Tag: Fuel tax

Demonstrators clash with police in Paris for the fifth straight weekend; Greg Palkot reports on the unrest. #AmericasNewsroom #FoxNews FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as political and business…

The venerable your-tax-dollars-at-work road sign, government’s feeble attempt to counter fire-breathing antitax crusaders and reassure motorists that their money is going to good use, has become cliche and commonplace — visual roadside litter that most of us hardly notice. Not so one Southern California lawmaker. They don’t recount the entire sordid history of California transportation spending, which is also a lot to ask of a sign. The essence of the Los Angeles County Republican’s complaint appears to be that the signs are true. And that, in turn, will threaten Republicans’ campaign to repeal the tax increase, which relies on the notion that the transportation funding measure is actually a plot to rob taxpayers of their hard-earned money for no particular reason. He voted to raise gas taxes. The GOP doesn’t have a candidate in California’s U.S. Senate race and, if polls don’t change dramatically, is facing a shellacking in the gubernatorial contest. Most of the $5 billion a year for roads, bridges, mass transit and other transportation projects being raised by last year’s gas tax and vehicle fee increases is to repair infrastructure that Californians are already using. But SB1 attempted to address that by including oversight measures and spending restrictions. In a mirror image of the GOP distortion, it says the measure “Eliminates recently enacted road repair and transportation funding by repealing revenues dedicated for those purposes.” The parties, in other words, are having an absurd argument over whether SB1 raises taxes or fixes roads.

A week after voting with fellow Democrats to raise California's gas tax, state Sen. Josh Newman was vacationing with his wife on a Caribbean island when he saw a news alert on his phone that said Republicans were targeting a lawmaker for recall over the action. "I thought to myself: 'Wow, somebody's in trouble. That's crazy.' And then I clicked on the link, and lo and behold it was a picture of me," the Fullerton lawmaker said. "That was obviously a jolting surprise for me, to find that I was the one person, of 81 people who voted for the same thing, who was ostensibly guilty of treason." The contest has become a surrogate battle between the state Republican and Democratic parties over whether the Democrats will regain a supermajority in the state Legislature. The recall campaign is headed by former San Diego City Council member Carl DeMaio, a Republican activist who noted that Newman had won election in 2016 by only 1% of the vote against Chang. "We want to make an example of Josh Newman for his vote on car [fees] and gas-tax hikes," DeMaio said. He was one of 26 Democrats in the Senate supporting the bill increasing the gas tax, and was not the last to cast a vote. He chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and lives in Orange County with his wife and daughter.