If you figure the average car gets roughly 20 MPG, a half-cent per mile tax comes out to 10 cents a gallon. We already have a mechanism in place to collect that. And it would penalize people who drive a lot, or own inefficient cars, or who do a lot of stop-and-go driving in traffic, which is exactly what you want.

It seems to me this is just a way to tax people without taxing gas directly. It's not going to fool anybody. So what are they going to do, put a mileage meter on each vehicle? If you want to tax people more for driving so you can raise more revenue, just raise the tax on each gallon. The voters will have a chance to respond to the idea at the ballot box, and people will be taxed for the amount of energy they consume and pollution they produce.

People need to stop complaining about taxes. If you think they're too high, don't vote for legislators who put them in. But don't bitch when the roads start getting potholes, either.

You pay for what you get. If the taxes are too high for what you get in return, then either you're getting excessive or unnecessary services, or there's corruption and/or inefficiency in government. Either way, its up to the citizenry to vote people in who can fix the problem. Ultimately, its the voter who determines the level of services relative to the amount of taxation.