After CAFE

Another entry in the "those who abuse us for our own good" file: The nanny-staters have finely admitted that increases in the CAFE standards really don't accomplish much, so now they are shifting the focus to VMT ("Vehicle Miles Traveled" for you poor, unenlightened sots). So how do you reduce the number of miles people drive? The same way you force people to do anything else they don't really want to do:

Tax them for doing it.
Use those taxes to fund boondoggles like Detroit's People Mover that rarely does.
Dictate where people will live.
Dictate how people can use their private property.

In other words, business as usual.

Personally, I think it's great to live where I can walk to work and Debbie only drives 7 miles round trip. Today, I realized I didn't have any quarters to do laundry, so I walked down the street to our bank: total round trip time: 20 minutes. Grocery store: 5 minute walk. Post office: 7 minute walk. Library: 8 minute walk. Ice cream parlor, art gallery, city park, an even dozen restaurants, a museum, the high school soccer field: all within a 10-minute walk. It will take a lot to convince me to ever go back to our previous situation where the nearest loaf of bread was a forty-five minute drive round trip. No thanks. But I want the option to do so if I wish without having to placate a bunch of whiners that just can't stand seeing someone else doing something they disagree with.