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It is crazy looking at the last red election map with the few blue spots on it how little of the country actually want Joe Xiden.
Yeah.... only a mere 81-Million or so...
In Texas, as I grew up, there were no toll roads. Energy taxes paid for the roads. (You can afford a car and gas..??? ...then you use roads.... what could be fairer? (Of course, since the mid-‘70s the reduction in oil production and more fuel-thrifty cars equals a per-capita reduction in revenues while automobile and trucking traffic has actually increased demand and damage to pubic highways..... so the maintenance bills of existing and the construction costs of new roads have been sky-rocketing.... Someone has to pay for it.... You got a car? You drive on roads? You gotta pay! Simple!
But also in the ‘70s Lt. Gov Ben Barnes brought-in a bunch of scandals and scams.... After he was kicked out of politics over it.... he found a NEW way to enrich himself at the expense of taxpayers... TOLL ROADS.
Here’s how it works: Take a public road sitting on public roght-of-way... and during a huge re-paving job which forces drivers onto the parallel feeders.... which have a stop light at every intersection/overpass. Then, get the newly-paved freeway converted to a TOLL to pay for the fresh paving...and see the rights to collecting the Tolls to a French Company that lines Ol’ Bens’ pockets.... Do this again and again. Pretty sneaky...taking a public road on public right of way that taxpayers paid for years ago and convert it to a Toll Road.... explaining that the parallel-feeder is still “free” for the average guy.
Then, he took it to a higher level: By-Pass the commercial districts with new Toll Roads by selling the idea to taxpayers that the 18-wheeler traffic thru downtown is the real problem and THEY will pay for the new TOll By-Pass.... politicians push it thru .... and tens of thousands of heritage family farms and property get condemned as “imminent Domain”... for the purpose of constructing the new roads. But truckers don’t LIKE paying the TOll.... so they add stop lights at almost every intersection to slow down the feeder streets.... and in 5 years or soo... a French company and Ol’ Ben are singing again “We’re IN the MONEY!... We’re IN the MONEY!!... “