  But not once Kulongoski gets his way.  The Toyota Pious, with its 48mpg, costs one half of one cent to drive per mile with a 24 cents a gallon fuel tax.  So Oregon wants to reward our tree-hugging earth savers with a 70% increase in the tax-portion of the cost of driving.  Ironically, these twerps are likely to be driving to Common Cause HQ to help stuff envelopes for an initiative to raise taxes, so they probably deserve to get socked anyway.

You could also abandon your dignity in the Smart ForTwo, your choice of coupe or convertible, to the tune of a 61.46% increase or cut your losses and trundle the soccer team about in the Toyota Yaris, which looks like a bow-legged cow in labor, for a mere 37% hike.

Of course, this isn’t what Oregon wants you to think of.  There are, you must understand, things the state must do, such as freshen up the crumbling infrastructure it allowed to fall into disrepair.  And to do it, the “Your priavacy and your money” grab is only part of the $1.3 billion plan.

Title taxes will double while registration will triple.  The tobacco tax will rise, state lottery funds will be raided, and, eventually, cute puppies will be forced to sell their collars and chew toys to pay their taxes.

Of course, just as setting up legal incentives to minimize driving and push people into buying ultra fuel efficient cars had bad side effects that anyone other than a bureaucrat could have foreseen, so this stunt will do the same.  And for all it will do, it won’t sate the government appetite for money.  The tax will rise, new fees will come in, and the federal tax on gas will still be there.  And there will be Kulongoski, or some idiot just like him, purring about the need for people to sacrifice a little more and help rebuild some bridge before ducking into a 20-foot limo and gliding away in his motorcade.

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