Jerry Brown’s Mileage Tax Is A Leftist Plan That Should Outrage Californians
On January 20, 2016, Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown delivered his State of the State address in his one-party state California. Brown deserves credit. Unlike Barack Obama’s State of the Union, Jerry Brown’s State of the One-Party State address was actually informative.
You see, Brown’s idea of forward leaning progress involves turning every road – literally everything from suburban cul-de-sacs to behemoth freeways to winding two laners out in the sticks – into toll roads.
That’s right. Toll roads. All of them. As in, if you get up in the morning to go to work in Moonbeamville, your trip to and from will be paid by you in the form of a toll. Each day. Every. Day.
“Nah, no way Andrew Allen, dude, there’s like no way Jerry Brown like said he wanted to like turn all of them into toll roads…maybe some of them and that would be cool, but no way all of them”, are what the waking baker Bernie Sanders wannabes are saying to themselves at this point.
Which is true if you’ve just pressed CTRL-F and typed in “toll roads” while viewing a copy of Moonbeam’s State of the State.
It’s the same way the semantics of truth work out for a lot of liberal ideals. Take Obamacare, err, excuse me, the Affordable Care Act, as an example. The penalties individuals must pay for not participating in healthcare were called fines, then taxes, then fines and back to taxes again. Back and forth it went until the Supreme Court weighed in; but, bottom line, whether tax or a fine or ice cream sandwiches, Obamacare takes people’s money out of their pockets. Which doesn’t make it affordable if you’ve got less of the green stuff to afford to pay for things with.
Brown’s proposal would require every vehicle in California to be outfitted with a tracking device. The device would tally up the miles driven and then — using some arcane formula dreamt up by the same fiscal masterminds that have already bankrupted the state – a tax would be imposed based on number of miles driven.
Yes, California already charges consumers $0.59 per gallon for gasoline (which includes federal gasoline taxes but doesn’t account for variable county and municipal fuel tax rates). And yes, those in state media and politics who are in love with Moonbeam’s plan proudly claim that the “road mileage fee” would “replace gasoline taxes”. Sure they would. Because in deep blue states they are always getting rid of taxes. They never ever seek out new revenue streams or raise existing ones now do they?
This slight of hand move is informative in and of itself. It’s textbook Liberal Lies 101. The Great Idea Fairy flitters down from Sacramento with some grand idea to raise money for the state AND get rid of an alarmingly high and unpopular gasoline tax. Fast-forward a few years down the line and presto, the gas tax is still there AND there’s that great, new money-raising idea also squeezing the life out of people’s paychecks.
That, too, is something to pay attention to when an idea like Brown’s come about. Think about it. Who, disproportionately, would be impacted the most by a law that says for X number of miles driven you owe X number of dollars? There’s all those people out there living in the shadows doing the jobs regular Americans supposedly won’t do. The working poor who often have to drive considerable distances to get to job sites. Those who are on a fixed income and simply don’t have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to making ends meet. And those who rely on tourism – it’s not hard to imagine Seattle snowbirds heading to Lake Havasu instead of sunny southern California because of Brown’s tax scheme. These are among those Brown’s idea would hurt most.
Liberals always cite the most noble sounding reasons for everything they want to do. Because they know best. Better than anyone else. Liberals are so all about themselves they can’t grasp that the people hurt the most by liberal idiocy are the same people liberals claim they want to help the most. Just look at any urban area in America today. City hall is full of liberals who have been helped by decades of liberal ideas – and the local projects are full of people liberals said they wanted to help but have only hurt for generation after generation.
It’s not just people that Brown’s idea would hurt.
Remember how upset liberals were over things like the Patriot Act and NSA snooping? Funny how when an idea like Moonbeam’s comes around they instantly forgot all their alleged worries about loss of liberties and due process.
For Brown’s mileage tax to work, as mentioned, installation of a tracking device in each vehicle would be required. This would give the state the power to track any vehicle in the state at any time. We live in a day and age in which we are supposed to believe the police are out in force each night playing a real-world version of The Hunger Games against black people. Would this tool not help them do this? More realistically, what about the right to privacy? Is it the business of some nameless, faceless, desk driver in Sacramento to know about the Point A’s and B’s a private citizen travels between? Who tracks the tracker?
In fact, isn’t a warrant required to wiretap someone in this way? Heaven knows if George W Bush had asked for powers like these the left would be up in arms quoting every bit of judicial precedent they could come up with.
Liberals believe that ends justify the means though. That’s how they can ignore everything that’s wrong with Moonbeam’s plan and smile with delight as they ram it down people’s throats.