Don’t Toss the Tolling Option

Herriman is hardly alone in opposing freeway tolls. The most prominent reason they give is wholly predictable – and it is reasonable:

The two-page Herriman statement said the council supports the corridor project, but believes tolls would create a financial burden for residents.

I would love to read the full statement from the city council, but I know that we need to quit thinking of tolling as an all-or-nothing proposition.

We already have a single carpool/toll lane on I-15 and I think the lane next to it should become a congestion pricing lane as well – that would leave at least two and in most places 3 free lanes on the road and would allow people to discover the value of congestion pricing.

That is also an idea that could be implemented and begin generating revenue while the Mountain View Corridor is still being built. I believe that if we created a congestion pricing lane on I-15 while the MVC was being built we would see little opposition to having one or two of the leftmost lanes on the MVC as congestion pricing lanes. This would allow residents on the east and the west to share the cost of the improved transportation infrastructure which will benefit both sides.

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Two Years (By One Way of Reckoning)

Last year I recorded my first year back to blogging. I recorded the statistics at the time and set a goal to average one post per day. In the last year I have:

  • 365 posts
  • 1364 comments
  • ~20,000 spam comments (the spam count got reset when I upgraded to WP 2.5 so the count listed is 9100)

I have more posts this year than comments last year, more comments this year than spam comments last year, and obviously more spam comments (I’d hate to be ignored by the spammers). I have also imported posts and comments from before my 8 month blogging hiatus so my totals right now are 735 posts and 1749 comments (as a future point of reference).

I do not anticipate reporting statistics yearly, but anytime I do choose to do an anniversary post in the future I will mark the anniversary on June 23rd (the day I first started blogging in 2004) rather than August 14th. It’s been very rewarding to see more people commenting and helping to refine my thinking. Thanks.

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Incentives to Get Off Welfare

Another spinoff from the discussion about Equality Under the Law clicked a switch in my brain. Nothing that Anti-PC Infidel says in his post should surprise anyone who has seen the discussion already, but for some reason the following statement made a connection to another issue that I have struggled to resolve for a long time:

This is often combined with the sin of destroying the recipients of {welfare} by encouraging them to be lazy and unproductive, irresponsible and greedy, by putting them on the dole.

I have long wished for some way to make it more difficult to vote for those who do not care to take the time to become informed. The thought struck me that we could make the right to vote contingent on paying at least as much in taxes as we receive in government handouts. This does not directly solve my original conundrum, but it would give incentive to those receiving welfare to find a way to become independent from government handouts if they desire to vote. Essentially, in addition to current requirements for voting, the payment of taxes equal to or in excess of any money received as welfare, food stamps, social security, unemployment benefits, rental assistance, etc. would give each person the right – like a shareholder – to vote in elections. This same rule should probably apply to board members of corporations that receive subsidies from the federal government as well.

I recognize that some will complain that such a plan would favor Republicans since poor people are statistically more likely to vote Democratic, but I would appreciate it if arguments for and against were framed in a way that was independent of party politics.

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One Good Decision

I would not try to claim that one good decision can negate a series of very bad choices, but I think that Michael Rodriguez deserves to be acknowledged for his choice to skip an endless series of appeals. Instead he has chosen to pay the only price he can for the crimes he has committed. I think that many people can learn a lesson from this.

We live in a country governed by laws and we should stand accountable for the choices that we make. We should not seek to shirk our accountability for any reason, whether because the price of our choices is too high or because we feel we are above the law.

Thanks to Scott for sharing one good example and one poor example of accountability.

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What Do You Expect?

What started as a post about Equality Before the Law grew into a discussion about the role of government in helping our fellow men. That eventually spun of into a discussion about how we can or should mix religion and politics at The Life I am Choosing. Later I ran across Connor’s post about the truth concerning charity in a capitalist system. That related post had a comment that seemed to capture the difference in the expectations between the two sides of the debate.

These and similar accusations . . . stem from a mistrust of capitalism and a lack of faith in man’s innate desire to help others.

Man’s innate desire to help others is what drives most of those who argue both sides of this issue. There are those capitalists who are not thinking of how to benefit others, and yet what they do almost always does help others. There are those communalists who are not really interested in helping others and they are very happy to be useing the force of government to negate the property rights of others. Despite those two groups, the majority of people approach this discussion with an honest desire to help others. Some believing that  government can provide the best coverage in helping others while others believe that individuals can tackle the major problem areas as well as filling the cracks that would be missed by government.

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Taking a Long View

Aside from my interested in transit and my general appreciation for the possibilities of Utah County, I did not expect that I would have much to gain from FrontRunner South now that I have moved North. When I read about the groundbreaking for FrontRunner in Utah County the comments helped me see that I still have a stake in the project.

This comment:

Great, now I can take commuter rail all the way to Cougar football games on fall afternoons.

Reminded me that I will not likely go to many BYU games with family memebrs which has been a fun event once or twice a year for me while I lived in the area. Once the line is finished I could go from Bountiful as easily as I did from Lehi for those games.

Another:

They really should finish first what they have now considering the line from Ogden to Pleasant View City is still not complete.

Reminded me that there are still detractors who must still be countered with leavel-headed reason. Which section of rail is likely to have more riders per mile – Ogden to Pleasant View, or Salt Lake City to Provo?

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Rights and Liberty

This is 8 minutes well spent if you have any question about what constitutes a right and why rights are more than simply good things that deserve legal protection or assistance. (Hat tip: The Anti-PC Infidel)

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One Subject at a Time

Today I would like to introduce DownsizeDC.org’s “One Subject at a Time Act”

Most Americans probably believe a bill has to have majority support in Congress before it can become the law of the land. Sadly, this common sense expectation is totally wrong. Congressional leaders routinely pass laws that a majority opposes. DownsizeDC.org believes every bill should have to stand or fall on its own merits. Toward this end we have crafted the “One Subject at a Time Act” (OSTA).

One thing that i like about the Downsize DC approach is that most of the legislation they promote is written as a regulation for Congress and not for the people of the United States at large. OSTA is no exception. This bill recognizes the smoke and mirrors effect perpetrated by congressional representatives when they are allowed to bundle or misrepresent pieces of legislation in order to pass them.

The premise of OSTA is that if a piece of legislation is not able to pass on its own merits then the bill does not deserve passage. There may be good bills that generate opposition, but more often there are bad bills that are slipping under the public radar by being passed under the shadow of a deceptive title or hiding behind bills that do deserve the support of congress.

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Equal Before the Law

In Sunday school today we were talking, among other things, about the freedom of conscience that was protected under Nephite law. The teacher (I can’t remember his name since it was our first week in a new ward) made the statement that all men were equal before the law. The thought that followed in my mind was that this was the highest equality we should strive for in society – that all men would be equal before the law. We need not seek for all men to be equal in material posessions, or in educational attainment, but only that all be treated equally in the eyes of the law and that there be no legal basis for any kind of discrimination with regards to the various kinds of opportunity that a person might seek.

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Fallout from Statewide Four 10’s Schedule

As I was riding the bus home yesterday there were very few riders. I overheard some people discussing it and suggesting that it might be related to the new four 10’s schedule of most government offices. That explanation makes sense to me. It also got me thinking about how wide an impact that could possibly have. I wonder if some of the commuter bus lines (the ones that only run into downtown in the morning and out of downtown in the evening) might add an extra bus at the beginning and/or end of the day on Monday thru Thursday to accomodate the extended hours of government workers. If they did, this might encourage others who have any flexibility in their schedules to shift their days earlier or later to avoid the rush of the 9 to 5 crowd. It occurred to me that this might result in a substantial change in traffic patterns every day of the week and not just on Fridays as I had previously expected.

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