Posted on 06/17/2012 3:52:28 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Howie Carr thread for the week starting with his Sunday Herald column
Highway to Hell!
Pay-per-mile tax is latest cash grab from greedy pols
By Howie Carr | Sunday, June 17, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
Photo by Stuart Cahill
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.
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.
Thank you sir, may I have another!
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061139467
That article needs its own dedicated thread!
I drive 50K per year - I am not amused with Deval (never was)
How about those riding the T paying the bill for a change.
Good idea...btw I’m finishing a trip to Pittsburgh right now for a cartoon convention and the subway in downtown is free (in downtown area), fast, clean. It’s also cost a lot to build. A friend of mine who lives in the area says taxes are very high. I have come to love the city of Pitt. but this makes me think twice about possibly moving here.... who knows. (Plus the winters must be c-c-cold, even with the Steelers to entertain...(
btw a 60-ish talk host named Howie who was very overweight, controversial, etc., has passed on, but it’s not our Howie. It’s Howie Chizek of WNIR Kent/Akron OH (former court announcer for Cavaliers) dead at 65 of a heart attack.
A friend of mine from Cleveland radio emailed me about it and accidentally said it was “Howie Carr” who died. Oops.
(He did say “our Howie...the voice of Akron”...on
WNIR-FM. At least THAT Howie, RIP, had an FM home....)
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061139896
special Tue column ping
click to read today’s column
excerpt:
>>You’re Scott Brown, and you’ve disregarded everyone’s advice about agreeing to a debate in the belly of the beast, or should I say moonbat.
But at least you extracted if not a pound, at least a few ounces of flesh from the Kennedys and the Teddy-we-hardly-knew-ye crew. Why should the leg-tinglers at MSNBC have all the fun? And demanding Vicki sit this one out — that’s like asking her late husband to take a pass on Happy Hour. Let the trust-funders complain — Granny Warren is the one looking for home-court advantage, not you.
So here are a few tips.
Wed column ping. btw WGBH radio in Boston is dropping a lot of its nightly jazz programming to add more news and talk, starting in late August. Care to guess how the news/talk
will be slanted?
OK:
http://bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061140116&format=text
Heavens to Betsy! What a Crocker!
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, June 20, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo
So much of her life story doesn’t stand up under scrutiny, but here is one thing we do know for sure about Elizabeth “Granny” Warren.
She was the 1966 Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow at Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City.
That’s right, we’re talking about the Betty Crocker, symbol of Caucasian cuisine. Not Betty Crock, who would seem a more appropriate role model for the fake Indian plagiarist.
After her glorious victory, Granny received a letter from “Betty Crocker” herself. Hers was probably a lot like this one, from a year earlier:
“You have already taken a big step toward a fine success in school and work and a happy life as a real-life homemaker someday — the most important career a woman can
have.”
More important than providing the “intellectual foundations” of Occupy Wall Street? More important than ... checking the box as a Native American, which Granny isn’t?
Has there ever been anybody, real or fictional, whiter than Betty Crocker? And yet here is a “woman of color,” as the law schools at both Penn and Harvard proudly described Granny Warren, taking home the ultimate honky prize.
Winning the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow award was a big deal back then, apparently. As you can see, it made Lieawatha’s yearbook, “Round Table.” To win, you had to pass a written test on “homemaking attitudes and knowledge.”
No recipes, though. If General Mills had required a recipe, I think we know where it wouldn’t have come from -— the kitchen of Elizabeth “Red” Herring, that’s for sure.
When talking about her high school daze, Granny doesn’t dwell on this kind of old-fashioned stuff. (Betty stopped giving out the award in 1977.) She’d prefer to mention her years as a “legendary” high school debater.
According to postings on the Internet, the award propelled you into a statewide competition, and the winner got a $1,500 scholarship. And the 50 statewide winners then competed to become All-American Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow.
Granny didn’t win that. Even then, perhaps she knew that in the circles she wanted to move in, once she checked the box, the word “American” might not have as positive a connotation as it did in the Sooner State.
As the winner, Granny received a heart-shaped pendant. The early ones, anyway, had a raised ranch house and suburban lawn in relief. In other words, a lot more modest than the $1.7-million Cambridge manse she now lives in.
Betty Crocker would be so proud. Or would she?
I think this piece is pretty lame-o. So what if she won a Betty Crocker award? He doesn’t have any evidence that she plagiarized a recipes, no?
Definitely not germane. I think he tryeth to hard to impugn granny Warren every chance he gets, even if it is a lame chance.
sorry a bit late, been travelin’
Hey hacks, show your old pal Sal some compassion
By Howie Carr | Friday, June 22, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Hey feds, you’ve won. Now it’s time to let Sal DiMasi come home.
It turns out his wife, Debbie, may have called it 10 months ago in her pre-sentencing letter to the judge.
She said prison “would be a death sentence” for the disgraced ex-speaker.
I know, he’s corrupt and he was a crook, but he’s 66 and he has Stage 4 cancer. His projected release date is Nov. 17, 2018. Judge Wolf gave him eight years, not a death sentence.
It’s a strange day indeed when I’m more willing to give a hack a break than Deval Patrick. The ex-speaker is ruined, cancer-ridden, in prison, and now Deval’s finally ready to play tough with him? Several years and millions of dollars in state contracts too late.
“I don’t have an opinion on that,” our stone-cold governor told the Herald when he was asked whether Sal deserves to be sprung. But would he go to his pal Barack Obama to seek clemency for a fellow Democratic hack?
“Seriously?” Deval asked. “It’s not my place, and I’m not going to do that.”
So much for that compassion Deval’s always yapping about. Too bad Sal’s not an illegal alien.
I say let the poor guy go. Whatever it takes — medical leave, commutation, furlough — allow the “broken man,” as his lawyer describes Sal, to return to Boston.
Believe me, I understand that nobody made Mr. Speaker run an extortion racket out of his office. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. I know Sal has no one to blame but himself for being locked up in North Carolina with Bernie Madoff. As a lawyer, Sal represented wiseguys, anyone of whom could have told him the horror stories about federal prisons.
Remember Paulie in “Goodfellas”? His real name was Paul Vario, and he did go to the can, just like in the movie. He had ulcers; one night he was doubled over in pain. The screws took him up to the infirmary to see the physician’s assistant on duty. The assistant tells Paulie, you’ll have to wait until the physician comes back in the morning. Paulie is returned to the cellblock and dies in his cell before dawn.
Somebody on a message board yesterday noted how ironic it is that Sal spent 30 years at the State House greasing the skids for lazy, incompetent hacks, and now a different bunch of hacks couldn’t be bothered to help him when he came down with the Big C.
Remember, Sal’s stiff sentence wasn’t just a makeup call by the G-men, it was a double makeup call. The feds had let his two equally corrupt predecessors in the speaker’s seat skate with no prison time — makeup call one. And they’d sent two corrupt black Boston pols to prison for stealing much less than Sal grabbed — makeup call two.
When he was riding high, Sal and Debbie used to hang out with Mr. and Mrs. Jay Cashman. The Cashmans are still Beautiful People. I read in the paper yesterday how they threw an “over-the-top bash” at their “Back Bay Xanadu” this week. There was even a photo of Jay in sunglasses yukking it up with some actress I’d never heard of.
Life goes on, unless you’re Sal DiMasi, in which case it’s, “Sal Who?”
Let it go, feds. It’s over.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1061140583
I misssed your posts. Glad you're back on the job.
I’ve been posting via netbook etc., but in one case I think I only gave an excerpt of Howie’s column and yesterday I didn’t post till I got home, at night. Netbook helps but a bit tougher to cut and paste.
I had one long trip, June 10-19 that started with visiting a friend in Akron (I did hear the death pool on the 11th) then I had various Pittsburgh tourism and my cartoon convention. Got to microbrew pubs, the Johnstown flood museum & inclined plane,
a bus tour of Pitt., Flight 93 Memorial, etc. I was home for a day or so then did a quick 2 day trip to Rutland VT and just over the border into NY...Lake St Catherine, driving around, etc.
I was in Pitt. area last yr when Whitey got caught. I was staying at a Motel 6 nr airport, a day or so before shifting to Pitt. downtown, and when I turned on netbook the facebook for Howie said, “So now that Whitey has been caught...” Whoa...I did get part of Howie’s show via podcasts which are
still on my comp. (I tried to get a friend to rec. the show for me, a guy that lived in Salem, but he trouble getting the AM broadcast in his building...guy has since passed on...)
Let that scamball DiMasi rot.
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