PEDALING OUR WAY TO SERFDOM

"Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has announced a “major policy revision” that aims to give bicycling and walking the same policy and economic consideration as driving.

“Today I want to announce a sea change,” he wrote on his blog last week. “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized.”

The new policy, which was introduced a few days after Mr. LaHood gave a well-received speech from atop a table at the National Bike Summit, is said to reflect the Transportation Department’s support for the development of fully integrated transportation networks.

It calls on state and local governments to go beyond minimum planning and maintenance requirements to provide convenient and safe amenities for bikers and walkers. “Walking and biking should not be an afterthought in roadway design,” the policy states."
NY Times

It's time for states to begin withholding most of the tax monies they collect for transportation.

I think that an argument can be made under the Commerce Clause for federal funding for interstate highways and I think that our tax money should support their maintenance and construction, within reason. However, all other roads need to be maintained by the towns, counties and states they are built in.

If a local community wants bike trails they should be able to build them. They can create a funding mechanism that is approved by the citizens and construction and maintenance will be provided for by local dollars. Perfectly within the bounds of subsidiarity.

However, when local communities and states are forced to send their tax dollars to Washington and beg to have them sent back, only after they have passed through the sieve of special interest, the citizen has lost control. Their property is being forcibly taken from them to be used by others for purposes determined by others. This is the very definition of wealth redistribution, a bedrock tenet of Marxism. Americans have had this Communist system of government foisted on them over time, so as not to have it noticed.

I like bicycles. I have a couple of them and I used to commute to work on them. I've got nothing against bike paths to make riding safer. But, if bike paths are to be built I want them to be approved and paid for by the communities that use them. Ray LaHood has no right to use my property to satisfy the demands of some political constituency that has found favor with the boys in Washington. If he does this, he is a thief and a despot.

GET THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES!