HIGHWAY ROBBERY?
Sep 30th, 2007 by The Outsider
I just read a couple articles about what seems to be….a selling out of our American roads and turning them into toll roads for the purpose of getting more taxes. This is on top of what we are all already paying in taxes for roads. Are the politicians in the states that are involved in selling or leasing our roads, that hard up for money? Of course, they claim they are “privatizing” the operation of these roads for our benefit. That remains to be seen! In the case of the Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll road, the bank of Macquarie, Australia, along with Cintra investment company of Spain, will take over the operation of these 2 roads. Cintra is also bidding to build 2 segments of the Trans Texas Corridor which is east of Austin. Our state governments are also planning on converting some freeways to toll roads, at our expense of course! When the tolls increase, and they certainly will, who do we blame? The politicians? No! They will blame the private investors and the bankers that control the sections of the highways that are turned into toll roads. Tolls are nothing more than selective taxes. It’s just another way you can be taxed by politicians that don’t want to take the blame for raising your taxes directly. The link to a good article on this follows: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/highwaymen.html
There is also another article about this on page 28 in the November issue of Car and Driver by Patrick Bedard.