More Taxes to Fund Cali High Speed Rail

There was a time when California alone was something like the 10th largest economy in the world. Abundant and educated workforce, friendly business climate, few places better to live, and other factors all combined to make the California economy vibrant and growing.

This is no longer the case. Heavy taxation for start ups and for heavy industry. A regulatory environment that makes it nearly impossible to get a business up and running or to expand. A state budget that is threaten to collapse under the weight of state employee salaries, benefits, and retirement programs which need higher taxes to pay for. All of these are driving businesses away from the once Golden State.

Now Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown has floated the idea of using the California Cap and Trade law to fund the controversial High-Speed Rail system.

Gov. Jerry Brown told a Los Angeles TV station today that the state’s proposed high speed rail system will cost much less than $100 billion, and will be partly funded by new taxes on major air pollution emitters.

The governor told ABC 7’s :Eyewitness Newsmakers” program that environmental impact fees paid by industries that emit large amount of greenhouse gases will help fund the big train project. California has a “cap and trade” law that will collect fees if businesses do not reduce emissions, the governor said. (Source: Contra Costa Times) (h/t: Soylent Green)

My question to Gov. Brown: How do you expect to pay for this huge project when many of these businesses that you are going to collect from are either considering leaving or have already done so?

Is Gov. Moonbeam going to tax the energy companies that are going to have to be built to produce the electricity to run these trains? Or is he expecting that solar panels and wind farms are going to be built from LA to La Vegas, covering the Mojave Desert? I wonder how the environmentalists are going to like that one.

I also bet these liberals think the only impact of these taxes is going to be on the companies. If they really think the higher costs of doing business in California isn't going to be passed onto the consumer of those products, well they have their progressive little heads buried in the California beach sand..

That is one thing I have noticed about liberals, they tend not to see the forest through the trees.

Tell me dear readers; who’da thought that a democrat would use more taxes to pay for a project that no one wants, no one needs, and no one is going to use?