Chamber Suggests Taxing Hybrids and Billing Driver

I have heard that they are going to make you buy a GPS tracker for you car that can also report where you are at any time. Real time big brother.

 

Let's see. Make hybrids more unattractive so more people buy regular vehicles, that burn more gas and hence it goes up because there is less of it. Therefore the oil companies get MORE money. Does anybody else suspect collusion? :huh:

 

Rocky Mountain Institute's (www.rmi.org) "Winning the Oil Endgame" (www.oilendgame.com) offers solutions to the oil problem:

1. Heavy truck buyers ask for more efficient trucks. 18-wheelers use one-ninth of US oil and are the second-fastest growing user (after light trucks, mainly SUVs. On 24 October, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott announced his goal and intention of flipping the heavy-truck market toward doubled and then possibly tripled net heavy truck fuel efficiency.

2. Implement a "feebate"-like program similar to the District of Columbia. Within each vehicle size class, charge fees on less efficient models and use proceeds to pay rebates on efficient ones. This widened price spread will stimulate vehicle makers to all-out competition on fuel efficiency since it helps buyers consider fuel savings overf the vehicle's life, not just the first two years.

This 2004 Reform Amendment Act was effective 15 April 2005, and changed the flat excise tax (formerly 7% on all new vehicle purchases, and vehicle registration fee on passenger vehicles greater than 5000 lb). Efficient hybrid and other alternative fuel vehicles will now not pay any excise tax and will have reduced registration rate, while excise tax rates for heavy passenger vehicles (greater than 5000 lb) will increase to 8%. The Act thus uses state tax law to reflect local needs and concerns, such as street maintenance, without intruding on federally preempted efficiency regulation.

3. Federal government switches from mass- to size-based light-truck fuel efficiency rules. This has tentatively been adopted by the Natl Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) for light trucks (SUVs, vans, minivans and pickups). NHTSA proposed to switch its Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations from a flat-rate fleet-mean miles per gallon requirement to a sliding sclae based on vehicle's SIZE - not vehicle mass as originally proposed.

4. Encouraging developments at the Pentagon. High costs and risks of battlefield fuel logistics add strength to RMI's key recommendation to optimize military platforms for DELIVERED fuel price, which is often 10 to 100 times undelivered price previously used. This seemingly small change would focus on R&D on ultralight, ultrastrong materials. This in turn will transform civilian truck, car and plan industries, leading the country off oil so our military doesn't need to fight over oil.

The US Chamber of Commerce needs to support and pay attention to the critical thinking and strategies of the Rocky Mountain Institue, not be Luddites trying to cling to the early 1900s.

 

I have no objection to spending cuts. What I do OBJECT TO is cutting programs vital to the very survival of parts of our society while handing out big tax cuts to corporation just so they will do their jobs. :angry:

The last thing that oil companies need is more tax cuts. Even the oil companies say they don't need them but still Congress pushes more money at them.