Growing government and bureaucracy on your dime

California 'Lumber Products Assessment' a tax by any other name

Lee DeCovnick

The clowns who frequent Sacramento's seedy bars and whorehouses, otherwise known as the members of the California State Legislature, have pulled off another midnight raid deep into the pocketbooks of all Californians. At least street thugs and bank robbers are a one-time occurrence; but these perfumed lapdogs of the special interests that ruin...er... run the Golden State have permanently attached a suction hose to our bank accounts.

From the LA Times, September 1, 2012:

A tax on timber came back from the dead early Saturday morning, with lawmakers giving their final stamp of approval to the proposal in the final minutes of a legislative session that stretched past midnight.

The proposal uses the tax to fund oversight of the timber industry. It also included controversial limits on legal damages for wildfires, restricting how much government agencies can sue for negligence.

Federal prosecutors and Obama administration officials opposed the limits, raising concerns they would make it more difficult to secure money needed to recover from damaging blazes. However, the timber industry has argued that prosecutors are suing for much more than the land is actually worth.

"This is very simple," said Assemblyman Tim Donnelly (R-San Bernardino). "We're literally taxing 2-by-4s, the very building blocks of our homes."

Tim Donnelly is not joking about  taxing 2 x 4's. Except the Vogon's at the California State Board of Equalization have the temerity to call this "Lumber Products Assessment" a fee, not a tax.  I feel better already.

Are there no limits to the greedy, grubbing, gluttonous addiction to forever-increasing taxation by our smug sanctimonious Sacramento overseers?

No.