At least if you listen to the right wing bloggers and talking heads.
Over Governor Pawlenty's tenure and his "no new taxes" pledges, Minnesotan's have seen exorbitant increases in tuition, fees, and property taxes.
At State Colleges and Universities, tuition increased nearly 70% over his initial 4 year term.
Property taxes have risen out of control under Pawlenty and House GOP leadership, forcing the same working and middle class Minnesotan's they staunchly defended earlier this week, to find ways to absorb these increases. Some lost their homes. The impact on seniors with fixed incomes has been the worst.
Palwenty and the House GOP's cuts to local government aid had the biggest impact on property tax increases, as well as leading to deteriorating roads in Greater Minnesota.
So lets be honest about the Transportation Bill.
Is it big? Absolutely.
Is it needed? Absolutely.
Is it the largest tax increase in the history of Minnesota? No.
The $6.6 billion bill is spread out over a 10 year period. Most revenue producing bills coming out of the legislature produce revenue in 2 or 4 year cycles.
Take a look at the increases in fees and other areas post 2003, when Governor Pawlenty had a hard time differentiating between a tax and a fee.
Tobacco fees, property tax increases, tuition increases, etc add up to more than $10 billion in increases over a 10 year span.
And these increases have hurt Minnesota more than they helped...
4 comments:
Gasoline prices are roughly twice what the were when George W Bush took office. Recent predictions are that gasoline will go above $4 per gallon by spring (which is actually not that far off). This massive increase is going primarily to record Big Petro profits.
And we are worrying about 5 cents a gallon to rebuild roads, bridges and a small bit of transit! Really, we see our filling-station prices go up and down more than double that, almost every week. Somebody is really playing with us here.
I'm very concerned that the right wing DFL ATV lobby is trying to get the gas tax cut they suck out for off road vehicles increased. These guys (Bakk, Dill) are absolutely dedicated to an anti environmental agenda and they are siphoning our gas to accomplish it.
Throw the bums out
Chraley said; "This massive increase is going primarily to record Big Petro profits."
Well, no, actually only a few cents of gasoline prices go to anyone's profits. Most of the $3 a gallon price goes to the owner of the petroleum. With the exception of our friends in Canada, that means it goes to the dictators and oligarchs who run the governments of countries like Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran etc. Not really the people most of us would normally give money to.
The U.S. people own a lot of petroleum that we could be using. It is in places like Alaska, off the shore of Florida, off the shore of California. Wouldn't it be a lot better to just use that petroleum instead????
The percent the oil companies make has stayed the same. The consumption has rose. I find it funny that the same people who tell us we can't drill for oil complain about the price. Don't you think there will be repercussions because of your actions. We are paying now for ignoring the last 20 years of progress. When the country grows so should all parts of the infrastructure to support the growth. We should have been working on this issue before it became a problem.
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