Discussing VMT

 This came up in the week and it's worth a moment to pause over.

The new guy as Transportation Secretary....Pete Buttigieg....was being asked questions before his confirmation, and he came to the topic of a Biden idea....a 1-trillion infrastructure project (basically roads and bridges across the nation).

On one side....most everyone is agreeable to replacing or renovating a ton of bridges in the nation (more than 200k).  On the other side, no one can explain where this trillion will come from.

So Buttigieg stood there and said that he wants to create a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) program.  As you renewed your registration and got inspected....they would average out the miles and say you owe X-amount (probably figured to your registration fee for the tags, and be federally 'grabbed').

How much would this add up to?  Well....if you traveled 100 miles a day to your place of work....the general estimate would be around 1.7 cents per mile.  So you'd owe $1.70 (per day).  A week?  Adding up to $6.35.  A month?  Around $26.  But that's strictly for work-and-driving.  Then you add in the grocery shopping, your doctor visits, the veterinarian visits, the flea-market visits on Saturday, the pick-up of your pizza, visits to your cousin Earl, night-time rendezvous visits to the Piggly Wiggly cashier-lady who plays the banjo while indecently dressed, and visits to the farm-store for dog-food.  So your monthly tax is going to around $50-to-$70.  

Go figure per year, it'll amount to around $600 minimum and approaching $1000 for fifty-percent of folks.  

So there are three basic problems here.

1.  Would the 1.7-cent scheme stay there, or increase?  I'm of the mind that it'd go within four years to 2-cents and be hooked up to some type environmental policy that never makes sense except to 5th-grade kids.  At the 8-year point, it'd probably go to 2.4-cents per mile.

2.  How many folks would cheat and have the speedometer rigged up?  Ten-percent?  Twenty-percent?  Forty-percent?  I know some mechanically-minded folks in the Netherlands who can rig a speedometer system to any number you desire.  If you wanted to show only 100 miles per year driven....they'd rig it up to say that.  

3.  Why the big push?  Well....in ten to fifteen years....a fair number of cars in America will be electric, and the gas-tax business which pays for the roads and bridges....will be screwed-up entirely.  So arguing against the VMT is nearly impossible at this point.  

Just something to ponder upon.

The Landscape Shift

 There on Wednesday....poll-guru Frank Luntz attempted to run a focus group chat after President Joe Biden gave his unity-speech.  

His effort was geniune....at least he attempted to make this group of roughly a dozen folks an even split.

Control?  I would suggest (having watched clips of this)....five minutes into it....he was losing control, and by the 15th minute....things were going in a crappy way.

To make this work....Zoom was employed, which meant people sat comfortably in their homes or apartments and gave their commentary from long distances.

Shouting?  Yes....without any doubt.

Facts and counter-facts going around and disrupting the conversation?  Yes.

Just my impression....maybe at the 15th minute, it was all just a bungled-up mess.  

Explaining what has happened?  It's rather simple.

In the 1980s....a Republican and Democrat could sit at a table....pick up six topics and generally discuss the matter, with the difference of opinion amounting twelve inches for the landscape.  We really weren't that far apart on the six topics.

In the 2000-era....the same two could meet....pick up six topics and find that on half of them, we were pretty far apart.  The landscape?  Instead of a 12-inch situation....the landscape was now three-feet.  

In the 2016-period....the same two could meet....with none of the six topics being marginally agreeable.  The landscape?  It's close to twenty-feet.

Today, the two could meet....working with twenty topics, and find nothing agreeable.  That landscape problem?  It's now closer to sixty-feet.

What I expect in 2024....same two meeting?  A hundred topics with not a single one being agreeable.  The landscape approaching.....nearly 1,000 feet apart.

The Biden unity speech?  Maybe it would have worked in the 1990s timeframe....but we've advanced way past that point.  

If You Open Impeachment Wide Enough

 Yesterday, a Republican Senator (Cornyn, Texas) spoke and suggested that since a sitting-President was being pursued for impeachment.....there was no reason in two years (suggesting the Republicans would recover in the House, and the Senate)....to pursue past Democratic Presidents for issues.

Even dead Presidents?  Well...he didn't suggest that, but I noticed in social media that even that question came up and no one saw a legal stumbling block to say they were living or dead.

Now, an average guy sitting there would pause over this suggestion.

Yes, we could actually draw up paperwork and go after President Jackson, President Roosevelt (both Teddy and Franklyn), and even President Obama.  In fact, you could repeat this act every year.....going after virtually every single President.

The odds of this happening in 2022?  I'd say less than 10-percent...mostly because I see a 5-Senator advance with the Democrats.  

The problem for the Democrats.....we all got kinda used to this continued use of impeachment now.  It really wouldn't take much to start this retaliation business.  In fact, you could ease Senators, House members, and federal judges into this mess very easily....removing three or four each year, just for entertainment.   

It's a messy affair but we don't seem to have any limits anymore.