WTF part 2

I was looking for a picture of the Hummer to post as an icon for my following rant about how people who buy Hummers are selfish, egocentric, resource hog assholes. However, my google search on the key word "hummer" brought this site up as the third entry after the official Hummer site and what looks like a paid sponsored entry. FUH2.com says everything I felt and more, in a much more enjoyable format. Take it for a test spin, I'm sure you'll enjoy the ride!

On a slightly more serious note, I see that purchasers of Hummers actually can get tax breaks if they can figure a way to make it a business purchase. Well, I would like to see a bill introduced in Trenton specifically targeting vehicles like the Hummer for vehicle registration surcharges for: excessive resource use, excess wear on roads and increased need for EMTs at accident scenes (for the people in the other vehicles). Now that I was going to suggest two grand per year as the surcharge, but, upon reflection, I think that figure is actually too little to require Hummer owners to pay for the privilege of driving one of those beasts on an annual basis. Given 15,000 miles/year as a reasonable usage, at 10mpg that means a Hummer would use 1500 gallons of gasoline/year. A reasonable car should average, say 25mpg, which would put its annual gas usage at about 600 gallons. So, charge the Hummer owners a surcharge of $2.50/gallon for the difference and you get $2250/year for excessive gasoline consumption. Then add an insurance surcharge of...I don't know...at least another couple grand for the excessive damage done to other vehicles and their occupants in collisions, and, finally, another thousand or so for excessive wear and tear upon roads. That would bring the annual cost of ownership up to...painful. Yep, that works.

Note: If you can document that you really need the Hummer for legitimate heavy duty off road work, then you could get a certificate of exemption from the surcharges. Personally, if you live on the East Coast, unless you live in someplace like northern Maine, I don't see too many of those exemptions being forthcoming.