From Fox News:
Californians already pay the nation's second highest gas tax at 68 cents a gallon -- and now it will go up again in January to pay for a first-in-the-nation climate change law.
"I didn't know that," said Los Angeles motorist Tyler Rich. "It's ridiculous."
"I think it’s terrible," added Lupe Sanchez, pumping $4.09-a-gallon gas at a Chevron near Santa Monica. "The economy, the way it is right now with jobs and everything, it's just crazy."
When gas prices go up, motorists typically blame oil companies, Arab sheiks and Wall Street speculators. This time they can blame Sacramento and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for passing a bill requiring California to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
The tax on carbon already raised about $1 billion in revenue by requiring manufacturers and utilities to buy credits for each ton of carbon emitted into the atmosphere. At the beginning of next year, the law will also apply to oil and gas. Refiners and distributors say they will pass another $2 billion in costs on - largely to consumers.
"Ultimately it hurts the consumer," said California Independent Oil and Marketing Association spokesman Mike Rohrer. "It is going to affect anyone who has a vehicle. Be it a motorist that is commuting back and forth to work or a trucker just moving goods throughout the state of California, the cost is immediately going to increase because whatever we have to pay for in carbon credits ultimately we have to pass through to the consumer."
Estimates of the cost of the tax vary. The California Air Resources Board, the Golden State's premier anti-pollution agency, predicts the new tax will raise gasoline prices from 20 cents to $1.30 per gallon. A prominent state senator who helped author the bill estimated the cost at 40 cents a gallon. Environmental activists downplay the cost, but hail the impact. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/08/27/california-hidden-gas-tax/
I don't feel sorry for anybody in California. They have voted for the Democrats and when you vote for Democrats, you get large bloated government, government employees with huge salaries, pensions and benefits and that raises taxes on it's citizens at the drop of the hat, whether they can afford the taxes or not.
And when you elect a governor like Jerry Brown who is even worse than Obama, you deserve every tax raise you get.
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