{"id":4924,"date":"2009-06-02T09:13:33","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T14:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=4924"},"modified":"2009-06-02T09:13:33","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T14:13:33","slug":"what_environmentalism_is_good_for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2009\/06\/what_environmentalism_is_good_for.html","title":{"rendered":"What Environmentalism Is Good For"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Iceberg shows how environmentalism is an efficient leveraging tool to extract tax hikes while still appearing “visionary.” The method is simple — first look sexy and “green” — either with an unserious congestion pricing initiative<\/a> or an equally unserious plastic bag tax<\/a> — and then let the city council institute a ridiculously unsexy half-cent sales tax increase<\/a> (Christine Quinn has been screwed at least twice now):<\/p>\n

The Bloomberg administration has backed down on a plan to charge a 5-cent fee on plastic shopping bags and to add sales tax on all clothing purchases as part of a budget agreement reached with the City Council on Monday night, aides said. <\/p>\n

To close a gap of about $1 billion in next year’s budget, Mr. Bloomberg and the Council have instead proposed increasing the city’s sales tax by half a percentage point, to 8.875 percent. In addition, the city would begin charging sales tax on clothing over $110. All clothing was previously exempt from such taxes.<\/p>\n

A typical household in New York City making $35,000 a year would have to pay an extra $74 a year in sales taxes, clothing included, according to estimates by the city’s Independent Budget Office. A household making $125,000 would pay an additional $237 a year, and one making $500,000 would pay $687 more.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mayor Iceberg shows how environmentalism is an efficient leveraging tool to extract tax hikes while still appearing “visionary.” The method is simple — first look sexy and “green” — either with an unserious congestion pricing initiative or an equally unserious plastic bag tax — and then let the city council institute a ridiculously unsexy half-cent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follow_the_money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4925,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4924\/revisions\/4925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}