TCI spy with my little eye a new tax
Tall Deval and his minions call it a T.C.I. but what it really is a T.A.X. – a gasoline tax.
And what’s even worse – the payroll patriots are claiming that they can impose this new T.A.X.
increase without even legislative approval, let alone giving the voters a shot at repealing it, the
way we did as recently as 2014.
If you haven’t heard about this latest daylight robbery by the hackerama, there’s a very good
reason – they’re trying to ram it through before anyone, including maybe even a lot of the
legislature, understands the brazen grift these greed-crazed hacks are plotting.
This “Transportation and Climate Initiative” (TCI) isn’t exactly a secret, but it’s being pushed out
in dribs and drabs under headlines designed to minimize readership:
“States unveil plan to curb transportation emissions.”
But the word started getting out last week, when the RINO governor, Charlie “Tall Deval” Baker,
appeared at a State House hearing on a transportation bonding bill. The tax-fattened hacks
bragged that they’d pay for the $18-billion bonding partially with a “fee” from the so-called TCI.
The TCI is a so-called agreement by a bunch of failing blue Northeastern states to impose higher
gas taxes, I mean fees, to, as one of the greedy grabbers put it, “reflect the urgency of the
climate crisis.”
The only crisis is that, in their view, you have too much money, and they, the hacks, want to
steal some of it – some more of it, that is. It’s very “urgent” to cut your pay, so they can have
more money to squander on themselves and their obscene pensions.
This is an account of last week’s hearing from Commonwealth Magazine:
“Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack admitted the carbon fee will be passed along to
drivers in the form of higher gasoline prices, but she made clear that she believes the prices on
carbon is not a broad-based tax of the type the governor generally opposes. ‘It is not a gas tax,’
she said. ‘It is a cap-and-invest program.’”
So it’s not a “broad-based tax?” Because it will only be on gasoline, which so few people use, or
rely on, right?
How much more tone-deaf can Tall Deval’s administration get? They propose a multi-billion-
dollar tax increase, and to promote it they send out Stephanie Pollack, whose agencies include
the very well-managed MBTA and the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
At the hearing, Tall Deval made it clear he has zero problems with imposing a “fee” on people
who work for a living for the benefit of those who don’t.
“I know this is counterintuitive to argue at a bond bill hearing,” he said, “but funding is actually
the easiest part of the critical paths we face.”
When he was running for governor in 2014, Tall Deval at least nominally supported the working
people who were successfully battling to halt the automatic gas tax increases the legislature
had voted for. Now his administration is claiming they don’t even need a roll call vote in the
legislature to jack up gas taxes by calling it a fee.
The Globe reported that “state officials said they likely have authority under the 2008 Global
Warming Solutions Act to implement the agreement without such a vote.”
This is so outrageous, and likely unconstitutional, that even some Democrats are balking at the
cynical play. See, the game plan is for all the failing blue states to simultaneously hike their gas
taxes and then claim they’re just trying to save the planet.
As Rep. William Straus, the House transportation chairman said, “All states raise their gas tax
the same amount at the same time and agree not to call it a gas tax, but I think the public is
smarter than that.”
Let’s hope so. The productive citizenry just suffered a one percent pay cut under the scam of a
new family-medical leave program, and nobody seems to have noticed. The hacks called it a
“grand bargain,” maybe because it’s going to cost everybody with a job a thousand bucks a year
– a grand.
The hacks have also doubled the deeds-transfer tax – again, crickets. The payroll patriots are
moving to ram through a “millionaires’ tax,” which within a few years will make everybody in
Massachusetts with a job a millionaire – at least for the purposes of paying state income taxes.
The hacks haven’t even come up with the “formula” for their gasoline “fees”. They’re saving
that for December – merry Christmas in other words.
This may be the first time you’ve heard of the new T.A.X., I mean T.C.I., but I guarantee you it
won’t be the last. Forewarned is forearmed.
After all, as Tall Deval reminded us last week at the legislative hearing, there are some “critical
paths we face.”
As an overburdened Massachusetts taxpayer, I increasingly care about only one critical path – I-
95 south. Towards Florida.
(Check out Howie’s latest podcasts at dirtyratspodcast.com.)
