Closet Democrat?

In looking at Mark Udall's call for "a transit option on our I-70 corridor," we couldn't help but think of the way to pay for it. The more we thought about it, we think the Democrats have the right idea-we can use oppressively high taxes.

Clearly, this benefits the ski industry, so we need to put as much of the cost of the "transit option" on it as possible. How about a $25 per day tax on skiers? That would be for the low and mid-range ski areas. Skiers at places like Vail and Aspen can easily afford to pay $50 a day.

We could establish a special ski resort area sales tax of 10% over the amount now charged, and 20% on works of art.

A 5% annual property tax could be slapped on Ski "villas" worth more than $100,000 (chuckle).

Udall's claim of a need for more ski area workers can easily be satisfied by establishing a ski area "living minimum wage" of $40 an hour. Heck, why not $50 an hour? It's only money, and it isn't our money.

Democrats so love tax code driven behavior modification that they will like the added benefits: It will take a few years to build a transit system, and these proposals will eliminate the riff-raff from the ski slopes and the I-70 corridor.

The really neat thing about this set of tax proposals is that none would ever expire. More "good works" can be done for years to come. If we make the taxes high enough, we won't even have to actually build a "transit option" and can siphon all of the money off to our own purposes. To avoid criticism, we can revenue share 10% of the boodle with the impacted counties and towns.

Mark Udall will doubtless like these proposals and aggressively move to see them adopted. We're not so sure about Bob Schaffer, who doesn't seem like taxes all that much.

Our reputation as a "closet Democrat" can only be enhanced by this post. Maybe Tim Gill will fund us.