Tax cuts for the rich, potholes for the rest of us

[barondave]

Whenever a Republican "cuts taxes", hang on to your wallet. It's going to cost you more money. A case in point is Minnesota's joke of a governor, Pawlenty. Made one of those asinine "no new taxes" pledges when the state was more than $4 billion in the red after Ventura. By a combination of cutting services, raising tuition, moving budget lines around and establishing "fees" that weren't called taxes, he managed to balance the Minnesota budget... on paper. One of the results was reported yesterday in the Mpls Star Tribune, which went out of it's way to dismiss $50 million in Federal matching funds as "pet projects" even though it was for much needed highway repair. A very right-wing slant on a story that really shows just how bad the Republicans in Minnesota are at managing the economy. In this case, a Democratic Congressman did something for his constituents, and the Republican governor is powerless due to his own budget constraints.

Federal fund for Hwy. 53 sit idle

I fired off a letter, which was printed, unedited, in today's paper. 7/25 Letters.

Minnesota is so poor, it can't eat pork.

Federal funds for Hwy 53 cannot be used because the state can't match it. The state can't match it because it doesn't have the money. It doesn't have the money because our governor irresponsibly refused to consider tax increases to keep Minnesota's infrastructure at serviceable levels.

Whenever you see an accident due to lack of repairs or you are stuck in congestion, a driver on Hwy 53 can place the blame squarely on the Taxpayer's League of Minnesota and Gov. Pawlenty.

If it wasn't certain before, it's certain now: Zero tolerance for Republicans.

Comments

Zero tolerance for Republicans!

[radparker.livejournal.com]

I love it.

[asimovberlioz.livejournal.com]

Not quite to the topic, but related. During the 1992 general election, I noticed that the lunatic fringe was gearing up with all kinds of stuff about Bill Clinton, many of them ad hominems. This for me is always a red flag, as you might imagine.

So one day I was out shopping, and parked my car in a convenient spot, and noticed as I was leaving that the car next to me sported a bumper sticker with the saying, "WILLIE WANTS YOUR WALLET."

I went back into my car, found a piece of paper, wrote a message on it, and left it under my neighbor's wiper blades.

What did I write?

"RONNIE AND GEORGIE ALREADY EMPTIED IT."

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Now you can just cross out a few letters and keep the original bumper sticker:

W WANTS YOUR WALLET
(so he can steal your id)

[emiofbrie.livejournal.com]

Other highway projects that have suffered due to the lack of funding:

MN-100 - Route 100 between Route 7 and I-394 is getting its 3 lanes, BUT... they will be 3 THIN lanes using the existing bridges, since they can't afford to replace the bridges, and due to the lack of room for accel/decel lanes, the intersection with Route 7 will be a jughandle with lights on 7 instead of the former cloverleaf.

US-12 - US-12 bypassing Long Lake will no longer be a full Super-2 freeway...due to lack of bridge construction funds, 2 intersections will be signalled.

US-169 - US-169's intersection with I-494/Route 5 will remain as it is for the forseeable future.

MN-36 - Route 36 is being converted to full freeway between Route 120 and White Bear Ave, but to save money they will be shutting the busy artery down for SEVEN MONTHS STRAIGHT! From April 2007 to November 2007, no cars will be admitted into that stretch. This is to cut down on labor/material costs associated with marking out temporary travel lanes. Traffic through the area will be snarled on side streets.

Pretty much the only projects that still seem to go on as planned are the I-494 widening between US-212 and I-394, and the new freeway alignment of US-212 around Chaska.

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

The amazingly, stupidly ironic part is that Pawlenty is the "all cars, all the time" governor. Even if I had supported him on anything else, I would have voted against him because of his Industrial-age emphasis on private gas-powered vehicles over any more rational form of transportation.

And now he's managing not to fund highways. Hmmph.

[invader-tak-1.livejournal.com]

That may be ok to you but I have crowd anxiety, I have to take the car, if I had to take "mass transit" I'd have to get stoned to the gills every day to go anywhere.

No car, my quality of life drops down to zip.