A Slouching Beast Cometh, And It Shall Be Known As....

"....the incoming Barack Obama Administration".

There is nothing - NOTHING - that they will not look to tax as a way to raise revenue from you to fund their pet projects.

The first American liberty to be raped - oh sorry, taxed - into nonexistance will be our freedom of movement around the country:

The Manchester Evening News reports that President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has contacted Jack Opiola, a transportation principal for the firm Booz, Allen and Hamilton. Opiola the brains behind a program to tax drivers $8 when entering the city of Manchester during peak hours. “I was ‘noticed’ by key people in the Obama campaign and I have been providing input to his strategy team in Chicago, including information about Greater Manchester’s bid,” Opiola said.

Previously, Senator Obama’s most specific transportation proposal was a proposal to create a $60b toll road bank. In March, Obama endorsed New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s scheme to charge a $9 toll on cars and a $22 toll for trucks that enter downtown Manhattan during working hours.

And what about Obama's allegdly beloved middle-class Americans who need to drive into the city to do business, or small delivery businesses who rely on the city for survival, or the small businesses within the city who will now have to eat these rate hikes (not to mention Obama's coming tax hikes on business)? Don't worry, there will be tax credits for all of you! Well, some of you. Well, likely, none of you. Just taxes. Or perhaps fees. Or maybe surcharges.

Anyway - more interest groups are getting into the act and hobnobbing with Obama's transition team, and gosh it all sounds so good:

....the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) last month submitted a detailed $544 billion transportation re-authorization proposal designed to encourage the new administration to shore-up the domestic economy with heavy spending on infrastructure projects.

The new programs would be paid for with massive new tax hikes, including a per-mile driving tax that would begin with “proof of concept” trials as early as 2010. The tax would initially be one cent per mile to generate an estimated $32.4b a year. An extra one cent per gallon in the federal gasoline tax would generate another $1.8b, and a national sales tax on cars of one percent would generate $7.6b.

A per-mile tax to drive. Along with a raise in the federal gasoline tax. And a new "national" sales tax on cars (likely new and used - man, how much fun to be able to tax the same thing over and over!). Plus a "toll fund" of $60 billion, also culled from the pockets of anyone needing to, you know, move about.

How will this help the economy? It won't, unless you are asking "how will it help destroy the economy?" (see how one word can change everything?).

So who benefits? The Slouching Beast, who rifles through our pockets at gunpoint (pay up or go to jail is still the law, right?) and takes what it needs to fulfill its own greedy, self-serving needs, while leaving the rest of us destitute, with the soothing balm of knowing that "it is all for our own good".

This is Barack Obama's change. The Slouching Beast cometh, and we ignore it at our own peril.