Jim Bacon will be staying on top of the “transportation / land use” issue with blow by blow postings. The MainStream Media and those standing for election in November call this “solving Virginia’s road crisis.” Others call it “the mobility and access crisis” which, along with “the affordable and accessible housing crisis,” have the potential, if not intelligently addressed, to continue the Commonwealth’s citizen on the path to economic, social and environmental Collapse.
The scope and details of the proposed “road” solutions will change from day to day during the current “short” legislative session. So will the arguments for and against each part of the ghastly omnibus / compromise package. Perhaps what is most useful at this point is a fresh way to present the true nature of the current “solution.”
Lets try this:
Suppose everyone in the Commonwealth depends on the Big Barn to shelter their resources and to provide for continued economic prosperity, social stability and environmental sustainability.
Lets us further assume that everyone agrees the Big Barn is in grave disrepair and if the political leadership of the Commonwealth does not do something they will be thrown out of office come November.
Upon careful review it is determined that just making the Big Barn bigger will not solve the problem. The Big Barn needs to be better and more resource efficient, not just bigger. The Big Barn needs a new foundation, better structural components and there must be a way to reduce the amount of stuff the Big Barn is expected to shelter for citizens, their enterprises and their institutions.
The reasons that these Fundamental Changes are necessary are based on the physical laws of barn construction / capacity, the economic laws of cost / availability of resources and democratic reality:
In a democracy with a market economy it is not sustainable for the Big Barn to only shelter the resources of those at the top of the economic food chain.
It turns out that the deterioration of the Big Barn has gone unaddressed because fixing it will gore the ox of those who make a big profit from Business-As-Usual. Anyone who puts forward a proposal for Fundamental Change in Big Barn management faces opposition from the special interests that pay for the political process. (See PROOF POSTIVE posting)
Any Fundamental Change proposals, and the those who make them, are doomed because education of the voters about the realities of the Big Barn have been thwarted by the Business-As-Usual interests.
In this context we can see how the legislative compromise to solve the mobility and access crisis looks a lot like a wonder cure for the Big Barn.
The grand compromise package for fixing the Big Barn is:
Charge all citizens a lot more money regardless of how much stuff they put in the Big Barn – a pure case of the tragedy of the commons.
Use taxes, fines and borrowed money to make the Big Barn bigger, using the same materials and the same designs that are now failing.
Paint the Big Barn a high tech color so it will look really good in November.
Add a new roof fabricated by the mobile home industry and paid for with the naming rights acquired by a smokeless tobacco product – in other words, a real public / private partnership.
Who will profit from the Big Barn repair job? The ones who have been kind enough to provide the bull for fund raising bull roasts.
Who will get hosed by the Big Barn repair job? In the long term every citizen of the Commonwealth.
It is very clear that without fixing the underlying problems and addressing the need to cut demand the whole New Big Barn will collapse. But not to worry, it will happen after the November election.
EMR