The folks who pushed, promoted, and signed on to the Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI) are so cute. They keep insisting that this is about saving the planet. We’ll reduce emissions. Gaia will love us. Sorry, as with all such schemes, the goal is to milk the sick cow for a few more bucks before it dies.
Related: NH Formally Declines to Foist a Massive Regional Gas Tax on Struggling Granite Staters
Here’s an aside, but only because it is an unpleasant fact. America’s world-leading reduction in CO2 emissions – a meaningless metric to which the Left clings – results from natural gas. That thing these same leftists go to great lengths to prohibit, and to whose expansion they object.
They also oppose nuclear, which counts in Franc as green but not in America. What if we pronounced if, énergie nucléaire? Nope.
Hydro, also green, is a no-go for most lefties, which might make you suspicious about their goals if you were as yet unfamiliar with these truths. Wind moving a turbine is green but water doing it better is not.
RGGI, the Regional Green House Gas Tax on “carbon emissions,” was never about anything more than turning power companies into money launderers for politician-spending binges via an unelected commission. Fiscal spackle for badly damaged Democrat-State budgets. But it was not enough (there is no enough). That’s why they want TCI.
CT Insider reports that “Gov. Ned Lamont is still trying to figure out how to otherwise fund sorely needed transportation infrastructure projects.“
Related: Democrats Destroy Everything They Touch and Sometimes Republicans Help Them.
That’s odd because CT is a wee little place and (consistently) ranks as having one of the country’s highest tax burdens per capita. New York beats them by a fraction of a percent. Tax revenues, they have.
Small state, they get federal highway money, and still “Gov. Ned Lamont is …trying to figure out how to otherwise fund sorely needed transportation infrastructure projects.“
Ned could take a political hit if he blames driving to justify a gas tax that then requires that people keep driving to raise more revenues to pay for profligate spending.
Enter TCI. Ned wants it, he’s said he’ll get it, and the Democrat majority legislature will give it to CT residents because it “could bring in about $90 million to $117 million a year between 2023 and 2032…”
The (State Transportation Fund) STF is on track to go broke in 2024, due to rising debt. Gasoline taxes that feed the fund are also declining amid less driving in the pandemic and the increase in electric cars.
Another Democrat-run one-party state Shakespearean tragedy. Rising debt on loans so you could spend. Electric cars (bought with taxpayer-backed cash incentives) that lowered gas tax revenue. Bad management during COVID19 that harpooned the economy. But unlike Shakespeare, no one in power is ever harmed.
Sure, Ned could say, “you took an arrow in the knee at our behest; now it’s our turn. We’ll trim government fat, take our boot off your neck, and focus our spending on a few key priorities.” Nope. Ned has decided to put the other boot on your neck. Connecticut’s aristocracy will feel no pain or loss.
We’re doing this for you (as he wipes a crocodile tear).
That’s how it would be in New Hampshire if Republicans had not swung into the Majority. Even Chicken-Chris, for all his recent failings, had the sense to avoid the TCI scam, but given his recent foray into left-wing gun fearmongering, we may not have that small blessing for much longer.
TCI is out there, and the NH Advantage is ripe for pillage, especially as the states around us embrace the suck.
A like-minded majority and governor could quickly turn one of the lowest tax-burden states in America and the best economy in New England into another failed progressive experiment.
Every other Governor and legislature in New England would cheer. Every time they raise taxes, NH wins. They’d love nothing more than to see us in the same pot of boiling water, and NH Democrats are looking to up you in there with them.
Let’s maybe not do that, okay.
