Some taxpayers in California are revolting.

Actually, the level of taxation in California is revolting.

There is an initiative effort to roll back the recent gasoline tax in California and part of that campaign is to stop the $77,000,000,000.00 high-speed rail project.

California’s liberal Democrat leadership is pushing this huge money pit that is increasing in cost by the day.

And as this project sucks dollars from the state government, the Democrats counter with cries for higher taxes. They claim that the tax increases target “the rich” but they actually fall on the middle class.

Instead of spending tax revenues to repair roads and bridges, they are diverted to a train project that is too expensive to build, too costly to maintain and too pricey to ride.

The original estimate for the bullet train was $33 billion when voters approved a bond package in 2008. Because of delays and cost overruns, the full project won’t be open until 2033. So the politicians who borrowed all those billions today won’t be in office when the bill comes due.

The petition wants all fuel taxes to go to maintenance of roads and bridges. That makes sense. That would provide more than $7 billion a year for roads and would make up for the repeal of the higher gas tax.

In 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a state tax increase that increased the tax on gasoline by 12 cents and by 20 cents on diesel. State governments love the gas tax because consumers have no idea of how much the tax is due to constant fluctuations in the price of fuel.

Californians are leaving that state in droves and many are headed to Texas, which doesn’t have a state income tax.

It’s as if there already is a bullet train out of California to Dallas and confiscatory taxation is to blame.