Mr. Douglas Duncan, writing for the Washington Post, here discloses which side he has taken regarding a government and the citizens who supposedly authorize that government. He is on the side of government.
Taxes, whether sales tax or gas tax, do not add value to a commodity, they reduce it. Governments already make more money on the sale of a gallon of gas than the people who risk their lives and capital to find the petroleum reserves, extract them, refine them, and deliver them to your corner service station.
For this, the industrialists make about a nickel.
Maryland is already making forty cents, and this greedy governor, whose first action, even before the normal legislative session, was to raise the sales tax, wants to increase his take by another twenty cents.
Thus Maryland would be making sixty cents per gallon, while those doing the work would get a nickel.
For this booty, the state of Maryland does nothing, other than to threaten the lives and property of those attempting to do business in this local version of the Khyber Pass and its highway robbers.
First of all, MD makes 23.5 cents off a gallon of gasoline, while the Fed makes 18.3 or 18.4 cents. Second, there was one regular legisl00tive session before O’Moron got his sales tax increase in a special session in the fall of 2007.