Just Before It Goes Black

Riding the bike home today, I noticed the unusually large number of vehicles with expired registration. Just think -- the registration fee in California went from 0.65% to 1.15% overnight, so imagine how many more people will be failing to scrounge up the money in time. That means, you guessed it, more penalties due to the state. I bet that the state figures penalty payments when they figured out how many billions more will be coming into them.

Of course, I'm personally inconvenienced by this measure, if only because I own three used cars but hardly drive any one of them. The good news is that my cars are all [mostly] depreciated, so the increase is marginal. The bad news is that I hardly drive any one of them, so instead of taxing gasoline as a users fee, well, now I get to triply support our grand expansion of roads and bridges due to our stimulus spending.

And wouldn't you know it -- the very first recipients were road crews in Maryland, used to repave and add safety features to a highway. Just as I expected. Obama plans on combating global warming by building more roads from oil-derived asphalt or coal-derived steel and concrete, driven on by car owners who don't pay use taxes for their gasoline and who won't be paying state sales tax on their new rigs.

Look...I understand that even if I don't use much of the road, I do use it indirectly, everyday. My food gets to me over the roadways, and I am more than willing to pay the incremental cost of delivery by taxing diesel. But the only reason we're repaving and adding safety features to a road in Maryland is because they beat the hell out of it, they drive, drive, drive, and they drive in such fucked up conditions and manners that we're compelled to add safety features. So they can drive 85? Great. The bad news is that these drivers aren't removed from the gene pool, either. A lose-lose proposition.

Well, I'm of the opinion that we've further to go down before we go back up. I think we've got a string of additional quarters of negativity in front of us before we see the light. Things are always darkest just before they go black.