OPINION:
It’s Jan. 6, and the government’s war on the innocent citizen rolls on.
The latest great battle in this long war comes from New York City. But it is part of the much broader campaign by powerful government enthusiasts across the country against American citizens.
If a nearby forest has been cut down for plastic solar panels from China, or you use a government-designed gas can to fill your lawn mower, or you live in a Democratic city where lawless prosecutors celebrate crime, you know what I am talking about.
Speaking of lawless prosecutors, President Biden just sold America’s highest civilian award to globalist George Soros, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars installing lawless Democratic prosecutors across the country to promote crimes committed against innocent Americans.
I mention that just in case you were wondering how deep Mr. Biden’s contempt is for the innocent American citizen.
The latest central planners’ assault on law-abiding, taxpaying citizens is an attack on anyone who would dare to work in New York City. Democrats, led by Gov. Kathy Hochul, have slapped workers with a new tax for driving to work in Manhattan that starts at $9 per day.
The new tax ranges up to more than $31 per day. That’s between $2,300 and more than $8,000 per year per innocent citizen who works in the Big Apple. Just for showing up to work.
This new tax is, of course, one of the most regressive taxes on the books. It will hit hourly workers, firefighters and other first responders, hotel maids, garbagemen and hot-dog vendors the hardest. The new tax will hardly even pinch if you are rich enough to have a car and driver.
Democratic politicians’ stated purpose of the new tax is to discourage people from driving into the city. They call it their “congestion pricing” plan. They want you to ride the subway or walk or ride your bike.
But if you are a big, gas-guzzling, traffic-jamming company that dispatches fleets of thousands of cars into the city every day, you will be just fine — so long as you spend millions of dollars paying off Democratic politicians.
Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft hired lobbyists in Albany and paid themselves a $1.50 fee for driving into lower Manhattan. It was such a sweet deal that the companies actually encouraged the new tax scheme.
Anyway, that $1.50 fee for driving in the city will just be passed along to the suckers who use Uber and Lyft.
“This is corporate greed at its worst,” a Democratic city councilman from Queens told the New York Post.
This scam is the most perfect Democratic solution ever devised. The big government central planners pitch it as a sensible way to reduce traffic congestion. In truth, it is nothing more than their latest scheme to rip off taxpayers after they have already spent all the proceeds from all their previous schemes.
And if you don’t want to be slapped with this new tax, just ride the New York subway system. Yet ridership is down because these very same lawmakers have turned the New York subway system into an underground insane asylum.
Subway cars have become sleeping quarters, drug-shooting dens and urinals for all the insane — including the “criminally insane” — who would rather live in New York City underground than in the the harsh elements of a New York City winter sidewalk.
One of the obvious problems is that these same big government central planners have been so busy defunding the police and celebrating fare beaters that the subways are filled with not just the insane but also illegal riders bent on mayhem. And sometimes they are one and the same.
Last week, an innocent commuter was pushed onto the track in front of an oncoming train. Last month, a woman on the F train was lit on fire and burned to death as commuters and helpless cops watched.
In many ways, it is a perfect situation for the government enthusiasts who hate you.
Either pay us another $9 a day, or ride the subway, where you will be burned to death or shoved in front of a train. If you don’t like that deal, just wait until you see the next one they have for you.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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