My column in today’s American Spectator discusses progressive cluelessness about how often they can pick the taxpayer’s pocket in order to fund frivolous luxuries:
Today I received an email from a cycling group to which I belong. It was marked ‘urgent’ and its subject line read: ‘Federal Bike Funding Under Attack Again.’ It implored me to contact my elected representatives in Washington and demand that they oppose an amendment introduced by Senator Rand Paul to the Transportation Enhancements program.
Never heard of TE? Well, it’s administered by the Federal Highway Administration and provides funding for the “provision of pedestrian and bicycle facilities.�
Senator Paul’s amendment, it seems, would redirect funding from such urgent national priorities as “Share the Road” signs to trivialities like infrastructure maintenance. The email cites the number of pedestrians and cyclists killed every year and declares, ‘We must defeat this amendment.’
As it happens, I know a little something about cycling accidents. I was hit by a car last year and had the uniquely unpleasant experience of bashing out a windshield with my head.
Needless to say, none of TE’s “cost-effective, valuable programs� will prevent any of the pedestrian and bicycle fatalities cited in the email. They certainly wouldn’t have prevented my accident.
Nonetheless our progressive friends believe that we can pay for all the goodies we want, no matter how frivolous, simply by raising taxes. They are utterly incapable of grasping that the taxpayers are tapped out. To read the rest of the column click here.
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