10.22.14
Proposition 1 – The Least They Could Do
The transportation issue over the last decade has always been a microcosm of what is wrong with the way Texas is currently governed. Roads are something that effect almost every Texans’ life on a daily basis. And for the most part they’ve been neglected and allowed to deteriorate. Over that time it’s become apparent to anyone who lives and drives in Texas that we have a transportation problem.
The reason we can’t fix this issue is not because we lack resources, it’s because we lack leadership. This did not just happen since Rick Perry took office, although he’s been a more than willing facilitator of the neglect. It’s the Reagan-era narrative, the story too many believe, of how things work. Government is the problem, and if it would just get out of the way, then everything will flourish. Obviously, that has not happened.
That mentality shows up in this statement from a WSJ article, In Texas, Toll Roads Proliferate—and a Backlash Builds.
“It’s almost impossible to get around without paying a toll now,” said Bobby Tillman, a 63-year-old web developer from Sachse, Texas, who spoke against the road at a public hearing last month that filled a 1,500-seat high-school auditorium. “We pay taxes for roads and bridges, and if that’s not enough, if you can’t afford it, don’t build it.”
The utter foolishness of his statement may not be clear until this reality sets in. It’s not enough, that’s why they’re not building roads, and why toll roads, which you spoke against, are being built everywhere.
The toll boom is taking place in part because a primary source of highway-construction funding in the U.S., a federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline, hasn’t changed since 1993. Many states also haven’t raised state gasoline taxes for decades, including Texas, which hasn’t increased its 20-cents- per-gallon tax since 1991.
I wonder how much food Mr. Sachse would be able to afford if he hadn’t had a rise in income since 1991? The cost of everything has gone up since 1991. Certainly the cost of road construction materials have gone up since 1991. For anyone to seriously believe that current/1991 tax levels are adequate to maintain and build new transportation infrastructure shows their ignorance.
But they’ve been lead to believe that the government is wasteful, ineffective, and can do nothing to bring positive change to their lives. And the Texas GOP, since taking over control of Texas government, has been doing their best to prove them right. How can anyone expect a political party that believes government is the problem to use government to solve problems?
But it’s worse then that. The GOP is not just wrecking government, they’re using government to make themselves and their friends and donors rich.
“We can go through the list over and over, but at the end of every line is this: Republicans believe this country should work for those who are rich, those who are powerful, those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers,” she said Friday in Englewood, Colo. “I will tell you we can whimper about it, we can whine about it or we can fight back. I’m here with [Sen.] Mark Udall so we can fight back.”
[...]
Her grand theme is economic inequality and her critique, both populist and progressive, includes a searing indictment of Wall Street. Liberals eat it up.
“The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it,” she said Saturday at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. The line drew a huge ovation — as did mention of legislation she has sponsored to allow students to refinance their student loans.
[...]
The centerpiece, though, is her progressive analysis of how bad decisions in Washington have allowed powerful interests to re-engineer the financial system so that it serves the wealthy and well-connected, not the middle class.
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There once was consensus on the need for government investment in areas such as education and infrastructure that produced long-term dividends, she said. “Here’s the amazing thing: It worked. It absolutely, positively worked.”
That last part is the most important part of what Sen. Elizabeth Warren said. We know how to fix this problem, but far too few are telling the story in the way that Warren is telling it.
Now for proposition 1. At best it’s a “band aid” or will “build a flyover or two“. It will do little if anything to address the neglect of the last 20 plus years. Is it worth voting for? Probably not, but it’s likely to pass anyway. Because when something that’s needed is being held hostage the ransom gets paid.
Our GOP run state government did all it is capable of doing right now, the least they could do.