UPDATED: Thanks to April for pointing out the news article. You can find the link in the comments section. It turns out that this bill has died due to the public input! I guess some Democrats do listen, too bad, we have to be constantly vigilant of them so they don't slip this crud past us. I guess if they really listened we would not have even seen this ill proposed. -- Scotty
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No doesn't mean no when you're a West-side Democrat. Some years ago the people of Washington didn't want to pay hundreds of dollars each year for licensing tabs. So we now pay thirty bucks. But these Democrats: Rodney Tom - Bellevue/Redmond area, Jeanne Kohl-Welles - Seattle area, Craig Pridemore - Vancouver area, Karen Keiser - Kent/SeaTac area, Adam Kline - Seattle area have sponsored a bill that will add a "fee" not a tax onto your car based not on price, but engine size. The larger the engine the more it will cost. For my 1980 Toyota I will be paying around $100 a year. For my Dodge I will be paying around $360 a year.
Then in 2012 the new fee will go away to be replaced with a CO2 emissions "fee". But when you are compelled to pay something by the government, I would consider it a tax. Plain and simple.
I find it strange someone from Vancouver would support this. When you make someone pay $400 a year again for licensing tabs, he will again go to Oregon to get licensed. Those in this part of the state people will probably start licensing in Idaho again.
The money is supposed to go to "transportation" purposes only, but that is not clarified. So, I would guess, using other measures as a reference point, more than 1/2 of this money will go to putting mass transit in the Puget Sound region.
But the bottom line is that we, the citizens of Washington spoke. But the Democrats just don't listen.
See it for yourself:
Senate Bill 6900
4 comments:
This is bullshit! I would have to pay $600 for my truck the "Overlord". God damn west side liberals. I shall call my senator to kill this one. All rural people use pickups that are greater than or equal to 3/4 ton because you need the power to haul loads.
If for some pinko commie reason this bill passes, I found a way around this beast of a bill, I will pull out the 8.0L engine, put in a 1.6L engine, register it as 1.6L and swap engines back.
F-You Olympia!
Scotty: Thankfully the bill is dead.
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/02/25/area_news/10124040.txt
I enjoyed these quotes, "It's dead. I mean it's really dead," Takko said of the bill in an interview Friday. "But (the e-mails) just keep coming in. They're really slamming us."
"Luckily for all of us, the bill was so strongly opposed it did not receive a public hearing, it will not be voted upon this year, and it will not become a law," the three lawmakers said in their statement.
The defeat of this measure, along with the defeat of the "Yellowstone to Yukon" bill still proves that, thank God, rural Washingtonians still have a voice enough to stop the granola nitwittery of the Puget Sound hippies.
The last few paragraphs of the Spokesman article should scare the hell out people.
"Urbanization is causing the squeeze on wildlife, not rural working lands, said Olympia�s Carolyn Dobbs. And animals need a place to roam, she said. {That would be your private property that they would need to roam on}
Donna Snow, also of Olympia, said that ensuring healthy wildlife populations would draw tourists to see the animals. {We've been down this road before. For one thing, we aren't in the tourist business. We are in the cattle and farm business. We don't wish for the state to convert our private property into a wildlife safari adventure park.}
�This is a sustainable source of revenue for our state,� she said.
�It�s an idea whose time has come,� said Albert Foster, a conservation scientist from Port Townsend, Wash. The comparisons to eco-terrorists and spotted-owl restrictions are wrong, he said. He seemed taken aback by the fierce resistance.
�The fear I hear and the division in this room is so unnecessary,� he said. {You bet it's unnecessary. Leave us the hell alone and we won't have to embarrass you like this again.}
Jacobsen said he, too, was stunned by the criticism. It�s far easier to keep wildlife populations healthy than to try to rebuild them after animals become endangered, he said. If that happens, he said, the federal Endangered Species Act kicks in.
�Then you have land-use restrictions,� Jacobsen said.
He said he plans to introduce the bill again next year."
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