Ad valorem: Latin for ‘in proportion to value’

Can we get a little “Tax Man” Beatles music here?Three states use a tax to bilk bucks out of trucking companies large and small for running miles in their state. It’s called an ad valorem tax, and it’s a property tax used by Kansas, Arkansas and Kentucky.What a boneheaded “property” tax. It doesn’t matter if you don’t own property in any of these states. If you have registered a vehicle through

Riding shotgun: anatomy of a protest

With a video camera in one gloved hand and a fresh Tim Horton’s coffee in the other, I strolled around the truck stop observing the rigs and waiting to meet the man who organized a grassroots protest against the Ontario speed-limiter law.A police escort was queuing up nearby, and mainstream media reporters from television and radio were abuzz near a white Volvo VN. Affixed to the Volvo were

Rex Rains is now offline

As February comes to an end, most of us here at the OOIDA headquarters will think of it as the month we lost an extraordinary friend and staff member – our peerless Webmaster Rex Rains. Rex died Feb. 17 after a long and wretched battle with cancer. He once described it to me as hand-to-hand combat with a – I will omit the expletive – invisible enemy.He was born in Wichita, KS, and was a veteran