Solve Virginia’s Transportation Problem: Tax The Virginian Pilot.

The Virginian Pilot is this area’s leading cheerleader for ever increasing taxes. It has supported increasing taxes on virtually everything (cigarettes, gasoline, personal services, and repairs). The Pilot's philosophy is: if it moves, tax it, if it sits still tax it, and when it dies, tax it again. It has opposed efforts to reduce or limit taxes on virtually everything.

For example, the Pilot ridicules putting a cap on real estate tax increases even as retirees are forced out of their homes because they can't afford the taxes on their paid up homes.

The Pilot is in full throated support of fining drivers thousands of dollars for traffic infractions. But it seems that a popular backlash against endless rounds of tax increases has begun.

Yet there is still a kneejerk reaction to the need for better roads to handle traffic congestion in the Old Dominion. For reasons that I cannot, for the life of me fathom, very few people seem to be asking where we can cut current governmental outlays to spend more money on roads. The cry is as mindless as it is endlessly repeated, like the words tumbling out of the drug addled derelict stumbling down a Norfolk street: “ where are we going to raise taxes to fund road construction?”

All right, I give up; if you can’t beat them, join them. And here’s my simple, elegant and obvious answer, tax the Virginian Pilot. Imagine the revenue that would flow from a mere 50 cents tax per issue on each copy of the Virginian Pilot. Come on, people, that’s 34% less than the combined state and federal tax on a pack of cigarettes. Of course you can afford it. Of course, since this is a statewide problem, we won’t single out the Pilot – that would not be right – we have to include all newspapers in this great state.

A back of the enveloped calculation shows that an absolute torrent of revenue that would flow into state coffers. There are over 7.6 million people living in Virginia in 2.7 million households. If each household gets at least one newspaper that would add $1.35 million daily to solve Virginia’s transportation problem; nearly half a billion dollars each year!

No enough you say? Well, let’s just run the numbers until it all adds up. $1.50 per paper should do it to get to the goal of $1.5 billion per year for roads and highways. Or perhaps we can get creative like the members of the last session of the legislature. How about expanding the tax to magazines? $1.00 per copy of Newsweak? Sounds right to me. That could be devoted education. And how can anyone be opposed to a tax that’s meant to help the children?