a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Tuesday, October 21, 2003 Sullivan Feels Californians' PainAndrew Sullivan poses as a man of the people in order to bash Joan Didion over the head about the car tax. In a Salon interview, Didion expressed her surprise that the "car tax" was such a major force behind recalling Gray Davis. "It's just so insignificant," Didion sniffed. Now, I admit the woman has some gall acting superior to California after keeping away from the state for so long; but Sullivan spreads his partisan guts on the table when he calls her a "limo-lib" for that remark. "A big hike in a car tax is, for most people, not exactly 'insignificant,'" he scolds. "On a $30,000 car, the difference is between $195 before the hike and $600 after."True, Andrew! But the fee hike — which really did get California voters in a lather — was not a symptom of Democrat Tax-Like-Mad Disease. Davis lost his job over this myth, along with several others (plus his own gray self). According to Michael Lewis in The New York Times Magazine: "The 'car tax,' which kicked in more or less automatically when the state ran out of money, simply raised the annual fee car owners already paid from 0.67 percent to 2 percent of the assessed value of their cars, which happened to be exactly what it was during the [Republican] Wilson administration." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:54 AM | |
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