Quickies: Fraudsters And Janissaries

It looks like it's going to be one of those days, so I'll limit myself to a few quick observations, triggered by this item cited at Common Sense And Wonder:

A black box in your car? Some see a source of tax revenue

WASHINGTON — As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.

The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues....

"This really is a must for our nation. It is not a matter of something we might choose to do," said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is planning for the state to start tracking miles driven by every California motorist by 2025. "There is going to be a change in how we pay these taxes. The technology is there to do it."...

The concept is not a universal hit.

In Nevada, where about 50 volunteers' cars were equipped with the devices not long ago, drivers were uneasy about the government being able to monitor their every move.

"Concerns about Big Brother and those sorts of things were a major problem," said Alauddin Khan, who directs strategic and performance management at the Nevada Department of Transportation. "It was not something people wanted."

As the trial got underway, the ACLU of Nevada warned on its website: "It would be fairly easy to turn these devices into full-fledged tracking devices.... There is no need to build an enormous, unwieldy technological infrastructure that will inevitably be expanded to keep records of individuals' everyday comings and goings."...

Some transportation planners, though, wonder if all the talk about paying by the mile is just a giant distraction. At the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area, officials say Congress could very simply deal with the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund by raising gas taxes. An extra one-time or annual levy could be imposed on drivers of hybrids and others whose vehicles don't use much gas, so they pay their fair share.

"There is no need for radical surgery when all you need to do is take an aspirin," said Randy Rentschler, the commission's director of legislation and public affairs. "If we do this, hundreds of millions of drivers will be concerned about their privacy and a host of other things."

First, let's acknowledge something history says quite plainly: No tax ever goes away. It is next to impossible to believe that Washington and the states will renounce gasoline taxes in favor of this mileage-based tax. I haven't seen a tax disappear in my 60-plus years, and I doubt this one would be the mind-shattering precedent. So what we're discussing is overwhelmingly more likely to be an additional tax than a replacement for the gasoline tax.

Second, a mandatory technology that's capable of tracking a vehicle's miles traveled will inevitably be capable of determining its location and velocity -- and that capacity will be used by the Powers That Be. The advocates of such devices might be able to fool an Obama voter about this, but they can't fool a Certified Galactic Intellect who just happens to be a very senior engineer with long experience in such things.

Third, in reports on the public sector, I've been seeing more and more names that resemble these (from the above):

• Hasan Ikhrata
• Alauddin Khan

If you're familiar with the history of Ottoman Turkey's Janissaries, you know that the Ottomans made it their policy never to send a particular unit of such troops to duty among people of "their own kind" -- e.g., their own tribe, or their own religion. The idea was, of course, to avoid the emergence of a sympathy between occupiers and occupied that might inhibit the troops against following harsh orders from their commanders. The Soviets did much the same thing in their years in power.

Call me a bigot if you like, but when I see a report about possible developments in public policy containing names that suggest heritages hostile to freedom, I begin to wonder whether our political class is striving to create a Janissary corps among American bureaucrats. The motivation would be exactly the same as that of the Soviets and the Ottomans.

Enjoy your Monday, if I haven't ruined it already.