Comments on The Morning News

Wow. Some GOP senators that are up for election this year voted to kill the pay discrimination bill. That's pretty fucking audacious.

May they be roasted alive for it in November.

Wow, I wish I had a job that let me play games and called it "training". Although, I guess there's a price to pay with the whole spying thing.

I read the article in the Seattle Times this morning about tolls reducing gridlock and it made me furious. Right in the article one of the people in the study says that the way she saved money was by driving the side streets instead of taking the freeway. So, sure the gridlock is reduced on the freeways but what does it do to all the surrounding surface streets?

There is discussion here about charging tolls on I-70 to reduce gridlock. Never mind that there's no alternate route. And never mind that it probably isn't even legal to charge tolls for a federal highway. But what the fuck, they're politicians, they can do whatever they want, right?

Bellevue to Lynnwood: $13/way. $26/day. $130/week. $520/mth.

The people who live in Lynnwood don't live in Bellevue because its cheaper, and they can't afford to. Thus, the rich get a shitton of benefits: easy commute, less mileage (meaning lower gas cost), and smaller tolls. The poor get fucked.

Either that or people move to the back roads, which will breed congestion there as well. And back roads mean lower gas milage which creates more pollution, and increases gas cost for the poor.

And all for bigger government.

FUCK THAT.

@3 That's the point: make people use available capacity more efficiently.

@4 Don't know the area, but yeah if there's not parallel capacity, the tools wouldn't do much except discourage non-essential trips during rush hour -- no small thing.

@4 - It's completely legal to charge tolls for an interstate highway; NY does on I-90, for example. Even US federal routes can have tolls under some circumstances. States pay for some of the upkeep, and they can fund it however they wish.

Why not just charge tolls for Republicans and Libertarians and let the rest of us ride free?

Sounds fair to me.

@6 I am just not seeing how this will make people use available capacity more efficiently. It seems like it would be seriously less efficient to force cars onto side roads where there are more traffic lights and the speed limit is lower. As @5 pointed out it will also cause more pollution and potentially more wasted gas.

@8 Hmm, you may be on to something. Perhaps we can combine tolls with nanny state policies and only charge tolls if people are also smokers, or drinkers, or if they are driving a non-hybrid, or if they have more than 4 in their family, or if they use plastic bags...

Shawn Kemp= awesome.

That is all.

We should also confiscate any car containing any former watch salesmen who have filed three unconstitutional initiatives and sell it to pay for bridge repair, while we're at it.