Once again defying logic
Among many work-related e-mails I get is a weekly missive from McGrawHill (the company that publishes Architectural Record and Engineering News-Record among many other trade magazines.) What caught my eye this morning was this article on the state of Pennsylvania looking to add I-80 to their base of toll roads, joining the Pennsylvania Turnpike and its Northeast Extension. From the ENR article by Tom Ichniowski:
The turnpike commission’s filing is a follow-up to Pennsylvania’s Act 44, signed by Gov. Edward Rendell (D) in July. That statute would raise an estimated $1 billion more per year for statewide transportation programs by imposing tolls for the first time on I-80 and increasing tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Of the expected $1-billion annual revenue increase, highways and bridges would get $532 million per year and public transit $414 million, on average. Adding tolls on now-free I-80 would require federal approval. (emphasis mine)
Now here is a Democrat governor who I’m sure has joined the chorus looking to bash those tax-hating Republicans for allowing the spigot of highway funding to slow to a trickle in the wake of the I-35W bridge collapse – yet the plan for the $1 billion increase has barely half actually going to work on highway infrastructure!
I talked Wednesday about Governor O’Malley and the tax increases sure to occur as the state seeks to rectify its structural deficit – in other words, politician spending promises it can’t keep – and part of that increased tax burden would be both adding to the gasoline tax along with adding gasoline to the items sales tax is collected on and/or indexing the tax to inflation, assuring a yearly increase. Once again this leads me to ask what we’re going to get for our money. Will we get bridge repairs and road widening where required or will we use the money to subsidize mass transit that no one is riding because it’s not convenient and doesn’t go where people want to go? The bus drives by my house several times a day and most times it doesn’t look too full. While there certainly is a need for public transit I just don’t agree with the degree of subsidy that it receives.
In something totally unrelated, I noticed this afternoon that the federal government is going to loosen its regulations in order to allow those who got over their head by buying homes they really couldn’t afford refinance their mortgages through the FHA. So once again, big government is going to bail out folks that made mistakes while someone like me who knew just how much house he could afford is going to eventually pay for all the scofflaws. In his statement, President Bush noted “the federal government was taking actions to make the mortgage industry more transparent, more reliable and fair to reduce the likelihood of these lending problems happening again.” I’ll bet though the problems will happen again in some way, shape, or form – I remember 20 years ago we did the same for the banks during the savings and loan crisis.
Obviously the mortgage and refinancing industry is lucrative – otherwise I won’t hear or see 10 commercials a day imploring me to refinance. These companies want my money to increase their bottom line and while the housing market was going great guns it was pretty easy for all of them to make money. But recently they underestimated the risk and dominoes began to fall.
People make mistakes, but why is it the duty of the federal government to permit those people not to learn from them? Like we always had happen in school, it’s those 2% of bad apples that will make the other 98% pay for them. All I can do is shake my head.
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