Featured 3 States Drop Gas Tax as Prices Soar

They wouldn’t be successful if there weren’t lines of localities willing to subsidize their expansion either.

I have only bought from Amazon once because I couldn’t get it anywhere else.

That seems to allude to the weather in Texas not being worse on occasion in the near past as compared to 2021.

Per IOP…
“demand for heating per capita across the region served by the Texas Interconnection were more severe during a storm in December 1989 than during February 2021, and that cold snaps in 1951 and 1983 were nearly as severe”

Also worth noting cold snaps in the 70’s while not being as cold lasted much longer and occurred more often in certain regions .

The recent failure is due to poor management of the Texas grid, water, sewer and poor or non-existent building code

 

1) there are way too many 'delivery services'. it's an underground economy of immigrant independent contractors' that need to be cracked down on.

2) if you are correct, prices are not high enough. put the oil back in the reserve, raise the federal gas tax, and tell people to suck it up. picture yourself in ukraine.

3) no, that won't get you reelected

sidebar: i ordered something from b,b&b the other day. 6 bucks for shipping, said 2-5 days.

guy shows up that afternoon from door dash. i thought he was a porch pirate

 

That and the fact that they have about 150M prime subscribers in the US.

Mike

 

we signed up due to covid

 

Hopefully just a temporary thing…

Depending on your area
Gas taxes only make up 15-30% of the road budget (officially)

It’s somewhat deceiving and a Peter pays Paul scenario when you have certain entities that can just write all of it (and then some) off. Removing fuel taxes altogether likely results in the public paying them to drive.

Our local ma roads folks have had the $10,000 owed per registration BS floated different times and my guess is for reasons unknown that seems to be the direction some of the Rs in my state want.

One would hope that would de-elect them but it appears they are Teflon.

I am uncertain why there is a desire over punitive registration taxes over gas taxes but that is the direction desired, maybe it is believed it will stop certain people from owning a car? Instead of just causing people to not pay registration?

Not sure why we want to fill junkyards and reduce peoples ability to work.

 

funny, we're still at $4.60, and hasn't changed in awhile.

imagine the frustration of paying an ev tax in a state that eliminates gas tax

 

Here is a map showing state taxes on gas

Gas Tax Rates by State | 2020 State Fuel Excise Taxes | Tax Foundation

States have different percentages of their road and transportation funding coming from their gas taxes. That is why different states may have different ways of handling how they handle the escalating prices of gas.

If a state has a large percentage of their funding coming from car registrations and they have given their citizens no breaks from the current higher valuations of vehicles, their road funds may be rolling in money right now. How much of that money will make it through the bureaucracy to actual road work is anyone's guess.

 

Especially when they are proposing more title and registration tax increases while simultaneously eliminating gas tax

It’s usually about 50% that makes it in the bucket, of that 50% they could technically spend it on almost anything.

My main frustration with the sky high title fees on EV/hybrids in my state is that the money doesn’t go to anything I actually want or agree with,
having more than a single public rapid charger north of Wausau for example, would make the 450-$700 title fee and $75-100 hybrid/EV fee less egregious to me but they don’t use those funds to anything useful like that.

 

The sky is falling!! Run for the hills!!

Sorry, but the plural in 'stations' here is 'fake news'. That story refers to a single 76 gas station in Auburn WA (sort of my back yard) that also sells specialty racing fuels, which are significantly more expensive than ordinary road fuels. On a local news outlet, the station owner expressed befuddlement and amusement at the scary but misleading story.

Google isn't showing me the item from the local outlets I usually watch, but is pointing to another local TV outlet. I don't have a Facebook login, so can't watch the story here, maybe someone else can:
The Truth behind stories of $10.00 a gallon for gas.

 

The highest gas prices in the nation are there and at one airport next to a car rental

So 2 stations drive a nationwide upgrade in the numbering system?

 

Been to Furnace Creek, it was extremely high when gas prices were low...LOL. National Park, only gas station for miles, yep, its going to be sky high.

 

They'll sell half-gallons if they need to, it has worked before.

 

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(broken post)

 

While the

Also worth noting cold snaps in the 70’s while not being as cold lasted much longer and occurred more often in certain regions .[/quote]

Let's dispense with some of this bad information, and look at what actually went wrong and the warnings. Weather was worse in texas for current power plants in the past, but not in the 1970s or 1989, you need to look back to the 1940s. It takes weather events to take down this much power.

There were weather related black outs in 1989 but did not consume as much of the state. Many of the plants that failed were built by then. That should have served as the first weather warning but it was minor. Percapita use is a meaningless statistic. It doesn't take into account differences where the power plants are. That doesn't tell you if a power plant will fail. The expected available power was 75 GW, The worst case scenario was 55 GW while use was 67 GW before the black outs began. That is a recipe for blackouts but not as severe, and ERCOT did not use climate models that took climate change into account so underestimated the cold and actual use. Actual production was only 47 GW. Natural gas and coal produced 11 GW less than there worst case because some plants failed at temperatures higher than they were rated while some weatherized natural gas plants did not have enough natural gas to run. Wind performed the worst compared to expectation but was 2 GW higher than worst case scenario, and solar produced more power than even the expected value. Coal performed the worst against the worst case scenario, while natural gas had the biggest deficit because it is the biggest part of the grid.

The warning that this could happen was in 2011 blackout. Federal Government, state government, and universities all pointed out the next one could be worse and the cause of the blackout was lack of weatherization. The PUC did not require weatherization. They only suggested it, and it is fairly expensive. ERCOT did not create incentives for new weatherized production or put any financial penalties in place for power plants not weatherizing. The Railroad commission did not require new natural gas wells to be weatherized or work with ERCOT to insure power was not cut off to natural gas compressors.

Natural gas reserves and production had fallen before the crisis. They knew that an artic winter storm was coming but they did not work to fill up reserves before the bad storm. ERCOT underestimated demand and did not have extra power plants turn on. When the black outs began ercot turned off power to some natural gas compressors, which starved some natural gas power plants making the situation worse.

Until this black out the texas grid was much more reliable than the grid in most of the US. The grid definitely was mismanaged. 12 of the 15 members of ercot's board came from utilities which was a giant red flag, and 5 members did not even live in texas which is against the bylaws. The PUC which failed the most because it has oversight of ERCOT and has a revolving door to industry. Most texans thought that the grid had been weatherized since 2011, but the PUC failed completely to enforce rules to force industry to protect against a known problem.

The deregulation grew a great deal of wind and solar. In 2011 it became clear that regulation and incentives were needed to weatherize. This was an easy problem to fix by the PUC but they failed. All board members of ERCOT and PUC leadership resigned after details were revealed. The PUC should have at least warned texans that they were doing very little about the known problem.

 

It is interesting to learn how other states handle this issue.

Thank you for explaining how Texas does it.

I had some questions because I'm not from Texas and am interested:
How does Texas fill positions on their PUC?
Do the PUC hold Public Meetings on Issues that affect Texas?
Do they have Terms?
Is the PUC accountable to any part of the Legislature?

Basically I am just interested in this after reading your post.

 

It isn't a digital sign. You can squeeze another digit into the sliders

Perhaps you should be posting in the politics section.