Musings from Brian J. Noggle

States Mull Taxing Drivers By Mile:

It’s [a hybrid car] great for Just but bad for the roads he’s driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.

Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogether, replacing it with something called “tax by the mile.”

Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.

Keep that in mind whenever your government wants to tax a behavior, such as using gas, smoking, drinking, or using a telephone. When that behavior changes, the spending remains, so the government will have to finally demonstrate some creativity–not in cutting spending, but in taxing something else for money to waste.

Lasers warn pilots of restricted airspace:

The U.S. military is planning a final demonstration Friday night of a ground-based laser system designed to warn pilots who have flown into restricted airspace over the nation’s capital.

During the demonstration of the Visual Warning System, a test aircraft will be illuminated with alternating red and green laser lights, said Michael Kucharek, spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

“It’s an attention-getter, but it’s not blinding,” Kucharek said. “It’s not a distraction. So pilots can still focus on flying the aircraft without endangering anyone or themselves.”

After warning pilots and law enforcement to watch out for terrorists using lasers to blind pilots and crash jets, the military is going to use lasers to literally light up plane cockpits like a Christmas tree when they enter restricted airspace.

Not a distraction? Whose lives are you betting?

Suggested motto for public schooling, 2005:

Bag ’em and tag ’em.

(First link seen on Cold Fury; second seen directly on KdT’s site because I read it every day to make sure his library remains smaller than mine.)

The cover story from the latest issue of Integrated Solutions frightened me, since it told me about how the state of Washington was earning money: Imaging Success Is No Accident: The Washington State Department of Transportation improves access to collision reports and earns $4 million in additional revenue with a document capture solution.

However, I skimmed to the end of the article and discovered how the state of Washington is "earning" that money:

Due to the increased efficiency of this document management system, WSDOT is no longer in danger of losing federal funding. The system also is helping the agency raise extra revenue. WSDOT estimates it is now collecting between $3 and $4 million annually for damage to state-owned property that it was previously unable to obtain. “It used to take a long time to get the paper reports for a specific accident,” says Stanley. “By the time we tracked down who was responsible, the insurance case was closed.”

They’re recovering damages from insurance companies for state property, probably non-vehicular, damaged in auto accidents. So losing less money is really earning money.

Unfortunately, although I don’t think whomever came up with that turn of phrase–whether a puffing state employee or the writer who was looking for a marketable spin for his piece–meant to engage in Newspeak, but when it’s inadvertent, it’s much more disheartening.

Bush threatens to veto Medicare changes:

President Bush on Friday threatened to veto any changes Congress tries to make to Medicare’s new prescription drug benefit, which takes effect in January 2006.

“I signed Medicare reform proudly and any attempt to limit the choices of our seniors and to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto,” Bush said at a swearing-in ceremony for Mike O. Leavitt, the new secretary of Health and Human Services.

Yeah, I voted for him. So now he threatens to veto any attempt to rein in the profligate spending-to-buy-votes. As his first veto in five years in office.

With great power comes great irresponsibility, perhaps, but at least he’s not as bad as the other guy would have been, and his foreign policy will allow us to live in a world safer than the alternatives so we can enjoy a future of financial collapse. But man, sometimes I have to work at convincing myself.

Eleven arrested after police find keg party in moving truck:

Police officers broke up a 21st birthday party and charged 11 people with underage drinking after pulling over a U-Haul moving truck with the revelers inside, officers said.

The most encouraging fact:

Officers allowed the partygoers to call for rides and no one was arrested.

But those who weren’t yet 21 were charged with underage drinking. If found guilty, each person could face a $255 fine or 30 days in jail.

Fortunately, though, none of the underage drinkers were elementary school kids with butter knives, because that would have been a different story.

Unfortunately, as I make juxtapose the behavior to prove the outrageousness of the zero-tolerance policy in schools yielding felony arrests, some might think the proper way to put balance into law enforcement would be to riding in the back of a rental truck a felony.

Missing Halliburton shipment of radioactive material found in Boston:

A Halliburton Co. shipment of radioactive material that landed in New York in October was lost en route to Texas, and was not found until Wednesday, when it turned up in Boston.

The material two sources of the element americium, used in oil well exploration was found intact at a freight facility after an intense search by federal authorities. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was not alerted to the missing shipment until Tuesday.

Boston was under a heightened state of alert in January and didn’t uncover this unexplained radioactive shipment with its radioactivity detectors and whatever other means it employed to investigate the dirty bomb threat.

Sleep tight.