You have a right to have your preferences, and others have a right to dislike your preferences. That’s what freedom is all about.

You really put yourself out on a weak limb when you try to compare a dislike of a given vehicle choice to racism. Nobody chose to be black, Hispanic, Asian or a female, but every SUV owner made a conscious effort to become one.

If you like SUV’s and those who love them, then you’d be more convincing if you’d defend them based upon their merits. Still, not everyone is going to agree with you, and you’ll just have to learn to deal with it.

First, while it could be construed as vague, the statement began with the word THESE… i.e. reffering to the people that are relentlessly expressing their hatred of SUV’s and the people that drive them.

As to how we should label people, how about first respecting peoples freedom to choose what they wish to drive without hurling a never ending stream of derogatory comments towards them?

If people that dare drive a vehicle that liberals don’t like are going to be subjected to all the “gas guzzling, bloated, unneeded, unnecessary, ego enhancing, phallic symbol, world destroying, child killing, efficient car crushing monstrocities, etc., etc.”, what further need do the liberals have for a label?

As to “how will this labeling further intelligent discussion on TTAC?”, perhaps you could help me understand how the pointless hatin on SUV’s is furthering intelligent discussion on TTAC?

Personally, I believe the level of intelligent discussion would rise dramatically as soon as the anti-SUV crowd quits trying to IMPOSE their personal religion on everyone else.

Vehicles are getting heavier because of consumer and government demands for more crashworthiness, along with consumer demands for more refinement (i.e., less noise, vibration and harshness).

Those require stronger structures (not to mention more air bags), and unless car makers use exotic materials that add cost (both to the purchase price and to accident repair costs, which will drive up insurance costs), those stronger structures will be heavier.

Also, air conditioning, power door locks and power windows are pretty much standard on Focuses, Corollas and Civics.

When I was growing up, a Pinto or Corolla was considered well-equipped if it had a radio and an automatic transmission, and only Cadillacs, Lincolns, Olds Ninety-Eights, Buick Electras and Chrysler Imperials and New Yorkers could be expected to have power windows, door locks and seats.

The horror, the horror.

So Wolven, if liberals are all environazis in your book, how should liberals label people like you so that they can dismiss your rantings with a wave of the hand instead of listening to what you have to say? And how will this labeling illuminate any policy questions and further intelligent discussion on TTAC?

Anyone that hates a person because of their personal choice of vehicle is EXACTLY the same as someone who hates because of skin color, hair color, ethnicity, choice of clothing, so forth and so on… And hating a machine requires about the same IQ as hating a rock, way below childish.

Just wanted to point out that if you make anywhere near the average income, the tax man (government) ALREADY takes well over half of it. The taxes you see are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s all the taxes buried in the base price of everything you buy that you’re missing.

Gasoline taxes have nearly always been promoted and justified as a means of paying for road construction and maintenance — that’s certainly been the case in the past. That happens to make her statement perfectly sensible, so I’m not sure where your shock and amazement come from. Perhaps you were living in England when gas taxes have actually been raised in this country.

The idea of taxing gasoline in order to reduce consumption is a pretty new idea for Americans, if that’s what you’re thinking of. And even in Europe, high gasoline taxes originated long before high oil prices and environmentalism — they started as a means to limit oil imports so as to fend off trade deficits in the era of the gold standard (when countries stupidly bounced gold bricks back and forth to each other depending on their trade balances).

Also, FWIW, most drivers may not like tolls but economists love the idea, as they directly assign the costs of roads to those who actually benefit from them. It’s not a stupid idea. And as far as I know, cabinet secretaries aren’t constitutionally banned from merely talking about things that may be politically unpopular during dinner conversations.

Solution? Get an “EZ Pass” so that your travel can be billed and monitored.

Just raise the gas tax, but allow low-income people a rebate.

As far a picking on them for their poor fuel consumption its not fair. All cars have backslid on fuel consumption in the past 20 years. Almost all cars have significantly more engine than required to perform their given role.

Heck Edmunds did a tongue in cheek comparison a little while back of a Ferrari 308 versus a Kia Sedona minivan. The minivan has more power than the Prancing horse.

The wear on the road is the cube of the vehicle weight.

95% of the damage comes from heavily loaded trucks. When you have a loaded dump truck piling on 50-65k lbs. in a 25 ft span or a 80k semi with a 40 ft span is where the real damage happens.

It depends upon the issue that you are trying to address.

If the goal is to reduce fuel consumption, then the most direct way to do that is to reduce the usage of fuel by raising the price. Making things more expensive reduces their use.

From a social policy standpoint, if reducing fuel usage is our primary motivation for creating laws and taxes, then we really shouldn’t care how individuals choose to save fuel, just so long as they figure out ways to save it. If they save it by driving a smaller car, let them. If they save it by taking the bus, let them. If they save it by walking, let them. Our interest should be primarily in results, because our goals are ultimately results based.

In this scenario, we really don’t care how they save fuel, just so long as they use less fuel. How everyone gets there is his own business. If someone with an SUV uses 400 gallons per fuel per year, that is better for meeting our social policy goals than someone who drives a Corolla who uses 500 gallons per year.

The fuel tax is the most direct method of creating linkage between behavior and results. Its main problem is a practical one — no politician in the US who wants to keep his or her job will ever support a tax set at a level high enough to impact consumer behavior.

While I don’t have too many tinfoil hats, there are those who think this “would be for our own good”. I respectfully dissent.

Sorry, but this is totally unworkable. This would be impossible to enforce, and would only inspire minimum wage gas station attendants to accept favors from the owners of gas guzzlers. The idea of bribing guys for a cheap fillup is about as good as it sounds, and expecting gas jockey to act as cops (”You in the Suburban trying use that Prius ID card — back away from the pump!!!”) is no better.

One of the advantages of fuel taxes in their presence form is that they are easy to tabulate and collect. There is very little room for gamesmanship and minimal opportunity for evasion, and enforcing the collections effort is cost effective. Trying to tax everyone differently at the pump would be an absolute nightmare for everyone, and would help no one.

If the goal is to stop people from buying SUV’s, then the best times to do it are at purchase time, and again at registration. Of course, make it too costly to register vehicles, and you’ll end up with a lot of unregistered trucks on the road, along with a lot of fake registration documents, so you can only do so much with this.

Thanks for the map. Yeah, I do remember that Madison Park area, and others and they are gorgeous. I lived about half a mile west of the old Floating Bridge, which was the only one when I lived there. David

It’s easy for Cheney not to care what Americans think because most of us are not directly affected by the Iraq war. Very different with the Civil War. There were a total of about 25 million Americans at the time, roughly 3 million served in the two armies–that’s one out of 8.3, which means few families would have been spared, and an estimated 618,000 died. If we even had a draft now, the Iraq war would have ended by now because Americans wouldn’t have tolerated having their kids drafted.

Finally, comparing Lincoln and Cheney is like comparing (insert your favorite car here) with a Chevy Aveo. As much as he had to resist public opinion during that war, Lincoln was not the sort of person who would have said FU to public opinion. Lincoln had both amazing political skills and a level of human decency which is seldom seen in a modern national politician. I highly recommend the biography, Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

His proposal is increase the tax on oil (or gasoline), but do it consistently and gradually.

For example, tax oil at $0.10/bbl this month, then $0.20/bbl next month, then $0.30/bbl two months hence, etc.

This gives people and businesses time to adjust their lives and operations to the new reality. The tax doesn’t really start biting hard for several years, but incrementing it every month keeps peoples’ attention on it.

Coupled with this increase in energy taxation is a simultaneous crediting and phaseout of income taxes, so that peoples’ tax burden remains approximately constant during the transition period.