More taxes not the answer

I’m sure we have all been wondering what the state was going to do to make up for the money it isn’t taking from us after Initiative 695. Well, wonder no longer. According to a Nov. 20 article that appeared in The Herald, the state is proposing adding the state sales tax, about 8.1 percent (about 14 cents per gal at 1.69 per gallon), adding a 2 percent surcharge to car sales, and adding a gross vehicle weight tax to cars.

The state is also considering adding another 11.5 cents fuel tax on top of the 23 cent tax currently being paid (one of the highest in the nation already). Before I-695 took away one of their cash cows, and with the high fuel tax, they couldn’t do anything about our poor road system, which was almost 30 years behind when I-5 was built in the 1960s. The state has not spent its road money smartly up till now, and I don’t see officials doing any differently, unfortunately, in the future.

Sorry to say, I don’t know what the answer is, other than a good light rail and mass transit system. But raping the public with the highest gas taxand what ever other tax the state can ram down our throats is not going to solve the problems we have now without some very intelligent ideas. The public must be involved in helping design those ideas. More taxes is not the answer. The state has proven it can’t wisely spend what it already has. It doesn’t need more for the pork barrel. We need some fresh ideas and some fresh faces making decisions.

Lynnwood

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THis is an editorial cartoon by Michael de Adder . Michael de Adder was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He studied art at Mount Allison University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He began his career working for The Coast, a Halifax-based alternative weekly, drawing a popular comic strip called Walterworld which lampooned the then-current mayor of Halifax, Walter Fitzgerald. This led to freelance jobs at The Chronicle-Herald and The Hill Times in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

After freelancing for a few years, de Adder landed his first full time cartooning job at the Halifax Daily News. After the Daily News folded in 2008, he became the full-time freelance cartoonist at New Brunswick Publishing. He was let go for political views expressed through his work including a cartoon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies. He now freelances for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, Ottawa Hill Times and Counterpoint in the USA. He has over a million readers per day and is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.

 

Michael de Adder has won numerous awards for his work, including seven Atlantic Journalism Awards plus a Gold Innovation Award for news animation in 2008. He won the Association of Editorial Cartoonists' 2002 Golden Spike Award for best editorial cartoon spiked by an editor and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists 2014 Townsend Award. The National Cartoonists Society for the Reuben Award has shortlisted him in the Editorial Cartooning category. He is a past president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and spent 10 years on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.
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