Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

Huh? This I don't understand.

I never anywhere argued for a ban. I gave my reasons why I dislike the proliferation of SUVs. I would dissuade their use in two ways. 1) Impose gas taxes that accurately reflected harm to the environment (which, in fact they may already) as well as damage to roads (this is harder to measure, but one 6000lb SUV does more than double the damage of two 3000lb cars). 2) Make sure that insurance rates accurately reflect the harm SUVs cause to others and tax that harm to the SUV owner.

If people want to pay the price, that's fine. But as shifter points out, one of the reasons why SUVs are popular (or were) is because they are "more car for the money", which is to say, they have lower costs for the amount of car because of byzantine regulation.

ETA: Lest you think I'm an enviro junkie, I just reread the thread title. I have even more disdain for Priuses. Why? Because many states (at least around here) give them carte blanche for the HOV lanes. They use gas. They take up space and cause congestion. They don't get that much better fuel mileage than some other econo-boxes. Yet they get to use the HOV lanes? Suck it. And DC can suck it more for giving them tax-free registration. Everyone else pays 7% of purchase price and they get in free? Suck that.

Victimhood
 

Interestingly, while you have a right not to have your saddlebags searched when the cops pull your horse over, you have no such right when you are driving in a car, hovercraft or Segway.

Victimhood
 

One tried. Any of your brain cells ever wrapped itself around a nonlinear thought?

Victimhood
 

One might say the same to all non-Arab males. Think about it.

Victimhood
 

Any of your brain cells ever wrapped itself around a rational argument? Do you really believe that at the airport race, religion and national origin should not be a factor on whom they choose for a more thorough search?

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

I can understand why states might want to give incentives to consumers to buy Priuses over equally gas-efficient cars using traditional technology, as a way to promote alternative technology that is, in the long run, more promising. But the HOV lane thing is a huge mistake -- it made sense when none of these cars are on the road, but as more and more of them are out there, it makes the commute worse for people who are actually carpooling. And Priuses in particular don't seem to need incentives, since there's a real waiting time to get one.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

Although I wonder if the waiting list would be so long if they didn't get the preference. I know at least two people who bought them specifically for that reason, and have other cars for non-commuting driving. I'll give credit to my neighbors--they bought one I presume because they wanted to look green.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

If you acccept that sort of soft regulation, then we should also be able to tax Domino's Pizza, or people who commute instead of take the train, for damaging roads more than others. Why should I pay more tax for my SUV (when I only drive to the train and the few miles around my home) than a car driver who commutes 50 miles a day? Your dissuading techniques are far too simplistic to ever be sensibly implemented.

Trying to tweak people's behaviors leads to exactly the sort of damging behavior you note about the Priuses.

The limited (and I agree, absurd) tax break Shifty cited does not make the case that an SUV is more car for the money. Their lower costs have always been outweighed by higher costs of maintenance and repair (if you owned a shift on the fly 4X4 in the 80s and early 90s, you understand the "new transmisssion at 60k miles" rule that applied). If anything, it was less car in return for the privilege of not worrying about anything come Winter (or, as I noted earlier, waiting in line to leave a stadium).

Victimhood
 

Do you believe it is possible to make it a factor that does not become the only factor?

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

A gas tax fairly distinguishes by the amount of miles driven. And heavier trucks pay higher road use taxes. hardly a novel concept

Why are we taxing dominos pizza? For the same reason we tax cigarettes highly? To pay for the health care costs?

Victimhood
 

I don't think you know what that word means.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

Do you know there are taxes on gas?

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

I didn't click on Shifty's link, but assumed he was talking about federal regulations that make it much less expensive to build pick-ups and SUVs because they don't have to meet the same safety and mileage requirements. The original intent was to exempt farmers and ranchers who actually used trucks as trucks, but the regulations morphed into a way to protect Detroit from the Japanese. It's terrible public policy.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

1. True. But don't we already have a blind gas tax?

2. Domino's uses roadways as part of its business to an extent far above the average driver.

Victimhood
 

Absolutely. I know when I board a plane I might be subject to a search. If I don't want to be thoroughly searched I don't have to fly a commercial jet. The issue is not who gets searched and who doesn't, the issue is who gets searched more often.

The issue is also not using racial or national origin profiling vs. other profiling, it is whether you ad it to your tools for trying to keep planes from being hijacked and blown up.

My mother, a 75 year old caucasian women, has had her hip replaced. She set off all the buzzers and so she got a more thorough search. She was incensed about it and kept yelling that it was her hip (this was her first trip using the new hip). Since she complained she got an even more thorough search. I told her they did exactly what they should have done. They can't take her word that it is a metal hip. The buzzers go off and they have to do something about it. I have also been told that when someone has got something to hide they are the first ones to complain. So once she started complaining she hit another profile and bang, even more thoroughly search. If she doesn't like it she can find another way to travel. But I am sure some liberal out there thinks it is discrimination that people with artificial joints (which means mostly old people) get searched more thoroughly. It is ageist or some such nonesense.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

All the Dominos delivery cars I see are little tin cans that even I could probably lift up.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

nd they charge a delivery fee to cover their increased gas costs.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

The next thing you know, someone will try to make you pay to use particular roads or bridges.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

Please. You wouldn't bother. If you got one of those in your sights, you'd hit the driver for his pizza. and then go back to the store and get his next delivery.

Victimhood
 

As long as there are people like you in this world, no, I don't. I htink the danger is too great. An easy alternative is to search everyone.

Victimhood (Prius Rant)
 

Depends what's on the pizza.

Maybe I could entice (or just force) him into some noirish pizza game . . .

Victimhood
 

Okay. Explain it.

Victimhood
 

Reid was the shoe-bomber (but I think his 1st name is "Richard")

Victimhood
 

And, oddly, is a half jamaican/half white man who coverted to islam. Let him through, people.

Victimhood
 

Yes. They will still do random searches. In addition, there are a lot more profiles out there. What about the caucasian male or female who has a terrorist counterpart, who has hidden a bomb in their stuff. Or a native born caucasian that has been converted to the cause and has cleaned up for the flight? I am sure they have developed profiles for them.

I am sure there is also a militia profile. If you are from rural West Virginia and your eyes are too close together. I don't know. But clearly if you are Black or Asian and from rural West Virginia there is not much of a chance of you being part of a terrorist militia.

When it comes to serial killers it is my understanding they are looking for white males from middle to upper white class families between the ages of twenty and fifty. When there is a serial killer on the loose I want them to work with the profiles they have.

Victimhood
 

You may be right. My bad.

Victimhood
 

The risk with all these profiles you've developed is that they either become a simplistic, and too narrow, crutch ("search all Arabs" means "let the shoe bomber through") or they become so broad as to be meaningless (the "drug dealer" profiles the DEA used to have were so broad that pretty much any person flying alone, and some people not flying alone, fit them).

You can say race would be "a factor." But if you believe that everyone of Arab descent should be searched, then race is not "a factor." It is dispositive, at least in one direction.

The other question is one of resources. What % of travellers would have to be searched with this "factor"? Could the TSA handle that -- and still spare the resources to search other people who should be searched, and apply other meaningful security measures?

I do believe that race should be considered, but I don't know how that works in practicality.

Victimhood
 

does not equal "blow up."

Victimhood
 

I don't understand the obsession with "profiling." Doesn't everyone agree that the government should pay more attention to people who are more likely to pose a threat and pay less attention to people who are less likely to pose a threat? They don't seem to do this now, and lengthy arguments about what profiles they should be looking for are a diversion from the question of what they should be doing with those profiles.

eta: What Sidd said, too.

Victimhood
 

What word are you referring to? I never thought I'd say this, but you're making less sense than Spanky, and I don't think you're doing it on purpose.

Victimhood
 

they should give everyone a gun as you get on the plane, like you get glasses at Disneyland for the 3-D rides.

You think anyone would start mixing lotions together if we were all taking a bead at them?

Victimhood
 

hijack. Reid did not try to "hijack" any airplane. He tried to blow one up.

Victimhood
 

Again, no one ever said that it should be the only factor (or the dispositive factor). The issue is where they should be allowed to use race, national origin etc. as one of the factors. Of course they should. The ACLU
doesn't think they should be allowed to.

Of course the height of stupidity would be to not search a certain group at all because they don't fit a profile. You always have to have random searches for everyone. But no one has ever suggested that.

But you can't give everyone that wants to get on the plane an anal cavity search (eventhough Taxwonk thinks that is a good idea)but when deciding how far up the search process you go (going through the bag all the way to all the way up to being thoroughly interrogated by the police in separate room) these people need to be able to use all the tools at their disposal.

Victimhood
 

The ACLU disagrees. And Taxwonk disagrees.

Victimhood
 

Ty gets at neither sticking point. The trouble is not with the concept of profiling. Nor is the trouble with what the profile is (or profiles are) in general. The issue is whether race or ethnicity or national origin should be an element (or the only element) of a profile. That's what the ACLU is bent out of shape about.

Victimhood
 

Isn't that the definition of profiling? So doesn't that answer your question of " I don't understand the obsession with profiling."

Victimhood
 

how about profiling based upon how many vowels you have in your name? no one complained with they profiled Italians and ran roughshod over our rights in the Mafia prosecutions so there is precedent.

Victimhood
 

So you would close the restrooms and make people squat in the aisles? Intriguing. I think they tried that on a recent flight, and it didn't go all that well.

Victimhood
 

maybe you just need to define the words and Taxwonk will agree. Taxwonk seems to not understand some basic English vocabulary.

Victimhood
 

2 words. "batroom buddy. or "slop pots."