From Autoguide
ILLINOIS - "Just attach this lil device to your car, and we'll help you save money!"
So say several of the insurance agencies out there, who want to track how much you drive so they can "get you the lowest rate." Heretofore, many of them had been sending out a little slip of paper every year, asking you to go out and write down your current mileage on your vehicle, and annually, they'd calculate your "use" of the car (and their insurance services) by the difference between the numbers each year.
But this is the new millennium. We can't do things on PAPER!! That's so nineties!!
So the insurance companies get you hooked up with what's ostensibly a GPS (global positioning device) that tracks your mileage and - again ostensibly - gets your rates lowered if you don't drive too much. You know, they get real-time info, so you don't have to write your odometer reading on a piece of paper.
Did you catch that...? They get real-time info. You do understand, don't you, that they're not just tracking your mileage...? They're FINDING OUT WHERE YOU'RE GOING IN YOUR CAR, EVERY TIME YOU GET IN YOUR CAR.
For those of you who screech to high heaven about how intrusive and invasive the government is, a whole buncha yall are happy to get hooked up with a GPS through Allstate or whatever insurance you have so you can SAVE MONEY!!!!
Have you ever heard of the old saw, "“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" by Benjamin Franklin ....? If you haven't, consider yourself schooled (properly, too. A lot of people butcher that quote). Although I doubt it'll help at all, butchered, filleted, fricaseed, whatever. Gotta save money you know. Takes money to live and all that.
Well, SOME people who understand that old saw have taken the latest campaign issue for the gubernatorial race in Illinois and are calling it out as it is.
And as it is is this: It's a sneaky way for the government to track your movements across the country. Fifteen years ago you wouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing. Now, hey...Bruce and JB are talking about it. Must be a thing, eh?
Here's a snip from an Illinois Policy article about this very thing.
In January, J.B. Pritzker told the editorial board of the Arlington Heights-based Daily Herald that Illinois should explore the idea of taxing people by how much they drive. This is called a vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, tax.
“It’s only fair if you’re on a road and traveling on that road then you should pay your fair share on the road like everybody else is paying,” Pritzker said.
We don't know JB, but surely he can't be that dumb. Our roads are ALREADY being paid for with "fair shares" from taxes taken out of our paychecks by threat of force (as I'm fond of saying, yes, FORCE. Try not paying taxes and see what happens. You'll think the use of the word "force" is MILD). No, it's not "fair," JB, for people to pay even more for our crappy roads. Our governmental entities need to responsibly tend to the funds they get for road maintenance...something they're not doing, from the lowliest road commissioner to the highest-paid IDOT director. What are they doing with our taxes collected for such a thing? THAT is what JB and Bruce should be discussing. But they aren't. Because this is Illinois.
This happycrappy was attempted back in 2016. Sen. John Cullerton, D-Chicago (where else?) attempted a per-mile road-user fee that was along the lines of Obamacare: You had two options for the tracking device, or conversely, if you didn't want one, you had to pay $450 a year. That was so hugely successful with O-care that that was one of Trump's early victories: Get rid of the mandate. The joyous cries of those of us who were continually penalized for not buying something we weren't going to use to begin with apparently were merely reverberations of the Cullerton shoot-down: He actually removed his Senate Bill proposal and didn't bring it up anymore. We've already got Ameren charging us for NOT putting a SmartMeter on our house; why on earth is it continually okay for governments and businesses to charge us for something we're NOT using??
Illinois is desperate for money for all the coffers that have been robbed over the years, all the mismanagement of funds that are still there, and all the deterioration we've had to suffer because of the first two factors. If anything, one of our gubernatorial candidates needs to grow a spine and decry the notion. If the insurance companies want to try to force this on us, that's fine; we'll go with another company. But if the state keeps forcing such things on us, well...Illinois is going to be a state of some population centers and no one to farm the rest of it, because we're going to get out in droves...which is already happening. Whoever wins this November is going to be presiding over one of the greatest failures ever to exist in this country. And it's going to take a LOT more effort than two such weak candidates and their ignorant ideas flitting through their heads, out their mouths, and into the ears of those of us who've had a gutful and realize...Kentucky, Indiana and Missouri are all very close to downstate.
Might be time to make a move.