This is WAR...my fellow Angelenos!!! Every single morning we awaken to a NEW tax...the Mexican mafia is raping us...no other word for it, sorry! They have squandered the biggest tax revenue surplus in the history of L.A. and now they want us to pay for their looting of our treasury. EVERYTHING has gone into their pockets and the pockets of their precious illegals. Villar is guilty of gross abuse of power and gross mis-appropriation of funds! This "subway to the sea" project would primarily serve the illegals and Mexicans who work on the Westside! Villar is trying to cash in on the high gas prices, but increasing the sales tax is adding insult to injury! The gas tax revenue was supposed to ONLY go for roads and highways...but they diverted ALL of it to the General Fund. We have been robbed! We need ro form an Action Committee NOW!

Breaking news: L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa supports a sales-tax hike for transportation projects

I just rode the subway with L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who said for the first time publicly that he would like to ask voters in November to consider a half-cent sales-tax increase in Los Angeles County to pay for more road and mass transit projects.

"I'd like to get a sales-tax initiative on the ballot, but we have to build a consensus on that first. I'm working on that as we speak," the mayor said.

The idea of a November transportation tax has been gaining ground with rising gas prices and increasingly public pressure for new transit lines like the Wilshire Boulevard "Subway to the Sea" and the extension of the Gold Line in the San Gabriel Valley.

Earlier this month, David Fleming, chairman of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, said that as a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member he intends to vote to move the sales tax forward toward the November ballot. He just wants assurances that the money won't be raided later for some other government purpose.

Villaraigosa has made building a Wilshire subway a top priority of his administration. But his efforts have made little headway largely because of the $5 billion-plus price tag. Congress last year lifted a longtime ban on tunnel work under Wilshire Boulevard -- but the money to build a subway remains a major problem.

Even if a tax goes on the ballot, it remains unclear whether it would pass. Some elected officials in the San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere have questioned whether the benefits of a subway are worth the huge costs. Transportation officials are consider a variety of new rail lines elsewhere, including extending the Gold Line, a second phase of the Expo Line from Culver City to Santa Monica and a new line along Crenshaw Boulevard.

More later.

-- Steve Hymon

June 25, 2008


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/bottlen ... ews-1.html