>Here in Saskatchewan (another province in Canada - not as pretty as BC, but
>"so flat we can see the future coming") the provincial gov't spends less
>than 20% of the money they collect on the gasoline tax on road maintenance.
>The gov't is also allowing some paved roads to "revert to gravel". The rest
>of the gas tax money goes into the province's general revenue fund. You'd
>immediately notice this when you enter the province, as the roads are
>riddled with potholes, and have thousands of patches per km. As the old 
joke
>goes: How are Saskatchewan highways and golf courses similar? They both 
have
>18 holes per mile.

Wellllll.... not here in California!!!

Here, *all* of the federal and state tax money goes into the general
funds of each organization.

In fact, when I moved here, I was "allowed" to pay a $300 fine<<<<fee for
an "environmental protection fund", since the three cars I brought in,
were not Calif. cars with the additional smog equipment those have. The
fact that they all passed the higher CA emissions standards, was irrelevant.
Yes, that's $300 for *each* car, $900 total.

Well, sez I, at least I'm paying for people working to fight for
environmental cleanliness, right?

Wrongo-- these "fees" go into the general fund, just like traffic tickets
and court fines do. Any environmental benefits that come from my $900,
are strictly an accident. Whereas they *could* have simply required me
to spend that $900 cleaning up my cars' emissions equipment. Except they
were quite clean already...

End of tirade. Wasn't even long.

Steve Maher  smaher@gi.com  "We're from the government. We're here to help 
you."