This just in: U.S. Transportation System is a giant Ponzi scheme.
OK, it's an April Fool's joke (sort of) by the clever folks at the Project for Public Spaces. The "Faking Places" newsletter today has these other headlines:
-- How football stadiums can be transformed into vital community places.
-- Get your kicks on I-95: USDOT announces "Roads with Character" initiative.
And my favorite:
-- Ice rink tops list of amenities proposed by residents of Hell.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
USDOT a Ponzi scheme?
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8 comments:
How do you still have a job?
Anon 7:40 PM...grow up. Please.
But it IS a Ponzi scheme. The government takes tax money from us; filters a bunch of it out to pay for needless bureaucracy; and then sends some of it back out to the states. As the bureaucracy grows, the more that's filtered out grows, and the more and more we have to pony up in taxes just to get back the same amount from the DOT.
We'd be better off not sending anything to Washington and just keeping and spending the money in this state.
Serious question. Does the Observer pay you for your blog? I noticed that you are some type of editor at the paper, however all of your input is relegated to this blog. While some of your blog entries are informative, I just wonder if management pays you for entries such as todays.
Actually all of gov't programs are a giant ponzi scheme. And that is no joke!
Thanks for the links, Mary!
Unfortunately, the Ponzi Scheme "article" is a bit too close to the truth for comfort. The first photo caption states: "Roads are being built to nowhere, causing the need to build more roads." The accompanying picture, looking like an aerial photo that would accompany a Doug Smith article (sorry, Doug) could have been taken at any of the Charlotte region's hundreds of "storage facilities for people" under construction.
It's true. Taxpayers pay to build "roads to nowhere"...except "nowhere" always happens to be a remote cornfield or patch of forest owned by some "connected" land speculator or developer (aren't they all connected?).
Then, after the trees or corn are gone and a crop of hideous McMansions with unhealthy, non-indigenous chemically-dependent water-wasting lawns has risen to replace the formerly healthy vegetation, the taxpayer is forced to build more roads to connect all these far-flung human warehouses and their accompanying "roads to nowhere".
Hence the word "sprawl", a living affliction that Mary's detractors claim to love...except those defenders of sprawl are probably the same ones who complain the loudest about the traffic on I-485 between I-77 and Providence Road.
We The Taxpayer must now connect those roads to nowhere, don't you see.
And this quote can't possibly be an April Fool's Day joke, because it is 100% true (as the I-485 phenomenon demonstrates):
"Much like drug addiction, investments in high speed highway capacity led to a temporary high but were quickly followed by a craving for more," said Toth. "Each addition of road capacity created sprawl and degraded the very destinations the system is meant to connect people with. In the end, the funding was simply supporting driving more and more and accomplishing less and less."
Mary, I've read and re-read the "Ponzi Scheme" piece...is it really an April Fool's Day joke, or is it actually a true horror story?
Wonder why we can't get the loop built but NC 16 is on a fast track. See the story of an 11 month construction schedule being completed on time for a 4 lane!
http://www.lincolntimesnews.com/default.asp?Section=57&VA=18762
"What is called the 'private sector' of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and what is called the 'public sector' is, in fact, the coercive sector." Henry Hazlitt
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