RUSH: Jeff in Woodland Park, Colorado. Thank you for calling, sir. Great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Retired military officer dittos from the media reported swing state of beautiful Colorado.
RUSH: Yes, sir. Thanks very much.
CALLER: I got something to report to you, if you will, if you’ll allow me, just a quick observation at the very end. First, the report. Yesterday during one of the news breaks there was something, something like a five-minute news break, top of the hour, the report was out of Colorado that the legislature is considering raising tolls on roads that previously didn’t have tolls because of the revenue drop with people driving less. I did a little more research on that because you don’t catch all the details on those quick news bites at the top of the hour and Reuters had reported back on June 20th the amount of Americans that are driving less and in the Rocky Mountain News it reported that between I-70, the main road going out to all the ski areas from Denver, were considering major tolls coming up in the future, things that didn’t previously exist.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: I’m going to encourage all my fellow Coloradans to go out and buy more sport utility vehicles and trucks and any kind of gas-guzzling vehicle they can get because if we continue buying the higher mileage vehicles they’re going to impose tolls on places to keep those revenues up in the coffers of the state. So basically an imposed tax, a shoot-from-the-hip tax because we’re driving less, and I just think that’s right in line with everything you were saying before in the way that the —
RUSH: Let me take the occasion of your news item to point out that this is happening in many states all across the fruited plain. The first place that I am aware that this happened was in the great state of California. What happened was that in California, Governor Schwarzenegger and all of the glittering jewels of colossal ignorance in the assembly out there, started demanding people, ‘Hey, you need to clean up this state. This state’s got smog, pollution, you need to drive smaller cars and get more miles to the gallon. You need to do it for yourself, it’ll reduce your travel budget,’ all these great things. So a lot of people went out and did it because of course people are loyal to their governments and if they believe their trusted elected officials, then of course they’ll do what they can to help, which is why so many doofuses buy the stupid manmade global warming hoax. Anyway, it didn’t take long for the state of California to realize out there, Jeff, that with all these new little lawn mowers disguised as automobiles getting a lot more mileage that the fuel tax was not producing as much revenue because people weren’t buying as much. The gasoline tax out there was not generating what it had been projected to be in the budget, and California is like 76 gazillion billion in debt out there, and so guess what?
They raised the tax, wiping out every saving that the dutifully patriotic citizens of California had matched and enjoyed by following instructions. In North Carolina, they put water restrictions on because of the drought. So people, by law, could not water their lawns as much. And guess what? The municipal water supply was not used as often, and thus sales of water and tax revenue declined and so local communities decided to raise water rates, while less was being used. Everything in government happens the exact opposite of supply and demand, and the reason for it, Jeff, is that there is not one government and there’s not one media person who understands the concept that government can do with less, too. Where did this notion come from that government can never do with less, that government by fiat has to have more every year? You and I need more every year, but we don’t just by fiat wave a magic wand and get it. They can, and do. It’s an interesting explanation, too, in terms of how they sell it. Something similar happened here in Florida. I forget what it was. It might be changes in property tax revenue proposals or what have you, but all these local communities here in the county in which we survive, Palm Beach County, these local communities all said, ‘We’re going to have to cut basic services! We’re going to have to close some child care centers. We may have to close a couple fire departments and fire some cops,’ and that’s how they do it.
Any time a state bureaucracy faces a cut, they caterwaul, they moan, they cry like babies, and then they tell people, ‘Well, if your house is going to burn down, too bad, our budget’s been cut and I don’t have enough money to get the fire truck to your house where you live,’ and of course the citizens go, (crying) ‘You can’t do that!’ What they never do is lop off the top-heavy bureaucracies. They never get rid of useless policies; never get rid of useless people; they never get rid of redundant things. They always seem to go out with their PR offensive where they gotta cancel, quote, unquote, ‘essential services,’ and hence they rope in people with fear. ‘Yeah, we’re going to have to cut a couple fire departments out there. We’re going to maybe even close one of the police stations.’ ‘You mean if my house gets robbed, I got burglar in there, you’re not gonna come?’ ‘That’s exactly right because of budget cuts.’
Now, who in their right mind who is a genuine public servant, state or federal or local, when budget cuts come along, would have the audacity and the mean-spiritedness to tell citizens, ‘Guess what? We’re cutting the essential services that you need,’ rather than look for places other than that to cut, and there are plenty of them. They don’t need to build the panda exhibit at the Wayward Zoo 25 miles out of town. They don’t need to build the latest art expo with the latest liberal cultural rot on display for $5 million. They don’t need to build a testament to some wacko liberal politician, some honorary monument somewhere. They never cut the junk. They always claim to have to cut essentials, so that you caterwaul and moan to higher authorities canceling out the budget cut.
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