New Year, Same Problems

A Seattle Times article from yesterday confirms my worst fears. Puget Sound region highway construction costs will increase 31% over the projected costs for one made-up reason or another. And where, oh where, does the government expect to make up the shortfall? Project cuts? Sure, no one will notice that the promised six-lane highways now have two-lanes. An increase in the gas or sales tax? Absolutely! People are already strapped at the pump, they'll gladly pay a few pennies more per gallon for their roads to be finished.

The government of the Puget Sound has been lying to their people for the last twenty years. Anyone could have predicted the prices of cement and steel, but those amounts were not taken into account beforehand, so the extra cost is shlepped over to the sheep of the area.

The worst part is not so much that anyone with an ounce of sense could have seen this coming. The worst part is that the people who we elect to the top positions in the area don't represent us. They're out for their own gain, and to that end they want to move as much money as possible from our pockets to their portfolios. The only thing we can do is to vote in people who--shock of all shocks!--actually represent us.

But we're not willing to do that. Or at least those of us with an ounce of sense who are willing to do that are out voted by the hundreds of thousands of sheep who believe whatever their elected officials tell them.