What’s wrong with my street?
Last week I noticed two signs go up in my neighborhood, announcing a “Recovery.gov” project. I did a little searching and discovered that federal stimulus money was being spent to resurface two roads in my city, at a total cost of $1,619,000.
According to the site, this project will create 0.22 jobs. At that rate, one job would cost $7,359,090.
The roads to be resurfaced are Bartlett Boulevard (from the southern limits of the city of Bartlett to Memphis-Arlington) and Altruria Rd (from Summer to Yale), both of which I drive frequently, and neither of which appear to be in current need of any major repairs. It’s a bit like that scene in Falling Down, where road crews shut down a perfectly fine street for repairs in order to justify the government’s budget.
Except in this case, we’re also paying for the government to create propaganda telling us how wonderful the stimulus is. According to one estimate, the government has spent $20 million on these signs alone.
Here in Tennessee, our government is apparently tickled to death about them:
“One state brags it posts signs but manages to keep the process cost-effective. The Tennessee Department of Transportation boasts, “There are a total of 324 signs statewide for a total cost of $12,931 and an average of $37.67 each.” The reason for the small cost, they say, is that their signs are small– about equal to a speed limit sign.”
Oh, but isn’t $37.67 such a small price to pay to remind us how out of control, spendthrift and corrupt our government has become?
The signs don’t help direct traffic. They don’t help alert drivers to road conditions. They don’t offer any necessary information. They serve absolutely no purpose other than to glorify the regime.
The statue in Percy Shelly’s Ozymandias reads, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
The question is, do these reprehensible signs stand as a testimony to the hubris of our malignant government, or to the decline of our great nation?
Who needs gov’t
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q541voE2SR0&
According to your video, the federal government is collecting and/or borrowing $30 billion more in taxes than it needs so that it can turn around and send it to Tennessee. Multiply that by 50, and that’s $1.5 trillion that should be collected and spent at the state and local level, if at all. The federal government has exceeded its constitutional authority, to the point where our state and local governments have become dependent upon its largess. That is not how our federalist system of government was designed to work. Thanks for helping me illustrate how badly our federal government is broken. The progressives would like us to become even more dependent on an out-of-control, unaccountable, distant central government. As a conservative, I would like to restore the constitution, return power to the state and local governments, and give people more democratic control over the policies and systems that affect their daily lives.