Another take: won't this makes it easier for the NSA to track traveling cell calls? - Granite Grok

Another take: won’t this makes it easier for the NSA to track traveling cell calls?

GPS BirdsBecause these kinds of things NEVER end up getting extended, do they?  I’m already not all that much liking that the Federal DOT wants a Black Box (a la a commercial jet) in my car they can access without my consent in the car that *I* have bought.  Now, they want me (likely) to buy another GPS device so they can track me where I go?  When will Government go back to leaving us all alone?

[Rep. Earl] Blumenauer’s [(D-Ore.)] bill, H.R. 3638, would set up a Road Usage Fee Pilot Program, which he said would study mileage-based fee systems. He cast his bill as a long-term solution for funding highway programs, and proposed it along with a shorter-term plan to nearly double the gas tax, from 18.4 cents to 33.4 cents per gallon.

“As we extend the gas tax, we must also think about how to replace it with something more sustainable,” Blumenauer said Tuesday. “The best candidate would be the vehicle mile traveled fee being explored by pilot projects in Oregon and implemented there on a voluntary basis next year.”

He said the bill would help answer questions about “how best to implement a vehicle miles traveled [VMT] system,” and said it “looks to the future and helps provide a more stable funding base for the next one hundred years.”

And we all know what happens to voluntary programs when it comes to Government revenues, right?  When is enough of violating our privacy, enough?  It’s bad enough that we all thought EZPass transponders were just to pay tolls – and now being used for purposes other than that (e.g., tracking us).  Sure, we HEAR that they are “protecting” our privacy, but since they get the transponder ID, they know where we are and where we’ve been.  We’ve also seen how the NSA (latest: over 5 Billion calls tracker PER DAY!) gets around not being legally able to get at some date – just use another governmental agency to get it for them.

But here’s the other rub – why should the Federal Government even bothering being the bottleneck for highway funding?  Yes, the Feds built the Interstate system – but ostensibly after Eisenhower saw the effectiveness of the German autobahn for defense purposes – after all, why rely on the older transportation system, railroads,  when highway / road system is so much more flexible and decentralized?

They keep whining that the high MPG cars are cutting into their tax revenues – gee, doesn’t Government keep mandating that bar keeps going up and up?  And that electric cars have no revenue at all – and the Feds actually incentivize their purchase with tax credits (or “gimme loans” to the manufacturers) to consumers?

So, once again, we see decisions made by a BIG Government, made for ideologically driven reasons, causing problems in “other parts of the system”, eh?  Bad decisions, IMHO, which now have to be fixed after the fact with yet another one that makes Government bigger and more intrusive.

When is enough, enough?  Let local governments, states and towns, make the decisions instead. That way, the people forking over the bucks will REALLY let them know if it was the right decision to spend that money or not.

 

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