New York can kiss hundreds of millions of federal dollars goodbye.

Say no to big government!

"Get your filthy hands out of my pockets" say New Yorkers.

Stop trying to legislate how I behave.

"It’s a common enough thought among city drivers inching through traffic: Everyone around me came from the suburbs, making my life miserable. But it’s wrong, because more than half the drivers who crowd into Manhattan each workday come from the five boroughs."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/nyregion/12traffic.html?scp=8&sq=manhattan+traffic+boroughs&st=nyt

this is like a cigarette tax in many respects. I personally think the idea of this congestion pricing may be a good thing, but to be honest, most of the congestion in NYC probably is caused by people living outside of Manhattan commuting into work and thusly they should have a say in whether this happens or not.

it'd be like the people of seattle creating a toll to cross into city limits; the only people who ever really cross into city limits are those that don't actually live in seattle.

And you know, I take those Democratic legislators at their word that they were just expressing the will of their constituents.

One can blame Bloomberg for not being able to sell this proposal to his fellow New Yorkers, but chances are, not even Derek Jeter or Jesus Christ would have been able to sell this proposal.

It's times like this you can't help but think that, no matter how many Nobel Prizes Al Gore wins or how many $300 million ad campaigns he unleashes, the great problems of our time like climate change simply are just not going to be solved--at least not anything but the hard way.

@15 Explain why tax payers should have a final say in architectural design when they arent putting up any money for the buildings the hem and haw about.

I think the NYers should have ultimate authority on the matter of congestion pricing but I don't think it is necessarily a good thing that they alone could levy a tax on something integral to the health of the entire region.

The surveillance society is going great guns already, we don't need UK-style logging of everyone's comings and goings, unless they are Republican senators in airport bathrooms, etc.