What’s with the tone of big-government, tax-raising types? First it was a series of quotes from Governor Tim Kaine, such as his disdainful “There’s no free lunch” mantra along with telling low-tax activists to “Stay off the roads.”
Yesterday, in something reminiscent of a vigilante movie, Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw (D-35, Springfield) provided the taxpayers of Virginia a reminder as subtle as a Mike Tyson uppercut as to what his intentions are with their hard-earned money:
“One way or another, people are going to pay.”
This, after his six-cents-a-gallon gas-tax-increase-bill progressed in the Senate yesterday while he and his Senate Democrat colleagues killed two bills that would raise revenue for transportation and cost taxpayers nada: Senator Frank Wagner’s (R-7 , Virginia Beach) bill for offshore drilling and Senator Ken Stolle’s (R-8, Virginia Beach) bill to use future profits from the Port of Virginia. (Aren’t new and improved roads supposed to benefit our state-owned ports’ increased economic activity? Why not, then, use some of their own profits?) (To read more, click here for an article at hamptonroads.com.)
For some of Senator Saslaw’s more outrageous comments from last General Assembly session, click here and here; for his admission of his own voracious tax-dollar-spending appetite, click here; and click here for his mastery of the bicameral legislative system; and, in a quote that pre-dated U.S. Senator Barack Obama’s “bitter . . . and clinging to their guns and religion” comment, click here.)
At least there is some progress in Senator Saslaw’s rhetoric: He’s no longer saying his tax increases will cost about as much as “One Big Mac.” But stay tuned. The Special Tax Session is still young. Senator Saslaw is just getting warmed up.
Let me see here… we can barely afford fuel and its climbing to $5.00 a gallon, so we’re adding a 35% increase to the fuel tax and we’ve killed offshore drilling. That’ll really pull us out of the recession!
I’m wondering if Saslaw meant an over-the-road truck with his ‘Big Mack’ comparison.
Is Governor Kaine raising taxes for roads because he really cares about the citizens or is he trying to make a name for himself before he leaves office? Does he really think he can out perform Mark Warner, raise taxes, and leave office with a 70% approval rating?
[...] the high water mark thus far for the Special Tax Session of the General Assembly. Moments ago, Senator Dick Saslaw’s 35 percent increase in the gas tax passed the Senate on a party-line vote of 21-16 (interestingly, two Tidewater Senators, Blevins [...]
[...] think the House could pass some watered down Senate tax increase, send it back to Senate Majority Leader Dick “The People Will Pay” Saslaw (D-35, Springfield) and his crowd down the hall, who will change it and take it to a conference committee, which would [...]
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[...] depth of coverage. But the velocity of change in information consumption is happening faster than a Dick Saslaw foot-in-the-mouth comment. So new media audience numbers will grow in time. Of course, expecting the MSM to acknowledge [...]