Taxing by the Green Mile

So.  You bought some tin-can hybrid econotoy powered by a burble motor, greased with biodegradable, recycled chicken fat.  Saving that gas.  Doing your thing for the environment.  Wearing your greenie baseball cap.  Feeling all good about yourself.

Traitor!  In your typically short-sighted zeal, you may not have realized you were just bollixing everything for your state tax collectivists.  Less gas, less tax.  Less tax, less spend.

Oh, don’t be so naïve.  There’s never going to be less spend, just more tax.  Ha!  If they can’t get it for the gas they’ve convinced you to conserve, they’ll get it for the green mile you go.  You can’t stop going.  You gotta get there.  There’s a Sundance Rally before Telluride on your way to the Freakers Ball.  Racking the miles.

Oregon knows, already feeling the gas tax pinch.  Got them a university, Oregon State.  Engineers there got a solution, already being “road tested,” as they say.  Gonna tax you by the mile.  Gonna slap a GPS gadget on your car, which you’ll undoubtedly get to pay for along with your mandatory five-point seat corset (those belts just let too much fat hang loose) and your mobile safe-baby vault.

The GPS loopengooper will measure your mileage, down to fractions of millimeters.  When you eventually pull in for the smidgen of gas you need, a new, smarter than you gas pump will get all intimate with your odometer and tax you, standing right there with the pump still in your hand, for the miles driven.  Tax Kaching!  You ain’t even gonna have enough change left for a Twinkie or a Ho Ho.

Oregon’s already got it going.  California is watching closely.  New tax gimmicks tarry for no man.  We’d urge you to start walking, but your cell phone already knows where you are, and they can pack some pretty mean electronics into the sole of a Nike.

If you’re older and wear a pacemaker, don’t go in for any retrofits.  You don’t drive enough, so they’ll just tax you by the heartbeat.

Peace Out!

Editor’s Note:  This article may not be true, even if it is. We got the information from CBS News, and adhering to that fine journalistic standard, vetted not a word.