Highway to Hell!

							                       Highway to Hell!
Howie Carr
bostonherald.com
June 17, 2012

The hacks at the State House are salivating at
the prospect of charging you a penny for
every mile you drive your car in
Massachusetts.
This is a tax increase so monstrous that it would
make M. Stanley Dukakis blush. We’re talking
$555 million — the first year.
It’s an idea so terrible it can’t be killed. Like a
vampire, it keeps coming back to life, and the
stake hasn’t been invented that can be driven
through its black heart.
The Vehicle Miles Traveled Fee, that’s what the
payroll patriots and union thugs are calling it
now, in a new transportation report full of
similar euphemisms. New taxes, for instance, are now “funding strategies” and “local financial
commitment.”
This new bleeding of the Dreaded Private Sector is necessary to pay for the “Green Line Extension.”
It’s budgeted for $1.3 billion. By comparison, the Big Dig was initially budgeted for $2.6 million, and
came in at $22 billion ... and counting.
This boondoggle is the Big Dig for the 21st century, although it may be eclipsed eventually by the even
more preposterous proposal of commuter rail to New Bedford and Fall River, those two bustling Bristol
metropolises. It’ll help the South Coast’s self-esteem, you understand. They won’t feel neglected by the
rest of the state. It’s the same specious argument the hacks made when they bought that bust-out law
school in Dartmouth as a place to park more unemployable lawyers in six-figure do-nothing jobs
behind which come the six-figure pensions and the free medical care for life.
                                             But of course these new white elephants have only the barest
                                             connection to transportation. It’s really about more money to
                                             keep the hackerama humming, by paying off contractors and
                                             pinky-ring unions who will then kick back to the pols who are
                                             stealing the money from the taxpayers.
                                             And the projects will take approximately forever. Remember
                                             the state motto: “Don’t Kill the Job.”
                                             We are talking mega-bucks here. That $555 million in the first
                                             year would be when they’re giving motorists what they
                                             consider a break, by charging a mere .85 cent a mile.
Drivers, it’s just your fair share. Don’t
be a slacker. It’s not enough that you
already pay tolls, and the auto excise
tax, and the 6.25 percent sales tax when
you buy the car, not to mention the
federal gasoline tax, and the state
gasoline tax, which reminds me, another
of the new “funding strategies” reported
by the State House News Service is
“indexing the state’s gas tax to
inflation.”
Would it likewise be “indexed” to
deflation? Nah. But if something is
indexed to inflation, does that not tend
to cause more inflation? That’s OK,
though, because it means more revenues for the state, and ... for the children.
Remember when Bill Weld was governor and it cost nothing to renew your car registration? Which
seemed only fair because, with the new technologies, the process costs next to nothing. First the hacks
brought back the registration fee, because their relatives and cronies and cash contributors needed jobs,
as opposed to work. Now they want to jack up the fees another $10. We have to do something about the
MBTA deficit, they claim, which is another way of saying, paying for the bloated pensions of all the
coatholders who retired with full pensions at age 43 after putting in an arduous 23 years of “public
service.”
Think about this penny-a-mile tax. The leeches say the average motorist drives 14,800 miles a year, so
it’ll “only” cost $148 extra. Of course, if anyone ever suggested increasing medical co-pays for MBTA
retirees by $148 a year, that would set off a firestorm. That would be economic fascism.
Suppose you own a trucking company in Massachusetts. Or you employ a fleet of salespeople who
spend the week driving from one appointment to the next. If you have to expand, do you think you’d be
more inclined to look in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, where the Vehicle Miles Traveled Fee is
“only” zero?
It used to be relatively easy to turn back the odometer on a car. With the new electronic systems, it’s
surely more difficult, but something tells me that if there’s $555 million on the table, new technologies
will be developed. And sooner rather than later.
And I also suspect that a lot more people will be registering their vehicles in New Hampshire. As if
they aren’t already.
Of course, the tax-crazed governor dismisses these proposed new taxes as “hypotheticals.” Trial
balloons is more like it. I can already envision the compromise. OK, OK, we won’t hit you with .85
cents the first year. It’ll only be a half-cent ... because we’re Democrats and we care about working
people, that is as long as they don’t work.



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