big brother in the sky

Not only no, but hell no:

The year is 2020 and the gasoline tax is history. In its place you get a monthly tax bill based on each mile you drove — tracked by a Global Positioning System device in your car and uploaded to a billing center.

What once was science fiction is being field-tested by the University of Iowa to iron out the wrinkles should a by-the-mile road tax ever be enacted.

Basically, some authoritarian nanny-statists… er… sorry… “transportation experts” are getting concerned that increased fuel efficiency in vehicles (you know, something our government has been demanding for about a decade now) might result in a decrease in tax revenues from gas sales (well, duh). Their response to this is not to bump up the tax rate, but rather add a whole new tax that just happens to have the cute little side-effect of installing a government-tracked GPS tracker in your car.
Uh, no.
I completely understand that roads are not free, and their construction and maintenance can be an inordinately expensive undertaking… but there is no way on God’s Green Earth (TM) that the federal and/or state governments are going to stick a GPS tracker in my car without a court order or warrant. Bump up the gas tax… institute tolls… but this GPS plan is not going to work.
(And yes, I know that the government does not need a GPS device to track me in this day and age of cell phones… try not to remind me.)