Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Sometimes I wonder if Dave Hansen is insane
I get back to town and I grab my sunday Green Bay Press-Gazette and I see this headline: "Excessive oil profits should help fund transportation."I should have known who it was from.
Our great State Senator Dave Hansen, Mr. Majority Leader. Now, I know Democrats like to build roads. (So do many Republicans.) But what gets me is that Dems are again talking about excessive profits from oil again. It seems like a broken record that has been going on for ages.
Sure, the oil companies are making profits. At $65 a barrel, how could they not. But why go after companies that are just doing what their business has always done: pumped oil from the ground, shipped it to a refinery, and sell it to consumers.
The bigger question is why now? Why in the midst of a budget cycle? It's easy. Gov. Jim Doyle raided it in 2005 to fix the structural defecits. As Dave Hansen said:
That's why the governor has proposed 2½ percent per barrel assessment on oil companies to support Wisconsin's transportation needs. The assessment would generate $272 million for our highways over the next two years.
In the last two budgets alone, Doyle moved $1.1 billion from the transportation fund to the general fund. Instead of fixing potholes and improving highways, God only knows what that money went to.
Now keep in mind these Democrats, who want to punish oil companies for running a successful business, opposed the repeal of the automatic gas tax indexing, and they oppose lowering the sky high gas tax. (When it is cheaper for me to fill up in Northern Illinois instead of Wisconsin raises a red flag.)
The truth is Democrats and Doyle are pursuing the "Big Oil" threat because they believe there is a link between high gas prices and excessive profits. What they don't want you to know is that they don't care about Big Oil. They care about the tax.
That is what Democrats do. They try to portray that their tax increases are justified for a cause. (Like raising the cigarette tax will make smokers quit, that the rich need to pay for their fair share and the poor, etc.) What they don't realize is that when you nickle and dime for years, people catch on. People realize that they are overtaxed and they put up a fight, like the Brown County taxpayers did for the Lambeau Field tax, or they simply move out of the state where taxes are more favorable.
Let's face it, after this next budget it is going to be significantly more expensive to live in Wisconsin. It will be more expensive to smoke cigarettes, register a car, hunt and fish, and own property. While the Democrats are at it, why don't they increase the income tax, the excise tax, lift the imposed limit on property taxes, lower tuition for out of state students, and tax anything that moves.
Or better yet, why don't we just give all of our money to the government? They seem to think they know how to spend it better than we do.
Hansen needs to go in 2008.
Labels: Election 2008, Liberal Hypocracy
