OK, Jack: How long does it take you to find those pictures for your composites? What is the secret of finding the perfect picture.

BTW: This is one of the all time bests. (did you consider putting an knife and fork in the gov's hands?)

BTW#2, the preview in Firefox still needs attention.

Thanks
JK

Does this remind anyone of the coyote and the roadrunner?

Thanks
JK

How perfectly Oregon, another attack on car owners.

What about bicyclists?
Or transit users?
Or people who don't own cars?

And when resistance kills the idea it will then mean people don't want more state police?

And when the toll road idea is beaten back it means people don't want more roads?

I notice there is never a new fee, tax or toll proposed to pay for more light rail or other boondoggles.

Only those things of less importance, like police and roads, are reliant upon the passing of an additional source of revenue thereby providing the means to avoid or delay these desperately needed but forever neglected improvements.

I'd like to see a new toll or tax proposed to pay for more light rail and streetcars. Then when it doesn't get approved we can conclude that the public doesn't want more of them.

Wait a minute we already did that, with a public vote, and we get more anyway as our officials just take the money from other basic services while claiming they are not.

It's called planning.

I wouldn't worry, after the election Teddy will forget all about his promises and go back in his hole for another 4 years of slumber.

Can we soon expect a transaction fee on Banks to support the Tax Division, an innertube inflation fee for the Parks and a home appraisal fee for the State Lands folks?

Remember folks, as long as we don't call it a tax, it ain't a tax. It's a 'surcharge', it's a 'user fee', it's a 'transation fee'... er, no, it's a TAX!!! It's government sticking a hand into my wallet (again) without asking permission. Akin to the 'surcharge' additional twenty five cents that is going to be tacked on to the zoo admission by Metro. Is the money going for a good cause - well, I'm not really sure if studies about the 'harvesting of bird guano' ranks real high on my radar; but regardless, since it isn't funding needed for the zoo, it's an unneccesary, unwanted 'tax' being thrust (like so many other things) upon the citizen.

Ever notice how all Ted can do is find ways to spend more money? Reminds me of my ex.

How about a 1% tax on the full market value of every real estate deal the City Council votes on?

The Right versus Privilege dichotomy has many slippery slopes.

Ron, your posts are like fortune cookies.

The Right versus Privilege dichotomy has many slippery slopes... in bed!

Yup, just like a fortune cookie.

I hope that is not an invitation to elaborate at length.

Did you get the catch that it is/was just an observation of the way things are in the Oregon Territory. No limits. Can you identify any universally tolerated limits? On any of the infinite list of available extreme slopes? This is just one example among many and the car thing, as an easy fact specific reference, rather than a linchpin to the reasoning itself, enables exposition in just one context.

I could read every free speech case that comes out of the US Supreme Court or every glowing phraseology for notions of liberty, individual liberty . . . but it will be of no use against an idiot or thug with the power to say SoWhat! why should I care?

Suppose tax policy, rather than being straight redistribution (either top down or bottom up), is designed to encourage or discourage some activity in the public interest; or from an Adam Smith's Invisible Hand sort of view to tweak economic "incentives." What is the activity which is designed to be tweaked, in the public interest? Someone could at least argue that it is to discourage the use of automobiles. Someone could at least argue that it is designed to substitute a per-person-head-tax (assuming everyone who might drive faces the prospect of the tax even if they do not drive, and compliance is 100 percent for those who drive) in place of a sliding scale income tax, so as to incrementally move toward someone's-nirvana of a flat-tax-per-person regardless of income and wealth.

My beef here is like that which I expressed to Barbara Roberts at the outset of the adoption of the state run video poker scheme. It is one thing to put the private crooks with private video games out of business and quite another to express that in our quest to raise revenue that we have no choice but to become the crooks ourselves. One view is accommodative of people's desire for "entertainment" (where the state becomes the video peddler, rather than merely banning all video lottery gambling, public or private) and the other view is just a crass grab for money. Gambling will NEVER be justified as economic development as it is by definition void of all of the redeeming qualities associated with the work of craftsman. It does however allow for redistribution, where control of the manner of distribution of the booty is of central concern, or of sole concern. Who cares about the losers, as it was voluntary after all.

Does Teddy belong to the flat-tax-per-person crowd? To serve one subset of masters in the insurance industry? I might have to wait an eternity before access to "Health Insurance" is Animal Farmed back to demanding that the pigs who control the monopolistic price of health care face the reality that the bulk of common ordinary folk cannot meet their offering price for services, and therefore lower their price. (Rhetorically. Yes, I have made up my mind as to where his loyalty lies on this point, without question.)

Sure, compulsory purchase of auto insurance to cover the medical cost faced by others has plausible merit; though it inherently sets up an extreme risk of abuse of monopoly power. (Second car discounts virtually disappeared over night, for example, but only by reason of linking "proof of insurance" to a particular car. It is funny how insurance company dream can become public reality.) There is also some nexus between our personal conduct and the risk of injury to others. Rick Metzger, however, "in my opinion" is the sort that would easily fall for the notion of a knee-jerk tacking on of a tax collection function on to auto insurance and then view it in a manner that is fully detached from the impact on the poor slobs for whom it may be the last straw for them to drive without any "insurance." This would be the most elementary predictive outcome, or availability heuristic (cute new phase of the week), and thus make more poor folks turn to a life of "crime" by knowingly driving without insurance at the immediate peril of losing their car and mobility; and perhaps pride. (Not everyone is like a JailBlazer that remains financially "responsible" notwithstanding lack of insurance or the posting of a bond.)

Can you design a better scheme to make poverty itself a crime? Folks could always just walk or take mass transit, I suppose; nobody has to drive thus one could simply apply the adjective of voluntary, like with video poker, to anyone that desires to drive and consider it less even than either a right or a privilege (a privilege that must be accorded equally to all regardless of wealth, as this is not).

Someone, please argue something to the contrary! Are we ruled by idiots and bullies? (One phrase from an interpretation by Emile Melchior of the Dostoevsky piece in the "crime" hypertext link above reads: "Only one single interest in life is left to him: to deceive and elude the police." Gosh. Sounds like home to me.)

I notice there is never a new fee, tax or toll proposed to pay for more light rail or other boondoggles.

Thats because they use all the gas taxes and federal road money to build light rail.

Remember folks, as long as we don't call it a tax, it ain't a tax.

Yup. thats how certain "reports & polls" keep showing Oregon as a "low-tax" state.