28-05-2010, 02:57 AM
Ed Jewett Wrote:Michigan House Bill 4961 [pdf] boils down to Taxation without Representation – turning the State’s right to levy taxes over to private international corporations, essentially ceding sovereignty over critial infrastructure. The corporations will be able to levy highway tolls without oversight or regulation on US citizens, should this bill pass.
At an absolute minimum it allows the creation of a single high occupancy toll lane. After the next repaving of an entire highway, tolls can be collected on all lanes.
Yes, here in Sydney, as in other cities around the world, we have toll roads constructed and mostly funded by private contractors, which are essentially privately owned roads, legislated to return into public ownership in 30 years or so. The Cross City Tunnel and Lane Cove Tunnel are two examples.
What you have there Ed, seems to be privatisation of previously publicly owned roads and the introduction of tolls on roads where none previously existed--a much greater breach of public trust.
A quote from the excellent Stoneleigh piece you posted in the Louisiana oil drilling thread fits nicely:
Quote:Elites (top predators) will have a smaller peripheral pool from which to extract the tithes they have come to expect. No longer able to pick the pockets of the whole world, they will very likely squeeze domestic populations much harder in a vain attempt to maintain the resources of the centre at their previous level. This will be very painful for those at the bottom of the pyramid, who will be asked, told and eventually forced to increase their contributions, at the very moment their ability to do so declines sharply.
http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...48&page=14