The Best Laid Plans

No, this has nothing to do with sex, unless you include the transportation that gets you to and from the sex. This is about the ever-wacky California legislature. Several years ago they posted a tax on gasoline per-gallon, to supposedly help pay for road and highway improvements. Well, since SUV sales in this Bizarro state increased every year after the tax went into effect, and SUV's get, oh, 8 mi. to the gallon, you would think that the government in Sacramento would be awash in gas-tax money and the streets would be paved with gold. Nope! No such luck (I'd be the first one in the streets with a pick-ax). Though everyone and their mother's dog is driving SUV's, the roads are still hell. Makes you wonder where all the gas tax money went. Don't even tell me that the government spent the money on something else! They would never do that! So anyway, now California has a pending crisis to go along with the other pending crisises. The state population, after getting a tongue lashing from Ariana Huffington (Zsa Zsa) and the enviro's about how EVIL we are for driving those big, fat, ugly, gas-guzzling, polluting, unsafe, roll-over-prone, Jesus-Hating SUV's, we beleaguered citizens are turning our collective queer and-not-so-queer eyes toward hybrid vehicles (being a tech-geek, both my eyes love 'em). One problem; because the average hybrid uses an average 1/10'th of the gas per-mile that the average SUV uses, California stands to loose mega wads of tax $$$$ from ever decreasing gas sales.

They never learn. Same thing happened with the anti-smoking lobby. They sell you with the line that taxing "X Product" will help curb usage ('cause "X" kills or whatever) and raise revenue at the same time. So it's a win win. Government gets more dough, and usage of "X" does eventually decline. Well, the state adds the projected revenue to the budget, but, due to base-line budgeting, can't adjust to the eventual decreased revenue due to the inevidable decreased demand, though this is what they claimed wanted in the first place. Since taxes are to Government what heroin is to a junkie; as the tax revenue falls, the state needs to find a new source. So what's a State to do.... And these taxes are are always regressive, hurting the poor the most.