You Thought They'd Stop at Lower Manhattan

 I warned people that the congestion pricing in NYC was only the beginning of the taxation on free travel in America. NYC had long wanted to put a toll on the Queensboro Bridge and used congestion pricing to do it. People actually believed they just missed that huge bridge when planning. It would have been easy to either put the readers south of the bridge or refund people who went from the reader to the bridge within a certain amount of time. 

They knew what they were doing.

Now that the city and state are rolling in congestion fees. The people that advocated for it are now talking about putting it elsewhere. I knew this would happen because the logic used to enact it, exists in other parts of NYC.

Now is the time for New York to go even bolder with congestion pricing. The three big levers I see to supercharge the toll’s impact are to:

• Raise the overall toll price to further motivate drivers to switch to transit and discourage low-value trips

• Increase tolls on taxis, Ubers, and Lyfts, to fix the surprisingly low per-trip tolls that we currently charge on this large share of Manhattan’s vehicles

• Create additional toll zones, to expand congestion pricing’s effects to Upper Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn

And there is is. Higher toll (which we knew was coming anyway) and additional toll zones. 

Ha.

That whole saying about an inch and a mile.

Yeah, that.

Wait till they put their sights on the Van Wyke and Belt Parkway.

But it's not just about creep on this issue. It's more. 

I remember writing about how eventually thse tolls on highways would be used to u issue tickets to speeding drivers using the time it takes to go from toll to toll.   Here's Connecticut:

“It's been a slow, methodical process, in terms of implementing automated enforcement technology here in the state,” state Department of Transportation spokesman Josh Morgan said.

I bet it has.

“It's not like, ‘speed cameras coming to I-95 tomorrow’ type of legislation,” Morgan said.

Of course not.

Another strategy is what’s called a corridor system, that tracks the time a vehicle passes through a section of roadway.

 Ahh..exactly like I said. 

See the technology is here. The state no longer needs to station a person on the road. There are cameras and radar everywhere. They see money driving down the road every day. If you object it's because you want people to die of course.

Strange how vehicles are way safer than at any time in history and yet the state feels compelled to be more onerous with it's "enforcement".  Meanwhile, after you get dinged for doing 80MPH on a clear hightway (and lets be honest, that's the only time you'll be doing that), The person camped out in the left lane looking at their phone will be A-OK.

One Root Of The Democrat Problem

 Long time no written post. If you follow my commentary you should bookmark my Rumble or Bitchute link as I do more video content than writing these days. That said, onto the subject. 

One of the things I have noticed over the years is the difference in how "Conservatives" and "Liberals" view the US government. I specify the US government because there are different assumptions that underpin other governments. For example. in England you are a subject of the crown (however ceremonial). There are no inherent rights, there are rights granted by the crown and Parliament.

In the US the opposite is true. The government [should} have only the power granted to it by the citizens.  It's written right there in the US Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

 See, if the power hasn't been delegated by  the Constitution, etc. are reserved to the people. Not granted to or otherwise transferred FROM the state. Nope. reserved. Similarly the other Amendments are restraints upon the government. The government is prohibited from abridging speech. The first amendment does not grant free speech, it restrains the government. Language like this is all over the constitution. You'd expect a judge to understand this. Enter Sotomayor:

"Justice Sotomayor, in dissent, countered by criticizing the majority for failing to identify any precedent that barred universal injunctions, but as Justice Barrett noted in a footnote, “this absence only bolsters our case” given it shows “no party even bothered to ask for such a sweeping remedy — because no court would have entertained the request”." [ My underlines]

 

The underlined is what is a root of why we currently have the conflict between conservatives and liberals. Liberals are of the opinion that the government is (or should be) all powerful and if there isn't a specific prohibition against something [that they want] then it must be something the government can do. Conservatives and indeed the Constitution itself have the position that if the power to do something hasn't specifically been granted to the government, then it cannot do it.

This worldview is why Brown-Jackson could comment during a previous case that she found that the first amendment was hobbling the government's ability to deal with "disinformation"? Yeah, that IS the point.

You cannot share a government with people who have a fundamental different understanding of the role of government. This is not about having the same understanding but disagreeing on how to address an issue within the shared understanding. This is a fight for control.