CARR TAX:

AL CARR

INTRODUCES

MARYLAND

GROCERY TAX

Tax-per-bag to Hit Poor Residents and

Seniors Hard in Already-Bad Economic Times

Virginia has a Car Tax. Now Maryland is getting a Carr Tax.

Delegate Al Carr (D-Dist.18) has introduced a new tax bill for you, the residents of Maryland. Aside from all of the new taxes and "fees" levied on you by Montgomery County and the state since 2007, and Sen. Richard Madeleno's and Nancy Floreen's attempts to add an internet shopping sales tax and parking tax respectively, Del. Carr has just the thing to lift the poor out of this recession: More new taxes!

Carr's tax will cost you 5 cents per bag of groceries. Carr says 3 cents will go to "the environment," but failed to mention where the other 2 cents go. (Guess.) As usual, the rich will have no problem covering 5 cents per bag of groceries. As for the poor and senior citizens, and working families across the state... ...you're going to have less money, and Carr and his cohorts in Annapolis will have all the more of your money to play with. All under the usual guise of helping "the environment."

It's outrageous.

Mr. Carr is calling from the same playbook as his fellow politicians and environmental extremists across the nation: to get more money from your wallet, a devious scheme: turn you, the victims of pollution in our community into the villain, who will now be punished by a grocery tax.

Yes, they're claiming your grocery bags are ending up in Rock Creek. Funny, I've never left a plastic bag there or in any other waterway. So, I have to pay a tax because Mr. Carr and his buddies are unable to do their job, and catch and punish those who litter?

There's nothing new about that. Our elected officials have allowed littering to continue unabated. There is constant trash in the Little Falls stream system. There has been an ongoing problem of trash being left by the tennis courts down on Westbard, across from the Park Bethesda.

I also saw, and captured photos of, trash, litter, and junk dumped in the spring alongside Woodfield Road extended in Damascus. There was even a pet carrier down there!

What have Mr. Carr and Co. done to catch the people who illegally dump that trash in our waterways? Why are so many of the "fines" for those who litter and dump toxic waste and pollutants into our waters so laughably low? (When they bother to catch them at all).

If Del. Carr and other politicians - as well as Safeway, which claims to support Carr's tax(!!) - are so genuinely concerned about bags...

...why don't they give each customer who uses a reusable bag 5 cents for doing so?

What? They won't do that? You mean, their passion, and Safeway's passion for the environment has limits? They're saying that 5 cents would be just too much to give you, their loyal taxpayer and customer?

Again, 5 cents is "small" when you pay it, but "too much" for Carr and Safeway to pay you for helping the environment.

Ladies and gentlemen, the hypocrisy of "environmentalists" has been laid bare once again.

And as usual, it is the poor who will suffer the pain of yet another flat, regressive tax. And seniors on fixed incomes. And large families, and you know that liberal extremists like to punish large families, because they believe "there are too many of us on the planet."

Will this tax succeed in such dark economic times? Let's just say this won't earn any delegates who support it many votes at Leisure World!

Note who votes for it. Hold them accountable. Pay attention to which grocery chains support the tax; shop elsewhere. Stand up for your rights. It's your money, not Mr. Carr's, Mr. O'Malley's, or Mr. Leggett's.

As for Del. Carr, once his constituents realize they are paying a new "Carr Tax," he should not assume his reelection is in the bag.