Posted inPhoenix

On transportation, stuff you can’t make up

Gov. Janet Napolitano is not so tough when it comes to dealing with the real power in Arizona. Thus, we have this story broken last week by Capitol Media Services:

Gov. Janet Napolitano agreed to take home builders off the
financial hook for paying for new roads in exchange for a $100,000
donation to a campaign to persuade voters to boost their own taxes.

The deal, outlined in a letter obtained by Capitol Media Services,
resulted in the recrafting of the $42.6 billion transit improvement
initiative shortly before it was filed Tuesday to remove a provision to
raise at least some of the money from fees on new developments — fees
that would be added to the cost of new homes.
Instead the final version of the initiative — the one being
circulated for signatures — calls for the entire costs of new highways,
widened roads and mass transit projects to be paid for with a 1-cent
increase in the state sales tax, an increase of 18 percent from the
current 5.6 cent state levy.

I suppose this could be shrewd if it delivers long-needed Phoenix-Tucson rail service and commuter rail to Pinal County, not merely more roads. But it comes at a huge price, may never be approved, and will face the usual rear-guard attacks by the Legislature.

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Posted inPolitics: National

Making serious economic reform, part II

In a previous post, I discussed economic reforms that should be made in the sick, corrupt financial markets. But this is only the start of efforts the next president and Congress must make to prevent a startling decline that is already evident in America. Whatever the Dow shows, most Americans are suffering and for the first time in generations, young people wonder, with good cause, if they can live better lives than their parents.

Real change is needed, and the question is whether the American people and their elected representatives have the guts to face the truth and move ahead. The laughable gas-tax holiday and much wishful thinking about alternative energy and hydrogen cars represent the school of destructive denial. This is "sustainability" that seeks to sustain the current unsustainable economic and social arrangements. It can’t be done.

Yet much of the current mess was caused, not by inexorable laws of economics, but by policy changes to benefit the rich and transnational corporations, as well as a sprawl economy at the root of the current recession. We can change it.

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