Whatever our thoughts may be about Chris Sununu regarding Emergency orders (not good, if you didn’t notice), he got this one right. New Hampshire, along with Maine, has opted not to sign on to the Transportation Climate Initiative memorandum of understanding.
Related: Danger Will Robinson: New TCI Talking Point Begins With “Once in a Generation Opportunity…”
We have no problem handing out the attaboy’s when they are deserved, and this is one of those times.
If you need a primer or a reminder about the economic burdens created by the Transportation Climate Initiative or TCI, follow the links. We’ve got plenty of cream there for your coffee.
If you take it black, the simplest explanation is this. An unelected regional commission you can’t touch would set motor fuel tax rates (gas taxes) for the participating states. The tax, labeled by advocates as a small price to pay for the good of the environment, like all such promises, would help pay for green energy improvements.
Translation: more easy tax revenue pilfered from people least able to pay it to fill holes in bloated, irresponsible state budgets. Added costs to job creators. Another permanent sinc on the economy like our ridiculously high electric rates keeping new business or industry from finding cause to settle here and driving existing business away.
And given that big-spending government never stops spending, the unelected commission can be reasonably assumed to discover in a year or two that the tax needs to be raised to further help the environment.
If these governors were honest, they just come out and say it. Our lockdowns devastated our economic life-blood, too, and we need more money (so, screw you!). We’re taking it from you in higher gas taxes, and that’s just the beginning.
Granite Staters need to understand that the Democrats in NH want this. They will sign on at the first opportunity (It’s currently illegal to join, but they’d change that). They already have a plan to spend that money and a good deal more for a problem with no chemical, scientific (see also), or historical relationship to the earth’s temperature. (They call them ‘carbon emissions,’ now, btw).
Until then, or for now, at least, New Hampshire said no. Gov. Sununu has always been a no and still is. We will not be piling new taxes on the backs of people who’ve been hit hard all over the state by a difficult year top-heavy with measures that harm lives and livelihoods in the name of stopping the spread of a virus, almost no one needs to fear.
But Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island have signed on to TCI. While I’ve no official word from Vermont (Gov. Scott was a no before Covidism), this declaration will make New Hampshire (and Maine) look more attractive to operations that want or need to be in the Northeast.
We’ll also benefit at some point from even more cross-border gas sales (and the tax revenue that will generate for NH without a tax hike in our state).
Benefits that only last for as long as we keep a Democrat out of the Governor’s Office.