Featured 3 States Drop Gas Tax as Prices Soar

Our state recently took action to help its citizens.

As many of you know used car prices have skyrocketed in the recent year and people in our state were getting an unpleasant surprise when registering their vehicles with the increasing valuations. Our state legislators passed a law that car valuations were to be based on their values pre pandemic.

This was to give us relief from the escalating values of used vehicles- much appreciated.

Kentucky House Passes Bill to Keep Tax Rates on Motor Vehicles at 2021 Values; Representative Ryan Dotson and Senator Ralph Alvarado Comment on the Pending Legislation - Winchester Sun | Winchester Sun

Governor is proposing lowering sales taxes

Beshear proposes sales tax decrease (wcpo.com)

In these cases legislators are reaching out to lessen the economic tax burdens on us.

 

In your pleading please use the phrase "eminent domain" so that the judge can understand what you are asking for.

 

You think those tax cuts were designed to benefit you? Not hardly.

 

the solution is less driving, more speed traps and higher fines. we're supposed to be discouraging fossil fuel use, not encouraging it by making things easier on lazy uncaring americans

 

Lowering the taxes is fine, but it won't do any good without also closing some roads to prevent wear on them.

OK who wants to sell rotating part time road closures to their neighbors? Bonus: convince everyone that the calendar/map is fair

 

Imminent is a lot faster :0

Our state closed some heavily trafficked dirt roads to the shagrin of some rural folks,
what our county does is dump tar then gravel and clay mix over exploded asphalt roads , after you get enough gravel you just occasionally grade the road (which the county rarely does) problem solved for cost (to the county anyway)

 

Putting the Government in charge of refining gasoline might be the biggest stimulus for people to switch to electric vehicles ever imagined.

Just the thought of the Government attempting to manage that professionally is sobering.

 

My thought was the threat of the government doing so would wake up refiners to pull their heads out of their rear.

Texas electric grid was government run in the 1970’s during the “ice age hype” when Texas had repeatedly gotten very low temperatures similar to recent events.

The difference was the grid, natural gas and power plants did not go down during worse weather in the 70’s as compared to recently cold weather.

Just because Texas government is incompetent does not mean we shouldn’t expect more out of government

 

I kind of doubt it will ever happen, but I think the solution is to draw an equivalence between nationalizing the facilities and exemption from regulation.

Then all parties mutually promise that both are permanently off the table. Nobody will steal the shareholder's value. And there is no "finish line" for a company to cross and then do zilch to address the next problem.

We are forever going to find better ways to operate facilities. I know I'll never see a responsible company, but I'd settle for one responsive to incremental improvements.

 

I assume this was like a train robbery?

Mike

 

Link?

Like Amazon? or Apple? Costco?

 

I already mentioned the worst of the worst, but since you bring these up

Back 2020 and earlier…
Amazon got the most government money of any non-military contractor business so it’s very good at sucking up local subsidies without any of the scrutiny a government contractor would face
and like Walmart getting public assistance to subsidize its employees, and very good at avoiding paying for roads and freight getting that subsidized as well
had a post about this a few years ago in that it’s record “profits “ were nearly equal to the subsides it received .
(And that didn’t include freight or public assistance which makes it worse)
In my mind if your profit is all due to subsidy you are a failure.
If the data is available for the last couple years
I have no doubt I would find Amazon is still just as bad at just chasing government grants and subsidies, an interesting comparison is that Amazon over time has gotten nearly the same amount of government cash as so called Government Motors during its bailout, yet one is viewed differently than the other.
Amazon is also very good at not paying the government for all manner of things opting to go to court to avoid its liabilities, its notorious for using the dark store loophole as well.

 

In my mind Amazon isn't "poorly" run as you say but have built the most efficient product delivery system anyone has ever seen.
Many seem to dislike the winners in business, but they wouldn't be so successful if lots of people didn't like buying products from them.
No one is nominating them for sainthood.

Mike

 

There is so much wrong here, so let me correct you. ERCOT - which is the grid that covers most of texas took over in 1970. ERCOT and the PUC are responsible for the blackouts and the PUC has oversight and failed to require weatherization. The PUC and ERCOT board all resigned after the scope of the failure, but the PUC is put there by the Governor and legislature that seemed fine with it working for utilities instead of the people it is supposed to protect. In 1970 the population of texas was 11 million but now is at 30 million. You need to build a lot more power to serve that many more people.

The weather was worse in 2021 and 2011 than anytime in the 1970s. It was not the coldest period in texas. Depending on the part of texas the non winterized power plants are in places where it was much colder in the 1890s and 1930s. During the blackouts in 2011 texas got a warning that power plants needed to be weatherized. The PUC and ERCOT instead of regulating it, just requested utilities do this work. The number blacked out in 2021 for long periods of time reflected the population growth. The a newly appointed PUC at least has some fines for not weatherizing, but still has no requirements. Blackouts have been happening this spring because of record heat and delayed maintenance. The grid has not grown excess capacity needed for all the people moving to texas.

Failure of the texas government is far from an exceptional case. The Fires and black outs in california caused by greedy utilities and poor regulation of maintenance is a systemic problem. New York also badly regulates. The grid is a monopoly so it needs to be in the hands of the government, but we do deserve better.

The oil situation is different. Over 75% of oil control is by state run monopolies with Aramco (Saudi Arabia) is worth 80x more than the largest capitalist oil company Exxon/Mobil. The consolidation of the Majors and the state run monopolies mean there is not much competition for refining capacity. The gulf coast refiners have expanded, but east coast and california refineries have closed. With regulation the way it is shortages mean higher profit margins, and building enough for bad times means fewer shortages and higher costs. A solution of taxing oil, then providing some of the money to subsidize excess refining capacity is not a bail out. The current system is not working. Doing such a plan would reduce excess profit price spikes. Government taking over likely will not result in better capacity or lower costs as seen by state run oil companies. These are used by politicians to line their own pockets and have more power.

 

I don’t know how the system works in other states.
In Minnesota, we have both Investor owned utilities (such as Xcel Energy) as well as Co-ops. All have a monopoly in their set areas of service.
We have a state PUC which regulates transitions lines, power plants, rates, etc.
The commission members are assigned by the governor. The PUC also is very good about asking for public input.

Our system, imo, works well. Energy rates are about 12c/kWh. Wind & solar energy are expanding quickly (solar farms as well as gardens and individual homes.

Power outages are infrequent and brief (typically a few hours at most).

I feel this is a great example of a public-private partnership that works well.

 

Our states utility system is set up exactly as you described for your state.

 

Similar results?
And which state?

 

This is what is supposed to happen, unfortunately my PUC was appointed by politics and was completely corrupt. Everyone resigned. The last member resigned after assuring out of state investors they could keep the excess profits, others admitted to be working on behalf of investors not Texans. Texas Utility Commissioner Resigns After Leaked Call

The problem is pretty simple. The PUC is supposed to be non partisan, but the members are appointed by the governor and approved by the legislature. The legislature has been so gerrymandered that they will approve whoever the governor wants. There is no accountability.

Things worked well through the 90s. ERCOT controls the grid and customers are given a grid charge. We have municipal utilities and coops which are monopolies and public utilities that must compete for most customers. Members of the ERCOT board and PUC are supposed to be non partisan, but the board included members that violated its bylaws. When we got the warning in 2011 that the grid needed to be weatherized, both the federal and state government agreed. The easiest way was to build more ccgt weatherized power plants and mothball older less efficient non weatherized coal and steam natural gas plants. The publicly traded utilities didn't want that and the PUC and ERCOT complied and did not regulate only recommended the changes. If the country instead of regions owned all the utilities then we would have an even bigger problem. I am glad many states have PUCs that are working for the people. I don't think the new members are in texas even now. Samsung lost a ton of money though, I expect they and Tesla will put pressure on the state government to actually fix the problem but that takes time.

 

What about the lazy uncaring Americans that are delivering goods so that local stores don't look like they've been looted?

The solution to high gas prices is high gas prices.
They cause folks to reconsider MANY things.
most-americans-believe-us-is-in-decline-amid-biden-debacles-poll/

 

Kentucky

Similar results.

Maybe interesting tidbit - a large city in Kentucky sold their municipally handled water utility to a private company which eventually sold it to a large company from Germany. The large company from Germany proposed some wholesale changes to the way the utility was structured and run but the Public Service Commission voted down a number of the proposed changes and did accept some of the proposed changes. I think in todays world where large international companies may buy attractive utilities a Public Service Commission to review all changes and price hikes with the public good in mind is a must have.

Probably should add that in both cases where the water utility was sold the Public Service Commision had to approve the sale of the utility. In both cases when ownership transfer was being considered they had some public hearings for citizens to speak on their feelings concerning the potential transfer of ownership