Raise Gas Taxes and Bridge Tolls Now to Protect National Security
Published: February, 2003
If threats to national security are serious enough to trample on bedrock American principles of freedom and privacy, where is the sense in not limiting the use of gasoline, the product that so entangles us with the Middle East? Together with higher bridge tolls, gas taxes alone can realistically discourage single passenger automobile use, the most egregious waster of gasoline. To stand in the way of enacting such difficult, but essential, measures is simply unpatriotic.
Why don’t anti-tax cultists, with their mania for free market principles, care to apply market forces such as so-called congestion pricing (variable bridge tolls) to the problem of overly crowded bridges and freeways? Because that would mean a few more bucks out of their pockets, and free market principles may only be extolled so long as they rationalize regressive taxes, the kind that fall disproportionately on the poor. That’s not neo-conservatism, that’s neo-feudalism.
Perhaps the most cynical pretext anti-taxers use to oppose increased gas taxes and bridge tolls is by citing the effect such increases will have on the poor. To be sure, the poor will be hurt most during the lag between when the increases are imposed and the time it takes to use the revenues to build out a proper public transit alternative. But the blame for that lies squarely with the oil and gas cartel which illegally bought up and dismantled the integrated rail and ferry network that existed in the Bay Area well into the 1950s.
Mindless anti-tax bullies have for too long gotten away with using fear and abusive intimation to stop any increase in fees or taxes, no matter how sensible or fair-minded. Their intransigence has degraded the quality of life of the Bay Area, eviscerated our public schools, demonized and demoralized public service. Now, their selfishness threatens our very national safety. Real patriots say it’s time to raise gas taxes and tolls.
