Higher Taxes
Re “7 in 10 Californians Support Higher Taxes to Help Schools,” June 18: In reading your article, I could not help but wonder how the $82 billion in state government spending is being allocated. Perhaps the question posed should not be whether to increase taxes, but instead to reduce or eliminate some of the liberal largess and reallocate it where it is so badly needed (schools and roads).
I already pay an enormous amount of my income in taxes, and I am constantly befuddled by the sorry state of our freeways and roads. Not only am I taxed on my income, but both the federal and state government tax our fuel purchases as well. Now state Sen. John Burton proposes a bond issue (financed by additional taxes) to repair our roads. What is the government doing with the taxes already levied? Why, giving it to welfare recipients, of course!
JAMES P. DOWLING
Los Angeles
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If your pollsters had prefaced the query to the respondents with the phrase, “being aware that by law 40 cents of every state tax dollar is mandated for public education” would the Times Poll result have been the same? I think not.
BARRY COOK
Newhall
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