There is an awful lot of serious talk coming out of Los Angeles about a 9-cents-a-gallon tax on fuel or a $90 annual fee on vehicles supposedly to reduce traffic congestion on our streets and freeways.

That's outrageous.

Local leaders and state legislators have failed and continue to fail to spend the taxes they already collected for decades to address these problems. More money won't do it.

Almost 60 years ago, American corporations - General Motors, specifically - and politicians of the day deliberately put one of the finest transit systems in the world out of business. GM was sued and paid a fine, but car sales boomed along with urban sprawl. We struggle now to find the room and money to recreate mass transit in a choked five-county megalopolis.

Fuel taxes once limited to roads and highways are now siphoned away for other political purposes.

Instead of pushing for mass transit into the far reaches of the region to reduce reliance on private transportation, we get taxes and fees expected to reduce congestion. What idiocy!

People will just bite the bullet and pay. They have no choice. And we will still have congestion. There are no other ways to go thanks to the corporations, developers, and politicians who build and build and ignore the public infrastructure vital to making it all work.