Expand sin tax to gay marriage

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• Make speeders pay a heftier fine – and help fund public transit

  Make speeders pay a heftier fine – and help fund public transit

  Speeding tickets are incredibly annoying, but speeding drivers who imagine their time supersedes public safety are more annoying. Their fines should be raised.

• Do your smoking in your home

  Do your smoking in your home

  I don’t understand all the brouhaha around the marijuana issue. Decriminalization is not the same as legalization. You can’t grow pot in your front yard, and you can’t haul bales of the stuff around in the trunk of your car. That’s still against the law. However, it doesn’t make any sense to grind someone up in the criminal justice system for possession of a small amount of a relatively benign herb being used for personal consumption; in this instance the “war on drugs” has been a monumental failure. Slap a big sin tax on buyers and sellers so the state makes a pile of money regulating sales and distribution and apply the same laws and penalties to pot use that cover a DUI or public intoxication offense. Growers need to be licensed to protect buyers, and big-time dealers should get thousands of hours of public service.

• Our Voice: Drug testing for welfare less appealing than it sounds

  Our Voice: Drug testing for welfare less appealing than it sounds

  Drug tests for welfare recipients is an idea with built-in appeal. After all, many job applicants must submit to the same test.

  And paying taxes is bad enough. Using your hard-earned money to help feed someone's drug habit -- maddening.

  "I think taxpayers want to make darn sure the money is going for groceries for the kids and not for dope," Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, told The Associated Press.

• Obama fires IRS chief

  Obama fires IRS chief

  Moving to quell a growing scandal, President Barack Obama on Wednesday fired the acting chief of the Internal Revenue Service and vowed to work closely with Congress in determining who ordered lower-level employees to target tea party groups and other conservative organizations.

• End the tax breaks without state benefit

  End the tax breaks without state benefit

  Why doesn’t the Legislature have a contest to come up with a new tax? It appears they are only concerned with taxing the masses as evidenced by the proposed 10 cents a gallon on gas, increases on auto licenses, a tax on studded tires, a tax on electric and hybrid cars and possibly more taxes that I am unaware of.