03.11.08
HD-52 Run Off And Transportation
For the GOP slot on the ballot in November it’s come down to a local Assistant DA versus an insurance man. (My father has warned me all my life about insurance men, their companies, and the damage they’ve done, all my life). Both of these candidates will do what they’re told by the Texas GOP elite and support Tom Craddick for Speaker of the House, if elected.
Both say, whatever that’s worth, they’re against the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), but are not against more toll roads. It’s not possible for them to be against more toll roads. Because if they were against toll roads, which are taxes, and against “new taxes”, ie raising the gas tax, which is much cheaper than toll roads, then how in the world would they pay for new roads? And we all know that Republicans can’t be, overtly, for raising taxes, even though tolling roads are just like taxes only much, much more costly to the taxpayer. Tolls are one of those hidden taxes, or so they hope, that Republicans love so much.
These two guys are stuck in a box and they’re hoping toll roads are their way out. They have to have some plan to pay for new roads after all. Republicans have twisted themselves up in knots so bad when it comes to taxes that they can’t even realize something that makes logical sense even though it has the name TAX on it. I’ll go through this one more time for those of you who haven’t seen this before.
Late in 2006 the Governor’s Business Council, yes that was Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Council, that said all we need to do is raise the gas tax by 8 cents and index it to inflation and we can build all the roads we need, NO TOLLS. Oh my gosh you might be saying, 8 cents, that’s a lot of money when gas is $3.00 plus/gallon. That’s true but it’s a drop in the bucket when it comes to how much more costly toll roads are. See 8 cents per gallon on a vehicle that gets 20 miles/gallon comes out to 4 tenths of a cent per mile. On average right now, because they will go up, tolls are 15 cents per mile. See a difference there?
Yes it’s quite a difference. But the two GOP candidates left in this race offer more of the same. Dee Hobbs on his web site says this about toll roads, “I believe toll roads are a very viable and successful option for our community..”. Bryan Daniel on the other hand is shiftier when it come to toll roads, which is expected of someone who “..has the look of the establishment candidate“. The AusChron profile of the candidates described him as being “..agnostic on specifics like toll roads“. Being agnostic, or noncommittal, means he’ll do whatever he’s told by those big money GOP statewide donors, that have been funding his campaign, when it comes to toll roads.
What all of this means is that neither one of these candidates offers a change from the current representation in HD-52 on the issue of trasnportation. Blind support of failed Republican statewide “leadership”, especially when it comes to toll roads, aka more of the same, is not what’s needed. When it comes to transportation these two guys might as well be the same person, and are no different then the person they hope to replace.
Amerloc said,
March 11, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I don’t want to give away my age ‘cuz I”m gonna turn old here one of these next days, but when I drove to college I did so on gas that was about a nickel less than a quarter a gallon. I could fill my full-sized Chevy for five bucks if I was down to fumes. An eight-cent hike in the gas tax would have been in the neighborhood of 42 percent, and I’d have objected. Strenuously.
But I was young. I had a future ahead of me with the attendant improvements in my wages. I’d have had to bite the bullet a bit, but I’d have made it, strenuous objections aside.
Anymore, though, eight cents is what? A two percent increase? Given my current rig, that’s about half a penny a mile. As a retiree, on a fixed income, though, that’s still a 2% cost increase that I won’t get a raise to cover.
And 15 cents a mile is only a … Wait a minute. My calculator says it’s thirty times as much – there must be something wrong, lemme run those numbers again…
Damn. Maybe it’s time for change.
wcnews said,
March 12, 2008 at 11:38 am
Maybe it is.
FedUp said,
March 12, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Indeed, it is! No fuzzy math!
Eye on Williamson » The Runoff In HD-52, The Same Only Different said,
March 24, 2008 at 1:42 pm
[...] Daniel and Williamson County Assistant DA Dee Hobbs. As far as their stances on the issues, (see here, here and here), there are few differences between the [...]