Nearly half of all Americans are worried about the collapse of a bridge somewhere in the United States, yet nearly two-thirds reject higher taxes to inspect and fix them, according to a new poll.
The collapse of a bridge in Minnesota has put America’s infrastructure on the political agenda.
In an affect called BIMBY — “Better In My Back Yard” — that is common in polling, CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said people often feel that situations locally are better than the national averages.
I’ll have to remember to use that term next time I’m arguing with other Santa Feans about the corrupt bastards in Congress.
Despite the concerns, only one-third of those polled favor increasing the tax on gas to pay for bridge inspections and repairs. The federal program to inspect and repair bridges is funded mostly by the federal tax on gasoline. Sixty-five percent of those questioned were against raising that tax.
Congressman James Oberstar, D-Minnesota, on Wednesday said he would introduce legislation for bridge repair funding and increased inspections. He says a 5-cent increase in the gas tax would pay for the proposed three-year program by generating $8.5 billion a year.
Another gutless wonder! Need to find $8.5 billion? That’s what the chickenhawks in Washington spend on Bush’s War – in a month.
There shouldn’t be any need to raise taxes.
Look at the money we’re spending on the war.
Let’s make sure first that we are spending everything the government gets from the taxes is being spent on the roads and not something else.
And yes, I do agree with rescinding the tax cuts that this idiot administration has pushed through. I have no problems with that, even though my family is in the top 20% income bracket.
#33 – While I know this is far-right of me, I see the issues around the environment getting worked out, for the most part, through capitalism.
I’d slide some environmental spending in at #5 under the “important social programs” heading, mainly to focus on government concerns that lie outside of private industry. I’d also like to see a short term program of tax cuts to get private industry going down the right path, but a long term process of government baby-sitting the issue isn’t going to work.
#3 Way to drink the liberal kool-aid! Being “wealthy” and “prosperous” are NOT bad things! I assume you think they are because you lumped it in with “greedy”.
Perhaps you would prefer to live in a non-capitalist society, where the government determines what you need and gives it to you?
#35 – James,
Unfortunately, it’s capitalism that is destroying the environment. The problem is that corporations do not take the long view of things. If they were looking to maximize their profits for the next 100 or 1000 years, that would work. However, corporations today are not even looking at 10 years.
They look for this quarter and the next, a max of 6 months. Environmental concerns affect the bottom line over a much longer time frame. There’s also the issue of externalizations. Companies are not required to pick up their costs of doing business. They socialize and externalize the risks and expenses and privatize and internalize the profits.
I am a capitalist myself. But, I think some controls are required. And, I would not look to capitalism to solve a tragedy of the commons.
>>mainly to focus on government concerns that lie outside
>>of private industry.
You mean non-governmental concerns like cleaning up the air and water, making sure our food is safe to eat, our medicines safe to take, that people have access to medical care (and no, I don’t mean a $40,000 trip to the ER), eliminating sweatshop labor, imprisoning violent criminals and predatory sex offenders? Stuff like that?
Private industry has a great record in those areas.
Every see the Mad Max movies? That’s what I imagine life to be in a society ruled by unfettered “private industry”. Or maybe “Soylent Green”. Hey, why bury them, if we can grind ’em up and eat ’em?
#36 – David K.,
Being wealthy and prosperous are indeed not bad things in and of themselves. However, they should come with some responsibility to help out those less fortunate then themselves.
Personally, I’m always willing to pay more than those making less than I do. What bugs me is when people making many orders of magnitude more than I do pay less than I do.
#19 – even you and I agree on something once in a while 😉
#21 – point 3, I agree. I’ve supported something similar for corporate executive pay for years. Get stock price out of the picture, although total payroll would have to factor in as well, not just average salary. Don’t want them profiting from massive layoffs.
Getting back to bridges: Pawlenty got ripped in an earlier thread for vetoing a gas tax hike in MN. Well, one of the problems with that bill was a rider diverting half the money to transit. Funding transit doesn’t fix roads. We’re probably going to get a tax hike now because of sentiment , but at a minimum, I hope the legislature doesn’t play games and dedicates 100% of the funds to roads.
>>Well, one of the problems with that bill was a rider diverting
>>half the money to transit.
That wasn’t one of the “problems”, that was one of the high points. The new light rail system rocks. Too bad it really only services downtown, the VA Hospital, airport, and Mall of America. If they could divert some funds and make a public transit system like DC (or a modern version of the one in Chicago), that would be a REAL step forward.
As to “fixing” roads, that’s a short-term solution. Even if the 35W bridge were built to last 1000 years, 35W from the river to 494 is the road of last resort for commuters. When I lived there, if you wanted to be insured that your 12-mile trip would take an hour and a half at rush hour, 35W was the road to ride. And there’s no room to widen it. So all they can do is strengthen is, so that it will support a 24/7 rush-hour flow of traffic.
People should be a little more flexible in their transit alternative. Minneapolis (and other places) is not fucking L.A. It’s OK to go somewhere without getting in the Hummer and driving there.
It is all about priorities: spend the money where it will do the most public good. For instance, do we continue to spend hundreds of billions upon mass transit, which is used by only 2% of the population, or do we spend it on road maintenance, which is used by the other 98%?
#36 – save your presumptions for your own greed. You don’t speak for me. You have no legitimate right in debate or any other political discourse to restate what I say to suit your own prejudice and self-deceit.
There are wealthy and prosperous who don’t default on paying a fair share to support the whole nation. There are wealthy and prosperous whose greed leads them to continue support for rapine tax policies, egregious legislation, reactionary foreign and domestic policies. I addressed the latter.
You get to decide which side you’re on. So do i.
#40 – iGW,
Nice point about execs. I agree wholeheartedly. And, how about not allowing a publicly held corporation to pay dividends and give boni to their execs in years with lay-offs. We do need to make it not profitable to lay off employees. We probably also need a way to make it not profitable to offshore their jobs, but don’t ask me how. Luckily though, at least in the computer programming field, companies have begun to notice that off shoring programming is not profitable because they actually don’t get the software they need when they can’t talk to the geeks in the same time zone.
I do have a slight difference of opinion with you on paying for transit though. At least where I live, improvements in transit that encourage ridership actually do help the roadways in the long term. They don’t cause the actual fixes of the moment that must also be made, but they reduce the load on the roads.
A gasoline tax would have a similar effect, if one takes the longer view of things, as well. See, larger vehicles actually do damage the roads more. Some of New York’s bridges are requiring not just repair, but additional support to handle the weight of today’s vehicles that are much heavier than the vehicles in the days the bridges were built. So, a gasoline tax, that would encourage people to buy smaller vehicles may be two parts of the solution by paying for the repairs and encouraging lower use of the roads and with lighter vehicles. It’s a win all around.
Greater disparity in costs of registration probably wouldn’t hurt either, higher registration fees for heavier vehicles. But, since that’s such a small cost anyway, it will probably have little effect.
#18 Want to know how to shut up a Democratic politician?
um, GW inherited a balanced budget from a DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT– nuff said.
face facts, republicans like running deficits because then they can say that they can’t afford school lunches for children. wake up dude.
#42 – Smith,
Where’d you get those numbers? We don’t even spend hundreds of billions on NYC’s transit. And, we have 80% ridership!
We’re talking about $12 billion for a second avenue subway line, a whole new subway line. Where are these hundreds of billions of which you speak??!!? We could use some of them here!! Our traffic in the entire tri-state area sucks. And, most of the entire area is already paved without much room for more roads. So, let’s get people into more energy and space efficient vehicles.
#43, Fossil fuels are from cheap if you add in defense costs. Before the Iraq war during the Clinton years, we were still spending $100 billion a year to defend $30 billion worth of oil. In fact, some liberal think tanks have argued that when you add in all the secondary costs like the military, the real price of gasoline is $15 a gallon.
At that price, getting oil from shale could be profitable. That is why I am all for setting a floor on energy prices so that real alternative fuels can be developed.
Alternative fuels are viable with today’s gasoline prices. But the key question is are they going to stay there? If, as an investor, I knew that I didn’t have to worry about Saudi crude that can be produced at $3 a barrel or Venezuelan oil that could be produced at $10 a barrel, I would be investing in alternative fuels like shale oil.
To me, that was the key question about the Iraq war. Were we better off spending all kinds of money to invade Iraq in the hopes of securing cheap oil or to spend money in our own country devloping initally more expensive alternate fuels? Obviously, now, I think the latter course would have been much wiser.
Mustard – Soylent Green and Mad Max, good – but I’d offer the Robocop films as the best projection of what handing over gov’t duties to private industry could do to America and soon, overpop or nuclear holocaust not required. They look less like SF and more like documentaries every day.
• • • •
Hey kidz, here’re two current social phenomena;
1. Americans are maturing more slowly and retaining adolescent and even childlike attitudes and behaviors into adulthood.
2. Americans, as this post demonstrates, increasingly want everything infrastructurewise that they’re accustomed to – but they demand those things while avoiding tooth and nail the responsibility of paying for them, like spoiled children.
Just a coîncidence, right?
>>Where’d you get those numbers? We don’t even spend
>>hundreds of billions on NYC’s transit. And, we have
>>80% ridership!
I think maybe he was taking the amount spent worldwide since mass transit began. Typical example of statistics non lying, but liars using statistics.
The Minneapolis airport/ MoA light rail line cost about $200M, the proposed Northstar line would be around $300M (they are ground-level trains, not subways or elevated). And once complete, of course, people PAY TO RIDE.
I think people like Smith would prefer to just pave over the whole country, and turn it into one giant bumper-car arcade game. With Hummers. And DIck Cheney laughing all the way to the bank.
#23 – You’re just trying to kill me aren’t you?
————————————————–
My personal thought is the following:
1) Remove all capital gains taxes on true investment. I rate true investment as investing money that you have already earned and paid taxes on, not taking others money or borrowing money from a bank as a investment corp, then splitting the take as “investment earnings” when you win and then hiding behind the corp when you loose. No investment without risk.
2) Raise lower limit on the 33% tax bracket from $154,000 to 175,000. Raise upper income limit on the 33% income tax bracket from $336,550 to $700,000. Insert a 40% bracket for 700,001 to 2,500,000. Raise the percent on the highest tax bracket from 65%. Index all of it to inflation.
3) Remove the tax loopholes that allow investment types to report what is in reality compensation as investment return, thus only getting taxed at 14%(?) instead of what should be payed as earnings..
The light rail in MPLS cost a billion and a half , ridership is significantly above design estimates and the reduction in traffic load is not even measurable. It ain’t happening. Build more roads.
#52 – iGW,
I’m surprised you want more roads. I thought you like remote living. If you want to see the end product of your “build more roads” attitude, come visit New Jersey. Then you can see the beauty of unrestrained road building in our most densely populated state.
Eventually, when there are enough roads to get everyone from point A to point B, everything will look like a huge parking lot. You should really think that logic through to its logical conclusion.
#51 – Sounds The Alarm,
I’m with you on 2 and 3. But, I think that all income regardless of source should be taxed. I’d not only include your ?false? investments, I’d include today’s tax free interest too. If the fed wants to make munis more attractive, let them help pay a competitive rate of interest, rather than giving some multi-gazillionaire hundreds of millions in triple tax free income.
Oh yeah, no deductions. I shouldn’t subsidize your kids. You shouldn’t subsidize my mortgage. Enter your total income. Pay taxes on it. Oh horrors!! I think I just put a whole bunch of tax attorneys out of business.
(Good morning. I was just having such a nice dream …)
#51 – Yeah, penalize the successful. How about this – Anyone who make over 100.00 per year pays 15%, period. No loopholes, no deductions for any reason whatsoever. Someone makes 10 time what someone else makes, they pay 10 time more in taxes. Nothing could be more fair.
>>he light rail in MPLS cost a billion and a half
Oh yes? I calculate “Total $334,277,500” (http://tinyurl.com/2q2xhn).
As to the non-“reduction in traffic load”, why do you suppose that is? Do you suppose the 15,000 fares per day represent people who were riding their razor scooters or rollerblading before the light rail?
Or maybe the massive influx of people into the Twin Cities (with no corresponding increase in infrastructure, and antagonism at every turn to viable mass transit alternatives) might have something to do with it?
Face it, IGW, most cities have every square inch of road-usable space already paved over. People are either going to have to start working and shopping in their neighborhoods, or they’re going to have to invest in some sort of viable mass transit system.
Not a big priority for the Overlords, obviously. They just take a nap in the limo, and let the chauffeur sweat the details.
#55 – iGW,
Well, you’d be saving me a bundle. But, where’s the interest on the 7 trillion in debt coming from? I don’t think you’re going to even be able to pay the interest on our existing debt let alone pay for schooling, health services, trash removal, law enforcement, fire fighting, or just about anything else the government provides.
>>I don’t think you’re going to even be able to pay…let alone…
Perhaps IGW is one of those who think the government should not provide any services whatsoever to its citizens. Their only “reason for being” (as the French say) is to start meaningless wars, jack up oil prices (and demand for oil), and to line the pockets of those whose pockets are already so heavily lined they look like codpieces.
“Health care”? Who gives a fuck about that? “Schooling”?? Pfffft. Send ’em to parochial school for $14,000/yr. The rest of the stuff we can outsource to India or China. Might take a while for the firemen to get from Mumbai to Boise, IA, but who cares? The Overlords have their own private fire departments anyway.
There is no shortage of $ to fix the problem. There is a shortage of intelligence & integrity in D.C.
53,
Build roads AROUND the metro area, but then give everyone INSIDE, a SMALL eco mobile, Or bike…
NO trucks NO cars..
59,
THERE is money..
but WHo keeps getting raises?
WHO make (probably) 4-10 times what you make…and is SUPPOSED to be representing you.
58,
We got our OWN Volunteer fire dept.
55,
ANYONE that makes LESS then 20k per year should NOT pay tax..thats $9 per hour…The reps and congress are WEIRD…after this 3 year SLOW raise in min wage, they want to raise the min wage to $9..
Get the Mexicans off our welfare system and back in Mexico and we can give 12 millions Americans jobs and cut our welfare rolls by at least 20 million people, each Mexican is probably enrolled at least three times under different names and SSNs, it’s not like they check out the numbers.
#61 – traaxx,
So, you want to be a migrant farm worker? Go for it. I bet you can get the job right now. They’re not taking jobs any U.S. citizens want. And, just to be clear on a minor unrelated point, from Chile and Argentina through Northernmost Canada, we’re all Americans.
>>Get the Mexicans off our welfare system
Got any stats on the number of ILLEGAL immigrants who are on welfare? Rhetorical question; I thought not.
Just another xenophobe, fantasizing that if we could send back all the people who pick lettuce and cotton and work at Taco Bell, all would be right with the country. Talk about fuckwits.
#56 – Your own link shows actual costs as of 12/31/2002 as $411,681,173 so I don’t know what your looking at. I’ve seen a number of local articles putting the final cost well over $1Bn. If there are building in the way of more lanes, get rid of some of the buildings.