> GAS TAXES Just for the sake of debate:
First of all my carbon footprint is smaller than anyone I know. Has been for 5 decades.
However, again for the sake of debate
1) gas taxes hurt the poor - gas taxes are regressive
rich people couldn't care less. What's $10 gas for a guy makin' $500/hr? I work for rich people. They drive SUVs and don't give a shit.
Gas taxes DO HURT a Mexican dad droppin' off his kid in the only vehicle he could afford which is a gas hog, on his way to a low paying drywaller job that used to be a union job until immigrants came and worked for less and destroyed the drywall union. And remember registering that car and the taxes on when he bought it hurt like shit too.
White collar people can take mass transit. Blue collar people cannot haul their ladders and toolboxes onto busses. They cannot recharge their car in the desert where they are fixing the plumbing in someone's vacation home. They cannot haul their janitor gear onto a train that never arrives at the white collar home they clean.
Busses suck. Trains to white collar suburbs are great. White collar mass transit is subsidized about 15 times as much as inner city mass transit. My experience with mass transit is terrible. I ride a bike... I'll not go into detail how shitty I was treated trying to do good using the red line in LA with my bike.
2) California has $100,000,000,000 surplus... a HUNDRED BILLION. They can't give us a break? The roads in my city look like goat trails. I just paid $700 to fix my front end damaged by potholes and a turn around that I couldn't see because some bureaucrat didn't want to put reflectors on it. My neighbors and I kept putting up cones, they took them down, we put them back up, but after a few months and hundreds of other people hitting it they painted it yellow... half assed if you ask me but better than nothing.
3) the roads are designed by idiots... most traffic jams could be easily fixed with better signage and preventing people from passing on exit lanes.
See Richard Ankrom who "fixed" a sign in LA that was wrong for decades. Friend of mine, he was just angry because that friggin sign had been causing traffic jams for DECADES. He embarrassed the shit out of Caltrans. BUT there are still multiple signs that are wrong in all California cities. Still causing angry, snarling, traffic jams with millions of cars doing nothing but stop and go for hours belching pollution worse that if they just did speed limit all the way home.
Most traffic tickets are given in the fast lane. Most accidents happen in the slow lanes... ever known anyone who got a ticket for tail gaiting? Tail gating is the #1 cause of accidents and accidents cause massive traffic jams.
Some common, non-white collar, sense would go a long way making our lives easier, using less gas, and belching less pollution and CO2.
Please do not lecture me that more people will drive more if we fix the roads. Poor people have no choice, rich people in luxury cars don't care in their wombs with nice radios, TVs and internet. And nobody thinks "Lets go get in a traffic jam for fun!" |
