Gasoline tax a key piece to puzzle
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump and lawmakers in both parties roll out infrastructure plans, no one seems to be willing to consider the hottest, most vexing piece of that legislative puzzle: raising the federal gasoline tax.
Motorists and truckers pay the same 18.4 cents and 24.4 cents a gallon, respectively, they did when Bill Clinton was president from 1993 to 2001. As of last year, Congress had poured $143 billion into the fund’s depleted coffers since the shortfalls began.
Any tax increase faces staunch opposition in the Republican-controlled Congress. On Wednesday, however, BNSF Railway Executive Chairman Matt Rose told a Senate Commerce Committee panel that by not increasing highway user fees on trucks, lawmakers were effectively giving a back-door subsidy to rail’s biggest customer, which also happens to be its biggest competitor.
Secession talk in Calif.
SAN FRANCISCO — About 15 people huddled in a luxury apartment building, munching on danishes as they plotted out their plan to have California secede from the United States.
“I pledge allegiance, to the flag, of an independent California,” Geoff Lewis said as he stood in a conference room adorned with California’s flag and a sign reading, “California is a nation, not a state.”
Bolstered by the election of President Donald Trump, the group, Yes California, is collecting the 585,407 signatures necessary to place a secessionist question on the 2018 ballot. Its goal is to have California become its own country, separate and apart from the United States.
DeVos criticizes teachers
WASHINGTON — Newly minted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had a hard time getting inside the District of Columbia’s Jefferson Middle School Academy last week when protesters briefly blocked her from entering. But at the end of her visit — her first to a public school since taking office — she stood on Jefferson’s front steps and pronounced it “awesome.”
A few days later, she seemed less enamored. The teachers at Jefferson were sincere, genuine and dedicated, she said; they seemed to be in “receive mode.”
Jefferson educators found her comments about their work hard to take: On Friday evening, the school responded to Ms. DeVos via its Twitter account, taking exception to the education secretary’s characterization of Jefferson teachers.
Arizona death penalty
PHOENIX—Thedeath of Joseph Wood in 2014, which took nearly two hours instead of the normal 10 mintues, prompted a review of execution procedures in Arizona and underscored a problem death penalty states have faced for a half-decade: It’s getting harder to put people to death in the United States.
Now, Arizona has responded with a new, and some say bizarre, solution to this quandary: Death row inmates can bring their own execution drugs.
The state’s manual for execution procedures, revised last month, says attorneys of death row inmates, or others acting on their behalf, can obtain pentobarbital or sodium Pentothal and give them to the state.
Also in the nation …
Last-minute rocket trouble forced SpaceX on Saturday to delay its inaugural launch from NASA’s historic moon pad. SpaceX halted the countdown with just 13 seconds remaining.