Hacks nickel-and-diming us again
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, July 20, 2011 |
http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Wait a second — wasn’t the state budget signed last week among much backslapping and hosannas about how there would be “no new taxes?"?
But now the solons are considering a new bottle bill. The old one’s been in effect for 30 years, and it covers beer and carbonated beverages. And for all these years, the airwaves have been full of PSA’s lecturing everybody how alcohol is bad for you, and soft drinks are even worse. If they’re not full of sugar, then they’re pumped up with sugar-substitute chemicals.
Guess what? Sales have fallen. People are now drinking a lot more bottled water. So what’s the answer? Tax the water bottles — slap a nickel deposit on every Poland Spring.
“The only way it’s a tax,” sniffed state Sen. Cynthia Creem of Newton, the moonbat pushing this latest tax hike, “is if they don’t turn in the bottle.”
This is a variation on the Turnpike argument. You don’t like paying the tolls, pal, well, you got an option? It’s called Route 9.
I’d be much more concerned if not for the efficiency of the Beacon Hill lobbying community. I sense that the right deposits, no return expected, will be made, and this bill will be recycled again in 2012.
The moonbats have come up with a new phrase for this bill — “closing the loophole.” Putting a new tax on something that’s never been taxed — that’s closing the loophole.
If you don’t turn in the water bottle with the new nickel deposit, the state gets to grab the nickel, like it already does with beer and soda containers. Multiply the nickel by a few hundred million unreturned empties and pretty soon you’re talking about some more money for the hackerama, although of course the unclaimed deposits “would help local recycling programs."
Yeah, right. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. This is a rerun of the smoking scam. They tell people not to smoke, people stop smoking, and guess what — the per-pack revenues fall off so precipitously that they have to jack up the taxes on cigarettes. And wasn’t that higher-tax cigarette money supposed to be “earmarked” for anti-smoking programs? The payroll patriots earmark money about as often as they “sunset” a tax.
How’d you like to be a convenience store owner along the New Hampshire border this week? Beacon Hill is slamming you with a double whammy. They’re talking about allowing Lottery sales on the Internet, which is not good news for you as a Lottery agent, even if it is for your customers.
And now this — another reason for your customers to drive to New Hampshire, to add a couple of cases of bottled water on their next trip north to pick up their Cokes, Budweisers, smokes and fireworks.
I want to know one thing: Why aren’t they slapping a deposit on wine bottles? Could it just possibly be because the Beautiful People drink wine?
Still waiting for the NH legislature to award its Certificate of Merit to the MA legislature for its heroic contributions to the NH economy! ;-)
Vapid liberal woman on WRKO this morning subbing for Finneran. I usually don’t listen more than a couple of minutes in the morning, but this one really made me cringe in the brief period that I heard her voice.