The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Waiting for Good Oil

9.19.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 5)

The Bridge to Nowhere may not make a good talking point but is a heck of a good object lesson especially for Republicans who are easily snared into supporting boondoggles like convention centers, sports stadiums and anything else that has someone converting a dollar amount of government spending into a specific number of jobs. It is not easy to tell a good infrastructure project from a bad infrastructure project if the only criterion is how many jobs or votes will it yield.

Transportation value is complex but, it can be boiled down to performance parameters such as cost per person or user, cost per year compared and the resultant transportation benefits. No politician has the staff or the time to evaluate this so they go by how many votes the project is worth. The expertise to do these studies used to reside in state highway departments but has been declining in quality over the past few decades. Everybody thinks that they can be a traffic or highway engineer if they could only hold some kind of government office from councilman to Federal legislator.

There probably never has been a golden age of objective transportation project selection, but since the Clinton Administration, I think it can be proven statistically, the quality of the decision making has deteriorated in direct proportion to the increase in non-technical people engaged in the process. This includes NGO's and the people we never needed before in Rural and Metropolitan Planning Organizations which are required by federal law. Any project selection routine that alleges to provide objective input concerning human lives lost, property damage and the value of time lost would eventually move a state into ever increasing efficiency and even lower insurance rates, if it were valid. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics keeps such statistics and I see no indication that things are getting better except in the realm of a few improvements made by car companies to the vehicle.

The Bridge to Nowhere was a really big fat chocolate cake with plenty of economic development icing and a lot of little job nuts and cherries on the top. Since Alaska is and has been a net importer of transportation tax dollars, there probably was not any additional incentive to send a sample to some accountants to find out if eating it would have any long-term problems beyond the initial salivary impact and lick smacking so easily heard at the Chamber of Commerce.

Considering there are so many people who have wolfed down these infrastructure atrocities and come back again and again for more, Governor Palin's change of heart is a modern day Road to Damascus experience that most will never understand and rarely see.
-- Danny L. Newton
Cookeville, Tennessee

...ASK DAVE FREDDOSO
Re: Quin Hillyer's Who Is Barack Obama?:

Allow me to add to Mr. Hillyer's otherwise excellent article. Who is Barack Obama is an excellent question, and the McCain campaign seems to be hitting it hard with some very tough ads, finally. But what exactly is John McCain attempting to become is an ever more interesting question. In addition to the brilliant selection of the Washington outsider and reformer, Gov. Palin as the V.P. nominee, McCain is attempting to morph into the 21st century Teddy Roosevelt. All fine and good, but if McCain is serious, and wants to score real points with Americans, he needs to hit hard at the very institution he's functioned in for many years. Yesterday, McCain, in response to the recent market turmoil, blamed both Wall St. and Washington, without saying who exactly in Washington were responsible. McCain blinked at a real opportunity to reform, one that requires guts and a real shake up of the status quo.

McCain needs to acknowledge, in frank terms, that his fellow elected Congressional pols created the monsters Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by allowing these specially chartered congressional quasi governmental corporations to operate without proper regulatory supervision. McCain needs to name names, like Democrats, Franklin Raines, (an Obama advisor) Jim Jones and the ubiquitous Jamie Gorelick, folks, who in addition to making tens of millions in bonuses, helped create the current Wall St. meltdown. In addition, McCain needs to call out Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank, who ran these institutions like wholly owned subsidiaries of the DNC, with thousands of dollars going to Dodd, Obama and Clinton for their campaigns.

The Clinton era dream of risky sub-prime mortgages, to those who could not afford them, all in the name of housing for all, has, as Rev. Wright would say, come home to roost. And now, we the taxpayers are stuck with the tab. If McCain truly wants to be Teddy Roosevelt, he needs to shake up Washington like it hasn't been in decades. He can start with a demand for a criminal investigation of members of congress and the former hacks that ran these entities. But if McCain really wants to make America take notice, he can call Congress the hopelessly broken institution it has become and call for real reform. A serious debate on term limits would get America's attention, big time.
-- A. DiPentima

Quin Hillyer is my hero. What a great article. McCain needs to listen to him. With the media trying to hurt McCain with the Democrat-caused economic problems it is the time to go after Obama's ability to mismanage the economy as badly as he represents Illinois in the Senate. Attack, attack, attack -- strip the media's messiah bare and bury him and "Hair plug" Joe.
-- Michael Tomlinson

TOWN AND COUNTRY
Re: Garry Greenwood's letter (under "Merging at 80 MPH") in Reader Mail's Should've Listened and Eric Peters's Is 16 Too Young to Drive?:

I find it amusing that Mr. Garry Greenwood claims that unless you have driven over forty mph in moderate to heavy traffic, you have no experience. He said this to denigrate my claim that most farm kids start driving trucks, tractors, etc at ten or eleven.

Apparently one must drive on a freeway. Gosh, here's a flash for you Gary, we have freeways here in MO, who woulda thunk it! Gollee, shazaam! Oh, and Gary those farm kids drive on them tool!

Excuse me now I have to go pick the "hayseed" out of my teeth.
-- Jim Karr
Blue Springs, Missouri

My problem with the driving age of sixteen has nothing to do with the experience of the driver. With all respect to Mr. Greenwood, farm boys do a lot more than drive the old family tractor on the side of a country road. The reality of farm life as it is, both young boys and girls do serious work. This often means driving a pickup truck into town for supplies. The sheriff knows farm life and looks the other way when 12-year-old Sam drives home with feed and salt blocks. Truth be known, quite a few underage farm boys and girls can drive circles around most steel-eyed adults.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Transportation, John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Television, Earmarks, Satire, Sports, Environment, Books, Hollywood, Constitution, Law, Russia, NATO, Energy, Alaska, Oil