Local Government TV

Thursday, January 02, 2014

Ripped Off at the Pump

Governor Tom Corbett will likely pay a price next election cycle when people start paying more at the pump because of his gas tax hike, which went into effect yesterday. This latest violation of his no tax pledge will send many more Lehigh Valley residents to New Jersey when their tanks approach "E". The working poor and shrinking middle class simply can't afford it.

But when you cross the free bridge into Jersey, be careful. One courthouse worker (I'll keep her identity anonymous) is reporting on her Facebook page that she's already been ripped off by an Exxon Mobile gas station on Route 22 in Phillipsburg. She asked for $20 in gas, but learned she had been charged $98.36. When called on the matter, the manager called it a "mistake." She attempted calling her bank to dispute the charge, but it's closed for the holiday.

Government gets you on one end, and uncaring gas stations at the other.

24 comments:

  1. Questionable story at best. Fact is the tax is to rebuild our shitty roads. If it is used for that, people will be OK with it. The corporate class in NJ are already complaining about the one dollar increase in the minimum wage. They are scr4eaming the jobs will go away. Of course it had many asking exactly were are the jobs that are going away.

    We constantly are told that any worker friendly benefit from pay to healthcare will anger the "job creators" and they won't create. Except for no benefit minimum wage jobs, they haven't been creating anything for over a decade.

    Truth?!

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  2. Hello NJ... the difference in price now will be worth the little drive over into Warren County. Might as well do a little shopping over there too. Home Depot, groceries, Mall come to mind.

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  3. @1:44 we already had tax to pay for our roads. All these new taxes are excessive. Congratulations as you bought the line that they want you to believe, that this is necessary for rebuilding our roads. It's time for people to start waking up from the comma and demand that the money collected from taxes be used for the purpose they were collected for. With your thinking soon there will be another tax on casino winnings to help pay for property tax relief. Unbelievable

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  4. Corbett will likely pay a price for the gas tax hike. However:

    Will ANY of the majority of democrats that made this possible also pay a similar price?

    Does anyone believe that there would have been no gas tax hike under a Democrat Governor? I don't remember hearing any if the Dem candidates for that position saying anything against the tax hike

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  5. And the lone Democrat locally who voted for the gas tax is...
    from Shittown "Allentown"

    Schlossberg

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  6. No, Democrats will not suffer. The vote was 104-95 in the House, and the lousy news reports about it do not even bother to indicate a party breakdown. But one thing is clear in them all - it is something Corbett wanted.

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  7. "Questionable story at best. Fact is the tax is to rebuild our shitty roads. If it is used for that, people will be OK with it."

    People will not be "Ok" with higher gas prices no matter what the reason. I also dispute that this tax is even necessary. According to conservative think tank Commonwealth Foundation,

    "Pennsylvania spends $71,000 per road mile, 11th highest of any state; state highway spending exceeds $660 per person, more than 26 other states; and transportation spending has doubled over the last 17 years."

    Corbett is in a mess bc he wasted state tax money to bail out a shipbuilder, a AAA Yankee stadium, and spent millions trying to outsource our lottery to some foreign firm.

    This is gonna' hurt him.

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  8. How much tax revenue has Colorado's legalization of cannabis netted the State treasury? Soon, the State will have more money than it can reasonably spend.

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  9. Highly (no pun intended) speculated on the fact there is no history to base any true amounts but this source states $67 million.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/01/jobs-tax-revenue-and-tourism-americas-first-marijuana-stores-open-in-colorado/

    Personally I feel that it's a very conservative number and will be much higher! Again, no pun intended.

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  10. If something like this were enacted in Pa, I'd like to see it tied to a repeal of another tax like this gas tax.

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  11. Prius driving power bottomJanuary 2, 2014 at 10:34 AM

    Boonie hates the gas tax because his death wagon get's 8 mpg (highway) and the extra money cuts into his little Debbie consumption. Corbett is a pariah and can do no good in the eyes of Salvation Army dems or tea bagging r's.

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  12. Corbett's raised taxes and fees and signed restrictions on drilling. He's a better Democrat than Ed Rendell. The next election figures to be a pretty good one for Rs. Corbett, however, has done everything in his power to not capitalize on the larger trend. Ds are contemplating Ed Pawlowski. They're not interested in winning either.

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  13. My wife commutes to Hunterdon County and certain gas station owners out that way are famous for this trick. Also several people at her work had fraudulent charges on their debit cards believed to be originated at certain gas stations on the I-78/US 22 corridor from Phillipsburg to Clinton.

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  14. Time to widen the busiest sections of route 22.

    Some of this.money will be used to subsidize mass transit.

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  15. Interesting. Corbett refuses to expand Medicaid so if you are a working adult making more than $316 a month, you do not qualify for PA assistance. Will representative Dent be sending a letter to Tom Corbett anytime soon? After all, it was Tom Corbett who eliminates the Adult Basic program that provided some assistance to self employed or low income working adults. With healthcare cost rising 3x the rate of inflation before Obamacarebwas even enacted, seems PA has an incentive not to work in order to have healthcare. Now pay that gas tax.

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  16. @12:48 please reveal your source that some money will go to mass transit. We are in this mess partly because there is little mass transit. We need high speed rail in the Northeast region of the US. We need an east west line here in PA. And we are in this mess as we don't build or repair roads with the right material.

    This is not a partisan issue this is a future issue!

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  17. We may mostly agree that PennDot has in the past done a crappy job. They should probably be shut down and re-organized to standards by and engineering society . However, is't we drivers that use the lanes. Grandma 'Johnson and Johnson' who does not buy gasoline should not have to from her pension.

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  18. It is funny that a person working full time making $7.25 an hour forty hours a week makes $290 a week gross or about $1160 a month, That is too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford a health insurance policy and buy food and shelter.

    These are the folks that suffer with a gas tax. However, they also suffer by not expanding the Medicaid program with federal dollars.

    So lets just keep paying for the non-working health insurance and screw the little guy working his ass off. That is the bagger plan, right?

    This country is really screwed up and it was long before Obama came on the scene. If you want to know when this upside down bullshit began look back to the "greed is good" years of Reagan in the 80's. That is when it all starting going to shit for the poor working man and woman.

    Now the "job creators" are wealthier then ever in any nations history and are bellyaching even more. History teaches what happens when you keep your boot on the neck of the poor for too long. Those gated communities are not secure enough to hold back history.

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  19. $7.50 an hour should not drive anything but a shopping cart.They have no business spending a third of their income on vehicles that mostly provide WAIST of cash needed.

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  20. I read that Phila, Erie and Pittsburg will get the lion’s share. So the LV delegation held out because they wanted more subsidies for mass transit? Did their brinksmenship prevent us from getting our fair share?
    We have seen major projects announced in Phila, Erie and Pittsburg. What major project is in this bill for the third largest metro area in the state?

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  21. I get gas in NJ and I ALWAYS pay cash because of the shadyness of some.

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  22. Gas in NJ is run by the Russian mafia.

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  23. This is all Obama's fault. I am going to have some more of my Rush Limbaugh brand Ice Tea. No, I a m not making that up. He is actually hawking his own Ice
    Tea brand.

    I hear the sheep are slurping it up at premium prices. Hate to tell them it is the same ice tea sold by WaWa just with a different label and sold at three times the cost.

    Love the baggers!

    ReplyDelete

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