Captured in a headline in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, here's a snapshot of California barreling down the road to ruin: 'Gas Tax Revenue Windfall for State.' And here's the sub-head: 'Lawmakers eager for help balancing budget'. Talk about man's inhumanity to man! With the state looking at an $8 billion deficit, the pols evidently think that recouping a big chunk of it through higher gas prices is a great way to go ' their idea of a victimless tax. Supposedly, if gasoline, now averaging $3.63 in the Sunshine State, hits $4 a gallon, it will add $1.2 billion to the $3.8 billion that state and local governments are already extorting from motorists at the pump. The reporter who wrote this story, one Matthew Yi, of the Chronicle's Sacramento bureau, seems as tone deaf to its implications as the politicians who evidently have been drooling over the prospect of all those 'windfall' dollars finding their way into the state's coffers. Here's a little more from Mr. Yii ' a transition paragraph that he undoubtedly believes is editorially neutral: '[The extra revenues] would bring some welcome relief to the state's revenue picture, which has been bleak in recent months as the meltdown in the housing market became a drag on the Golden State's economy.' Now, you may have to read that sentences a couple of times before you fully understand what it says ' that taxing fuel until motorists cry 'Uncle!' is somehow going to help California's 'revenue picture.' If that were true, then why not levy a $500 tax on each and every patient admitted to a hospital emergency room? That's a tax that would be especially hard to avoid ' plus, wouldn't the lion's share be paid by greedy insurance companies that are swimming in unconscionable profits anyway? The Last
LATEST TRADES
