In endorsing liberal Carol Kent for re-election, the Dallas Morning News has pinned their fawning support on her willingness to put higher gas taxes on the table. The DMN’s editorial board has apparently made crashing Texas’ economy their top policy goal.
You’d think the well educated folks at the Dallas Morning News might have learned something from the spring. In the primaries, candidates opposing the DMN’s gas-tax hike faired far better than those who supported it. In every single open-seat primary where it was an issue or discussed, the gas-tax-hiking candidate lost to the more fiscally reasonable candidate.
A poll by the Fort Worth Star Telegram earlier this year found 90 percent of Metroplex voters opposed the Dallas Morning News‘ gas-tax agenda, known around the legislature as “TLOTA”. Meanwhile, the same poll found 84% of voters opposed any kind of gas-tax increase.
That’s because Texans understand raising taxes to pay for more government bloat is wrong-headed at any time, but especially in tough economic times.
And making transportation more expensive, which a gasoline tax does by definition, not only more harshly penalizes working Texans and the poor, but tosses dirt in the engine of the state’s economy.
The DMN’s gas-tax would siphon cash from the economy and dump it into boondoggles like the grossly inefficient light-rail scams. Transportation spending, especially at the local level, is totally opaque. When even a bit of sunlight is poured in, we find rampant waste and abuse.
Such things don’t matter, apparently, to the Morning News editorial board. They just want more money to be spent with the same lack of oversight currently exercised.
In House District 102, from where Carol Kent currently misrepresents the best interests of Texas, there is a strong, right-thinking candidate named Stefani Carter. She understands that government spending must be controlled long before there are any discussions about new or higher taxes.
