Brains and brawn

Ahem. It is not so much repealing the car tax, as not letting it go back to what it was under former Governor Pete Wilson. It was a temporary measure. And just where do you you suppose that money is going to come from now?

Okay I don’tl ike penalizing car owners and I’m sure if I lived in Cali I’d be applauding this move.

Arnold wants to make a good start in people’s minds and this is an easy way, give them money. I’d be interested to see how his policies ( if he’s figured them out ) work over the duration.

California is a place where instant gratification is almost a core value and picking this guy seems a feel good approach. If you want someone to teach you dumbell flies okay, but not to run the 5th largest economy.

We’ve had car tax here for years and it keeps going up.

First it was there to pay for road improvements, then Tony Blair put it up to pay help pay for a ‘world class’ national health service. Then it was to pay for a ‘first class’ education system.
Now its there as one of the measures to get people onto public transport.

Car drivers in the UK get absolutely hammered with fuel and car taxes, parking charges, congestion charges, because the government know there’s no viable alternative for people than driving. It’s easy money for them.

If they spent the revenue they get responsibly and did their jobs, they wouldn’t have to keep coming after the same group of people time and again to make up for the gaps in the master plan.

Give drivers a break, where ever they are.

I wince when I read that folks think that the California vehicle license fee (VLF) (aka “car tax”) was raised by Gray Davis. Not so.

The 1997 rollback was a carefully calculated political move by former (republican) Governor Pete Wilson, not Democrat Gray Davis.

The Vehicle License Fee was set at 2% of each vehicle’s
value from the late ’40s until 1997. At that point, REPUBLICAN Governor Pete Wilson signed a law rolling it back by 2/3, to 0.67%. The tax was what it is now, but was reduced during the boom.

The reduction had a sunset provision raising the tax back up to what it *had been*
if the good times ended.

They ended.

And now we are stuck with another Republican.