🚀 go-pugleaf

gurd@next04wor.wam.umd.edu (Daffy Duck) writes:
>The following is a commentary written by Ross Capon, co-chair of the 
>Action Committee for Transit, Montgomery County.  The remarks in [] are  
>mine for clarity.

>   By international standards, the gasoline taxes we pay or are likely to  
>pay are obscenely low and the rail transit network we support is obscenely  
>tiny and undertutilized.  The gasoline tax is about[almost $4 in France]  
>$3 a gallon in Italy, $2 in Japan, and well over $1 in Great Britain and  
>West Germany.  Our federal tax is 14 cents; New Yorkers pay state taxes  
>totaling 30 cents; Marylanders pay 18.5 cents now, 23.5 cents proposed.

If you think Europe is so wonderful, move there.

>   Why is the legistlature so timid about increasing the gasoline tax  
>[because of all the hicks from Western MD and the Eastern shore] and  
>earmarking most of it for transit and for non-transportation purposes.

Maybe the the "hicks" aren't interested in subsidizing an inefficient
mass transit system for "rich, yuppy scum".

>   Because our politicians believe the public [mostly rednecks from guess  
>where the Eastern Shore and Western Maryland] thinks cheap gasoline is  
>more important than providing desperately needed transit improvements,  
>more important than keeping Montgomery County libraries open the week  
>after Christmas, more important than providing school "amenities" such as  
>activity buses that enable kids in extracurricular activities to go home  
>late. 

This "redneck" wants to know how the Montgomery County Government
manages to waste such incredible sums of money.  Current levels of
spending are so inadequate, they want to raise my piggyback tax by 20%
so they can think up new and inventive ways to spend other people's
money.

>   The public is ready to listen to common sense from legistlators or  
>council members.  The public is ready to accept a stiffer gasoline tax  
>with the right explnations, along the lines suggested above.  Do we want  
>kids to spend the entire Christmas vacation at the mall [and we spend  
>$7,000 a student so they can forget it all hanging out at the local  
>shopping mall) so we can close the libraries and enjoy cheap gasoline?   
>Will your legistlator start the ball rolling?

I am going to vote against every SOB in the county and state
government who jumps on the tax increase bandwagon.  Montgomery County
spends more money than 99% of the counties in the USA.  In the middle
of a recession you might think that they would cut non-essential
spending and programs.  Sorry, you shouldn't expect the county
government to stop having fun just because the citizens have less
money.

-- 
John A. Limpert
johnl@n3dmc.svr.md.us
uunet!n3dmc!johnl