Enjoy your freedom while you can folks, because the University of Iowa is currently field testing hardware for a system that will all but eliminate it.

It’s an Orwellian plan known as a by-the-mile road tax, and it’s allegedly designed to replace current gas taxes.  The tax works by tracking your vehicle’s every movement via GPS satellites.  Information regarding where, when, and how far you drive would be uploaded to government computers, and they would generate a tax bill based on the data.   

In April, a 15 member government body, dubbed the  National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, ended a two year study by unanimously reccomending the by the mile system.  They called a one or two cent per-mile tax “the best path forward,” saying that it would ensure revenue streams to highway projects. 

The group’s chairman, Robert Atkinson, went a step further, claiming “If you’re committed to the system being improved then it was a no-brainer.”

Obviously, ”the system” he’s referring to has nothing to do with a free and open society, since the complete and utter horror of such a tax is almost too great to fathom.

First of all, if ANYONE in the government believes that big brother has the right to track every US citizen’s movements, they should immediately be removed from their position.  There is no way that the feds have ANY right to know where I am at all times.

Secondly, the freedom to go where we want, when we want is so basic that the mind reels at the insidious stupidity it would take to limit it.  What would be the penalty for a failure to pay this evil little tax?  Will they remotely shut off my car?  Do I go to some sort of traveller’s jail?

Finally, and far less importantly, even if we feel like letting the feds take away our freedom, we know they’ll never eliminate the gas tax.  They’ll claim that by-the-mile taxes will end the need for taxation at the pump, wait a few years, and reinstate it.  We’ve been burned this way too many times to remember.   

Really, though, the money’s not the issue here.   This one’s a freedom-destroyer, pure and simple.  Clearly, the measure would be wildly unpopular, but that only matters in a system where politicians feel that they have to answer for their actions.  More and more, it feels as though we no longer have that.  With their current majorities in Congress, the Dems could have this on Obama’s desk at any moment.

We can only hope that somewhere, behind all that rhetoric, there are still a few people in Washington who actually remember what “freedom” is supposed to mean. 

-Robert Laurie