Why Rep. Speier's proposal to cut the speed limit is a bad idea

Accordig to the Mercury News, Rep. Jackie Spier is proposing to impose a national 60MPH speed limit. Here's why it's a bad idea and why there are better alternatives:

Let's do some calculations based on some of the news reports we've heard about Rep. Speier's reducing the national speed limit to 60.

Say a typical commute is 30 miles, gas is $4.50 a gallon, and a typical car gets 20MPG at 80MPH. Using Rep. Speier's numbers, slowing down to 60 would increase the mileage on that car to 25MPG.

MPG	Gallons	$ Cost	$ Savings	Speed	Time Taken	Time Savings
20MPG	1.5	$6.75	0	80MPH	22.5 min	7.5 min
25MPG	1.2	$5.40	$1.35	60MPH	30 min	0

As you can see, driving at 80MPH, it costs $1.35 to save 7.5 minutes. This works out to being paid $10.80 an hour to slow down.

So, it's really only worth it to slow down for those folks making less than about $21,600 per year.

Calculations of this sort were the reason that I supported the move to eliminate the 55MPH national speed limit back when the republicans took over congress in the 90s.

Personally, I'm saving both gas and time having recently moved so that my wife and I are both closer to our jobs, friends, etc. It would be great to see Congress encouraging people to make that sort of change as part of the solution. I really believe that this is the way we're going to have to solve this long-term (i.e. over the next hundred years): we need to adopt a more european model of significantly higher population density, shifted closer to cities that are walkable and bikeable.

Sensible Amendments?

I was just reading the post about a potential privacy amendment here, particularly the comment from "ArthurKC," where suggests that there should be an amendment to the US constitution that reads:

no person who serves in an office of public trust or authority it the United States, or in any individual State, shall recieve any monetary donations, or any other gifts from any source whatsoever, except wherein the public official must conduct a campaign for election to office

in cases where a candidate for office collects donations for a campaign, no person shall donate money or any other gift unless the person donating money is legally entitled to vote in the election in question

In no case may a political candidate recieve gifts or donations from any entity except bonified citizens of The United States who are able to vote

I think that's a good start to getting the money out of politics, but it has a few loopholes which the programmer in me wants to try to fix. The most glaring of these is that it still allows for the equivalent of 527 organizations. Here's my take to try to fix that:

No person who serves in an office of public trust or authority it the United States, or in any individual State, shall recieve any monetary donations, or any other gifts from any source whatsoever, except wherein the public official must conduct a campaign for election to office.

No person shall expend tangible resources with the intent of influencing the outcome of an election unless that person is legally entitled to vote in the election in question.

No entity shall expend tangible resources greater than those received from persons eligible to vote in a particular election with the intent of influencing the outcome of that election.

In no case may a political candidate or organization recieve gifts or donations from any entity except citizens of The United States who are entitled to vote.

There's also an interesting article on Things That Are Not In the U.S. Constitution. Some of those are definitely interesting food for thought.

Personally, I think that the proposed Privacy and Campaign Finance amendments might not be entirely bad ideas. They, and the impact they might have, are certainly interesting to think about.