Doyle Open To Cigarette, Gas Tax Increases January 1, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Gov. Jim Milhous Doyleone, Liberals, Spending, State Government, State Legislature, Taxes, Wisconsin.comments closed
Gee, what a shock.
Gov. Jim Milhous Doyleone told the Wisconsin State Journal that he is open to yet another significant increase in the cigarette tax as well as bringing back automatic annual gax tax increases. That means lawmakers don’t actually have to vote on the increase; the tax, already one of the highest in the nation, would just go up annually.
Madison – Gov. Jim Doyle is signaling a willingness to raise the cigarette tax, a year after he and legislators raised the tax by $1 a pack.
The Democratic governor did not explicitly endorse raising the tax in a recent interview, but he noted he originally fought for raising the tax by $1.25.
“I would simply point out that I’ve supported going to a higher level in the past,” he said.
The cigarette tax rose to $1.77 a year ago today.
Doyle – who spent Tuesday doing one-on-one interviews with reporters at the governor’s mansion in Maple Bluff – told the Wisconsin State Journal he wants to resume having the gas tax automatically increase every year.
“The simple fact is that where Wisconsin went, where Republicans took us, is unsustainable for transportation (infrastructure), where you say, that’s basically it on the gas tax, regardless of what the costs are and what the needs are,” Doyle told the State Journal.
That’s a departure from what he said two years ago, when he was running for re-election. Then, Doyle promised not to raise the gas tax during a second term, which runs through 2010.
Surprises everywhere. Diamond Jim flip-flops on raising taxes. This is the same man who, in his 2003 State of the State address, said: ““We should not, we must not, and I will not raise taxes.”
He then proposed $1.7 billion in new taxes and tax increases. Yes, Virginia, a fee is a tax. Just try driving your car without paying your registration fee and get pulled over by a cop and see what happens. Eventually he settled for just under a billion in new taxes as linguini-spined Republicans in the state Legislature caved.
Here’s a Don Doyleone pullquote worth dissecting:
The simple fact is that where Wisconsin went, where Republicans took us, is unsustainable for transportation (infrastructure), where you say, that’s basically it on the gas tax, regardless of what the costs are and what the needs are.
That’s Diamond Jim blaming the elimination of the automatic annual increase in the state gas tax when it was Doyle himself who raided the state transportation fund for ovr $1 billion to give to his friends at WEAC, the Wisconsin Extortion Association Council. God forbid WEAC’s thugs ever do without.
Diamond Jim, greedy avaricious Democrats in the Legislature, greedy, avaricious public employee unions (I’m looking at you, WEAC) and local municipalities, and a lack of any opposition from what passes for a Republican Party makes staying in Wisconsin an “at your own risk” proposition.
Bailing Out Newspapers January 1, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Bailouts, First Amendment, Newspapers.comments closed
H/T to Michelle Malkin.
We all knew this was coming. Now they’re talking about government bailing out newspapers about to go under.
NEW YORK (al-Reuters) – Connecticut lawmaker Frank Nicastro sees saving the local newspaper as his duty. But others think he and his colleagues are setting a worrisome precedent for government involvement in the U.S. press.
Nicastro represents Connecticut’s 79th assembly district, which includes Bristol, a city of about 61,000 people outside Hartford, the state capital. Its paper, The Bristol Press, may fold within days, along with The Herald in nearby New Britain.
That is because publisher Journal Register, in danger of being crushed under hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, says it cannot afford to keep them open anymore.
Nicastro and fellow legislators want the papers to survive, and petitioned the state government to do something about it. “The media is a vitally important part of America,” he said, particularly local papers that cover news ignored by big papers and television and radio stations.
To some experts, that sounds like a bailout, a word that resurfaced this year after the U.S. government agreed to give hundreds of billions of dollars to the automobile and financial sectors.
Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them.
Let’s see. Here’s our bailout checklist:
- Banks? Check.
- Other mismanaged financial institution? Check.
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Check.
- AIG? Check.
- Automakers? Check (only temporarily).
- States? Check (coming with the ultimate stimulusapalooza bill coming this spring).
Now newspapers want their bailout. All of these bailouts using federal money with federal control is tantamount to nationalization. Once the federal government gives you money, they now gain a certain level of control. That means telling you what you can and cannot do. The ninny-nannies pushing government-run health care and who will wind up running it very well will be able to tell you what you cannot and must do, what you cannot and must eat, how you must live, etc.
The proposed Car Czar will be able to tell Detroit what kind of cars it has to make, whether or not the American people want to buy those cars. When that becomes inconvenient, the Car Czar will take steps to limit consumer choice to only what he dictates.
Welcome to the world of the government-run newspaper. Not that the Drive By Media hasn’t served as the Fourth Branch of Government unofficially for some time now as well as the House Publication of the DNC, but having federal money propping up and bailing out failing dead-tree news sources makes the First Amendment irrelevant.
How can a newspaper bailed out by government and owes its very existence to government fairly and objectively cover that government? It can’t. Pure and simple. It becomes beholden to the source of the bailout.
With the new fascists planning to move to shut down talk radio as well as bringing us nationalized broadband and thus being able to regulate content on the Internet, their move toward being able to control the flow of information and thus the debate rolls on merrily unabated.
