I should point out that part of that map is not very truthful. It counts money going to Native American reservations, maintenance of Federal land, and military bases and missile silos as returned state funding. This is deceptive and tips the balance in states with a low population. I also believe they seem to be failing to note the "Minerals Management Service royalty".

If you get in, you can make some cash and Apple pays on-time.

oh, I see, the Mayan calender is really the due dates on some reports to the galactic overlords - great 2012 will be fun.

I get the feeling your comment is more "Insightful" then "Funny".

You must be in management :)

"The corn used for fuel was grown specifically for fuel, on fields that had been put-aside (pay to not grow type)."

I would love to see your source on this statement, because I believe it to be false.

Also, there is plenty of diesel being run in the winter in places like ND, you just use the winter formulation and don't use pure bio-diesel. It does take more battery to start then a regular gas engine. On the other hand, hydrogen has serious problems with cold weather (Honda's engineers pointed this out on one of the weekly news programs).

Here is the part I never got. Ok, two people both subscribe to the monthly service. They meet and pass songs back an fourth. Why in the heck did Microsoft / Record Companies limit the number of plays? What is the purpose? If it is tracking, then count the new songs at sync. It just seems like a really stupid way of doing things that misses the possibilities and actually saves Microsoft money on the download.

Well, it did last 10 years with ~267,000 miles. It wasn't a great car, but it did ok. I learned to hate the dealership enough that I wouldn't buy another car from them, and the four recalls were a little much. Some of the recalls where kinda scary (brake recall - damn anti-locks sounded like a jackhammer).

I gave it to my uncle who is a good mechanic, so he will probably fix it up and give it to someone to drive another 100,000.

I am saying most people in the area most likely to be affected will deal with the roof ok, I would be more worried about the other effects of the ash.

The basic problem is that a lot of people will take a hard hit at that inspection and it will a financial disaster. Oregon is trying to complicate one of the easiest taxes most people pay with a scheme that will be most painful to the low-income person.

Look at it this way, suppose no employer took withholding taxes and on April 15, you had to come up with the whole amount. The likely outcome is most people will not have saved enough during the year and cannot make the huge payment. It is much easier for everyone concerned to pay in incremental chunks.

As a side note, the states that I have lived in (ND, SD, MN) have never had a vehicle inspection on a yearly basis. I would guess that is limited to the coasts.

Also, the thought that all these people with lower income that would have the biggest problem with a yearly payment should take mass transit, assumes a community has mass transit. This is generally not true of rural areas.

The other problem with this whole thing is to assume that my small car causes the same wear and tear on the roads as an SUV and should pay the same per-mile tax. The reason a per-gallon gas tax works is that the SUV will be paying more taxes due to worse fuel economy. Making me pay the same as a SUV owner is a joke,

Wouldn't it be a great feature if you could ask the moderator wtf? Even if it was anonymous, it would be a great insight into how some of this stuff happens. Then again, it might just be like starring into the abyss Cthulhu-style.

one man's trolling is another man's insight

"Denver would only get about a foot" - heck - Denver probably got more snow than that this week in one snow storm. I would be more worried about lung / equipment problems than the roof collapsing.

This is going to be the fun problem with dealing with a new basic type of motor

Gas, for all its problems, has an excellent infrastructure. We have created solutions for storing, transporting, and taxing it. The gas tax is probably one of the easiest to pay and doesn't sneak up on you because it is payed in relatively painless small amounts.

Non-liquid solutions (electricity) are going to be a problem. I would imagine in a sane plan (not Oregon), we would just increase the cost of electricity to account for the roads or mandate that cars have a special plug-in (the paddles for example), and tax that electricity differently. This assumes we improve the power grid so everyone can actually plug-in a vehicle without blowing it up.

I was hoping bio-diesel (made from non-food crops) would be the energy winner, since so much of the current infrastructure and taxing policies could be reused.

Oregon's plan is going to be a pain for the people just getting by and it is so wrong headed from a travelers point of view it isn't even funny. The logistics of this system are so out of whack - I can only imagine the coming IT boondoggle.

Oregon - simple solution - increase your gas tax and use gas and motor licensing fee money only on roads and not your other pet projects.

For a great part of the nation, rail is not economical as a means of commuting. A lot of people live in rural areas or places where metros were designed for cars and not rail. Heck, the light rail project in MN should be looked upon as a inefficient use of taxpayer money. It will have trouble expanding due to cost and lack of area to put rails, it goes from the downtown to the Mall of America (read - not a commuter route of any importance).

Tourists like it though.