Parking fees expose ‘tax the rich’ bias Re: “MontCo council approves parking fee increases,” May 10
In his article, Alex Pappas reveals more than just the fact that parking fees will rise beginning July 1st. By raising fees in Bethesda six months earlier than in Silver Spring, the council’s distinctly progressive “tax the rich” bias is evident.
Additionally, by rejecting County Executive Ike Leggett’s arguably more egalitarian Saturday fee proposal, the council telegraphed its intention to use this levy during the next budget year. Couple these moves with the rise in the number of pay by cell phone meters, where the “convenience fee” for services was raised by over 33 percent late last year.
Watch out for the “bait and switch” later this year, when the general fund needs an infusion.
Kurt S. Osuch
Chevy Chase
There’s a way to keep gas prices from spiking
Regarding the high price of gasoline: Our government has used the supply lever (regulation of offshore oil leasing, long-term tax breaks for oil production companies, military protection of foreign oil supplies, releases from the strategic petroleum reserve) and the demand lever (regulation of automobile fuel efficiency, speed limit reductions), but it has never used the price lever.
Therefore, it should be government policy to use the federal excise tax on gasoline to:
1) Reduce gasoline price volatility, whether upward or downward; and
2) Steadily and incrementally increase the portion of external costs associated with gasoline consumption (e.g., wear and tear on roads and bridges, air and water pollution, U.S. military actions required to protect foreign oil producers, negative impact on balance of trade) that is covered by its price.
When our government begins to use the price lever in tandem with the supply and demand levers, it will begin to make rapid progress in limiting the economic damage caused by gasoline price spikes. Nothing else will work anytime in the near future.
Jim Lemon
Vienna
‘Geronimo’ was good code name for Osama
Re: “Dim Bulb: Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs,” May 4
Near the end of Geranimo’s life, according to historian David Roberts (“Once They Moved Like the Wind” 1993), his “dreams were haunted by memories of the killing he had done, particularly that of white children.
“‘Often I would steal up to the homes of white settlers and kill the parents,’ he confessed in an unguarded moment. ‘In my hatred I would even take the little ones out of their cradles and toss them in the air. They would like this and would gurgle with glee, but when they came down I would catch them on my sharp hunting knife and kill them.’ Now, he added, ‘I wake up groaning and very sad at night when I remember the helpless little children.'”
A monument to Geronimo has been erected at a National Park in New Mexico. Given enough time and sufficient political correctness, even the murderer of children can be memorialized.
Glenn Merritt
Vienna
