Oh No! Not Again! Cintra-Macquarie wants to unload the road!

Governor Mitch Daniels floated the idea to sell the Indiana Toll Road a few years ago. I died laughing at the implications until I woke up one day to realize that Mayor Daley of Chicago had actually sold the Skyway. This after every traveler for two years had suffered incredible delays and miles long back-ups so they could spruce up the bridge. Now it belongs to some Spaniards and Australians. It was the first-ever privatization of an American toll road. It won't be the last. Incidentally, was any of Cintra-Macquarie's money used for the reconstruction? Of course not. Will they use it as a cash cow and sell it back to Chicago when its only destination is the glue factory? Stay tuned.

So Mitch gets this great idea: "I can sell the Indiana Toll Road!" He got away with it. Now Cintre-Macquarie wants to unload it because it's not making enough money. This will put the most important section of the main east-west travel and shipping route again on the market. Let's examine some possible new buyers.

Buyer: Verizon Wireless. Name: Verizon Highway; slogan: "See what's over the Verizon":

1) Ad campaign touts the ability to pay your toll by Verizon cell phone, raising tolls for other users until a motorist has to have a Verizon phone to afford travel on the toll road.

2) Verizon squeezes out access by other cellular service on the Toll Road. "If you drive my road you have to use my phones."

3) Verizon encourages cell phone use while driving on the Toll Road. Police become sales reps: "Flip it or ticket."

Buyer: France (or England, or Canada). Name becomes Route de Péage Français (nickname: "payout frenchy"), or Royal Colonial Highway (nickname: "royal pain").

1) Foreign policy dispute with owner country results in toll increase.

2) French law and currency, or Canadian, or English, becomes applicable on the Toll Road.

3) The English buy it, we have to switch lanes; Toll Road Commissioner becomes Royal Viceroy.

4) All signs in kilometers; police become foreign troops.

Buyer: The Vatican. Name becomes Strada Del Tributo del Vatican (nickname: "holy highway"):

1) Toll Road personnel in Swiss Guard regalia, plaza gates converted to halberds; plazas converted to baptismal fonts; road signs extol Catholic doctrine.

2) Scofflaws forced to attend confessional toll booths, to receive (and pay or perform) penance before exiting.

3) Divorced persons, Protestants, (etc.) banned from toll road.

4) Police are priests, nuns and monks: Mass at toll plazas; Mass tokens get free toll.

Buyer: Anheuser-Busch. Name becomes Budweiser Highway (nickname: "budway"):

1) Policy on the toll road: responsible drinking. Plazas sell Busch products.

2) Highway name changed to reflect current ad campaigns: Bare Knuckle Stout Highway (no speed limits) near St. Patrick's Day, Natural Ice Highway (no snowplows) in the Winter, Honey Lager Highway near St. Valentine's Day, etc.

3) Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Day (or Week, or Month). All speed limits are off, bumping, drafting (formerly called "tailgating") are legal, even encouraged. Fastest time from Ohio to the Cintra-Macquarie Bridge wins Busch premiums.

Buyer: China, Russia, Saudi Arabia (no women drivers); Bill Gates (no apples sold at rest stops), Ted Turner (televisions everywhere), Pat Robertson (just imagine!), Donald Trump (slot machine alternative to toll), Larry Flynt (Hustler Highway); Democratic Party (tolls go up, liberal speed limit), Republican Party (tolls go up, conservative speed limit).

Any way you look at it there'll be more tax breaks scattered like snow at Christmas, non-union construction and maintenance on a cost-benefit basis (Remember the New Orleans levees and Katrina, the fuel tank fire cases, the Corvair, Valuejet?), more toll increases (read "shareholder profits" and "recover our investments"), sweetheart deals. Can you say "Three Card Monte"?

Any way you look at it, it will be more disaster for Hoosiers and all other motorists. Remember, we were promised a free highway? Not for one hundred years! The Toll Road is now totally commodified for private profit, like the oil companies, the telephones and the airlines. It's now all about profits, not motoring Future forecast: privatized water; (Think this is farfetched? Atlanta has it; the World Bank advocates it.) private cities: sell the whole city of New Carlisle (it's perfect "small town America") to Disney under the new eminent domain rulings!

Let's take it back from these idiots and run it for the benefit of the people not profits.

It's Racism, Pure and Simple

Since the days of Richard Nixon ("the gift that keeps on giving") Republicans have tried to advance their cause by appeals which, decoded, purposefully enhance the racial fears of whites. Their "cause" is keeping insurance companies unconscionably profitable--they disguise it by pandering to our health care fears--but they're funding and drawing the support of the "birthers"--those insisting despite overwhelming evidence that President Obama is foreign-born, and a Muslim to boot. They spread disinformation--the preposterous belief that President Obama's plans would lead to euthanasia of the elderly--but are in truth appealing to the racial insecurity of people who fear him as "the other." You know, like, Black. This is racism, plain and simple. The other day in Wakarusa the group supporting the President's health care objectives was multi-racial, multi-class, multi-age, while the group shouting, "don't tread on me" was 100% white. Is this an accident? I don't think so. If Mr. Obama can recapture the passion of a larger portion of the rainbow group which elected him, he will gain his health care objectives. Otherwise the racists and their financial backers the big insurance companies will win against the 70-some percent of the American people who want a public plan.