SB 974: Bob Huff's Tax Betrayal
Posted by: Slotur | 07/16/2008 9:34 PM
Just six weeks after running as a conservative in the June Primary to beat Dennis Mountjoy, Assemblyman Huff voted for the $400 million tax on shipping in California.
Huff was the lone Assembly Republican to vote for the bill labeled a "job-killer" by the Chamber of Commerce. While a boon for the port of Seattle, the tax will hurt good paying jobs at the port and add to the cost of goods in California.
Candidate Bob Huff wrote this in his editorial on Tax Freedom Day;
"Republicans in the Legislature will stand firm this year in protecting the wallets of hard-working Californians from every attempt by Democrats to raise your taxes."
He forgot the words "except me".
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California Stuff
Slo-tur-get it:
Any idea how you plan onpaying for needed grade separation projects in OC, especially northern OC? I appreciate your comments are very knee-jerk GOP and I am with you for the most part. But do you really understand the bill or do you just take your comments from whatever GOP press release you fancy? Or do you not favor Mr.Huff? It's all good, but tell me what mitigation the bill provides for OC without looking online. If you know off the top of your head, I will eat crow.
We have a $120 BILLION dollar state budget, an $80 BILLION dollar federal transportation budget, a dedicated state gas tax (which I'm sure Huff will vote to suspend too), county OCTA funds, Prop 1B monies we just borrowed and we are on our second round of local Measure M taxes and your trying to tell me that a huge new tax on every container that comes into our ports is the only source of funding for two ports that bring in like 50% of our nation's goods.
Give me a break Buffy. Huff sold out the GOP caucus on this vote just like he will on the budget.
Oh, no! Mr. Huff voted to make gigantic companies help pay for the transportation grid they use every second of every day! $30 per container is going to crush our economic might! Every ship from China is going to float to Seattle, leaving the 5th largest port in the world, and the largest port in N. America, for ports with zero infrastructure to take them all! Oh, I am devastated that I will soon have to fly to Seattle or pay an additional .0003 cents for my baby's lead-painted, plastic-toxined toy made by child labor!
All those taxes you mentioned are paid mostly through consumers. Make producers pick up their share, especially since they are ducking out of honest wages in America by manufacturing overseas. And don't feed me the line about job losses or the consumer eating the cost: The market will bear the prices it will. If that means that companies have to post a 4% gain instead of a 6% gain to profit for shareholders, then so be it. Those road and rail lines aren't broken by Priuses and Magnums, my friend, but by big rigs and trains. Make 'em cover it.
I for one have found a person to respect in the California Legislature, if he is willing to buck the pressures in that building.
And as for the future of the ports in LA & LB? Even with the container fee, they anticipate a 300% increase (that's triple) in activity over the next 25 years.