Taxes bring out the loonies

Don't raise taxes, just raise the subject of taxes, and total tax-free lunatics crawl out of the talk radio woodwork and explode their know-nothing bile all over everyone. The degree of their ignorance would be stunning but for long experience.

Gov. Deval Patrick is now open to raising the gas tax to fund the Turnpike Authority in servicing the debt incurred in building the Big Dig. Here's some of the reaction:

• will00407 assesses the condition of the economy by talking to one (one!) sales clerk of no known expertise. This suggests the level of will's expertise. Update (1/14): Real numbers from CNBC to show what a total dipshit will00407 is as he fantasizes about that one cute sales clerk.
  
• Timo-2 wants to revolt over this proposal because he thinks he doesn't use ... something he doesn't identify, but let's be charitable and assume he means the Big Dig. It's curious how he thinks goods get to him. Did someone finally invent a way to beam it down? I know, he gets it from the supermarket, end of story.
• XENOPHON-1 objects to legislator pensions, probably still angry from yesterday. The subtext of that story could have been how lousy legislator pensions actually are.
• sweetlandofliberty thinks the small, automatic legislator pay raises can pay for it all. Sure, if the Big Dig only needed a couple hundred thou. Learn to count? Not the tax haters.
• daviedooski thinks New Hampshire has no taxes at all. Government there is an air fern! He's an idiot.
• kickyoubutt is just mad, mad, mad. He hated Deval from the start and thinks we're all morons for not hating him.
• walpoleHSparent and bostonBBB can't remember two weeks ago or October, not even the cut of 1000 jobs from the payroll. The state never cuts its budget, except when they're conveniently not looking.
• teacher55, casinowriter, and dsilenzi want to start paying tolls on their local roads and highways, I guess, since they don't want to pay for our local roads and highways.
• -Hoss thinks he's smart to cut the tolltakers. Guess what? Already going on. Further, the MTA needs revenue, not because there's an operating shortfall, but because the Big Dig debt was moved onto the MTA for accounting purposes.

Well, that's enough stupidity for one day.

One other think: The American Petroleum Institute, which apparently now calls itself API (without all those other letters), ranks Massachusetts (PDF) below the national average for taxing gasoline.