Glenn Beck is a hypocrite. Just like Rush Limbaugh.
Ever see any of Rush’s writings or hear any of his rants on Drug users BEFORE he was arrested for buying illegal drugs???
Rush Quote - “People who abuse or buy illegal drugs should be sent to jail.” Funny how he now thinks drug users shouldn’t be sent to jail.
Rush is also a big proponent of the Iraq war and sending our sons and daughters over there to be killed…Yet he was too cowardly to serve himself…He applied for at least 5 deferments and finally got a medical with the help of his fathers political connections. And he got it for have a boil on his butt. I was in the Army with guys who had reconstructive knee surgery.
Also vehemently attacks anyone who is on welfare…yet he even admits to being on Wellfare for a couple of years between jobs when we was a disk-jockey.
The hypocrisy of the extreme left or extreme right is nothing new.
I don’t think prices will collapse; the changeover to high mileage cars will take time (abut 10 years at least). During this time India and China will put many more millions of cars on the road. What it will do is keep prices from rising to $150 per barrel as soon as the recession is over and economic growth resumes without any mileage changes.
The US has a unique window of opportunity here to get in step with the rest of the world.
Reading this got my bowels in an uproar" we dont need any stinking new taxes,the only thing I grudgingly favor is user fees,people that dont use a certain stretch of road neednt pay for it or any other service for that matter.We have to keep buying stuff to keep the market going,if we are going to maintain our standard of living(you have heard about the proposed tax on real good healthcare benefits?)-Kevin
And that effects you how? It’s every individuals prerogative what type of vehicle they choose to drive. I have no problems offering incentives to buy fuel efficient cars, but there should not be a penalty for those who chose not to. People who drive such vehicles are already taxed more simply because their vehicles use more fuel so they automatically pay more in fuel taxes at the pump.
Why should a truck driver be different than a car driver? There has been a gas guzzler tax on cars since 1978. If your new car gets combined EPA mileage less than 22.5 MPG, you pay the tax. If you buy a new 2009 S2000, you pay a $1300 guzzler tax. Why should trucks be exempt? And as cars get better fuel mileage, a new source of revenue for road maintenance is needed. Who is going to pay to fill the potholes?
And I think the talk about pickup trucks ceasing production is way premature. Newer diesels and hybrid trucks will remove many trucks from the guzzler list. The 4WD Chevy Tahoe hybrid gets 20 MPG and the non-hybrid gets 16 MPG. If they were subject to the existing guzzler tax, you’d pay $1700 for the hybrid and $3000 for the non-hybrid. Considering that they are over $40,000, that’s not too bad.
I am on the verge of ejection from my American History II class because I challenge my Professor on Beck,Palin,Limbaugh. He feels all thats necessary for them to be relevent is that, either what they say or do gets press coverage or they have a large audience.
I have heard it said many times Palin is of consequence because it is popular to cover what she says on the Sunday political shows,that is, she draws a crowd,thats all that is required.
I did a rhetorical analysis of a Beck article and a Limbaugh article and stated the contex of each was entertainment,he felt both were reliable sources of information,I think this professor has some degree of delusion going on.
The crazy part is that when one of these wacked out bills come up, some people actually think they have a chance of passing. Don’t forget, whomever sponsored that bill has to worry about getting votes when election time comes up and if the bill doesn’t get withdrawn based on unpopularity, it will die as fast as it was dreamed up. Hundreds of senate bills get presented every year and the crazy ones that don’t pass the sanity check fall by the wayside without much fanfare. BTW, that is strictly my humble opinion, and I truely respect oldschool’s automotive experience and advice he shares on this forum.
…and yet when they imported the early Isuzu Troopers, they had to come without back seats to dodge some tarrif or another. I never did figure that one out.
Oldschool, I think you are right. Your professor has no historical perspective. Just take a look at the first several Presidential elections that took place in this country. They were some of the dirtiest campaigns of all time, yet we think nothing could get worse than the dirty campaigns of present day. When we look back at the period when our country was in its infancy, we look at the great men and women who actually accomplished something. We don’t look back at the publicity junkies who got attention in the public forum (usually in print) just because they were controversial. When history judges this era in the future, I think it will be known for the general lack of good leaders, much like emperors of ancient Rome. Can anyone here name a pundit or columnist from 100 years ago? I doubt it. 100 years from now nobody will know who Beck, Palin, and Limbaugh were, as it should be.
Ross Perot when running for office called it the “chicken tax” in retaliation for those countries not allowing US chickens in import duty free. Agree it was a regressive tax to protect the US minivan, SUV and pickup truck makers.
First, let me compliment Oldschool for actually posting the link to the legislation rather than just an opinion. It’s a welcome relief and a sign of intellectual honestty. I tip my hat to you.
With great respect some friends here, with a democraticallly controlled house and senate and an administration with a stated and demonstrated goal of driving an increase in mileage in an effort to combat Global Warming" (the veracity of the theory I’ll save for another thread), this bill has a better chance of becoming law that it perhaps would have had at any other time in history. It is a real possibility.
My perspective is that many buy pickups as second vehicles and put little mileage on them. The only fair way to tax guzzlers is buy the amount of fuel they use, not by the type of vehicle they buy. And that’s already being done by the use of gas taxes. Gas guzzlers pay more in gas taxes, pure and simple. I disagree with taxing people based on their vehicle selection.
My retired neighbor bought a pickup to tow his boat to his favorite fishing hole a few miles away. His “family car” on which he puts the overwhelming majority of his mileage is a Honda. Is it fair to charge him this tax on his neew pickup?
When I lived in Litchfield everyone had pickups as backup vehicles simply to go to the dump and to pick up occasional supplies at the hardware store. Nobody delivers to rural areas without a delivery charge. And there is no garbage pickup unless you pay a private service. In rural areas this is common. Should these people, who need pickups but don’t put many miles on them be charged?
I view this tax as another poorly thought through way of using the tax laws to try to compel people to buy the type of vehicle that the administration thinks they should have rather than what they might need. I don’t think it is an appropriate use of tax law. What ever happened to freedom of choice?
I know others will disagree, but I think enough is enough.
The trouble is that the price of fuel, even when it’s over $4, is simply not a serious financial consideration for a new car buyer. After all, what’s an extra hundred bucks or two a year in gas compared to the first year’s depreciation? Nothing!
While I won’t say gas won’t ever reach a point in which it is a serious concern for new car buyers, I think it’ll need to be way past $6 or $7/gal… and incidentally past the point in which it becomes a economic catastrophy and a humanitarian catastrophy for much of the poor in this country.
Which gets to the point that, even without the environmental considerations, it is in my opinion immoral to just wait for the economics of scarcity (or increased gas taxes) to kick in and so the government has to find other ways to reduce consumption that won’t hurt the masses of petroleum dependent poor in this country.
I agree that it would be much preferable to create incentives for people who buy more efficient cars than to punish those who buy guzzlers, but the current fiscal situation our government is in makes the later much more practical. I’m not sure that I agree with this particular measure, but it is true that many carmakers are selling cushy luxury pickups as a way to of skirting CAFE and so if the new CAFE standars are going to be effective, something has to be done about this loophole.
(And I say this as someone who owns a pickup I use just as you describe in your post-- I honestly don’t know of a way of separating out people who need pickups from those who don’t, other than maybe my “work truck” idea further up the post)
Really we could say its not a pickup thats the problem just any vehicle that gets worse than 22.5 combined mpg,that appears to be the line that puts you int “guzzler” country.
I could see some argument that at most all you have is two passengers so your pollution per person transported is more.
While I’m inherantly against the use of taxes to control buying behaviors in the free markets, at least a “guzzler” tax of the type you describe, perhaps even graduated by MPG, would be much more fair then taxing new vehicles by category.
In truth, there are already countless taxes that apply to vehicles including CAFE fines to manufacturers. And,as I’ve stated before, to my mind it’s high time the feds stopped adding more costs to the private citizens’ vehicles to combat emissions…it’s high time they looked at ways to drive the trucking industry to less pollution. While data commparing aggregate pollutant levels of diesel trucks to those of private vehicles is strangely nonexistant, I suspect that the real gains are now to be made in the trucking industry.
Well trucking industry,get ride of the junkers.Private cars already clean enough,follow a Classic car down the road for awhile,then you can see how much cleaner new vehicles are-Kevin