IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Governor Jerry Brown and many California lawmakers are desperately attempting to increase taxes on gasoline in the once Golden State. They tell us that our roads and highways are in the worst disrepair of any state and that Californians don’t pay enough to maintain our infrastructure.
What they fail to remind us of is that fact that Californian’s pay an average of 41 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes, the 5th highest in the nation. They also don’t remind us that billions of dollars every year of those taxes are diverted away from paying for road maintenance and new infrastructure into bloated mass transit projects like buses, rail lines and bike paths that very few Californians ever use.
And of course, let’s not forget CALTRANS, the bloated agency responsible for maintaining state highways and its wasteful incompetence that causes projects either not to be built, built defectively, or completed at such a high cost that the State Highway fund is emptied early.
Never the less, Jerry Brown and his cohorts want to increase our gas taxes again.
But, according to California Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor (LAO), Jerry Brown already increased gas taxes by 11 cents a gallon when the state implemented the Cap and Trade program for gasoline this past January. According to the LAO, in a letter dated March 4, 2016, that is $2 billion dollars raised from consumers in the state.
This “carbon tax” though doesn’t go to funding roads and highways. It doesn’t even have the opportunity to be wasted by CALTRANS. It funds programs like high speed rail or whatever new general fund program or project the Governor and his accomplices want to spend it on.
According to the LAO, there are some benefits for consumers. You can get a state rebate on a $50,000 Chevrolet Volt or a $70,000 (base model) Tesla thanks to the cap and trade tax. Of course, most Californians can’t really afford these expensive vehicles, so who really benefits from the rebate program?
So while the “little people” of California, who have the highest poverty rate in the nation, pay another 11 cents per gallon, none of it goes to improving roads. It does help offset the cost of high performance luxury cars for wealthy tech moguls and Hollywood stars though and that is really all the new California economy is really about today anyways.
It’s a great example of how the new California Progressives actually function in government. You and I pay new taxes. Those taxes are completely disconnected from their origin, in this case driving a car down a pothole filled road. No, that money is diverted into expensive cars and trains for elite Californians, so they can drive their expensive electric vehicles and look down on the rest of the peons.
It is truly unfortunate that most Californians no longer pay attention to how their government operates or where their tax dollars are going. But, don’t worry about that. Movie Stars and high tech money makers appreciate all that you little people are doing for them, in the name of fighting “Global Warming” and protecting the environment.
Thank you Jerry Brown. Thank you Arnold Schwarzenegger. Thank you to all the Democrats in Sacramento.
