Forgot one from over the weekend:
Tell Maryland politicians that you cannot afford more money out of your pocket by attending our Rally Press Conference this Wednesday March 9th on Lawyers Mall in Annapolis at noon.
This weekend Baltimore County AFP members were at gas stations waving signs and getting their fellow neighbors to sign AFP’s petition in opposition to the gas taxes.
Will you join fellow AFP members in encouraging fellow Marylanders to take action against this awful bill that will hurt struggling families and businesses?
Attend our rally and bring a homemade sign telling Annapolis politicians that Maryland cannot afford another tax! (Emphasis in original.)
Yes, it’s an Americans for Prosperity event, and this battle in Maryland is one pitting two industry groups against each other as those in the construction industry who favor the tax – presumably so they’ll have a larger pot of cash with which to fix roads – take on the trucking industry, where an additional gas tax affects their bottom line. Those eighteen-wheelers don’t get terribly great gas mileage, and they’ve already made their feelings known with their own protest last week, timed to coincide with the hearing on this and other fuel-tax related bills. Of course since a significant portion of consumer goods are transported via truck, increased costs to them simply get passed on to consumers through higher prices.
The problem with the construction industry’s perspective on this new tax is that the Transportation Trust Fund is a frequent target of Governor O’Malley’s budget fixes. If he would stay away from tapping the fund, there would be plenty more to distribute around for road repairs without the tax hike.
Secondly, part of the current gas tax we pay goes to subsidize mass transit and build items like bike paths, which don’t help the morning commute or travelers too significantly. It’s all part of the liberal effort to wean us out of our cars because they’d rather have control over how we move about. Imagine how much traveling we could do and the impact on consumer prices if gasoline were returned to the 35.9 cents I remember it being before the oil crisis hit in 1973. It was back in the days where pumps were only built with two digits in the price-setting mechanism. (Yep, I’m that old.) I know we’ll never see those days again – heck, the taxes are already more than that price – but at least we can keep two-dollar a gallon gas from being a memory for the kids growing up today.
And, while the state has little to do with this aside from Governor O’Malley trying to scare unwitting dupes with the prospect of Gulf-style oil spills off Ocean City or in Chesapeake Bay, part of the effort needs to occur about forty miles down the road in allowing more drilling for oil and natural gas. Don’t let ’em fool you – we have plentiful domestic supplies of both and shallow-water drilling has a admirable track record of safety.
But first things are first – we need to hold the line on the gas tax and restore sanity to the budget.
Correcting for inflation, 36 cents in ’73 would be about $1.80 today. It wasn’t even that long ago when that was the price for regular, although the prices have been sort of all over the place in the past five years, with the average being probably a dollar higher than that (in today’s money).
You can play with the data here:
http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx
So when you think about it, what we pay is not actually that bad by comparison, especially considering I’m sure there are many cars out there that get much better mileage. Still, I agree with you that we shouldn’t be considering a tax hike when we’re not even using the money we are supposed to be devoting to our roads.
Michael,
Holding the line is not enough. What we should be doing is taking these elected bastards and hog-tying their asses to the bumper cars at Trimpers in place of the rubber bumpers.
You know all that “money” that Baltimore City gets for roads but other counties don’t get? You know what they spent that on? “Intersection beautification” and “crossing guards”.
Meanwhile, Poppleton Street (where the new Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is located) has been torn to shreds for three years due to construction of new state buildings. This no-man’s land of a road (think trenches, potholes, manhole covers sticking up, etc) is a disaster, and is the only way to get into a key garage for University of Maryland employees.
Yeah, the repaved Charles from Mt. Vernon up to University of Baltimore, but every other major street is a major disaster. The JFX is a complete mess of potholes and bridge joints that are opened too wide.
So even when given the money, O’Malley’s evil allies in Baltimore City can’t even spend that competently.
I know, big surprise.
When the state and the jurisdictions start spending the money properly — for good road maintenance, appropriate road expansion, and sensible transit projects — we ought to cut their hands off to prevent voting on any tax increase.