Recently I was sent a flyer asking how I felt about giving away more money because someone figured out I just have too much. Of course it was in the form of a tax. This tax would be used to fix potholes, improve safety, make Highway 25 better, make other roads better, move money around, pay for unfunded liabilities, who knows.
Meanwhile, we as forced taxpayers have probably forked over $2 million by now to cut into a hill, move a driveway and install two traffic lights on the top of a hill on the way to Pinnacles. One can see dinosaur skeletons emerging from all the rock falling away from where they made vertical cutouts for the road. Huge boulders are literally falling all over the road, and if you aren’t careful, you will run them over and damage your car. Will the government (actually you the taxpayer) compensate for that? Not a chance. Instead, they put flaggers on the construction site with a huge smile so you won’t think about how much you are getting ripped off.
Probably one reason they did this was to slow down motorcyclists and others from speeding up and down to Pinnacles. Sure, several motorcyclists and cars have gone through cattle fence over the years and a few have actually died. I’m not sure by spending $2 million on a few hundred yards of road is the best way to save lives. Think how many tickets could be written there. Think of the revenue!!! Now that I think about it, I have never seen anyone ever written for a ticket on that road. The only thing I have seen is debris being picked off the barbed-wire fence people keep running through. Perhaps the condors can clean up after the wrecks?
One could put small speed bumps to slow people down, but that would be too practical. We need these multimillion-dollar projects that do nothing so we can be asked for more money because the budget needs to hide money to pay huge retirements so a select few elected officials that get appointed positions in government after they are termed out, do nothing, get a huge salary and lifetime benefits. For decades there was enough money to fix the potholes. It’s not clear why now there is no money now. It’s not like potholes are that expensive to fix. One thing is clear: The taxpayer has an infinite amount of money, and the government has the power to force us to hand it over.
And speaking of potholes, a couple county supervisors have promised us that the road to the dump would be maintained if we only put in a nuclear waste site across from the dump. We can’t even find money in the unfunded retirement accounts of government employees to fix potholes, and yet, we the stupid taxpayer keep voting for more taxes so that some government employees can have a much better retirement than we do at our expense in spite of them complaining it’s “their” money, where did it come from?
It’s not clear to me why people can’t figure this out. Oh, that’s right, the same people run education, and they make darn sure issues like this and how to balance a checkbook are never taught in schools. What we need to keep teaching in schools is to get behind banning plastic bags and equal outcomes. No one deserves the rewards of someone else’s hard work more than someone who didn’t work for it. Feel the bern (not a typo).
Oh, and by the way, the biggest bang for the buck to fix highway 25 is to have merge lanes for trucks at one or two large businesses. I find it amazing this wasn’t a requirement considering how aggressively our government went after Leal to put a turn lane in on Fairview.
But hey, we need to spend MILLIONS of dollars on roads to nowhere because our college was so cleverly located by a judge who’s extended family sold the land at the TOP of the housing bubble. I find that transaction extremely curious, especially when every guideline to locate the college was violated.
That’s our government; aren’t you proud? I bet that the tax increase passes. And I bet that the potholes won’t be fixed any better and we will need another new tax to fix the potholes. And people wonder why some people are upset. George Washington would be in jail if he were alive today.
Mark Dickson, Hollister
