Thursday, April 2, 2009 | 2:02 a.m.
In the stimulus package passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in February is an item to wire the United States for high-speed Internet. The budget item is for $7.2 billion.
Am I the only person who remembers the tax placed on all telephone lines to wire the United States for the Internet? If I remember correctly it was laughingly called the “Gore Tax” after the vice president who “invented” the Internet. This tax has been collected since the early 1990s.
It would seem that the entire world could have been wired by now. As far as I can determine this tax is still being collected and will continue to be collected ad infinitum.
Remember, the telephone tax to pay for the Spanish American War was collected for more than 100 years after the war ended.
I realize that $7.2 billion is just a drop in the bucket out of a $787 billion stimulus package, but how many more items are in the proposed budget like this? I am tired of being ripped off by my government with earmarks and items to pay off special-interest groups.
And I am really tired of paying for representation by members of the U.S. House and Senate who care not one whit for the taxpayer now that they belong to the elite Washington establishment.
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