Gas Tax – Howie Carr
Gas tax, Pike hike add fuel to fire
By Howie Carr | Sunday, February 22, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics
Gov. Deval Patrick, what part of “no” do you not understand?
No to the 19-cent increase in the gas tax.
No to the obscene hike in the tolls.
I know, the highest state gas tax in America will merely cost the “average” motorist “one large cup of coffee a week.” It’s the least we can do for what Deval calls the infrastructure – the bloated T pensions, the sticky-fingered Mass Pike tolltakers and Troop E’s detail-inflated, six-figure salaries, not to mention the “prevailing wage” scam – methadone-addled ditch diggers making $50 an hour.
How appropriate that Deval’s as-yet-unwritten legislation is called the “Transportation and Economic Security Plan.”
Economic security, all right. For hacks and pinky-ring union thugs.
Like Wimpy in the old Popeye cartoons, Deval will gladly give you “reform” tomorrow for a tax increase today. He leaked his soak-the-motorists scam to his sycophants at the dying broadsheet Friday morning, then delivered the speech on the Friday afternoon of a school-vacation week. How much more do you need to know?
Still, you owe it to yourself to read the entire opus – preferably on an empty stomach. Let’s get right to it: “Every time we hear another story . . . about a state worker collecting one pension from the T while earning another in state government, the average citizen gets madder.”
One of those double-dippers would be the son of Billy Bulger, he of the $197,000-a-year state pension, with whom Deval met regularly at Mul’s Diner on West Broadway during the 2006 campaign to concoct grand schemes to beggar the working man. Another of those MBTA double-dippers is the boss of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, Jim Rooney, several of whose board members Deval appoints. Maybe I missed it, but have any of Patrick’s MCCA appointees ever raised concerns about Rooney’s rip-offs?
“Don’t perpetuate the Big Dig culture,” Deval intones.
Right . . . the one that provided sleazy Jim Aloisi, Deval’s new transportation secretary, with millions in legal fees, not to mention one of those tsarist pensions that make us “average citizens” get madder.
“Let me be clear: the ‘23 years and out’ rule, where T employees start receiving a pension earlier than any reasonable retirement, is coming to an end.” Let me be clear: If you believe that whopper, you’re probably still holding your breath waiting for that property tax relief that candidate Patrick promised you in 2006.
Strangely, there wasn’t a single word in his speech about removing the toll booths on the Pike, which were supposed to come down in 1987. He does mention the “stiff imminent increases in tolls” that his Pike board may be rubber-stamping soon. He’s quite worried about all of us from “the North Shore, East Boston and MetroWest,” though not concerned enough to order his tax-fatted hyenas who run the Pike to take that extortionate option off the table.
Deval does promise to eliminate “about 300 positions,” no names attached, and I predict neither of Rep. John Fresolo’s siblings will have to be extracted from their Worcester toll booths with the Jaws of Life.
How stupid does Patrick think we are? As long as the Pike toll booths are up, we are all held hostage, like that rich businessman shaken down by the “escort” from Canton who kept blackmailing him every time she ran short on dough.
Don’t blame me, I voted for Muffy. For the rest of you guilt-ridden sheeple, how’s this one-party rule thing working out for you?
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1153783
