listening online now though
Governor wheeling and dealing
By Howie Carr | Friday, July 22, 2011 |
http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Wait a second — I thought the deal was, if we rolled over and didn’t repeal the 25-percent increase in the sales tax, the hacks would take the 19-cents-a-gallon gas tax off the table.
Do you think the vote last year on cutting the sales tax back to 5 percent might have gone the other way if the voters had figured out that Deval was pulling the old bait-and-switch on them yet again?
Forget the U.S. attorney’s public-corruption unit, we need to unleash the bunco squad at the State House. Deval ain’t much of a governor, but damn, can he play three-card monte.
“Lookee here, folks, see if you can figure out which peanut I got this here property-tax cut under . . . ”
From the people who brought you the Big Dig, now comes The Gas Tax!
Maybe it’s the heat, but Deval, et al. seem to be sending out one contradictory message after another this week. First they want to put deposits on water bottles because they’re broke, but then they announce they took in an extra $2 billion in revenue this year.
Then on the same day Deval announces there’s plenty of money to give every illegal alien in the world a free college education, his doughnut-addled lieutenant governor floats the trial lead balloon about the gas-tax hike.
You know it’s a trial balloon, because now Deval can step up and say, “My aides wanted that increase, but I know what I promised my people. And that’s why it’s only going up . . . 17 cents a gallon.”
The moonbats will genuflect and swoon.
The extra money, of course, will be “earmarked,” although you might notice that Tiny Tim didn’t use that word. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, although you do have a better chance if the people are from Massachusetts. So now the new millions will be “dedicated” to road projects.
Shovel-ready projects no doubt, although that’s another newly banned phrase. Why don’t we call them “orange-cone-ready” projects. The taxpayers’ money will pay for lots more “prevailing wage” jobs — no wonder the real state motto is “Don’t Kill the Job.” Nobody in the trades wants to go back to working for real wages, which is maybe half the “prevailing wage.” Meanwhile, the Route 128 project around Westwood will soon be celebrating its 25th anniversary.
And by the way, Deval, whatever happened to all those civilian flaggers that were supposed to cut construction costs so much? We’ve already got so many worthless highway projects around here that as far as I can see, they’ve run out of real cops for the details, so first they went to retirees, then they cut in the sheriffs’ correctional officers. School crossing guards are next on the free-money detail list.
Last time the voters were told they could have either higher gas taxes or a higher sales tax. The choice was easy: Drive to New Hampshire to beat the sales tax. After all, the price of gas is about the same in both states.
But not for long. Soon there will be yet another reason for driving to New Hampshire — two, actually, once they put the nickel deposit on water bottles. But Deval will be ready for that one too — toll booths on the New Hampshire border.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1353458