The “Tank the Gas Tax” committee is holding an event this coming Monday in Karyn Polito’s home town of Shrewsbury to raise some
money to help support their efforts to pass a ballot question in November to stop the indexing of the state’s gas tax to inflation. They posted an image on Facebook that caught my eye because among other things they’ve decided there’s some kind of a connection between money to repair roads and bridges and “transgender coverage” that proves we don’t need to raise the gas tax. Weird.
Then I read the rest of the words floating in the air in front of the State House:
- Patronage
- Cronyism
- Welfare Fraud
- Cost Overruns
- Pensions
- Evergreen Solar
- Failed Websites
- Transgender Coverage
- Per Diems
Per diems… those weird little allowances that legislators have available to them for commuting to and from their $60k+/year jobs at the State House. A great issue for the Tank the Gas Tax Committee to rail against – per diems should go away in my opinion, at least for legislators that aren’t commuting from far-flung locales in Western Mass or on the Cape and Islands – the commute from Nantucket can’t be cheap.
But just because it’s a great issue for the ballot committee doesn’t mean they should be plastering it the flyer for an event headlined by Karyn Polito. Why? Simple. Between 2001 and 2009 Karyn Polito took home $34,000 in per diems. That’s awkward, huh? That amount would cover the current Massachusetts gas tax for 141,667 gallons of fuel – enough gas to take my car back and forth to the moon 17 times!
I sure hope that on Monday night when Rep. Geoff Diehl (who is taking a break from trying to the lower the Massachusetts minimum wage to $7.25/hour to work on the gas tax) introduces Karyn Polito at this event he’ll ask her why she took so much in per diems… but he probably won’t. He’ll be too busy blaming solar energy, retirees and transgendered residents of the Commonwealth for the conditions of our roads and bridges.
Just saying!
If so the other “wastes” identified don’t seem terribly relevant.
Aren’t all the things listed of much smaller scale than what we need to fix our infrastructure?
The gas tax as a whole isn’t being repealed, not even the recent fixed increase. It’s just the automatic increase that’s on the ballot. How much is that?
Only candidate running with the courage to have the has tax raises and indexed.
“Attorney General Martha Coakley, Treasurer Steve Grossman, and former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem all said they support indexing.
“Otherwise we can’t pay for our transportation plan we all need and want,” Grossman said. “We can’t do it without indexing.”
Former Medicare and Medicaid administrator Don Berwick would support indexing, but has also said the state should move away from the gas tax toward a “vehicle miles traveled” fee.”
http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/03/democratic_gubernatorial_candi_12.html
there will be less driving — and hence even less gas tax to collect, I suppose.
…the gas tax isn’t high enough. No matter the weather, no matter the day, I can rely on seeing at least one unpopulated car (usually an SUV) idling in the lot while its driver is in the post office or grocery store. I guess it’s too much work to turn that key.
Not only is car idling a willful act of pollution via needless gas burning, it’s against the law and punishable by a $100-$500 fine.
Since I’ve never heard of the idling law actually being enforced, I suspect that the threat of a ticket isn’t going to dissuade idlers from idling. That leaves the price of gas as the only possible deterrent. Since the price of gas isn’t high enough to deter wasteful idlers (not to mention gas-sucking speeders), there’s clearly room for an increase.
Seems like it would be an easy way to raise some revenue. Can parking enforcement people write those tickets?
The law in question.
And how often to police cruise with their windows open? They’d have to be looking *and* listening to know that a car was idling.
I think it was stomv who observed elsewhere here that a large number of those idling vehicles sit there with the motor running so that the gas can power the motor that can spin the alternator that can charge the car battery that can charge the cellphone battery in the cellphone that the lone occupant is texting with.
The engine typically doesn’t have to be running to power the accessory (AKA cigarette lighter) plug. Also, if the lone occupant is in the car, the vehicle is not in the “unoccupied” class that we’re talking about, and is not violating the law.
Most cars have 12V batteries, and many cellphones require 12V DC input. The combination means that the voltage at the accessory outlet is below the threshold required for charging the cellphone unless the car engine is running. In fact, with all too many cellphones, cellphone will actually discharge to the car battery if the car battery has a lower voltage.
I did skip over the part about “empty”. I just find the irony of a driver burning gasoline to keep a cellphone going to be tragically comic.
What cell phone charges @ 12V? Here is a study (PDF) examining the characteristics of various cell phones chargers. Scroll down far enough, and you’ll find tables where they characterize different phone chargers while charging Apple, Nokia, Samsung phones and other devices. The highest voltage they encounter is 5.6V, using an iCube charger on a Nokia phone. The nominal voltage specified for all the devices is 5V, which is why you can charge a cellphone from a USB port. My old Handspring Treo’s wall-wart puts out 5.2V. The car charging adapters step down your 12V to 5V. If it’s only getting 10V, it still steps it down to 5V.
You don’t need the engine running, unless your battery is depleted beyond the point that where probably wouldn’t start the car.
A little more understanding about how electricity actually works would help. Voltage is the difference in electrical potential between the two poles of the battery. Without knowing the amperage draw (flow), the voltage doesn’t give a complete picture. Multiply the amps by the voltage and you get watts, the actual rate of transfer of energy. Which in this case isn’t going to be enough to discharge a battery that has enough stored energy to turn over an internal combustion engine.
…though I notice you say no matter the weather. A ticket to me would be much more of a deterrent IF it is in fact enforced, though I still cringe at the idea of increasing prices just to make them high. That is absolutely not the solution for those of us who don’t have a lot, and for the record I don’t idle my car.
on people who don’t have a cushion. Especially people who live in towns where bus service isn’t so great, so they have to have a car to be able to get to work.
Colleagues at IBM once passed along an apocryphal tale they SWORE was true: An IT department at a prospective client proposed to block all user access in order to optimize system response time.
The transgender bit probably has to do with the Michelle Kosilek case. Of course, this hasn’t occurred yet, and if/when it does, it will be peanuts compared to infrastructure repair costs, as kbusch notes above.
and contraceptive coverage. $300k.