I live in a blue state – a very, very blue state, California, and I am not blue. In fact I am far from blue. I am not even close to purple. I am red, and thus a Contrarian in my blue state.
It is fitting that my first blog is coming so close to that dreaded April 15 tax deadline, as the Democrats in California have just passed a big tax increase in order to try to cover-up for their incompetence in handling the state’s budget in reference to infrastructure. Here in California there is a $59 billion backlog on deferred state highway maintenance as well as a $78 billion backlog on local streets and roads, as the funds that should have been used for these issues seem to have disappeared!
Well of course, the only solution for Democrats is to raise taxes and that is what they have just done.
When I say “Democrats”, I mean just that, as there was only one Republican vote for this tax hike bill. This lone Republican senator (R, Canella, Ceres) voted for this bill only after he had cajoled Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, into adding $500 million of pork for his district in the form of a commuter line from San Jose to his Central Valley district and a parkway linking U.C. Merced to highway 99. (As one of my friends sarcastically told me in the past, ” We are all basically prostitutes, and all we haggle about is our price!”) Mr. Canella’s vote theoretically gives this tax hike “bipartisan support”, and while those in the Central Valley will be enjoying the pork, the rest of us in California will be paying for it!
In the sense of fairness, I should mention that one Democratic assemblyman (D,Sales, Bakersfield) and one Democratic senator (D, Glazer, Orinda) voted against this bill. I do not know either of these gentlemen, but I assume that they are men of principle, as they refused to lie down as did their Democratic counterparts. Madame Lorena Gonzales-Fletcher (D, San Diego) apparently castigated Mr. Sales saying, “You sold them out” (referring to her Democratic lemmings) when in reality he had refused to sell out his constituents.
To all the people in California one of the important things to remember is that this tax hike barely passed in the assembly – getting the minimum two-thirds ‘yes’ votes. What this means is that if your local Democratic assemblyman had voted “No”, this bill would not have passed, and so basically your local Democratic assemblyman is directly responsible for your personal increased taxes – for the next 10 years!! I would hope that everyone remembers this when they show up again asking you for their vote in the next election.
Vote them out!
One more thing that is often missed when the Democrats vote on just about everything is how they actually hurt the poor the most. As Republican Senator Ted Gaines said, “We’re not taxing champagne and caviar here. Transportation is a basic need to live and work and raise a family.” Who is going to be hurt the most with these new taxes?
Those with electric cars will not be taxed until 2020 and then only at a rate of $100 per year. Those who can afford electric cars will not blink at the $100 per year, and don’t they use the roads and highways the same as the rest of us? Worse still, in the next two years they will be using the roads and highways that the rest of us will be paying for – and using them for free! How many of the poor in California will be driving electric cars? ZERO!
As the poor are forced to drive only what they can afford to buy, they are by necessity driving mostly older used cars that get the poorest gas mileage, and thus will be paying this additional 12 cents a gallon much more frequently than those who can afford new cars or hybrids.
But potentially even worse the tax increase on diesel fuel will go up over 100% from 16 cents to 36 cents a gallon. I would doubt that many Democrats in the state legislature drive cars that require diesel fuel, and perhaps they thought, “no big deal, as hardly anyone drives a car that uses diesel fuel”. However, most of our food is transported by diesel fueled trucks . . . so get ready for an increase in food prices. Again those who are driving Teslas will most likely not blink at this increase in food prices. However, those who are barely scraping by will now be eating more beans and rice, and less protein because that will be all they can afford.
Actually hurting the poor is a recurrent, often unforeseen theme in a lot legislation proposed by the Democrats, and for sure this will come up again.